The case
John Dillinger spent about eight and a half years in Indiana prisons for robbing a Mooresville grocer of about fifty dollars, and he came out in May 1933 knowing a great deal more about banks than when he went in. His teachers were older inmates, Harry Pierpont, Charles Makley, Russell Clark and Homer Van Meter, men who had studied the careful, timed methods of the bank robber Herman Lamm. His father had collected signatures for his parole. Dillinger used his freedom to rob his first bank within six weeks.
He was born in Indianapolis in 1903, lost his mother before he was four, and grew up with a strict grocer father who moved the family to the farm town of Mooresville in 1921 hoping to keep the boy out of trouble. It did not work. A stolen car, a short spell in the Navy that ended in desertion, a brief marriage, and then the 1924 robbery, for which his father persuaded him to plead guilty in the expectation of mercy. He got ten to twenty years.
Once out, Dillinger arranged for guns to be smuggled into Indiana State Prison. His friends broke out in September 1933, four days after he was arrested in Dayton. On 12 October three of them walked into the jail at Lima, Ohio, posing as Indiana officers come to collect him. When Sheriff Jess Sarber asked for credentials, Pierpont shot him, and Dillinger walked free. Through the autumn the gang raided police arsenals for weapons and vests and robbed banks at Greencastle, Indiana, and Racine, Wisconsin.
On 15 January 1934, during a robbery in East Chicago, Indiana, patrolman William O'Malley fired at Dillinger and was killed by a burst from a Thompson. It was the only killing Dillinger was ever charged with. Ten days later the gang was arrested in Tucson, Arizona, after a hotel fire exposed them. Dillinger was flown to Indiana and held at the Lake County jail in Crown Point, which officials called escape-proof. On 3 March he walked out of it holding a pistol. Whether it was a real gun or one he had whittled from wood has been argued ever since.
The escape made him a federal fugitive, because he drove across a state line in the sheriff's own car. With a new crew including Baby Face Nelson and Van Meter he robbed banks at Sioux Falls and Mason City, shot his way out of a St. Paul apartment, and escaped again in April when federal agents attacked the Little Bohemia Lodge in northern Wisconsin. That raid was a disaster for the Bureau of Investigation: agents shot three innocent men as they drove away from the lodge, killing one, and Nelson killed Special Agent W. Carter Baum. Hoover's Bureau badly needed a win.
By summer Dillinger was living in Chicago as 'Jimmy Lawrence', his face altered by an underground surgeon and his fingertips treated with acid. He was dating Polly Hamilton, a waitress whose friend and housemate, Ana Cumpănaș, faced deportation to Romania. Cumpănaș went to the Bureau and offered him up in exchange for help with her case. On the evening of Sunday 22 July she telephoned agent Melvin Purvis to say they would be going to the Biograph Theater on Lincoln Avenue.
Agents and East Chicago police waited outside through Manhattan Melodrama. When the film let out, at about half past ten, Purvis lit a cigar as a signal. Dillinger seemed to realise what was happening, reached toward his pocket and moved toward an alley beside the theatre. Three agents fired. He was hit from behind, fell face down in the alley, and was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital minutes later. Two women in the crowd were wounded. He was thirty-one.
The victims
William Patrick O'Malley was an East Chicago police officer who answered the alarm at the First National Bank on 15 January 1934 and stood his ground in the street, firing at the robber in the bulletproof vest. He was the only person Dillinger was charged with killing, though some writers doubt Dillinger was the gunman. Jess Sarber, the sheriff of Allen County, Ohio, was at home in the jail with his wife when the gang came for Dillinger in October 1933; Pierpont shot him, and he died that night.
The violence around Dillinger reached well beyond his own gun. W. Carter Baum, a young federal agent, was shot dead by Baby Face Nelson near Little Bohemia, and a local constable and another agent were badly wounded. Eugene Boisneau, a local man who had simply been eating the lodge's Sunday dinner special, was killed when agents fired on the car he and two companions were leaving in. Their deaths were part of the reason the Bureau was so determined that the Biograph operation should not fail.
Timeline
Dillinger pleads guilty to the Mooresville grocery robbery and is sentenced to ten to twenty years.
Dillinger is paroled from Indiana State Prison after about eight and a half years.
He robs his first bank, at New Carlisle, Ohio.
Pierpont, Makley, Clark and others break out of Indiana State Prison with guns Dillinger arranged; he is already in custody.
The gang frees Dillinger from the Allen County jail in Lima, Ohio, killing Sheriff Jess Sarber.
Patrolman William O'Malley is killed during a bank robbery in East Chicago, Indiana.
After a hotel fire exposes gang members, Dillinger, Pierpont, Makley and Clark are all arrested in Tucson, Arizona.
Dillinger escapes from the Lake County jail at Crown Point using a real or carved pistol.
He shoots his way out of the Lincoln Court Apartments in St. Paul and is wounded in the leg.
Federal agents raid Little Bohemia Lodge in Wisconsin; the gang escapes, a civilian is killed by agents and Nelson kills agent W. Carter Baum.
The gang's last robbery, at the Merchants National Bank in South Bend, Indiana.
Dillinger is shot dead by federal agents outside the Biograph Theater in Chicago.
People in the case
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John Dillinger Perpetrator
22 June 1903 – 22 July 1934
Bank robber and escaper; charged with the murder of William O'Malley but never tried. Shot dead by federal agents.
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Harry Pierpont Accomplice
13 October 1902 – 17 October 1934
Leader of the first gang; shot Sheriff Sarber during Dillinger's release from Lima jail. Executed in Ohio.
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Homer Van Meter Accomplice
3 December 1906 – 23 August 1934
Dillinger's partner in 1934; killed by police in St. Paul a month after the Biograph.
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Baby Face Nelson Accomplice
6 December 1908 – 27 November 1934
Joined the second gang; killed agent W. Carter Baum at Little Bohemia and died after a gunfight with agents in November 1934.
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Billie Frechette Also involved
15 September 1907 – 13 January 1969
Dillinger's girlfriend from late 1933; arrested in Chicago in April 1934 and convicted of harbouring him.
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Ana Cumpănaș Witness
1889 – 25 April 1947
Romanian-born brothel keeper known as 'the woman in red'; betrayed Dillinger to the Bureau but was deported anyway.
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Melvin Purvis Investigator
24 October 1903 – 29 February 1960
Head of the Bureau's Chicago office; gave the signal outside the Biograph.
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Charles B. Winstead Investigator
25 May 1891 – 3 August 1973
Bureau agent generally credited with firing the fatal shot.
Where it happened
- Biograph Theater, 2433 North Lincoln Avenue, Chicago. Where Dillinger was shot after watching Manhattan Melodrama; the building still stands as a theatre.
- Crown Point, Indiana. Site of the Lake County jail from which Dillinger escaped on 3 March 1934.
- Little Bohemia Lodge, Manitowish Waters, Wisconsin. Scene of the failed federal raid of April 1934.
- Mooresville, Indiana. Dillinger's home town from 1921 and scene of his first robbery.
Outcome
Killed before trial Killed before trial
Dillinger was charged in Indiana with the murder of patrolman William O'Malley but escaped before trial. He was shot dead by federal agents and police outside the Biograph Theater on 22 July 1934. Pierpont was executed in Ohio for the murder of Sheriff Sarber; Makley was killed trying to escape death row, and Clark served a life sentence. Billie Frechette, Cumpănaș's associates and several doctors and lawyers who helped Dillinger were prosecuted for harbouring him.
What the record settles, and what it doesn't
Established
- Dillinger was paroled from Indiana State Prison on 10 May 1933 after serving roughly eight and a half years for a 1924 robbery.
- The Dillinger gangs robbed at least a dozen banks in the Midwest between June 1933 and June 1934.
- Sheriff Jess Sarber was shot dead by Harry Pierpont when the gang freed Dillinger from the Lima jail on 12 October 1933.
- Dillinger escaped from the Lake County jail at Crown Point on 3 March 1934 and crossed a state line in a stolen car, bringing in the federal Bureau of Investigation.
- Federal agents' raid on Little Bohemia Lodge on 22 April 1934 failed; one civilian was killed by agents and Baby Face Nelson killed agent W. Carter Baum.
- Ana Cumpănaș tipped off the Bureau, and Dillinger was shot dead by agents outside the Biograph Theater on 22 July 1934.
- He was never tried for murder.
Disputed
- Whether the Crown Point gun was a carved wooden fake, as the FBI's files say, or a real pistol smuggled in through his lawyer's circle, as a deputy and later testimony suggested.
- Whether Dillinger actually shot William O'Malley, or was even at the East Chicago robbery: witnesses identified him, but some historians question it.
- Whether Dillinger drew his gun outside the Biograph: agents said he reached for a pistol, while sceptics argue he was given no chance to surrender.
- A persistent theory holds that the man killed at the Biograph was not Dillinger. The fingerprints and family identification at the time support the official account, and historians reject the theory.
- Who should get the credit: Hoover's Bureau publicised Melvin Purvis and its own agents, while the East Chicago police officers involved, and the role of Ana Cumpănaș's police contact, have attracted suspicion and argument.
Pictures
Afterwards
About 15,000 people filed past the body at the Cook County morgue in a day and a half. Dillinger was buried in Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis, where souvenir hunters chipped away so many headstones that the grave has needed several replacements. Within months Van Meter, Pierpont, Makley and Nelson were dead too. Ana Cumpănaș, despite her deal, was deported to Romania in 1936.
The Biograph shooting was the making of the modern FBI. Congress had just given the Bureau new powers over bank robbery and interstate flight, and Hoover used the Dillinger case to argue for a national police force under his direction. The Biograph Theater still stands on Lincoln Avenue, and the story has been filmed repeatedly, most prominently as Public Enemies in 2009.
Questions readers ask
How did John Dillinger die?
He was shot by federal agents in an alley beside the Biograph Theater in Chicago on 22 July 1934, after leaving a showing of Manhattan Melodrama. He had been betrayed by Ana Cumpănaș, the 'woman in red'.
Did John Dillinger kill anyone?
He was charged with one murder, that of East Chicago patrolman William O'Malley during a bank robbery in January 1934, but was never tried. Other killings around him, such as Sheriff Sarber's and Agent Baum's, were committed by gang members.
Did Dillinger escape jail with a wooden gun?
That is the FBI's version, and Dillinger encouraged it. Others involved later claimed the gun was real and had been smuggled in, so the question has never been settled.
Who was the woman in red?
Ana Cumpănaș, a Romanian-born brothel keeper also known as Anna Sage, who tipped off the Bureau in the hope of avoiding deportation. Despite the nickname she is said to have worn orange that night, and she was deported in 1936 regardless.
Sources and further reading
- John Dillinger (Wikipedia)
- Dillinger Gang (Wikipedia)
- Little Bohemia Lodge (Wikipedia)
- John Dillinger (FBI history)
- Wikidata Q243918 (life dates checked here)
Written by Sinister Crimes from the sources above; see our editorial standards. Last checked 1 November 2026.