SPECTACULAR CAREER

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 20, 24 July 1934, Page 9

SPECTACULAR CAREER

John Dillinger ,was born in .Mooresville, Indiana, thirty-one years ago. He attacked an elderly grocer named Morgan, beat him about the head, and tried to rolj him. For this ho was sentenced to 'from ten to twenty years. He was taken to a, reformatory, proved the worst boy there, and was transferred to a prison, where he spent nine years. In May of last ycar'hu was paroled, returned home, and within a month was robbing banks at- tho point of a gun. He was taken to ' prison run' on "model" lines by a woman warden, Mrs. Lillian Holley, to await Ms trial on March 12. Offers of strengthened forces to guard the desperado wero rejected by *the warden with the remark, '' Wo can take care of the gaol ourselves.'' When, a week before he should have been brought to trial, Dillinger escaped, Mrs. Holley had hj'storics. The gangster got out of the gaol by a bare-faced piece of bluff. With a "pistol" fashioned out of wood, he held up his warder and, with a negro colleague, seized a machine-gun from Mrs. Holley's office, drove the warders into cells, '.and walked out into the prison yard, where he appropriated Mrs. Holley's car and drove off. Later an- official -yras indicted for, assisting him to leave his cell. Twenty thousand policemen wero put on the trail of the. gangster, to begin the amazing series of raids and escapes which have culminated in his death. Within the past few" months Dillinger staged spectacular raids at:— Warsaw, Indiana: When he stole revolvers from a police station. Sioux Palls, Dakota: Where he fought his way out of the town carrying with him four girl bank clerks as hostages. , ■ St. Paul, Minnesota: Where ho was shot at and wounded by police when nearly cornered, but fought his way to liberty. Port Huron, Michigan: Where his presence was disclosed by the death in a gun fight of Herbert Younghusbarid, tho Negro who escaped with him from Crownpoint gaol. Paua, Illinois: Whore he raided a bank, knocked a watchman unconscious, overpowered clerks as they arrived, and forced a cashier to open a safe from which he took £5000. South Bend, Indiana: Where a bank was raidedv v and 30,000 dollars stolen, a policeman killed, and bystanders injured. Coincident with tho raid at Pana, Governor White, of Ohio, received a message from Dillinger threatening that ' unless ho immediately released two , gangsters under sentence of eleetrocu- ' tion, he would bo shot. The week before Dilliivgcr showed ! his iron nerve by dyeing his'hair red and attending a family < reunion at Mooresville, Indiana, to the intense | gratification of his father. Dillinger was in another Statte by the timo the police, had picked- up his trail. It seemed .that tho climax had eventually been reached on tlio night of Sunday, April 22, when Dillinger and his.gang were surrounded in the Bohemia Hotel, a drinking, resort in tho, small town of Mercer, Wisconsin. . The luck was still with tho gangster, however, for tho police gave their presence away when they opened firo on a car leaving tho hotel in tho'falso.im--prcssion that the wanted man was inside. Tho shots, which killed ono of the occupants of the car and wounded the other two, ended all hope of surprising Dillinger and his desperate followers.The police attacked the hotel, lto bo received by a devastating burst of machine-gun and revolver fire. TEAR-GAS BOMBS. Twice the polieo and Federal agents attacked and twice they were repulsed. When eventually, with the aid of tearr gas bombs, the authorities forced the occupants of the hotel to surrender, their total capture was three women, Dillinger got away, a- policeman being killed in the process. A Federal agent had been killed during one of the attacks. '"•-:. Tho gangster did not • escape unscathed, for the police learnt that ho had received a wound in the shoulder which prevented the use of .one' arm. Ho was also wounded in the leg. On June 27 it was reported that he was the Sole .survivor of his gang, but three days -later ho raided tho South Bend Bank with twt> companions. ■Dillinger, once a torn labourer and the son of a greengrocer, has spread