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.