John Dillinger
This article may be too long to read and navigate comfortably. Please consider splitting content into sub-articles or condensing it. (May 2014) This article may have been copied and pasted from a source, possibly in violation of Wikipedia's copyright policy. Please remedy this by editing this article to remove any non-free copyrighted content and attributing free content correctly, or flagging the content for deletion. Please be sure that the source of the copyright violation is not itself a Wikipedia mirror. (May 2014) John Dillinger Born John Herbert Dillinger (1903-06-22)June 22, 1903 Indianapolis, Indiana, U.S. Died July 22, 1934(1934-07-22) (aged 31) Chicago, Illinois, U.S. Criminal charge Bank robbery, murder, assault, assault of an officer, grand theft auto Criminal penalty Imprisonment from 1924 to 1933 Spouse(s) Beryl Hovius (divorced) John Herbert Dillinger (June 22, 1903 – July 22, 1934) was an American gangster and a bank robber in the Depression-era United States. His gang robbed twenty four banks and four police stations. Dillinger escaped from jail twice; he was also charged with, but never convicted of, the murder of an East Chicago, Indiana police officer who shot Dillinger in his bullet-proof vest during a shootout, prompting him to return fire. It was Dillinger's only homicide charge. In the heyday of the Depression-era outlaw (1933–1934) Dillinger was the most notorious of all, standing out even among more violent criminals such as Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, and Bonnie and Clyde. (Decades later, the first major book about '30s gangsters was titled The Dillinger Days.) Media reports in his time were spiced with exaggerated accounts of Dillinger's bravado and daringly colorful personality. The government demanded federal action, and J. Edgar Hoover developed a more sophisticated Federal Bureau of Investigation as a weapon against organized crime and used Dillinger and his gang as his campaign platform to launch the FBI. After evading police in four states for almost a year, Dillinger was wounded and returned to his father's home to recover. He returned to Chicago in July 1934 and met his end at the hands of police and federal agents who were informed of his whereabouts by Ana Cumpănaş (the owner of the brothel where Dillinger sought refuge at the time). On July 22, the police and Division of Investigation closed in on the Biograph Theater. Federal agents, led by Melvin Purvis and Samuel P. Cowley, moved to arrest Dillinger as he left the theater. He pulled a weapon and attempted to flee but was shot four times and killed.