This day in history

July 22: John Dillinger shot dead

	Having escaped from prison not once, but twice, America’s law enforcers were beginning to suspect that he was taking the piss.

Feared bank robber, tabloid darling, urban legend… there was no way John Dillinger was going out without a bang. And sure enough, July 22 1934 saw America’s favourite public enemy bow out in a hail of bullets. He was just 31 years of age.

Sitting pretty at the top of the FBI’s most-wanted list, Dillinger had been on the run for nearly a year. Having escaped from prison not once, but twice, America’s law enforcers were beginning to suspect that he was taking the piss. And unsurprisingly, they were getting right tired of it.

Led by the FBI’s golden boy, Melvin Purvis, a dedicated taskforce were gradually closing in on their man. When a Romanian hooker offered info on Dillinger in exchange for the right to stay in the country, they finally got the break they needed.

Rather than catching a bullet mid-robbery, Dillinger finally bit the dust after a night at the cinema. Being a proper chap, he opted for the gritty crime flick ‘Manhattan Melodrama’, showing at the Biograph Theatre in Chicago. Sadly for him, he chose to go with the hooker who’d shopped him to the FBI. Having received her tip-off, Purvis and co were laying in wait.

At least they had the decency to let him enjoy the film. As their target swaggered from the theater with a girl on each arm, the Feds made their move. Realising what was happening, Dillinger drew his gun, only to find he was seconds too slow. A pair of bullets in the chest and one in the neck, and America’s greatest outlaw lay dead on the street. Sadly, none of them hit the two-faced brass who’d stitched him up, but that’s justice for you.

Newspapers reported passers-by dipping handkerchiefs into the pool of Dillinger’s blood. When strangers are harvesting your bullet-ridden corpse for souvenirs, that’s when you know you’re a big deal.

Other stuff

Buried in Indianapolis, Dillinger’s gravestone had to be replaced several times due to people chipping bits off it as souvenirs.

On March 3rd 1934, Dillinger escaped from the County Jail in Crown Point, Indiana, using what he claimed was a wooden gun he had whittled. The authorities had previously claimed the jail was ‘escape proof’.

Melvin Purvis died a less glamorous death in 1956, with authorities speculating he accidentally shot himself whilst trying to extract a tracer bullet jammed in his pistol.

The city of Tucson holds an annual festival called the ‘Dillinger Days’, in which they hold a reenactment of the Tucson Dillinger Gang bust, in which Dillinger and co were caught in possession of 5 machine guns, 3 sub-machine guns and over ,000 in cash.

The three agents that fired on Dillinger were Charles B. Winstead, Clarence O. Hurt and Herman E. Hollis. None of them ever confirmed who actually killed him.

The Biograph Theater still stands on North Lincoln Avenue, Chicago. No longer a cinema, it now exists as a venue for live plays.