The death of John Dillinger

American Handgunner, July-August, 2008 by Massad Ayoob

Situation: Public Enemy Number One runs to the end of his trail outside a Chicago theater and a legend is born, only to be twisted again and again.

Lessons: Inter-agency operations are tricky. Poor documentation of officer-involved shootings leaves the door open for countless false allegations in the future and, when you're going up against the worst, it's wise to send in your best.

His name was John Dillinger. Those who liked him said he was a nice guy. His family saw him as a good-hearted Indiana farm boy who got in with the wrong people and took a wrong turn down the primrose path. Law enforcement saw him as a merciless cop-killer and a living mockery of justice. And much of the Depression-era American public saw him as a Robin Hood, a symbolic little guy who stood up to the big guys by robbing their banks. One historian called Dillinger America's first celebrity criminal--which may have caused Jesse James and Billy the Kid to stir in their graves, but that's a discussion for another time.

Dillinger was shot and killed outside the Biograph Theater on Chicago's Lincoln Avenue by Federal agents from the Division of Investigation, later to become known as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and already led by J. Edgar Hoover, who considered Dillinger a personal nemesis. The shooting occurred between 10:35 and 10:40 PM on the night of Monday, July 22, 1934. Legend says Dillinger died in a "hail of gunfire" unleashed by a veritable firing squad of agents, and was "riddled with bullets." Dillinger, it was said, had been led to his doom by a "lady in red." Some said the famous fugitive was unarmed, and others intimated he was shot again and executed, as he lay helpless. Dillinger had been killed, many believed, by superstar agent Melvin Purvis, who had led the operation.

0nly those who have studied the incident seem to know the truth. The woman who set up Dillinger was wearing different color garb. The overwhelming body of evidence indicates only three men fired their guns that night, and only five shots were fired in the course of the entire incident. It appears only two bullets solidly struck Dillinger, with a third grazing him. It is certain that one, and probable that both, of those fatal shots were fired by the same agent.

And that agent was not Melvin Purvis.

The Stakeout

At Chicago Municipal Airport, which would later become Midway (O'Hare had not yet been built), the temperature that day was recorded at a high of 108 degrees. Dillinger was holed up in the third-floor walkup apartment of Anna Chiolak Sage, hiding out with her and his current girlfriend, Polly Hamilton. He did not know that Sage, in trouble with authorities as an illegal immigrant, had discussed his presence with Sergeant Martin Zarkovich of the East Chicago, Indiana Police Department. It would later be widely suggested that Zarkovich was a crooked cop who may have worked with Dillinger in the past, setting up bank robberies in return for a share of the take, and now afraid that if captured Dillinger would squeal on him. This allegation has never been conclusively proven nor discredited, and the same is true for the allegation that Zarkovich and Sage were lovers.

What is a matter of record is that Zarkovich brought Sage to Melvin Purvis, the Special Agent in charge who was supervising the Dillinger investigation, and Purvis promised to do all he could to help her with her immigration problems in return for her leading them to Dillinger. She apparently never told the lawmen that Dillinger was actually living at her apartment.

John Herbert Dillinger spent much of the last day of his life hunkered down in front of an electric fan in Sage's apartment, sweltering in the heat wave he found intolerable. He told his female companions they should go to an air-conditioned movie theater that night. Sage surreptitiously called the DI agents, and told them of those plans, stating they had narrowed their choice down to one of two theaters, the Marbro or the Biograph.

Purvis gathered some 30 lawmen in an equally overheated conference room at the Division of Investigation's Chicago office, and set about planning the stakeout. It was decided the Chicago Police Department would not be notified of the operation. It was important to Hoover and Purvis alike the capture of John Dillinger be a Federal coup. However reluctantly, Purvis chose to include some members of the East Chicago PD, including Zarkovich, if only because they had been the key to finding Dillinger and hooking the Feds up with Sage.

The stakeout itself was an exercise in frustration that encompassed elements of both comedy and terror. Not knowing which theater would be chosen, Purvis had to assign men to cover both the Biograph and the Marbro. Before the night was over, the men hovering suspiciously on the street would catch the attention of observers, who called Chicago Police, whose responders included plainclothesmen. A mistaken identity "friendly fire" shooting was narrowly avoided.

After Sage, Hamilton, and Dillinger shared a fried chicken dinner at the apartment, Anna Sage covertly observed Dillinger prepare to go out. He had recently undergone agonizing underground plastic surgery to alter his facial features and his fingerprints, grown a mustache, dyed his hair, and was wearing unneeded eyeglasses to alter his appearance. Sage said later she saw him count out approximately three thousand dollars worth of greenbacks, carefully sorting them and distributing the packets of money in the pockets of his gray trousers. She described him hesitantly withdrawing a small blue steel auto pistol from a drawer, returning it, and taking it out again, as if deciding whether or not to carry it. She would say later she wasn't sure whether or not he had taken it with him until after the shooting was over. Having been raided at hideouts multiple times in his long criminal career--often escaping, though not always--Dillinger had learned to always have a gun and a substantial amount of cash on his person.