This is Greatest Escapes, a show bringing you the wildest true escape stories. Now today we're going to go back to the Great Depression and to the golden age of the Bancheist to tell you a story of a man who may be America's most celebrated outlaw. I'm Martro Castro, and I'm joined by a fantastic actress, a super kind soul always makes me want to get up and dance. Sunita MANI.
Wha.
That was a bench of special and everybody, we got a real treat for you today. I'm I'm a big fan of her and I've known her for for a long long time, I guess by this point, so welcome to the show. Sunita MANI give me ben? Where is my prop pa pal?
Oh?
Thank you? But but I love you. Okay, I guess you just said you ready? I the sound effects, so on that note, What do you consider to be your greatest escape?
Yeah, I was just thinking about the time that I feel like I escaped the jaws of death.
Well, dramatic music will put it on and post It's gonna be so cool.
It's the first thing that came to mind. I was on my honeymoon with my now husband in Italy.
We were in Sicily, So this is like twenty eighteen, well before White Lotus.
Okay, twenty eighteen. You were there first.
We had this like wonderful time, this like lovely week. The whole week we had been doing like really remote stuff, but this was like a populated place. Anyway, We're swimming in the ocean, it's lovely. All of a sudden, we're getting a little far away from the shore and it's like kind of noticing no one. No one else is like really in the water, Maybe we should go back. Let's just like yeah, I don't know, it feels a little far. So we're trying to go back. We cannot get back to the shore.
And you feel like you're not making progress.
We're not making progress at all. It's a riptide. I guess I'd just never been caught in like a riptide before.
Could you feel the current?
Yeah? Yeah, I wasn't like feeling like a swirling vortex or anything.
We just like couldn't swim out of it.
And now I know this to anyone who is ever gotten a riptide. You don't swim like directly towards the shore. You swim parallel to the shore now to get out, and it was one of those guttural things of like screaming for help, Oh my god, just like I don't know, we don't know what to do.
And it was like far enough away that the shore was to not even know if anyone could hear.
Us, could you see people on the shore.
Eventually we see these like six men.
In speedos run race into the ocean like to come after us. They're like yelling Italian at us.
You're like, I know, they're calling us.
Idiots, Like what were you thinking? And we're like, I don't know. Do we miss a sign? I don't know.
So we're kind of like linked arms with these strangers who are nice enough to like try and help us.
And then all six of us can't get back to the shore.
No, well eight of us, me and my husband and these like six men and speedo's.
It was just six of us because the two of them died.
At all.
Wow, So now you're all funcked.
Now we're all screaming, we're all fucked. And that's when they really start yelling at.
Us, like it's like fucking die, I want to die.
By this point, the everyone on the beach is just like standing up and watching and like looking.
Out and being like, uh, what's gonna happen.
Finally, a lifeguard like comes to throw one of those like life rings, you know, and he's going to try to pull us in, and we're just like again, the shore, the waves are really turbulent. So by the time it like the donut gets to us and we're trying to meet the donut halfway, it's like it's struggling.
Exhausted by this one, We're so exhausted.
We finally reached the damn donut and it's connected to a rope so that they could like pull us in from the shore.
They let go of the rope.
Why the fuck would they let go of the fucking rope? Man.
I don't know what happened, but I think we were just too far out and they were like, well, at least they have the donut.
It's like one donut for fucking h my man, they have the dona now they figured it. We're all job and they all continued on with their day and they're like, okay, that'd be fine.
Wow, And then eventually they like because it's a marina, someone like someone in their like a little motor boat come from behind us, like they don't come from the shore. They actually like kind of come from behind because I think the waves are just too strong.
The visuals of this are amazing. You have to write this.
Yeah, So eventually we like do get on the boats, and that's when I started like really panicking. Actually, it's like when I totally broke down, like when we were okay. I was like hyperventilating, like really fat and scared and like, oh my god, they were so nice.
We finally got back to the shore. It was such relief.
But also I was like, Okay, I guess we're like drinking wine now, you know, another cafe or something.
It was wonderful.
It's like that feeling of like life is so beautiful and fine and lovely and I'm so grateful to be here, and also like wow, the fuck yeah, am paralyzed by like fear.
Oh much. Well, listen, thank you so much for sharing that. I'm so glad we you are okay, And to the Banana Ham gentleman of sicily said that, all right, well, are you ready to hear of another escape?
I'm so ready.
Yes. For today's story, We're headed to the American heartland. Indianapolis and also incidentally, the romance capital of the world. No, no, it's not nobody. Nobody there has ever so not the romance capital of the world Indianapolis. But the year that we're talking about is you're nineteen o three, and that's when a boy named Johnny is born into a family that owned a grocery store. That's it. I know it sounds like random detail, but it's gonna come up again. Okay,
So grocery based crime, it's gonna be on the way. Okay. So as he grew up, Johnny was constantly getting into trouble and his dad, like many dads at the time, try to punish the rebellion out of Johnny. Now spoiler alert, it did not work. So Johnny got up to some mischief. He formed a neighborhood gang of kids who called themselves the Dirty Dozen. Did you have a did you have a tight group of friends when you grow up?
I wasn't like a little neighborhood gang, and none of us went to school together. It was it felt very much of the like the three blocks you know I lived, and like we shared.
I shared a.
Backyard with one of them, and yeah, we had our little bikes and we would like run around in the woods and.
That's so cool. So you didn't come in any crimes with your neighborhood friends. Nothing for I did. I'm sure something were legal in Oh yeah. The worst thing we did was we stole a stop sign.
Yeah, because we wanted to holes like that.
Yeah, we were like we vandalyized some shit, for sure. So sorry, I want them all on's if you ever come get me. There's no extradition laws. So the crimes of Johnny committed with this Dirty Dozen gang were little things like the day they stole some liquor off a train and Johnny showed up at school drunk. Yeah, I was like, Johnny will hang out. And then there's a time they make some coal from railroad cars to sell to their neighbors.
All these are such old timy.
Yeah, it's like, so, yeah, we have an ice box here.
See yeah, distributing coal.
Yeah, it's kind of industrious, isn't it. So most neighbors actually describe Johnny as a cheerful, likable youngster, and they said that he dressed well and they thought he was only as mischievous as every other boy.
Right, Okay, they gave him some slack, got it.
Yeah, they caught him some slacks. He dressed as well. He goes his cold fuck it. So that's all it took back then.
Yeah, simpler times.
Yeah, it was the romance capital of the world. It could be word just like chilling. So in nineteen twenty, John's dad moved the family out of the city to a small and he was trying to keep John out of trouble. But no doubt, like John got extremely bored and he was always driving back into Indianapolis looking for.
Somebody to do It's Johnny's way.
Yeah, Johnny, or get out of the way, you know. He wanted to see more of the world. Was there ever any time growing up where you had a real sense of wonder lust? Yeah?
I think there was always like a small town girl wide eyed for the city, like syndrome that I had.
You you always had New York at your sights.
Yeah, I mean I think it was like watching Annie or something. You know, it was just having that I don't know, just like wanting to be Annie.
Yeah, and you were Annie. It was also mat of fact. So once when John was driving to the city to visit his girlfriend also happened to be his uncle stepdaughter. Weird.
Okay, got it, that's like clueless, right.
Huh, it's kind of clueless.
I don't know where like Alicia Silverstone's character.
That's what it is, Paul's character. I take it all back. It's not weird, it's CLUELESSI victorian.
Yeah.
And also it's his uncle step daughter, so it's even twice removed. Fair game, buddy. So the thing was, John was driving a car that he had stolen for the trip, so he ran through the Yep, he ran from this traffic stop, and the cops actually fired a couple of shots at him as he scampered away, and the whole situation was generally a messive. So John decided that his best way out was to skip town completely. So he did the logical thing what you do at a time, and he joined the navy.
Hop on a train.
Okay, this is like playing out like a Charlie Chaplin film or something exactly exactly.
So he started. He learned how to tap dance and yeah, yeah, uh peep you and just like a little kyri and that says peep you. So John served on this ship for only a few months. He thought that his dad was harsh, but now that he was a fireman in the navy, meaning that he shoveled coal into the end in furnaces. Oh, the coal, the coal, the coal. It fucking sucked. So John naturally when a wall and the Navy placed a bounty on his head fifty dollars for the runaway fireman.
Okay, fifty dollars must have been a lot.
Seven hundred thousand dollars at the time. It was actually the first you could buy a country with fifty dollars. It was the first time the authorities offered money first capture, but it was far far from being the last. And apparently the Navy wasn't looking too hard for him. There's just kind of like if it's no trouble, if you find him on the way.
It was like how I dog sat one time in la and the owner was like kind of joking about like if the dog, like you know, runs away, it's like it's all right.
There's like an insurance saying, don't worry about it.
No, we don't like the dog very much. Actually, I mean, my kids really liked the dog. But if something happens to the dog, you know, Honestly, I.
Asked questions, I really like, oh my god.
It wasn't sure if he was like trying to tell me to like, like.
What am I involved with a psychopath? So listen. So since the Navy wasn't really looking to heart like, John actually showed up back home and he was able to pass it off to his family that he had been honorably discharge. He spent a couple of months playing pool and baseball and sweet talking a teenage girl. John was twenty and he married a sixteen year old who moved in with his family, which gross. I don't know. I'm firmly on the side of no miners marrying.
I can't tell if this is just like is this regular confidence that people had.
Back then, Like there are there a lot of Johnnies like this. I don't know. I feel like you could get away with all this shit.
That's what lost the Industrial Revolution children, you know. So things took a darker turn in the fall when John and a friend robbed a grocery store. Yeah, the grocer locked up the store at the end of the week and was walking home with the money from his cash register when John jumped in. He attacked a man with an iron bar that's fucked up and John was arrested
for the attack. His dad was so pissed. Yeah, he actually advised John to plead guilty and take his punishment for the crime because he thought that this was John's first arrest that he might get off easy. Well, no, no, no, John, Johnny young Johnny was giving the maximum penalty of ten years in prison, even though he had no previous criminal record.
Well, it's making up for all the bad shit he did.
So for ten years John stewed in prison rubbing his shoulders with other social outcasts. And it is to turn out a key kind of fit in.
Oh my goodness.
So like him, they weren't suited for the discipline of navy ships or backbreaking farm work or semi professional plates. I don't know what the fuck they were doing the time. They were burglars, bootleggers and train robbers, and John Dillinger was taking lessons boat. What you know the story of John Willinger?
I have heard of him, but I'm like forgetting history.
I got you you, thank you. One defining trait of John Dillingder was his love for looking good. Think Paul Rudd, He's just like ageless forever. When he made it on a parole in May nineteen thirty three. He was ready to go out there and get himself a straw boater, had a fresh haircut and a silk cravat or two. What's a cravat? Like a cravat like a little little tie?
Cravat is like a neck handkerchief?
Is that what it is? That is correct? Nice little necktie? Oh? I want one?
It sounds delicious.
That's one historian was very careful to note. John came out of prison smarter, trimmer, and more muscular, which made him I quote yeah, and I quote attracted to women and respected by men.
In history. That is history.
It's hilarious commercial, right, but like for prison, yeah, prison exactly.
Give me a light at music. All right, we haven't rehearsed this. Here we go. Hi, Are you a loner who hates the navy? You get compared to the shrimp you sell at your dad's grocery store, Then you need the one and only only in closest state guarantee make you smarter, driver, more muscular, president, become instructed for women and respected by men. This miss is brought to you by Dapperanswool, private and characteries jealousy who I'm bad for our first try of that. That's great. But John stepped
out of prison into hard times, right. The banks had crashed in nineteen twenty nine, and it was a great depression. So yeah, they were in a lot of jobs for an ex con stepping out of prison, no matter how fucking sexy he looked at pr Yeah, fucking sucksy, bro, bro, you're looking good. So this is no problem for John though, you know, because he didn't even try. First he went home and he told his family that he had learned his lesson. He was a new man.
He is a liar.
He's a fucking liar. Second, big a second. Second thing he did, Sinnia. Second thing he did. He met up with a bunch of guys who knew his prison buddies, and they struck up a plan.
Of course.
Uh, this was the beginning of what one historian calls John Dillinger's wild Ride, one of the most buck wild crime spreees in American history. The lord, yeah, no, it was wild. So they kicked things off with a couple of starter robberies, just ICs to get their feet with some teasers. That's right, appetizers if you will, cravats cravat for the hunger, so they hit up two grocery stores. That was just a prime the pump a little bit right.
Then it was onto the real targets. In June nineteen thirty three, John rolled into the new Carlisle, Ohio, a second romance capital of the world, and together with his new gang, he was headed for the National Bank. Word on the street was that they always left the rear window open in the bathroom, even the night, which to me sounds like an inside job. How would you know unless they were putting it like that was like their shady slogan, like come to our bank. The windows are
open anytime. Our door is always open, and if it's not, our window is in the back.
Because people be taking huge shits in the bank.
I guess they just get nervous depositing all this money. Word on the street was correct. John and his gang crawled in through the bathroom window under the cover of darkness, and they walked right out because it smelled like shit, and they're like, I don't know, I can't hang not worth it. They laid down behind the counter and wait until the morning when the staff came in to open
the bank. Oh my god, for a second I thought that where this was going was like and then they just kind of had have had at it, you know, they're just like.
The d of the bank in the dark, yeah, and in the shield of like night. Yeah.
No, no, no. It was way more elaborate than or way more violent, I guess. As they came in one by one, John and his team grabbed them and tied them up at gunpoint. The youngest member of Johnny's gang was only nineteen, and his strongest memory of the heist was how big John Dillinger's gun was, oh ok, and how just and beastly in masculine he see him. And also this this nineteen year old was the one that went on to be a journalist and write into history.
How hot it was, yeah, exactly. So eventually John forced the staff to open the vault and walked out with thirteen thousand dollars, which is like three hundred thousand dollars in cash today.
That's that's a lot, I mean, it was.
Yeah, especially for these young young whipper snappers. I guess it must have been like thirty by this point. But it wasn't just a kid who was impressed. One of the local papers called it one of the most cleverly executed crimes in the country's history. Jerlas really fucking love this guy.
It's like waiting for like the review of your performance as like an actor or something.
But yeah, you're like you're yeah, you're waiting for the Hollywood reporter.
Expected entry quite an expected premise of going through the window that we all know is open.
Isn't that really fucking thing once that, once you're a show or is out or whatever. It's just like, I'm not one of those people that doesn't read the reviews. I'm like one hundred percent in there. Do you skip them or do you read them?
I have like a wind where I'm like, oh, I just have to you know, I have to know the morbid curiosity, and then I feel like I don't keep going.
Well, funny enough, you mentioned it, because we have the review of each one of your shows. Come on, guys, okay sung by the Vienna Boys Choir, Come on now.
Not as good as her Coastal.
So after the newspapers were really kissing his ass, the bank employees actually remember that the other robbers all seemed crazed or high, and they were all extremely nervous and jumpy with their eyes bugging out. But not John Dillinger.
No, no, this guy's a psychopath, right, No, he was apparently very calm, yes, psychopath and gorgeous.
Apparently it was very calm and just god, just like it was just he was just bulging out of his fans. He was polite through the entire thing, is what they said. Okay, but it turns out that money wasn't enough through John Dillinger. The very same day, the very same fucking day, when they got back to Indianapolis, John and his accomplices robbed you fucking guessed it, a grocery store. So the spree
has sprung. John Dillinger and his crew set about robbing five Indiana and Ohio banks in four months, and John started to gain real fame as the bold, polite, absolutely fucking sexy, dressed to kill No but literally they said, dressed to kill burglar with a big gun. Literally they said that.
The cops, I mean, people just want them to keep going. Really, I can't catch.
The second they're like putting out ads on the newspaper like don't rob my bag.
You know, and my money is shiny, don't take it.
Oh my god, this is the door, kno close proper, What are we gonna do? So the next few scores were all in the same area, and Dilager was cruising. In July, he hit that commercial bank in Daleville, Indiana and made off with thirty five hundred dollars. He hit two banks in August, one in Indiana and one in Ohio, and together they scored over twelve thousand dollars.
Okay, what do you think he's doing with this money?
Buying amazing clothes? I don't know what you're doing?
Yeah, with bane Crobots collection.
Right then they were back in Indianapolis for their biggest heists yet, twenty one thousand dollars. But that by now they had a routine.
Yeah, yeah, we know he's coming.
Yeah yeah. By now, everybody's like, nobody's like ramping up security or anything. They're just like, he's not. I think he's done, you guys, this man is satisfied. None. His routine was set.
You know.
It was two men went into the bank while get away driver waited outside of the car. Doinger ran forward, jumped the counter, and held the bank teller at gunpoint, forced them to open the cash doors in the bank vault and forcing them to fill the bags with money. He and his accomplice would walk right back out of the front, hopping the car and drive off. They were super fast, and the whole thing was over in minutes.
It was happening a broad daylight.
Of course, they were gone before help could arrive. Did you know rob a bag? What's going to be this easy?
No, it's almost like I want to try it.
Yeah, it's almost like what are you doing this weekend? All right? So John knew how to thank his friends for robbery lessons. He started sending pistols into their prison. Seriously. Sometimes he even just walked up to the jail and threw the guns over the walls.
Okay, he would also pack them, and that's in the history books.
That's in the history books. He did not give Yeah he is if I don't give a fuck was a person. It's this motherfucker.
Seriously.
But he would also pack them in boxes of spoons and send them into the prison workshops. And how did they use their guns? Humorous? Dillinger's criminal cronies were now packing. They all teamed up. They rushed the guards. They moved through the halls and captured the superintendent with their hostage in hand, they made their way outside to steal a couple of cars. But now bullets were flying, blood is spilled, the cars peeled away, and the boys were out of there.
The boys would taunt John Dillinger everything he knew. We're now on the loose. But now, ironically, it was just like, that's an impossible voice to keep for longer than that. But isn't that wild? Yes, ironically, it was just after his friend's escaped that Dillinger finally got caught. After five bank robberies and god knows how many four grocery stores, the cops had finally paid enough bribes to snitches and
sex workers to find out where John's girlfriend lived. Oh, and now we know what he was using the money for. And they staked out her boarding house in Chicago, which I'm like, why don't you just buy her own apartment with all this money? So one night, when Dillinger dropped by, the cops swooped in, and just like that, the dashing bank robber was arrested.
Wow at his girlfriend's house.
Yeah, and he was like he was already fully clothed and expecting him. No, I don't know. Yeah, And there was cravats everywhere. It seems almost too easy, right, it does.
But at the same time, he just like kept coming back to where he came from too.
Like he was like he got cocky. But yeah, while John waited trial, the paper started printing that the jack rabbit that jumped over a bank counters was finally caught. But John was only in jail for a month. As soon as John was in his whole gang's mission became getting him out.
Oh my god.
So Dyllinger was being held at the Allen County Jail in Lima, Ohio. The cops had sent him there because they were worried that he knew how to get out of state prisons in Indiana. Sure, yeah, he had the maps of prisons and he also helped his boys get away already, but they moved him only once stayed over Like it was just like a couple of miles out right.
So the breakout completely unknown territory.
Yeah, of Ohio, where he's also already hit banks. So the breakout actually happened on October twelfth, nineteen thirty three. Six men gathered at the courthouse. Three men stayed outside and three went in inside. They found the sheriff sitting at his desk reading the newspaper while his wife sat nearby working on a crossword. Okay, what a detail to keep in the history books.
It really is like scenes from a Chaplain movie or something like every little detail that that feels.
Like it gets better. The deputy was sleeping on the office couch.
That's all we were missing.
And the men told the sheriff that they were officers who needed to question Dollinger Lowel. When he asked to see their credentials, they pulled out their pistols. The lead man said, here are credentials, buddy, Hey, here's our credentials. See, and they gunned down the sheriff where he sat. After he was shot, they beat the sheriff until his wife broke down and gave them the keys. Oh, so do you think that like getting shot is enough to like give over the keys.
From Yeah, And it is shocking that there's just like no protection of the like at all from this thing happening.
And now how does the wife have the keys? Man? They grabbed her and they dragged her to the cell along with the drowsy deputy. So they put her in when they pulled Billager out, So the gang ran outside and they piled into two waiting cars and they hit the road. Wow. Two days later, this is so wild, they hit a police station at a little town north
of Fort Wayne, Indiana. They swarmed inside with guns drawn, locked up the cops, and scooped up their arsenal, two automatic rifles, a Thompson's submachine gun, three bulletproof vests in all the ammo they could hire. Can you believe? You believe? And that was only their first off. You would think that maybe the police stations might be on alert point I don't know, and apparently not in Peru, Indiana.
No, everyone is so indefensible. It's like it's so wild, there are no consequences.
Yeah, see, done, get out of here.
Okay. So a week later they hit the police station in Peru, Indiana, and they locked up all the cops in the basement. They collected their weapons with two more Tommy guns, a couple of shotguns, more body armor, and so many rifles and pistols that it's really not even worth listening. Wow, leaving bodies in his wake. Now, Dyllinger was free, unarmed to the teeth. So his gang got immediately back on their horse, hitting banks across the Midwest. Wow,
at one bank this is also fucking crazy. Where the cops actually caught up with him. Dillinger marched right out the front door with a human shield. The man jumped out of the way and the police opened fire, but Dillinger was armored up right. Witness it said, the bulls just splashed off his chest, as if the newspaper people needed more reason to be thirsty for this guy.
Right exactly. He is invincible.
It was like a Superman before a Superman sort of thing. He's like, oh my god, he's made of steel. So the cop was shot eight times and Dillinger's accomplice was also hit, but the robbers still managed to make a getaway despite the rain of bullets slamming into their car.
So much gun like battle, it's wild, so.
Much cup play, you guys. Yeah. As the news came in a bank after bank getting turned over by Dillinger's high powered gang, the National Guards started talking about sending in tanks, planes and he loads of poison gas to Indiana to try to stop him. One got their fu plan was like where they gonna go to like gas the whole state. Right, We're gonna We're gonna kill a bunch of people, but we're definitely maybe gonna get into.
One of them is probably gonna be John Delager.
They could have stopped Dillinger, you know. At one point he even mealed a little present to the chief of Indiana State Police, a book called how to be a Detective. Fucking trold Buddy, you got hooked?
Wow, dude, this guy is so psychotics.
The gang rob banks in Indiana, Wisconsin, and Illinois. When it was all told, they were hauling close to three million dollars in today's money.
Man, I mean maybe supporting the sex work economy of nineteen thirty three.
Single handedly propping it up with their bank calls. With that huge score in tow, they packed up and ducked out of sight. They went to a place where everyone brings their ill gotten gains. They went the floor, right, Yeah, So they slept out of sight while the National Guard was mobilizing. Eventually there were shotgun gangs and machine gun squads of National Guard troops setting up checkpoints on the
highways across the Midwest. But Dillinger was already out of reach, and he adopted a Kouba Knox and he was talking to It'll be like this and it's like, I don't know, you know, that's what gets Righty couldn't find him, and everybody in Florida found him incredibly sexually attractive.
Oh my god, but.
They probably did. He found the hiding place in Florida. He and his gang spend their time playing cards, swimming, fishing, drinking and hanging out. But Dyllinger was restless. They relax, Yes, just enjoy your vacation, John, Why do people never did it?
You made it out?
Yeah? Are you a person when you're not trying not to drown in your vacation? Are you a person that that? Are you? Do you get angsy? Or are you good with chilling for for a while?
I need I need those moments.
Yes, I like have those vacations or whatever, retreats, whatever, so that I.
Can be there.
Yeah.
I love it. I love to just throw my feet up.
When we were all starting out and there were like periods of like in four like of involuntary resting, I was never good at that. I was. I would hit it every Craigsist, audition, every fucking backstage actors, access, Mandy dot Com. I would find no downtime.
It can feel like you're just like drowning. But when I guess, I feel.
That's fantastic. Yeah. So in the end, it was in the National Guard who put the climbs on him. No, no, it was the local police in Tucson, Arizona.
In Arizona, No.
Arizona, Cotumn. As the Dilager gang was planning an escape route to Mexico, some of John's got drunk at a local bar and started bragging, as everybody fucking does. Cops got win of it, and they raided the house where the gang was staying and scooped up a lot of the weapons and gear the rest of the people inside, and they just waited. Dolinger pulled up a few hours later. He walked up the steps and right into a police ambush.
Oh, just as he was loosening his cravats.
Yeah, he was pooring himself as first tumbler of brandy. Have you people know? Shame? Yeah, that's how they caught him, and along with John and most of the gang, the cops grabbed up tons of new clothes in a house. It sounds odd for the cops to be thrift shopping from the thieves like that, but whatever.
It's like, it's just going to go into evidence anyway, they may as well.
Just yeah, all these cravats are not going away. We better be sponsored by a fucking cravat company after all this plugging. But what they had actually found was the clothes had been lined with money. That was it. It was the secret sash Oh where the gangs get away to Mexico. Oh okay, yeah, that one really shocked hu.
I just I love the visual of that, like putting like dollar bills under like a sewing machine and like sewing them into a suit jacket or something.
It's so cinematic, isn't it?
Good idea.
That brings us to January twenty fifth, nineteen thirty four. John Dillinger was shipped back to Indiana unlocked in Crown Point Jail to await his trial. Tons of armguards marched around the jail for the newspapers to snap pictures of There was no way he was going to escape this time. The trial was set for March twelfth, but Dillinger never
planned to face the music. Wow, so in his cell, this is crazy, right, So John used the razor to slowly carve out a piece of wood into a fake pistol, then he blackened it with shoe polished and waited for his chance.
Oh god, getting shoe polish on the black market.
Also like it's all over your fingers now, it's just gonna look cross. But you can never get that stuff off.
He's so obvious.
Yeah, So on the morning of Saturday, March third, he was taking to the jail's exercise room and left to himself. Nobody wanted to see him work out. Apparently he made all the craziest sounds.
They don't want to.
See how the sausage is made.
They He called out to one of the jailers who came into the room alone. John stepped up behind him and stuck the gun in his back. He marched the man to the cells, locked in the jailer. Then one by one he was able to track down the other guards and locked him up, releasing another inmate along the way.
It's just everything you've said about how he has just sort of gone in through the front door, or just like he killed someone to get the keys or whatever.
It's just like, how is this he finished the crossroad possible to get the keys from the wife. Apparently, and this is the Banana's part of the story. The prisoners were able to lure in two dozen prison officers and lock them up in the cells.
Yeah, it seems like he has like power, mind control powers or something.
Yeah. Do you want to come here and listen to some jazz and the smoke some Devil's lettuce. You're like, yeah, I'll the fucking do that. John took one hostage, the county's deputy sheriff, marched him to the prison locker, then popped it open and pulled out all the guns and gear. Then John and the other escapee walked across the street to the city's garage. They waved the gun at the mechanic and asked for the fastest car. He pointed them to the sheriff's nineteen thirty three Ford v.
Eight hilarious.
Yeah, and the mechanic remember that, Dillinger laughed when he realized it was the sheriff's car. Yeah. John pointed a Tommy gun at the sheriff's deputy and forced him to speed off down the road towards Chicago the Chicago bus. Baby grab it on. So more bank robberies followed, with new confederates like his new linkup with maybe the most memorably named gangster of the era, Baby face Nielsen, Wow, adorable. Yeah,
he was just like so cute. I'm like vicious. Between a South Dakota bank and an iol bank, they hit that March. Dillinger came away with another two million dollars. So it was an early birthday present for John. On June twenty second, he turned thirty one, and on that day he was.
Declared accomplished so much so, yeah, overachiever.
It was declared America's first ever public enemy number one.
That's right, that's how I know him, That's why I know there you go, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, And the government started throwing cash around five thousand for information leading to his arrest or. You could get ten thousand if you manage to capture him yourself, So that's like two hundred thousand in today's money. Is there is there a time in your life where you might have been tempted to go after him?
What's the point you're gonna die?
Yeah? Fuck no, I don't know what would make me chase down a dude. That's obviously I killed so many people and stuck up so many fucking police stations.
I know, right, That's just it's like they kind of they need all the help they can get It's just a desperate like, we're.
Gonna get him, or you could get him if you can, could you We're.
Gonna get it, but if you get to it first. Whatever, Are you ready for a little more thirst?
Give me?
This was the point when theaters were playing the news before the movies, and as the story goes, when the reels would play in the theater and Dillinger appeared on the screen, the audience would cheer. And you know who fucking hated this, the head of the government's Department of Investigation, Jay Edgar Hoover's right, Okay, a little bit of true. Yeah, they had to rebrand because they got kicked in the
ball so hard by Dillinger. Can you believe that's like that the Department of Investigation that like, he completely destroyed them in the pr battle. You know, so after just one year they changed their name from the Department of Investigation to the FBI.
Yeah, rebrand.
It kind of makes sense of people at the time were on dillinger side because this is I'm not condoning violence or robbery, of course, yes i am, but this is smack in the middle of the Great Depression. So basically what people know is that banks fucking suck, the government sucks, and their lives were ruined by shipbacks, monkeying around with money beyond their control. Banks weren't loaning anyone
money for the things that they needed. You wanted to buy a house, if you wanted to start a business, then fucking tough like you weren't going to get any other money. So Dillinger became kind of their fantasy. The bank refused you the money, what if we just walked in and took it.
He's the revenge fantasy, totally exactly.
So during the early robberies, one letter to the Indianapolis Star said, Yeah, I'm for John Dillinger. She he wasn't even worse than the bankers or the politicians who put the poor people's money. She he didn't rob poor people. She he robbed those who became rich by robbing the poor. She thank you, very right. That's a producer, tell you
thank you. But really made him robbin hood to the American people with the mortgages, because when his game would rob a bank, they wouldn't just take the money, They would also take the mortgage records and the title deeds that the banks held, and Dillinger would torch them. Suddenly the banks didn't have the people work they needed to claim ownership over people's houses. It wasn't exactly stealing from the rates to give to the poor, but it was
pretty fucking close. Oh yeah. Interesting, And the stealing from the rich part, he really had down path. That was enough for a lot of people in the Great Depression just to fuck up the rich people's day. At this point, Dillinger was so popular and his mugshots were everywhere. He realized that he needed to change his look. It was too sexy. Some people said, so, if you're downing jer and you got to change up the look, what are you going to do? Are you gonna get some killer sideburns or some.
Mutton chop so blonde?
What would you do?
Oh me, oh, mun chop sounds.
Good, right?
I I really like style reinventions, like to change up the exterior.
I don't know just what color palets I use it. He's like, I'm going to try more blue. It's because soundm feeling adventurous. John decided plastic surgery was the way to go.
What fucking posty whatever it was.
You know a lot of advancements from plastic surgery happened because of people mangled in World War One and so to replace faces, and there are so a lot of the you know, they did really some sort of crazy shit with with very limited technology at the time. So, but but John didn't go the full route. He had two moles cut off, he slugged off a scar on his lip, and he pushed his cheeks higher. Okay, he had a dend in his nose filled in, but most importantly,
he filled the dimple on his chin. What Yeah, it's a little limerick. On top of that, he had his fingerprints burned off with acid. Okay. Also, that's the fucking like. I didn't know that you could go that elaborate with plastic surgery at the time.
I thought, Hey, oh, do you mean like just everything like filling in dimples and getting like bocle fat trans.
Particularly the push his cheeks higher. It just seems like that feel like that feels like really complicated to do.
I don't know, but yeah, that's like breaking your face.
He mustn't look fucking wild.
Yeah, was he in like a face brace? I mean, how do you like from all that shit?
Well, emotionally, we don't know, but physically three months and This was all for the lolo price of like one hundred thousand dollars in today's money. That wasn't too bad. Oh my god, what's like sown in corners?
Man?
That is some cotting corner shed. I bet you they gave him like a pig slab on his cheeks. Afterwards, he was hanging out at a friend's house, lying low for a month, or actually not exactly lying low. After the surgery, John apparently thought he was untouchable, so he spent the month hanging out with his girlfriend all around Chicago. They went to restaurants.
Oh they're still together even though she turned his ass in.
I might have been a new one.
Wait, so he did this facial reconstruction to disguise himself, or just as a vein to disguise himself.
Okay, okay, that's.
What he was, just setting a hook. He was like going to restaurants, amusement sparks. John went gambling, and he went to shows. Can you imagine you're like at a fucking like death cap of a cutie concert? You're like, is that the No, it can't be.
He looks like a public enemy Number one.
I love that people be like, no, no, he's got a chin dimple. Yeah.
Right.
So, in true cinematic fashion, it was a trip to the movies that finally got John caught. Orse. So, one night, a broth madam who knew John's girlfriend told the cops that she was going to join John for a movie at the Biograph Theater. They were watching a gangster flick
naturally called Manhattan Melodrama Meta. The movie ended just after ten o'clock that night, when Dyllinger stepped out of the theater with the crowd, some freshly branded FBI agents moved in rand As a crowd on the sidewalks thinned out, Dillinger looked around and realized the agents were surrounding him. He bolted for an alleyway, but they didn't chase. They just threw their guns and opened fire. Oh this time,
John couldn't out run the bullets. A killer shot hit him in the back of the head, and he went down. After he died, something like fifteen thousand people came to see his body, and the legends about him continued. Of course, that included the story that he wasn't actually killed at the theater. Some people said that his body was misidentified and that the murdered man was someone else?
Oh because of the cheeks.
Yeah.
Probably. There's even the idea that dillinger allies actually hoaxed the investigators, that his girlfriend set up the cops with someone else, and that the FBI were tricked into gunning down some other man, which left Fyllinger free to disappear. But the new FBI had no doubt the acid burd hadn't worked. Dillinger's trigger finger was unmistakable. The Prince matched America's Robin Hood had made his final escape.
Into the afterlife.
Yeah, that's our stories.
You need a what on epic Dad? I mean that is that's a better served standing, you know.
Yeah, Yeah, it's feeling anti climactic when he was just like caught, even though like yeah he should be.
Also it feels like he's getting caught because he's like keeps going to brothels and I was like, I don't know, He's like this time around, it's gonna be fine. Exactly what are he taken away from the story? What's what was? What was something that really jumped out of you? Truly?
All the guns, like just that there's such everyone had like a stash of conment.
Everyone but like no.
Every single person. Yeah, yeah, everyone had a stash of Tommy guns.
The Tommy guns, Like, what the fuck? It's terrifying.
I took away that like the thirties, this era was terrifying, insane.
Yeah, I don't want to be there. I'm glad let's not.
Go back there. But we're gonna be there in like ten years, just in a different type of thirties. Hey, Snita, thank you so much for being honest. Where can our listeners find you?
Great question?
I guess I'm on the internet and are you in the social meds? I'm on the social meds. I posted about things like upcoming movies and what.
You see, what we're gonna do movies in piction. Yeah, so find her at Sunita Moni. That's right, that's right.
The money, yeah, my first last name.
I got that one.
Good for you, man, Yeah, thank you so much, thanks for having me by our Tuto bye.
Greatest Escapes is a production of iHeartRadio and Film Nation Entertainment in association with Gilded Audio. Our executive producers from Me are Turo Castro, Alyssa Martino and Milan Popelka. From Film Nation Entertainment, Andrew Chugg and Witning Donaldson from Gilded Audio and Dylan Fagan from iHeartRadio. The show is produced and edited by Carl Nellis and Ben Chubb, who are also, respectively, our research overlord and music overlord. Our associate producer is
Tory Smith, who's our other overlord. Nick Dooley is our technical director. Additional editing by Whitney Donaldson. Special thanks to Alison Cohen, Dan Welsh, Ben Riizek, Sarah Joyner, Nicki Stein, Olivia Canny, and Kelsey Albright. Hey, thank you so much for listening, and if you're enjoying the show, please drop a rating or review. My mom will call you each personally and thank you. We'll see you all next week.