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PUBLIC ENEMY NO..1 BANK ROBBERIES AND MURDERS John Dillinger, known during his brief career as After two unsuccessful attempts to escape from the Public Enemy No. 1, was born in Indianapolis on June reformatory he was transferred on July 15, 1929 to 28, 1902, and came of Quaker stock. Although his the Michigan City penitentiary. His wife then di- mother died when he was three years old, his child. vorced him. hod was a normal, happy one. He went to grade and From the time that he was freed on parole on May high school, as well as Sunday School. 22, 1933 until he was shot he put into practice much At 14, John decided that he no longer wanted to he had learned from companions he had met at study, and decided to work instead. For a while there- Michigan City. after he did work as a machinist, but soon he bought Fred Fisher, manager of a thread factory in Mon- himself an old automobile and began to drift around, ticello, Ill., was the first hold-up victim. The banks worrying his family until finally his father bought a at Saleville, Montpelier, and Indianapolis were the farm in Mooresville, Indiana, in order to take him first bank hold-ups to be credited to Dillinger; Sale- away from city influences.. ville on July 17, 1933; Montpelier on August 4; that Open spaces appealed to John; he worked hard and in Indianapolis on September 22.. ambitiously. When he was 18, an escapade in which As time passed, and he was successful'in evading he temporarily "borrowed" a prominent citizen's car arrest, Dillinger began to plan for the escape of.his caused his arrest, humiliating him so much that he ran friends Hamilton and Pierpont. His first.attempt to away to join the navy. This was on July 23, 1923. toss guns over the walls of the prison failed, but on Five months later the rigid discipline annoyed him to September 20 he had them enclosed in a package of the point of desertion. Later he was dishonorably merchandise consigned to the prison, and with the discharged. help of a conspirator, the guns reached the two con- At 20 John Dillinger married his childhood sweet- victs. heart. Five months later he and a companion whom On the 25th of September he'was arrested at the he had met at a pool room slugged and attempted to home of a girl friend in Dayton, Ohio, and taken to rob a Mooresville grocer. He was then sentenced to 'the Lima jail. He did not stay there' long, however, ten to twenty years in the Indiana reformatory. His because on October 12, three of his friends masquer- companion was sentenced to two years. This un- ading as Indiana deputies freed their leader and killed equal decision was believed to have turned him against Sheriff John Sarver. Then they looted. and robbed society. police stations, getting machine guns, pistols and bullet-proof vests.. 16 17