Dillinger: fact or fiction?

This is a death mask made after Dillinger's death. The famed bank robber John Dillinger escaped from the Crown Point Jail in 1934, leading the FBI and the police on an interstate chase, before finally being shot and killed outside a theater in Chicago. (Credit: Sam Riche / Metromix)

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The American public was just getting to know John Dillinger when he was shot to death by police outside of a Chicago theater on July 22, 1934, and they weren’t quite ready to let go when he was gone.

Bystanders dipped hankerchiefs and pieces of their clothing in his blood as mementos (by the next morning, pieces of newsprint stained with Dillinger’s blood were selling for 25 cents per square inch). The following day, thousands lined up to see his body in the Chicago morgue. Stories of his criminal derring-do filled the pages of newspapers nationwide, feeding the hysteria, and urban legends grew like Indiana tomatoes.

There were reported Dillinger sightings all over the Midwest, and a trail of big tips supposedly left for barbers and others by the charismatic bandit. To this day, mention of Dillinger’s name elicits tales of granddaddies who shot pool with him, cut his hair, or drove his getaway car. It’s impossible to confirm much of the Dillinger folklore, but there are certain widely held assumptions about the man that can be debunked.

Fiction
Dillinger was born and raised in Mooresville, Ind.

Fact
Dillinger was born on the Near Eastside of Indianapolis and didn’t move to Mooresville until he was a teenager.

Fiction
Dillinger was like Robin Hood, robbing from the rich and giving to the poor.

Fact
Dillinger was generous to friends and family and is believed to have been a big tipper, but it’s probably more accurate to say that he stole from the rich and gave to the whores. Dillinger lived large, spending money on cars, clothes and 8ladies of ill repute.

Fiction
Dillinger was a murderer.

Fact
Dillinger escaped from the Crown Point Jail in northwest Indiana before he could be tried for the murder of East Chicago police officer William O’Malley. His gang was filled with ruthless, murderin’ SOBs, but no homicides could be pinned on Dillinger while he was alive.

Fiction
Dillinger escaped from the Crown Point Jail using a fake gun carved out of soap and painted black with shoe polish.

Fact
The dummy gun was painted with shoe polish, but it was made of wood.

Fiction
Dillinger associate/police informant Anna Sage, known as “the woman in red,” wore a red dress to the Biograph Theater on Lincoln Avenue in Chicago to tip off federal agents.

Fact
Sage’s dress was orange. (Interesting aside: Agent Melvin Purvis told reporters on the scene that Dillinger was alone when he was shot.)

Fiction
The man shot was not Dillinger.

Fact
This one is murkier. Dillinger’s family identified the body, but the desperado had recently undergone plastic surgery and dyed his hair black in an attempt to hide his identity. Friends and acquaintances claimed the dead body was shorter and heavier than Dillinger, and a barber familiar with the bandit’s hair said the dead man’s hair was too thick.

Then in 1965, a California man wrote to The Indianapolis News, claiming to be Dillinger but was dismissed as a nut. The identity of the body lying at Crown Hill Cemetery could be easily divined with a DNA test, but exhumation is not a casual undertaking.

Fiction
Dillinger’s penis is stored in a jar at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.

Fact
C’mon, do you really think archivists earn Ph.D.s and fight for jobs at America’s pre-eminent museum so that they can preserve George Washington’s dentures, NASA capsules and John Dillinger’s penis? This is hokum, a product of a morbidly amusing photo taken of Dillinger while his body was on display at the Chicago morgue. His body, still in rigor, was under a sheet with one arm partly extended at the hip, giving the impression that Dillinger was pitching a massive post-mortem tent.

This rumor is a foot-and-a-half long

Internet rumors put Dillinger’s man-part at a cool 18 inches. Highly skeptical (and unable, even, to process such an idea), we asked Debby Herbenick, sex health researcher at IU’s Kinsey Institute, if this was even humanly possible. Her response: “I wouldn’t doubt that 18 is possible — however, it would be quite rare.”

Herbenick directed us to a book called “Is Size Important?,” by Donald Templerer, which recounts that Dillinger was reportedly 12 inches flaccid and 22 inches long when erect. However, a witness to the bandit’s autopsy disputed this rumor. Meanwhile, Dillinger’s legacy stands tall.

Sources: Star archives, The John
Dillinger Museum, John Dillinger.com