John Dillinger

Gangster

When John Dillinger was gunned down by federal agents in 1934 he was "public enemy number one," so-named by the Justice Department for his string of violent bank robberies in the midwestern United States. In May of 1933 Dillinger was paroled from the Indiana State Prison, where he had served more than 8 years on an assault and robbery charge. By September he was in jail again, awaiting trial on bank robbery charges. On 12 October 1933 Dillinger's pals, recently escaped from Indiana's state prison, broke him out of jail. Over the next several months, Dillinger and his gang robbed several banks in Indiana before heading to Florida and then Arizona. He was arrested in Arizona and extradited to Indiana, where he once again escaped jail on 3 March 1934. Dillinger then crossed the Indiana-Illinois state line and headed for Chicago, sparking the interest of federal investigators (in the division that later became the F.B.I.). Over the next four months Dillinger's escapades -- daring robberies and narrow escapes from the law -- were popular newsreel features and he became something of a folk hero. After a tip from informant Ana Cumpanas (a.k.a. Anna Sage), federal agents ambushed Dillinger on 22 July 1934 outside the Biograph Theater in Chicago, where he had just seen the Clark Gable movie Manhattan Melodrama. In the ensuing gunfight, Dillinger was killed.

Extra credit: Common folklore has it that Dillinger was betrayed by "the Lady in Red," a description of Anna Sage adopted newspapers, despite the fact that Sage was actually dressed in orange and white.

Blog posts mentioning John Dillinger:
Rudyard Kipling's Deceptive Lifespan