John Herbert Dillinger (1903-1934) - Midwestern bank robber during the early 1930s, Dillinger was a dangerous criminal who was responsible for the murder of several police officers, robbed at least two dozen banks, and escaped from jail twice.

During the 1930s Depression, many Americans, deep in poverty and feeling helpless, made heroes of outlaws who took what they wanted at gunpoint. Of all these many outlaws, John Herbert Dillinger, came to evoke this Gangster Era, and stirred mass emotion to a degree rarely seen in this country.

Idolizing him as a modern-day Robin Hood, Dillinger was nicknamed "the Jackrabbit" for his graceful movements during his robberies -- actions such as leaping over counters and his many narrow escapes from police.

The exploits of Dillinger and his gang, along with those of other criminals of the Great Depression such as Bonnie and Clyde and Ma Barker, dominated the attention of the American press and its readers during the Depression era, a period which led to the development of the modern, more sophisticated Federal Bureau of Investigation.

John Herbert Dillinger (1903-1934)

This image available for photographic prints

and downloads HERE!

Dillinger was born on June 22, 1903 in Indianapolis, Indiana. Growing up in a middle-class residential neighborhood, his father, a hardworking grocer, raised him in an atmosphere of disciplinary extremes, harsh and repressive on some occasions, but generous and permissive on others. John's mother died when he was three, and when his father remarried six years later, John resented his stepmother.

As a teenager, he began to get in trouble, finally quitting school and getting a job in a machine shop in Indianapolis. Although intelligent and a good worker, he soon became bored and often stayed out all night. His father, worried that the temptations of the city were corrupting the boy, sold his property in Indianapolis and moved his family to a farm near Mooresville, Indiana. However, John reacted no better to rural life than he had to that in the city and soon began to run wild again.

A break with his father and caught stealing a car led him to enlist in the Navy. There, he soon got into trouble and deserted his ship when it docked in Boston. Returning to Mooresville, he married 16-year-old Beryl Hovius in 1924. The pair soon moved to Indianapolis but Dillinger was unable to find a job. He then hooked up with the town pool shark, Ed Singleton, in his search for easy money. The hoodlums first tried to rob a Mooresville grocery store, but were quickly apprehended. Singleton pleaded not guilty, stood trial, and was sentenced to two years. Dillinger, following his father's advice, confessed, was convicted of assault and battery with intent to rob, and conspiracy to commit a felony, and received joint sentences of 2 to 14 years and 10 to 20 years in the Indiana State Prison. Stunned by the harsh sentence, Dillinger became a tortured, bitter man in prison.

After serving 8½ years of his sentence, he robbed a bank in Bluffton, Ohio on May 10, 1933. Dayton police arrested him on September 22, and he was lodged in the county jail in Lima, Ohio, to await trial. In frisking Dillinger, the Lima police found a document which seemed to be a plan for a prison break, but the prisoner denied knowledge of any plan. Four days later, using the same plans, eight of Dillinger's friends escaped from the Indiana State Prison, using shotguns and rifles which had been smuggled into their cells. During their escape, they shot two guards.

On October 12th, three of the escaped prisoners and a parolee from the same prison showed up at the Lima jail where Dillinger was incarcerated. They told the sheriff that they had come to return Dillinger to the Indiana State Prison for violation of his parole. When the sheriff asked to see their credentials, one of the men pulled a gun, shot the sheriff and beat him into unconsciousness. Then taking the keys to the jail, the bandits freed Dillinger, locked the sheriff's wife and a deputy in a cell, and leaving the sheriff to die on the floor, made their getaway.