“Baby Face Nelson,” a member of Dillinger’s gang, was born Lester Gillis, son of an Illinois tannery worker. As a teenage mechanic, he fixed cars, then started stealing them, and earned his nickname when a woman he’d robbed—who happened to be the wife of Chicago’s mayor—told a reporter “he had a baby face.”

Subscribe Today

• Did you enjoy our article?
• Read more in American History magazine
• Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!!
 

Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow grew up in the slums of Dallas, children of poor farmers who’d moved to the city. Clyde ushered in a movie theater, played the saxophone and burglarized stores. Bonnie waited on tables, read movie magazines and longed for excitement. “Haven’t been anywhere this week,” she wrote in her diary in 1928. “Why don’t something happen?” They met in 1930, fell in love and drove aimlessly around America with their pet rabbit Sonny Boy, robbing stores and rural banks. They might have remained obscure petty crooks if police hadn’t raided their hideout in Joplin, Mo., in 1933. In the shootout, Clyde and his brother killed two cops before the gang escaped, leaving behind a camera containing pictures of Bonnie and Clyde smooching and fondling guns. Printed in countless newspapers, the photos made them famous.

But not nearly as famous as Dillinger, whose career in crime was wilder than anything Hollywood could concoct. Son of an Indiana grocer, Dillinger took to crime in grade school, forming a gang called the Dirty Dozen and heisting watermelons. He dropped out of school, joined the navy, then deserted. Back home, he mugged a grocer and was sentenced to 10 to 20 years in prison. After nine years, he was paroled in May 1933. A month later, he gathered some friends and robbed a bank. The gang made off with $10,600 and celebrated by robbing a grocery store and a pharmacy that night.

Dillinger used his loot to bribe somebody to smuggle guns to his pals in prison. In September, they escaped, only to learn that Dillinger had been locked up in Lima, Ohio. So they stormed the jail, killed a sheriff and freed him. Then the reunited outlaws raided two police arsenals, stealing guns, ammo and bulletproof vests.

Soon the well-armed gang commenced robbing banks. In October 1933, they hit one in Greencastle, Ind., emptying the vault of nearly $75,000. In November, they raided one in Racine, Wis., wounding a teller and a cop and escaping in a blast of gunfire. In January 1934, after a three-week vacation in sunny Florida, they hit a bank in East Chicago, Ind., stealing $20,000. A cop fired at Dillinger, hitting his bulletproof vest. Dillinger was unhurt, but the cop was killed with a blast from a Tommy gun.

Now wanted for murder, Dillinger fled to Tucson, where he was recognized, captured, shipped to Indiana and locked in the Crown Point jail. There, the warden let reporters interview Dillinger, who joked about his crimes.

“How long does it take you to go through a bank?”

“One minute and 40 seconds flat,” he said, smiling.

The reporters loved Dillinger’s bravura performance and lamented that a murder conviction would send the wonderfully colorful character to the electric chair. But that didn’t happen. On March 3, 1934, Dillinger, waving a pistol, captured Crown Point’s warden and several guards, locked them in a cell and fled in the warden’s car. Before leaving, he showed them his gun. It was a fake that he’d carved out of wood.

“You should have seen their faces,” Dillinger wrote in a letter to his sister. “Ha! Ha! Ha!”

Dillinger wasn’t the only one laughing. Newspapers mocked America’s hapless cops and prison guards. The snickering incensed J. Edgar Hoover, who was then the obscure head of the Justice Department’s obscure Bureau of Investigation. Hoover saw Dillinger as a way to win publicity and power for his little outfit. He ordered his Chicago bureau chief, Melvin Purvis, to find the infamous outlaw.

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to