Whoever wanted to become America's public enemy No. 1 in the past few decades had particularly good chances if political or religious madness was added to pure criminal energy. The list includes such illustrious names as Fidel Castro, Saddam Hussein and, of course, Osama bin Laden. However, these ideological qualifications were not always necessary to win the unofficial gold medal of the villain. In the early days, all you had to do was know how to use machine guns, and having a few like-minded people around didn't hurt either.
America without crime is like a burger without a bun. The fascination that emanates from the various dons, pistolos and outlaws is still unbroken in the digital age. And so it is only logical that three years ago a dispute broke out about the exhumation of the body of John Herbert Dillinger (1903-1934), which occupied the country's media for weeks: the bank robber, who made the first "Most Wanted" list of all time may have died by bullets from his captors on July 22, 1934 - his myth only really thrived after that.
Unlike men like Al Capone or Bugsy Siegel, Dillinger did not rule a shadowy empire. But that didn't detract from his popularity, as he transported a little Wild West romance into the 20th century with his daring raids. This caught on all the more because during the Great Depression, banks were seen as institutions that hoarded money that ignored the needs of the people - and America's chief policeman J. Edgar Hoover also did the super robber a favor, at his expense to the conscience of the whole Playing the nation: The federal police "Bureau of Investigation" led a rather meager existence, but Dillinger's work changed that. In 1935, Hoover was able to found the FBI.
As with all people who at some point decide not to bother with the law, it is not possible to say what the trigger for Dillinger was. He was born in Indianapolis in 1903 into a middle-class world. His father was a solid merchant with Saarland ancestors. After the early death of his mother - John was just three years old - his older sister took care of him.
Nevertheless, the boy got involved in conflicts at school, which one preferred to avoid and was fascinated by gangs. "Many of my friends wanted to be police officers, firefighters or farmers," he is said to have said later, "I always just wanted to steal money." As a worker in a machine factory, he caused so much trouble that he was quickly fired. His father moved with him from the city to the country, the peace and quiet there should do the trick.
That remained a pious wish: the son signed up for the Navy, was a stoker on a battleship for a short time, but deserted, returned to the country, married a woman from whom he soon divorced, and in between it was about three dozen Chickens he should have stolen. If he still had the chance to end his career as a criminal, he still had it.
But it only got worse. While playing baseball, Dillinger met a man named Ed Singleton. It didn't take him long to persuade him to rob a store because of a financial slump. But instead of waiting with a getaway car afterwards, as agreed, Dillinger received the police; The verdict in court was ten to 20 years in prison.
Dillinger was imprisoned in Indiana for nine years, from 1924 to 1933. He tried to break out several times, but without success. But as if he'd only been thinking about his future as a criminal while in prison, he quickly gathered a few desperadoes and robbed a bank in Ohio while he was still at large. He wasn't too clever - it didn't take long for the police to catch the gang.
Some members of his gang quickly escaped from prison with the help of smuggled guns. Dillinger's charisma was so overwhelming that the men soon returned to get their leader out of jail. A guard died in the shooting that was due. It was at this point that J. Edgar Hoover caught the eye of the man who could now reasonably be called a career criminal. He sent his authorities to the mob, which immediately continued to maraud, robbing banks and clearing out a police weapons cache. There, in addition to machine guns, bulletproof vests also fell into the hands of criminals.
Dillinger was now becoming a national celebrity. His path crossed that of Emily Frechette - a singer who was surrounded by the charms of cultivated ruin. A police officer died in a robbery in Chicago, which drew appropriate publicity. This time the gang was caught by hunters in Arizona. But Dillinger managed to escape from prison again, allegedly with a dummy pistol that he is said to have put together himself from wood and shoe polish.
This finally made him a kind of cult figure for parts of the public. A guy who fools the authorities and takes money from the banks was even considered Robin Hood by some good Americans. A great aura - with the small flaw that Dillinger never thought of sharing his hard-earned money with the needy. More raids followed, more dead police officers - and finally a betrayal that heralded the end of the gangster.
Anna Sage was an immigrant from Romania who lived with Dillinger's acquaintance Polly Hamilton in Chicago. For $10,000 and naturalization, she promised Hoover's people she'd set a trap for Public Enemy No. 1 the next time he showed up at Hamilton's. The deal was in place - and when Dillinger went to the cinema with his friend on the evening of July 22, 1934, Sage delivered the gangster free of charge. Recognizing the situation, he tried to draw his gun and died shortly thereafter from three bullets from the guns of his captors; an ending of almost biblical quality, only made better by the fact that the authorities only paid the traitor $5,000 and never naturalized her.
It goes without saying that this material had to get Hollywood on the scene. Again and again the criminal haunted the screens, in 2009 Johnny Depp erected a monument to him in "Public Enemies". Of course, the strip was not realistic, the suits are too well cut and the dialogues too polished: “Okay, how do you want it,” says Depp, as he holds the cannon in front of the bank employee with the key in front of the vault: “You want do you die a hero or live on as a coward?”
The story of the exhumation of the body is now over. The descendants, who doubted that the gangster was in the grave, seem to have realized the danger of making a fool of themselves. Because it doesn't matter where he rests - John Dillinger has long since become immortal.
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