They had John Dillinger behind bars in the Lake County jail in Crown Point , Indiana . His jailers boasted that their facility was leakage - proof . But Dillinger had n’t become a successful malefactor by fortuity . pitiless , clever and hard - boil , he whiled away his time carve a piece of wood into a replication of a small-scale handgun and paint it with skid polish .
Unbelievably , he was capable to apply the phoney gunslinger to play a joke on his capturer and managed to escape . By the time he was done , Dillinger ’s pack was creditworthy for10 deaths , three clink breaksandmore than 20 bank robberies . He became America ’s first lawful celebrity crook and was named the nation ’s Public Enemy No . 1 .
Dillinger like fast cars a lot . He stole or bought them at even intervals and used them to outrun the cops in their four - cylinder rattletraps . There ’s someevidencethat he even penned a letter of appreciation toHenry Fordfor building such fast car . Roaring across state borders , he overlay vast territories and left local natural law enforcement in the dust .
In an audience , Dary Matera , the writer of " John Dillinger : The Life and Death of America ’s First Celebrity Criminal " says that at the time , J. Edgar Hooverwas trying to convince the government to give him the money to turn theBureau of Investigationinto a truly efficacious home police force . He used Dillinger ’s interstate scandalization to point out the need and his run worked . Hoover ’s first ordination of business was to deal with Dillinger . But how ?
He caught a break of serve when a womanhood describe Ana Cumpanas contacted the Bureau . Cumpanas was Romanian immigrant who bunk a brothel in Gary , Indiana . One of the bawd who work for her was dating Dillinger . Threatened with deportation , Cumpanas wanted to cut a passel with the FBI . She would tell them where Dillinger was if they would verify she was n’t sent back to Romania . The FBI agreed to help her as well they could and Cumpanas decide to work with them .
On July 22 , 1934 , FBI agents hazard out the Biograph Theater in Chicago . According to Matera , most FBI agents were " pencil peddler , or , as I like to call them , Hoover ’s army of flake . They could n’t photograph , so Hoover employ a couple of military assassinator . " Together , says Matera , the geeks and the assassin loitered outside the theatre of operations until the show was over and Dillinger emerge . He ’d lately had plastic surgery and trust himself so unrecognisable he could divagate the streets with impunity . But he ’d also been in and out of prison for much of his lifetime and it took him no time at all to clock the law .
He headed into an alley to evade them and , according to the FBI agents , draw in a weapon system as he ran . One of the eccentric person send away wildly and score two woman in the crowd that was egress from the moving-picture show theatre . " The assassins got Dillinger in their heap . The bullet that killed him entered the back of his neck and exited under his correct centre , " Matera says . It was " an execution crack . They ’d been sent there with orders to stamp out Dillinger and that ’s what they did . Hoover had no intention of put him on trial . "
One reason for this , Matera believe , is that a trial could have been very mussy . Not only was Dillinger an admired folk hero by the time he died , he might also have had info that some powerful people did n’t want to egress . There were doubtlessly policemen and politicians he ’d bribed , not to remark bank functionary who might have hired him . One widely believed hearsay , tell Matera , is that in some cases banking concern officials would hire Dillinger to rob their banks . He might slip $ 10,000 , but they would claim he ’d taken $ 50,000 and keep the difference when their insurance claim came through .
One way or another , says Matera , it really wasDillingerthey get . As with many famous person death , rumors persist that the man they killed that night was actually a duple . But , Matera says , duplicate never run . They do n’t need to get burgeon forth . Also , he points out , Dillinger was enamored of his famous person . " He could n’t live without his renown . If he ’d really survived , he would have resurfaced somewhere in Mexico and thumb his olfactory organ at the FBI . "
That said , two of Dillingers descendants claim that they doubt it ’s really his body that ’s bury under his gravestone . In September 2019they plan to disinter the corpseand use desoxyribonucleic acid to determine its true identity .
As far as Matera is touch on , " It ’s just a packaging stunt . "
Time will state .
