Dillinger
The history of American gangster John Dillinger and all law enforcement tasked to catch him.
During the Great Depression, the American gangster John Dillinger led various gangs that robbed numerous banks and police stations. Law enforcement caught Dillinger twice, and he escaped twice. The media loved him, and many regarded him as a modern-day Robin Hood. J. Edgar Hoover cleverly used the hunt for Dillinger and his gang to increase the Justice Department’s Bureau of Investigation powers, which it still wields today.
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John Herbert Dillinger was born and grew up. Then, when he was 20 years old, he got a prison sentence for a failed robbery. He was in prison when the Great Depression hit the US, and Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected President. Roosevelt ended Prohibition and vowed to fight the gangsters such as “Pretty Boy” Floyd, “Machine Gun” Kelly, the Barker-Karpis Gang, and the Barrow Gang, with Bonnie and Clyde, using Agents from the Justice Department’s Bureau of Investigation led by J. Edgar Hoover.
A paroled John Dillinger found a few fellow gang members to rob banks and stores to gather money to help a group of fellow prison inmates escape. However, he’d been paroled during the Great Depression, and most places on his jug list were shut down. Also, his fellow gangsters proved they weren’t exactly up to the task. Plus, he was distracted by a girl…
John Dillinger had provided his friends inside Indiana State Prison with the means to escape, but he was himself jailed. He could only hope his fellow-inmates succeeded in his break out, so they could spring him from jail…
The Indiana State Prison escapees had freed John Dillinger from the Lima, OH jail and began robbing police stations and banks. Police departments from Indiana and Illinois teamed up to catch the supposed leader of the dangerous gang, Dillinger. Acting on a tip from a snitch, they laid a trap for Johnnie at a doctor’s office in Chicago, IL.
Police chiefs in Indiana and Illinois, fed up with the crime wave sweeping their States, assembled several elite forces to track down and arrest the members of the most dangerous Terror Gang. Its core members, John Dillinger, Harry “Pete” Pierpont, Charles Makley, John “Red” Hamilton, and Russell “Boobie” Clark, found the heat on them unbearable. They went on vacation in sunnier climes to cool off. First in Florida, then on to Arizona. The gang had plenty of cash from their previous hold-ups, but Pierpont, Dillinger, and Hamilton couldn’t resist doing one more bank job in East Chicago, Indiana. They were ill-prepared, and their messy getaway ended with the tragic death of Detective Sergeant William Patrick O’Malley and a severely injured John Hamilton. Hamilton and his new girl Pat Cherrington were left in Fort Wayne, Indiana, so he could recover, while the rest of the Gang and their galls headed into Tucson, Arizona. They figured they’d be safe from the law in the sleepy Old West town. Yeah… they were wrong.
Tucson Police had captured nearly all members of the bank robbing Terror gang. Only injured John Hamilton was still at large, but he was in no shape to help. Harry Pierpont, Charles Makley, and Russell Clark had been arraigned in Lima, Ohio for the death of Sheriff Jess Sarber, while John Dillinger had been arraigned in Crown Point, Indiana for the death of Sergeant William Patrick O’Malley. But all incarcerated gangsters had escaped before, and all vowed to try again.
John Dillinger had escaped the Lake County jail in Crown Point, Indiana, and, like the roofing nails,nails, gangsters scattered on the road after robberies, left a trail of destroyed careers in his wake. In desperate need of cash, John and his first Lieutenant John Red Hamilton joined up with Lester Gillis, aka Baby Face Nelson’s gang,gang, with Homer van Meter, Tommy Carroll, and Eddie Green. After robbing a bank in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, together, Dillinger prepared another bank robbery in Iowa. Meanwhile, Johnnie’s captured former gang mates, Harry Pierpont, Charles Makley, and Russell Clark,Clark, were about to go to trial for the murder of Sheriff Jess Sarber during Dillinger’s previous jail break.
Eddie Green’s wife, Beth Green, had arranged an apartment for John Dillinger and his girlfriend Evelyn “Billie” Frechette at 95 South Lexington Avenue, in St. Paul, Minnesota as Mr. and Mrs. Carl Hellman. John “Red” Hamilton, his sweetheart Pat Cherrington, and her sister, Opal Long,Long, moved in a little later. Lincoln Court Apartments Manager Daisy Coffey became suspicious of the Hellman’s odd behavior and alerted local police. Federal Agents of the Bureau of Investigation, thinking they might be members of the Barker-Karpis Gang, headed over, but the manager didn’t recognize them from the mug shots. Still, Inspector William Rorer instructed his Agents to pay a visit to the couple in Apartment #303.
The Federal Agents of the Bureau of Investigation had joined the hunt for John Dillinger, the outlaw who had escaped from jail twice and evaded police traps and raids so often that it was becoming ridiculous. The public cheered him on, but the heat on John and his fellow gang members, John “Red” Hamilton, George “Baby Face” Nelson, Homer van Meter, and Thomas “Tommy” Carroll, was getting too great. Johnnie had just shot his way out of his Apartment in St Paul, Minnesota, the gang’s jug maker Eddie Green was killed in a Federal ambush, and the Feds had arrested Dillinger’s girlfriend Billie Frechette. The Gang decided to go to ground somewhere quiet and out of the way. Underworld Tavern Owner Louis Cernocky suggested they go to the Little Bohemia Lodge in Northern Wisconsin.
The Bureau of Investigation’s Special Agent in Charge of the Chicago field office, Melvin Purvis thought he had the New Dillinger Gang trapped at the Little Bohemia Lodge in Manitowish Waters, WI, but John Dillinger and his fellow gang mates had slipped through his fingers, again. Two men had died, four had been wounded, three of the four molls had been arrested, but the six gangsters had fled in all directions. They weren’t home safe yet, though, and the relentless hunt for Dillinger and his gang mates continued.
In the wake of the shootout between Federal Agents and the Dillinger Gang at the Little Bohemia Lodge in Northern Wisconsin, the United States government passed several crime bills that gave J. Edgar Hoover’s men of the Bureau of Investigation extensive powers to unleash hellfire in the War on Crime. John Dillinger was Hoover’s supreme target, and he and his Agents ramped up efforts to catch Johnnie and his fellow gang mates, Homer Van Meter, George “Baby Face” Nelson, Thomas “Tommy” Carroll, and Arthur “Pat” Reilly. Dillinger was still reeling from the loss of his lieutenant John “Red” Hamilton,Hamilton, who had been shot during their escape from the Little Bohemia Lodge. Despite law enforcement’s best efforts to turn Dillinger into a master villain, Johnnie received a lot of public support. However, with his face splashed across newspapers and movie screens, he became too recognizable. He needed to change his face.
The United States Government had placed a $10,000 reward on Public Enemy Number One, John Dillinger. But Dillinger continued to elude local, state, and federal police at every turn, and the public kept cheering him on. Johnnie had undergone plastic surgery to change the most notable features of his face, but his mug was still very recognizable. J. Edgar Hoover of the Bureau of Investigation hoped the high reward would turn all the regular law-abiding folk, devastated by the Great Depression, into a salivating pack of dogs to hunt down Johnnie and bring him in. The not-so-law-abiding folk planned to do the same. One person in particular had such plans, not so much for the reward money, a nice bonus, but hoping to gain hoping to gain a Governor’s pardon.
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