History at my Doorstep: John Dillinger’s Great Escape

MBHenry

1 year ago

I have to admit it – I feel like I’m running short on ideas for this blog lately. In part because I have a lot going on and sometimes it’s hard to keep up. In other part though, and probably more importantly, it’s because I like to use only my own photographs when I post about historical things. It makes it kind of limiting when I want to reach for the stars from the past. Especially since my husband and I haven’t been traveling as much as we used to, and I haven’t had as much recent practice with the old camera.

So, at the beginning of this year, as I sat at the table brainstorming some fresh blog ideas over morning coffee with my mother-in-law, I decided to start thinking about some local history. Something that would only require a short day trip, or less, to go seek out and take pictures of. But I sort of scoffed at the idea even as it formed in my head. I mean, I live in Indiana now, not Los Angeles. What sort of local history could be found around pokey old Wheeler, Indiana?

“Well, you know about the whole John Dillinger thing right?” My mother-in-law said.

Ding. The light bulb inside my brain lit up so fast it almost popped. I actually felt my eyebrows shoot up in a comical, cartoonish sort of way. “What John Dillinger thing?”

My mother-in-law smiled.

Before I dive into the very entertaining, and very local connection to one of the country’s most famous outlaws, let’s start with the basics of who this guy John Dillinger really was. Although, thanks to the mythical status of Dillinger and many other outlaws of his time, I’d be surprised if a whole heck of a lot of you don’t already know.

John Herbert Dillinger was born in June of 1903 (in Indiana, actually!), and from the time he was a child, he was a bit… er… cantankerous is maybe the right word. As a boy he was constantly in trouble for fighting and petty theft, especially honing his bullying skills on smaller children (which is just mean). Needless to say, his behavior didn’t earn him many educational accolades, and maybe that’s why he quit school at a young age and joined the workforce. Perhaps he thought bullying would get him a bit further there, but that theory didn’t end up holding much water either.

In the 1920s, restless, falling out with his family, and still committed to a life of wild rebelliousness, Dillinger quit the workforce and enlisted in the United States Navy. However, his military career didn’t exactly end with a host of medals and a hero status. Instead, he deserted when the battleship he was serving on, the USS Utah, docked in Boston. He was eventually slapped with a dishonorable discharge, and that was the end of any military aspirations.

I suppose with his resume skills falling a bit short at this point, Dillinger must have decided there was only one real viable career path left for him. Crime. It started with a grocery store robbery in the rural town where he lived at the time (Mooresville, IN). While serving time in prison for that, Dillinger fell in with quite the band of roughs, many of whom were experienced with bank robbing. He studied their methods diligently (that’s the best I got for a Dillinger pun) and the rest, as they say, is history.

During John Dillinger’s dizzying career as a bank robber from 1933-1934, he and his gang robbed at least twelve banks, and were accused of robbing several more, in a stunning, splashy style that garnered plenty of media headlines at a time when anger at the banks was at an all-time high and the financially battered people needed a hero. His antics, and natural flare for theatrics, turned him into somewhat of a darling amongst the newspaper community and the American populace at large.

He also gained the reputation of being a modern-day Robin Hood in violent, gun-toting, bank robber form. A man of the people who wasn’t afraid to stand up against the cold, heartless, money machine that had taken so much from so many. His gang also had a penchant for ripping up mortgage papers at the banks they robbed, freeing a decent amount of people from soul-crushing debt. There are also some accounts that have Dillinger taking money from the bank vaults only, refusing to rob or harm any individuals that happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Yes his bank heists were all the rage, but it was Dillinger’s stunning escape from prison that really helped mold him into the mythical figure that he is today. And it occurred just twenty minutes from my front door.

One January day in 1934, the law finally caught up with John Dillinger and his notorious gang in Tucson, Arizona. The whole lot of them were captured, and Dillinger was placed under arrest and shipped back to his home state of Indiana. There, he was charged with the murder of a policeman during a Chicago bank robbery that went awry, and taken in handcuffs to the Lake County jail located in Crown Point.

I knew the name well when my mother-in-law mentioned it. Because Crown Point is pretty darn close to my house. My husband and I actually enjoy the town immensely, having been there several times for antiquing, shopping, and general merry making. It left my jaw on the floor that the quaint little town had played host to such a wildly entertaining story, and it goes a little something like this:

Once Dillinger was behind bars in Crown Point, police in Indiana were inflated with victory. They boasted to the press that the Crown Point jail was escape-proof. No one in or out without the express permission of the guards on duty. And just as an extra precaution, they had posted additional guards to keep an extra eye on Dillinger.

Which, in all fairness, they probably did indeed have all eyes on Dillinger on March 3, 1934, when he pulled a pistol from his pocket and demanded that the guard on duty release him from his cell. Once that was done, Dillinger, with the assistance of some inmates, helped himself to some machine guns, and then sprung himself and a handful of others out of the jail without even firing a single shot. To add insult to injury, he drove himself away in the Chief of Police’s own personal vehicle.

To make matters even worse, rumors quickly surfaced that the pistol Dillinger used to get out of his cell wasn’t even real. FBI files mention it was carved from wood. A hostage that Dillinger held at gun point in the jail also suspected the pistol might have been a fake. Conjecture that keeps going to this day, despite the absolute insistence from the deputies on hand at the time that the gun was all too real.

Whether it was a real gun or not, the Crown Point escape stunt of course made the rounds in papers across the country, and it became one of the crowning jewels (Indiana pun) in John Dillinger’s violent career. In the aftermath of it, he spent several months on the run with various friends and girlfriends, while also managing to rob a couple more banks in the process. Not the best way to keep a low profile, but I guess the bills need to be paid somehow.

It all came to a screeching halt in July of 1934, at the Biograph Theater in Chicago. While John Dillinger and some gal pals went in to catch a movie, local police got tipped off, FBI agents staked out the place, and then they sealed off all nearby exits. John Dillinger had escaped from many things in his life, but this was one web that he couldn’t wiggle out of. Almost as soon as he came out the door, a shoot-out ensued. Dillinger was shot four times before he could draw his own gun. So ended the career of one of the country’s most notorious outlaws.

Yet his legacy didn’t stop there by any means. In fact, out of all the criminals to emerge from the 1930s, John Dillinger remains one of the most legendary. One glance at Wikipedia will show you the countless films, pop cultural references, and books that have blown up his story to mythical proportions and firmly cemented his memory. One of these films, Michael Mann’s “Public Enemies,” I saw myself in theaters when it came out in 2009. Scenes for this film were actually shot in downtown Crown Point. My own sister-in-law happened to be there during filming one day, and she got to shake the hand of Mr. Depp himself.

It was all quite a story to take in over morning coffee. The fact that a notorious outlaw had committed one of his most notorious prison breaks just a handful of miles down the road from me kind of blew my mind. It also humbled me a little bit. I mean, having lived in Los Angels for so many years, I kind of fell into the trap of underestimating small towns and small town life. The Dillinger story was a potent reminder that small towns don’t always equate to small history. Dynamite comes in small packages. Little seeds can make quite big trees, and small towns can create big legends.

There can be so much going on that you don’t know about right outside your front door. All you have to do is dig. Or in some cases, just ask your mother-in-law.