During the 1930s Depression, many Americans made heroes of outlaws who took what they wanted at gunpoint. The problems of the depression and the growing hatred of banks and bankers caused many of the poor in America to look to the outlaw as a hero who fought against the evils of the rich. Of all the lurid desperadoes, one man, John Herbert Dillinger, came to represent this Gangster Era.
Dillinger's was a bank robber and a cold-blooded murderer. From September, 1933, until July, 1934, he and his violent gang terrorized the Midwest, killing 10 men, wounding 7 others, robbing banks and police arsenals, and staging a number of jail breaks. He was born 1903, in the Oak Hill section of Indianapolis. A hardworking grocer, his father, raised him in an atmosphere of disciplinary extremes. John's mother died when he was three and his father remarried six years later and John resented his stepmother. As a teenager he was frequently in trouble. He quit school and got a job in a machine shop. He soon became bored and often stayed out all night. His father worried about the temptations of the city and sold his property in Indianapolis and moved his family to a farm near Mooresville, Indiana. But John's personality changed little in a rural environment. An auto theft led him to enlist in the Navy and he soon got into trouble and deserted his ship. Returning home he married 16-year-old Beryl Hovius in 1924. Dillinger had no luck finding work in the city and joined a friend in his search for easy money. In their first attempt, they tried to rob a grocer, 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 bitter man in prison.
His period of infamy began on May 10, 1933, when he was paroled from prison after serving 8 1/2 years of his sentence. Dillinger robbed a bank in Bluffton, Ohio and was arrested him and he was sent to 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 the prison. Three of the escaped prisoners and a parolee from the same prison showed up at the Lima jail where Dillinger was being held telling the sheriff that they had come to return Dillinger to the Indiana State Prison for violation of his parole. The sheriff asked to see their credentials, one of the men pulled a gun, shot the sheriff and taking the keys to the jail, the bandits freed Dillinger. The sheriff died due to the wounds he received.
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