John Herbert Dillinger

Born in 1903 in Indianapolis, John Dillinger came from a middle-class neighborhood. His father was a grocer until they moved to Mooresville, Indiana to get away from city life and run a farm. His mother died when he was 3 and he was raised by his older sister Audrey and father, who later remarried.

Farm life was never the life for Dillinger. He enlisted in the Navy after running into some trouble with the law, though he went AWOL a few months later.

By 21, he was already in Pendleton Reformatory near Indianapolis for attempted robbery of a local grocer. Dillinger received joint sentences for his charges, a combined sentence of up to 34 years.

At Pendleton, he met Harry Pierpont and Homer Van Meter, both in for car theft and bank robbery. After Pierpoint and Van Meter are transferred to Indiana State Prison in Michigan City, Dillinger is granted his request to be transferred there, too. There he meets Walter Dietrich, John Hamilton, Charles Makley and Russell Clark. Together with Pierpoint and Van Meter this group makes up the first of Dillinger's gangs.

After serving 8 1/2 years, Dillinger is released but helps 10 prisoners escape from the Michigan City Prison, making it the largest prison break in Indiana history.

Dillinger and his gang started a wave of robberies across the Midwest, 12 banks in 14 months. After Sgt. William Patrick O'Malley was killed, allegedly by members of the gang in the robbery of the First National Bank of East Chicago, Indiana, Dillinger was held in the "escape proof" Crown Point jail awaiting trial. He proved this title was not true when he held his captors at gunpoint and escaped. The gun later proved to be a wooden gun he claims he whittled. This gun is held by the Dillinger Museum in a safe deposit, though an exact replica is on display.

Dillinger soon became Public Enemy #1 and continued his life on the run. On July 22, 1934 special agents received a call from Dillinger insider, Anna Sage, informing them that he would be at the theater that evening. When Bureau agents saw him leave the Biograph Theater in Chicago, he was shot twice and killed. John Dillinger was 31 years old.

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Visit the John Dillinger Museum to discover more about
the life, crimes and times of John Dillinger.
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