Americans love outlaws—we love to mythologize them, romanticize them, idolize them. None more so than the bank robbers of the early 1930s, when the Great Depression impoverished . millions of Americans and made a tiny handful of gun-toting outlaws rich. Here’s a brief look at :the even briefer career of John Dillinger, bank robber extraordinaire:

MYTH: Dillinger and his gang terrorized America with an endless string of armed bank robberies. REALITY: Their spree lasted all of 10 months. He spent the last two months of his short life hiding out in Chicago, with the FBI closing in on him daily. BUT: During those 10 months they hit 24 banks and four police stations, netting $300k in cash (equal to $7 million today), plus a cache of police weapons, including machine guns, To paraphrase James Brown: Dillinger was the hardest-workin’ man in crime biz.

MYTH: He and his gang never harmed anyone during their crime spree. REALITY: They killed 10 men and wounded seven. Dillinger was charged with personally killing a bank guard butt never stood trial. BUT: Law enforcement was almost as careless once the bullets started flying. The FBI killed a tourist and wounded two others during an incredibly botched raid on Little Bohemia, a Wisconsin resort where Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson and other gangsters were holed up. They all escaped.

MYTH: Dillinger was a genius at evading arrest and confinement. REALITY: Most pf his getaways were due to law enforcement’s incompetence, lack of funds and personnel, and inability to cross state and even county borders to chase the gang. Dillinger and his gang weren’t immune from stupidity either. They rendezvoused in a Tucson hotel to plan their next series of bank robberies. Fire broke out, and they tipped firemen $10 each to carry their bags downstairs. When the firemen looked inside the suspiciously heavy bags, they saw the gang’s weapons. One of the firemen had seen their pictures in True Detective Magazine and alerted police. Dillinger and his entire gang were arrested without a shot fired. BUT: Dillinger was sent to the Crown Point Indiana jail to await trial for killing a bank guard. Machine-gun-toting Sheriff Lillian Holley bragged that her lockup was “escape-proof” and surrounded it with cops and sandbags. Dillinger fashioned a “gun” out of a washboard blackened with shoe polish. He overpowered a guard, took his keys, freed four prisoners, locked up the warden and most of the staff, and made off with two Tommy guns and four pistols—and Sheriff Holley’s V8 Ford, which outran pursuing law enforcement. News media referred to “Clown Point Jail.”

MYTH: He “robbed from the rich, gave to the poor.” REALITY: Most of the money he stole was deposited by farmers and small business owners. The bulk of it was unrecoverable, because FDIC didn’t start insuring bank depositors until well into his spree. And, he lavished his ill-gotten gains on cars, clothes and prostitutes, BUT: Even his victims lionized Dillinger because bankers were among the most hated men of the Great Depression—demonized as greedy foreclosers of farms and stores.

MYTH: He destroyed mortgage and loan records while robbing banks. REALITY: Get serious! While serving a long stretch for a petty theft as a youngster, Dillinger studied the career of Herbert “Baron’ Lamm, “father of modern bank robbery,” who advised that gangs had no more than three or four minutes to fill their bags with money before The Law arrived. BUT: Pretty Boy Floyd, one of his bank-busting contemporaries (who was later lionized by folk singer Woody Guthrie), gained an (unverified) reputation as a bank records-destroyer, and that glow attached to Dillinger.

MYTH: He died in a blazing shootout with brave FBI agents. REALITY: FBI agents never gave him a chance to shoot. He was betrayed by Anna Sage, a Romanian immigrant (and madam to Polly Hamilton, Dillinger’s girlfriend), who told Special Agent Melvin Purvis that she would identify Dillinger in exchange for not being deported. Eighteen FBI agents and Chicago cops staked out the Biograph movie theater as he, Hamilton and Sage left. When the two women fell behind, Dillinger, sensing the trap set for him, began to run. He was shot three times and died, face down, on the pavement. BUT: In “Manhattan Melodrama,” the movie that was playing in the crowded Biograph Theater, Blackie (Clark Gable), a gangster and convicted murderer, goes to the electric chair rather than confess and have his sentence commuted. Gable’s movie “courage” rubbed off on the crowds that surrounded Dillinger’s body—some even dipped their handkerchiefs in his blood.

MYTH: Dillinger had a huge penis. REALITY: His body was laid out on a table, on his back, with his arms at his side. Due to rigor mortis, Dillinger’s left forearm rose up at under the sheet, giving the thousands of curious Chicagans who lined up to see him that he went out in a blaze of, uh, manhood.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fnews.wttw.com%2F2019%2F08%2F01%2Fjohn-dillinger-relatives-doubt-body-grave-gangster&psig=AOvVaw2OU_0p5FlCSuGJd9RK5O2x&ust=1717558457223000&source=images&cd=vfe&opi=89978449&ved=0CBIQjRxqFwoTCJC95YCCwYYDFQAAAAAdAAAAABAE

BUT: What more fitting myth to cap the end of America’s most mythologized outlaw?

Great info and thanks.

What about his alleged ties to the Chi mob?

Nice

.....im currently having tough time in finding the file which states that some guys like Joey Aiuppa used to keep weapons for the Dillinger/Nelson gang...but Im 100% sure that its out there.

What about Dillinger’ connections to the Outfit and Frank Nitti? I remember him saying to Dillinger - what you make in year we make per day (in relation to the gambling) by the Outfit gang.

That was my question too, although not about Nitti but instead about Aiuppa, Maddox or Heeney? Possibly even about Chicagos Karpis gang since i think one of them personally knew Nitti or Maddox. In fact, Aiuppa was mentored by Maddox aka Johnny Moore.

Dary Matara, who wrote a well-researched bio of Dillinger, makes no mention of The Outfit or anyone in it. Logically, Dillinger was much closer to the Old West tradition--a desperado--than to the modern Mob.and its gangster-as-businessman modus operandi. But, no mention doesn't necessarily mean no connection.

Thats right, although during those days the Outfit still had members and associates like Capezio or Maddox who loved the adrenaline of doing a bank robbery and also killed cops, besides being involved in numerous lucrative rackets, and on top of that they knew almost every shooter and bank robber from around the country. Take Fred Burke for example and the rest of the guys from the St Valentines massacre, or the guys from Detroit. Those guys werent racketeers but istead they were shooters, cop killers and bank robbers.

I always thought they could have arrest him instead they executed him he probably knew too much.

Fred (Killer) Burke was a stone bad guy, and yes, he really belonged more to the desperado era than to the Mafia tradition. Also, Capone's frequent golf partner.

The Dillinger mythology also helped create an ever larger mythology: J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI:

In 1919, as President Woodrow Wilson slowly recovered from a paralyzing stroke, his Attorney General, A. Mitchell Palmer, launched raids against immigrants from Eastern Europe suspected of being "Bolsheviks." He put 24-year-old Hoover in charge. Thousands were arrested, hundreds deported, nearly all guilty of no crimes. This drew the ire of Sen. Thomas Walsh, a progressive Democrat from Montana. In 1933, President-Elect Franklin D. Roosevelt nominated Walsh as Attorney General. Walsh told friends he intended to fire Hoover. Walsh had married in Havana just before the inauguration. He dropped dead on a train taking him and his bride to Washington for his swearing-in (he died of "excess honeymooning," according to some tabloids). Hoover got a temporary pass from Homer Cummings, the new AG. Hoover made sure he stole credit for Dillinger's demise from Melvin Purvis--even hung Dillinger's death mask outside his office. He remained FBI chief until he died in 1972.

Thanks for the additional info. Btw I somehow found the file regarding Outfit boss Joey Aiuppa for which I previously talked about....

Thanks this also shows Aiuppa was already a big guy around Capone.

Classic Michael Mann !

You're always welcome bud, although I think there was also another file which states something about Aiuppa allegedly stashing weapons for these guys, or something like that. Capone's lieutenants like Heeney and Maddox were constantly bringing "new blood" during those days and Aiuppa was one of those younger gangsters. In fact, whenever young Aiuppa was arrested for some crime crime, he usually told the cops that he worked for Johnny Moore aka Maddox, and after that he was often released since the boys in blue knew on who Maddox really was and didnt want to risk their own lives.

Very cool Toodoped.

There are still guys around from Aiuppa’s days.

Thanks bud. After Marcello's imprisonment, the death of Tornabene, and also the murders of both Zizzo and Chiaramonti, the old Cicero-Melrose Park aka Aiuppa crew was finished forever, although as you already said, there are probably still some associates and members who knew Aiuppa personally, such as Nick Ferriola who in turn allegedly took care of the old boss when he was released from prison during the 90's or shortly before his death.

Another interesting excerpt which includes the names of Aiuppa and Dillinger regarding young Aiuppa allegedly providing weapons for the Dillinger and Karpis gang...

Always wondered how close Aiuppa and Dillinger were. Love that last passage in the article about him saying nothing and chewing gum. Dude was gangster to the core.

Same thoughts here buddy lol he was also labelled by investigators as completely illiterate individual lol

Great stuff Turnbull and TD. Thanks for sharing!

You're are welcome Jimmy

You're more than welcome, Jimmy.

You wonder how a guy like Dillinger would act around the italian hoods like Aiuppa - I wonder if he was scared of those guys. He was a southern boy - you just wonder with these guys in the 30s still talking italian with the dark features and the racism against them coming from the south - would a tough guy like Dillinger call Aiuppa and his crew guineas and tell them to fuck off or pay tribute bc he knew how they operated?

My opinion is that "desperados" like Dillinger had a lot of courage and were very unpredictable by being very trigger happy. But as it was already said in one gangster movie something like "huge balls, but no brains". Many of the "desperados" who were closely tied to some members of the Outfit, by the mid 1930's were killed by the Mafia mainly because of the sensitive jobs they previously did for them like the professional hits in the massacre or on Aiello and Barker, which were executed with machineguns (some from a very long distance with military precision). Also, when Fred Burke went to prison while his buddies from the massacre were hunted down all around the country by the Mafia, Burke was personally visited in jail by Capone capo and connection guy Phil D'Andrea and both of them had a short private talk. Some of the prison guards and the warden at the time, speculated that the short chat was for Burke to keep his mouth shut or else.

I remember there was a "conspiracy theory" about Dillinger not being really killed then, that the FBI mistakingly killed another man and tried to cover it up etc. Maybe it's all bullshit, I don't know, but 1 thing seems weird to me: when a few years ago they were going to do an exhumation of Dillinger's body to check whether it was really him, at the last moment it was canceled without explanation....I mean, why cancel it, if they just had a perfect chance to disprove the "fake death" theory once and for all?

I am not really into conspiracy theories, but the exhumation being canceled at the last moment doesn't really make sense to me, unless they had something to hide.

Here is one of the articles about this:

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/john-dillinger-family-wont-exhume-body-935691/

You mean George "Red" Barker? But wasn't he allegedly killed by the Touhy gang rather than the Mafia? Although maybe I am confusing him with some other gangster.

Yes, there were probably few Outfit associates who were killed by the Touhy gang, especially associates of Rocco DeGrazia's crew. But Barker was a completely different case and he was allegedly killed by the Outfit by being almost cut in half from machinegun bullets from a long distance, and the interesting thing is that none of the people around Barker didnt receive a scratch, which means that the shooters were quite experienced (same as the Esposito, Aiello and other hits from that era).