Dillinger, John (1903-1934)
During the Great Depression, many Americans, nearly helpless against forces they didn't understand, made heroes of outlaws who took what they wanted at gunpoint and stole from the institutions that they felt were oppressing them. Of all these lurid desperadoes, John Dillinger came to evoke this Gangster Era, and stirred mass emotion to a degree rarely seen in this country.
In truth, Dillinger was not the leader of a crime syndicate but was merely a brutal thief and a cold-blooded murderer. From September, 1933, until July, 1934, he and his violent gang terrorized the Midwest, killing 10 men, wounding seven others, robbing banks and police arsenals, and staging three memorable jail breaks, killing a sheriffduring one and wounding two guards in another. He became something of a folk hero for successfully thwarting his pursuers for a time.
John Herbert Dillinger was born on June 22, 1903, in the middle-class Oak Hill section of Indianapolis. His father, a hardworking grocer, raised him in an atmosphere of disciplinary extremes, harsh and repressive on some occasions, but generous and permissive on others. John's mother died when he was three, and when his father remarried six years later, John resented his stepmother.
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