By ERIC C. RODENBERG
AntiqueWeek Associate Editor

To Frances Helen Dillinger Thompson, “Johnny was just your typical big brother.”

But to America, “Johnny” - John Herbert Dillinger – was Public Enemy Number One.

And, for good reason.

He was a nuisance. He made the police look like fools.

On Oct. 12, 1933, he was busted out of the Lima, Ohio, jail. A week later, Dillinger and a gang member posed as “tourists” at a large police arsenal in Peru, Ind., asking local policemen what types of firepower they would have available should the “Dillinger Gang” ever show up in their part of the country. The officers proudly showed the “tourists” what the gang would be up against.

Late on the evening of Oct. 20, 1933, Dillinger and his accomplice entered the arsenal, subdued three lawmen and made off with several machine guns, sawed-off shotguns, ammunition and bulletproof vests.

Police authorities were in a fury over Dillinger’s brazen exploits. The plunder he amassed gave him enough armaments to continue on a crime spree that would eventually lead to his incarceration within the Lake County Jail at Crown Point, Ind. While there, he pulled another one over on the cops, carving a wooden gun from a washboard and bluffing his way out of that holding pen.

And these brazen exploits were making him too popular. Among struggling Americans, who were learning not to trust bankers and the government, Dillinger was becoming an heroic myth.

Warner Brothers released a newsreel showing the Division of Investigation – the predecessors of the FBI – on its manhunt for Dillinger. The newsreel showed footage of Dillinger’s father, a somber church-going Midwesterner, at the family farm in Mooresville, Ind.

Movie audiences across the country cheered when Dillinger’s picture appeared on the screen. They booed and hissed at pictures of the federal agents.

When Director J. Edgar Hoover heard this news he put the town of Mooresville under surveillance. He threatened to prosecute the Dillinger family unless they cooperated.

He portrayed Dillinger as “Public Enemy Number One” – the only “wanted man” to wear such a moniker.

A $10,000 award was put on Dillinger’s head. Again, federal agents botched several attempts to nab the gang, including a shoot-out at the Little Bohemia Lodge in Wisconsin.

But, Dillinger knew, as he wrote his father, “you can’t win in this game.” On July 22, 1934, agents were posted outside the Biograph Theatre in Chicago. They had information that Dillinger and two women were inside watching Clark Gable depict a ruthless gangster in Manhattan Melodrama. Each agent was told by Hoover that it would be “each man for himself,” if Dillinger – once outside - offered any resistance, according to FBI records.

At 10:30 p.m., Dillinger and the two ladies – one dressed in red – were leaving the theatre. Special Agent Melvin Purvis lighted a cigar, as a signal for his men to close in. Dillinger, immediately aware of what was happening, grabbed a pistol from his right trouser’s pocket and turned to run down an alley. Five shots were fired from pistols by three agents. Dillinger, hit three times, fell face down on the pavement. He was pronounced dead shortly afterward. The three agents were commended by Hoover for bravery.

A photo of Frances Helen Dillinger – named by her big brother Johnny – ran on the front pages of newspapers throughout the world. She was holding a bouquet of flowers in front of the funeral home.

John Herbert Dillinger came into the world with little; and left with little. In his pocket, police said, was $7.81, including at least one blood-stained dollar bill.

However, what little he left – some 15 items, including that stained bill – is causing a stir among collectors and historians.
On Dec. 12, Frances Helen Dillinger – now 87 years old – will be selling the artifacts from the short, but meteoric, life of her brother at Heritage Auctions in Dallas. The items, which are being touted by Heritage as the “greatest collection of John Dillinger artifacts ever to be assembled,” are expected to sell for an aggregate amount of $600,000-800,000.

The collection includes personal letters from Dillinger, the timepiece he was wearing when he was shot in Chicago, three different personal firearms belonging to him, and what is believed to be the wooden gun he used to escape from the Crown Point jail.

The wool hunting jacket, purchased in Chicago before the Little Bohemia shootout, will also be up for sale, in addition to letters written from Dillinger to his father. In one of the letter, Dillinger tells his father he knows he’s been a disappointment, but also assures him that he’s “not guilty of half of the things I am charged with and I’ve never hurt anyone.” The other letter contains the “can’t win in this game” acknowledgement.

Most of the items have been stored inside a small Indiana home – near the original Dillinger farm – for more than 75 years.

“I won’t be able to keep track of it forever, so I figured I might as well sell it now,” Thompson said. “I took good care of it all for 75 years, I reckon that’s long enough.”

Thompson, who plans on being at the auction, had also kept the blood-stained shirt which was recovered from her dead brother. However, in the 1960s she incinerated it inside a burn barrel at the back of the house, saying she “could no longer live with it.”
The reasons for selling the items are two-fold, according to Dennis Lowe, who spent several hours with the Indiana family, prior to obtaining them for the Heritage auction.

“It wasn’t like a lot of families, ‘here’s a bunch of stuff we have, now we want some money,’” he said. “Helen Frances, at 87, is still as sharp as a tack.

She has an endless list of anecdotes. They’re all about “Johnny” taking her and her sister to a movie … she was of an age old enough to see what was in the papers, and she knew what was going on, but that’s who he was – her older brother … she had kept all these things for years, and now she is letting go of them … I think it is cathartic for her.

“The other reason that this was a good time to sell, was the movie. The family knew that we sold one of John Dillinger’s guns for $96,000 in July, and that a letter sold by another auction house (Leslie Hindman Auctioneers in Chicago) for $60,000 … now, with the movie out, they knew that it would be a good time to sell.”
The movie, Public Enemies, starring Johnny Depp as Dillinger opened in theaters on July 1. The movie received mixed reviews, despite being “panned” in Mooresville.

“I didn’t think much of it,” Dillinger’s sister told AntiqueWeek. “It was just a bunch of shooting. It wasn’t anything close to what I remember … but I thought Johnny Depp was good ... yeah, he’s a good actor.”