John Dillinger was born on June 22, 1903 in Indianapolis. A typical boy, except his mother died when he was three and he was raised by his sister until his father John W. remarried in 1912. In 1919 the elder Dillinger moved the family to a farm near Mooresville. The family would eventually consist of two-half sisters and a half-brother. He thought the farm life would be good for his children. John never took to the farm and spent most of his free time in Indianapolis or in Martinsville, south of Mooresville. In 1923, after John had supposedly stolen a automobile, he joined the Navy to escape arrest. No charges were ever filed on the matter. If the thief had actually taken place is not for certain. Within months John jumped ship and headed back home, telling people he was discharged from the Navy. In early 1924 he met a sixteen year old Martinsville girl named Beryl Hovious and married her in April. It was soon apparent John took to married life as he did to the Navy. Often out late, the young couple quarreled violently. John met Ed Singleton while playing on the Martinsville baseball team. An older man with a criminal record, he told John stories about ways to make easy money and it is apparent Singleton coerced the young, impressionable Dillinger into robbing an elder Mooresville grocery, B.F. Morgan. On the evening of September 6, 1924 Dillinger, who had been drinking, accosted Morgan as he walked past the Christian Church. Armed with a .32 revolver and a bolt wrapped in a handkerchief, Dillinger hit the grocer over the head with the bolt, when Morgan fought back, John hit him again. With this, Morgan began shouting and grabbed the gun John was holding. It discharged, Dillinger fearing he shot the man, ran. Singleton was suppose to be waiting in a car for him, but Dillinger found his partner had disappeared. John was picked up a few days later and questioned. There was no hard evidence against him, even Morgan refused to believe it was John who attacked him. But he was persuaded to plead guilty and was promised a lenient sentence, so John did so without a lawyer present. The Judge threw the book at the young Dillinger sentencing him to 10 to 20 years in Pendleton. Singleton who had a past criminal record and had a lawyer, was given half the time. John Dillinger had good reason to be angry. Singleton made parole in a couple years and John languished in prison for nine years and during this time his wife divorced him. Even though his marriage had began rocky, he soon grew to adore his young wife and was devastated over the divorce. So much he requested a transfer to the Michigan City prison to rejoin his friends Harry Pierpont and Homer Van Meter who had been transferred there several years before John. John was paroled on May 22, 1933 with one thing on his mind....to earn back the nine years that were taken from him. He was going to make a name for himself in a very short time span. The golden era of bank robbery was coming to a close and John knew his time was limited. Before his release he and Harry Pierpont masterminded a mass prison escape and John would be the one to see it happen. Robbing several banks and businesses to raise the money to smuggle guns to Pierpont in Michigan City, working with an assortment of ex-convicts. William Shaw, Harry Copeland, Hilton Crouch, Sam Goldstein were among them. Dillinger began dating a sister of a convict that was included in the prison escape, Mary Longnaker. She had been living in a boarding house at Dayton, Ohio. The police were alerted to this and on September 22, 1933 John was arrested there while he visited her. On September 26 Pierpont and nine others boldly escaped from the Michigan City prison with the guns smuggled in by Dillinger. Included in the escape were Charles Makley, Russell Clark, John Hamilton, Ed Shouse, Walter Dietrich, Joe Burns, Joe Fox, Jim Clark and Longnaker's brother, James Jenkins. Dillinger admitted to a Bluffton, Ohio bank robbery and was transferred to the Allen County Jail in Lima. Secretly, John most likely thought Pierpont could break him out of the smaller jail if he happened to come looking for him. Which, Harry did. On the evening of October 12, Harry Pierpont, Charles Makley and Russell Clark paid a visit a visit to the Lima jail. Before they left they had freed John and murdered the Sheriff, Jess Sarber. The murder of the Sheriff had upset Dillinger. Contrary to most stories on John, he was not a cold blooded killer and felt Pierpont didn't have to kill Sarber. For the next several months the gang raided the Auburn and Peru, Indiana police stations of weapons. They also robbed a Greencastle, Indiana and Racine, Wisconsin bank. Supposedly Dillinger and John Hamilton robbed a East Chicago bank on January 15, 1934 where John was said to have killed Officer Patrick O'Malley. There are many who speculate Dillinger was actually there and if he was, the murder was an accident. The robber had fired at the legs of O'Malley and the policeman fell into the firing range. The gang had been laying low in Daytona Beach, Florida. Pierpont decided the gang should move onto Tucson, Arizona. The group had enough money to last awhile and the eastern part of the country was looking for them everywhere. It was to be their undoing. Russell Clark, Charles Makely, Harry Pierpont and John Dillinger were rounded up within hours of each by the Tucson police force on January 25. With them were their girlfriends, Mary Kinder, Billie Frechette and Opal Long. Long and Frechette were later released for lack of evidence, but the rest were sent back to Indiana. Pierpont, Makley and Clark were transferred back to the Michigan City prison to await extradition to Lima, Ohio where the would stand trial for the murder of Jess Sarber. Dillinger was sent to the Lake County Jail in Crown Point, Indiana to stand trial for the murder of Patrick O'Malley. Mary Kinder was held in Indianapolis for suspicion of aiding in the Michigan City escape, but was later released when the state was unable to build a case against her. Dillinger once bragged no jail could hold him. The Indiana bad man meant it. On March 3, 1934, John Dillinger walked out of the Crown Point jail with what he later stated, was a wooden gun. It is theorized the wooden gun was smuggled into him and that he did not whittle it himself during his many free moments at the jail. On the loose again, John quickly joined up with John Hamilton and his old friend Homer Van Meter. At this time Dillinger could not be too picky about his associates and it is highly doubtful he had wanted to work with Lester Gillis, known as “Baby Face” Nelson. The gang Dillinger and Pierpont had formed was now gone forever. Hitting the Sioux Falls, South Dakota and Mason City, Iowa banks where heavy gunfire was encounter during both. Dillinger had been wounded in the shoulder during the Iowa robbery. The risks were beginning not to be worth it. Hiding out with his girlfriend, Billie Frechette at the Lincoln Court Apartments in St. Paul on the end of March. The caretaker had reporter some suspicious activities and two FBI agents paid a call on apartment 303. Frechette opened the door and the agents asked to talk to Carl Hellman. Forgetting John's alias at first, she told them he wasn't there. They asked to speak to her then. Billie told them to wait while she dressed. After a few minutes, Dillinger clears the way with a machine gun and he and Billie escape with John only receiving a wound in the leg. After spending a couple days mending at another hideout, they both head to Mooresville, the least likely place the FBI would be looking for John.
Arriving at the Mooresville farm around the 4th or 5th of April, the family has a picnic on the 8th. Dillinger poses for his now famous wooden gun and Thompson machine gun photo. Frechette and Dillinger leave for Chicago later that day, arranging a meeting with a friend on the 9th at a tavern to help them locate a hideout. That evening Billie enters the tavern first to check it out and is immediately arrested by FBI agents. Dillinger who is waiting outside in a car, slowly drives away after witnessing her arrest. He quickly calls his attorney, Louis Piquett to represent her. The gang then heads for northern Wisconsin to the Little Bohemia Lodge near Mercer. Agent Melvin Purvis is tipped off that the gang is there. A total fiasco from the start, several innocent men are wounded one killed by the FBI. “Baby Face” Nelson also kills an agent. While Dillinger, Homer Van Meter and John Hamilton race to Minnesota in a stolen car, they encounter the police and they give pursuit. Hamilton is fatally wounded in the back during the chase. He is said to have died in Aurora, Illinois a Barker-Karpis gang member's hideout and was buried in a shallow grave near Owsega. His grave was discovered in 1935. Dillinger went undercover after this, emerging only once to rob a South Bend, Indiana bank. The robbery itself was not the Dillinger-style type robbery and there is speculation if he was actually there. Under going plastic surgery, he led for a month or two and basically normal life in Chicago. He attended baseball games and met a new girlfriend, Polly Hamilton. Dillinger also met up with Anna Sage at this time. He may have possibly known her before this. Van Meter supposedly warned John not to get mixed up with “those” people. Anna was fighting a deportation order and saw John as a means to escape it. It has been theorized she was the ex-mistress of Martin Zarkovich of the East Chicago police. They went to Melvin Purvis and told them they would turn over Dillinger if Anna's deportation was halted. Purvis said he would do what he could to help her, but made no promise. The trap was set for July 22. John would be taking both Polly and Anna to a movie that evening. The midwest was suffering from a heatwave and people were thronging to the beaches and the ice cooled theaters in Chicago. At around 8:15, Dillinger, Polly and Anna, dressed in a bright orange skirt to identify herself to the FBI, entered the Biograph Theater. Just shortly over two hours later they emerged. Purvis was to light a cigar when he identified Dillinger, but was shaking so badly, he had problems doing so. Dillinger and his lady friends turned left, the agents catching Melvin's intended signal, close in on their prey. Almost simultaneously, several agents fire at John, who by now knows the scene isn't playing right and darts for the alley several doors down, tugging for a gun in his pocket. Dillinger is hit several times, one striking him the back of the neck and exiting under his left eye, driving him face down into the alley. He dies almost instantly. Two women bystanders are also wounded from the stray bullets. The FBI never declared which agent actually fired the fatal bullet that killed John Dillinger. But it is believed Charles Winstead did. The FBI received some criticism over the manner of how they killed John Dillinger. It has been speculated they had no intentions of taking him alive. Having been promised her deportation would be halted for turning in Dillinger, Anna Sage was later deported back to Romania. And the Indiana bad man, who wasn't as bad as history has proclaimed him, achieved what he set out to do. He etched his name in history. The same name J.Edgar Hoover built his bureau on...John Dillinger.