Latest / The Infographics Show Podcast / First Public Enemy #1: John Dillinger and the FBI

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First Public Enemy #1: John Dillinger and the FBI · The Infographics Show Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to another beyond infographics. I want you to
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: picture something for a moment. Just try to see this
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: in your head. Okay, it's a scene that feels like
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: it belongs in a I don't know, a slapstick comedy,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: maybe a Looney Tune sketch, but it's actually one of
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: the most pivotal moments in American law enforcement history. You
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: are standing outside a fortress. It's a jail in Crown Point, Indiana,
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: and it has been marketed to the entire world as
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: completely escape proof.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: Fall steel and stone, the real deal.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: Teeming with steel bars, armed guards, floodlights, and insides. It's
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: the most notorious criminal in America.
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: And then he does at He casually walks right out
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: the front door.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: It sounds impossible.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: And the weapon he uses, the thing he uses to
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: hold an entire jail staff hostage. It's a piece of wood,
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: a piece of wood he carved with a razor blade
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: and covered in black shoe polish.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: It sounds absolutely ridiculous when you say it out loud,
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: it really does. It sounds like a myth we made
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: up after the fact to make this story better. It does,
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: doesn't it. But this isn't a cartoon. This is March
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: nineteen thirty four, and that wooden't gun. It didn't just
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: embarrass a local sheriff. Oh no, it set off a
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: chain reaction that fundamentally change how policing works in.
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: The United States, a huge chain reaction.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: So today our mission is to look at the collision
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: course of two men, John Dillinger and Jay Edgar Hoover.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: We're going to unpack how their rivalry, this cat and
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: mouse game essentially created the modern federal police state. We're
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: going to see how a stolen Ford V eight and
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: a carved up washboard gave us the FBI as we
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: know it today.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: It really is a study in opposing forces.
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: It's perfect.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: On one side, you have the gentleman bandit Dillinger, who
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: represents the absolute chaos, you know, the desperation and that
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: anti system feeling of the Great Depression, right.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: The outlaw hero.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: And on the other side you have the bureaucrat Hoover.
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: He represents order filing, cabinet surveillance, and just centralized power.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: And before we get into the shootouts and the chase,
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: I do want to remind you, our listener, if you
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: find these discussions valuable, if you enjoy peeling back the
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: layers of history like this, please take a moment to
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: rate the show five stars on your app. It really
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: helps us keep the lights on and keeps us digging
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: into these stories.
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: For you, and to really understand this story, we have
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: to look past the Hollywood version. We all love the
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: Fedoras and the Tommy guns, but we need to look
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: at the systems behind the shootout.
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: The nuts and bolts exactly.
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: We need to understand the legal loopholes, the technology of
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: the cars, the bureaucracy of the files. Specifically, we need
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: to understand how a stolen car allowed the federal government
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: to step into local crime in a way they never
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: ever had before.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: Right, it's not just about bullets, it's about jurisdiction. But
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: to care about the systems, you have to care about
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: the guy breaking them. So let's start with John Dillinger,
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: because when you look at his life, his origin story
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: doesn't start with him being some kind of mastermind supervillain.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: He wasn't born robbing.
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: Banks, No, not at all.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: He was born in nineteen oh three in Indianapolis in
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: the Oak Hill section, and his child wildhood is well,
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: it's a case study and instability His mother died when
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: he was only three years old.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: Three Yeah, I mean that's a massive trauma right out
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: of the gate. You lose that primary bond, that primary caregiver,
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: and it leaves a mark. It has to.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: And his father, John Wilson Dillinger, he was a grocer.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: From what I've read, the parenting style was pretty erratic.
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: Erratic is the polite way to put it. His father
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: oscillated between being incredibly strict, We're talking locking him in
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: the house, severe punishments, and then he'd swing to the
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: other extreme of being totally permissive whiplash, total whiplash, buying
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: him candy and toys to apologize. It was a confusing,
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: unstable environment for a kid. So Dillinger was restless. He
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: quits school, he gets bored. There's a story about him
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: stealing a car early on just for the joy ride,
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: just to feel something.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: You know, that classic rebel without a cause trajectory. He
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: even joins the Navy, right which for that era was
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: supposed to be the thing that straightens young men out.
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: It backfired completely. He joined the Navy and hated the discipline,
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: hated it. He ended up deserting, going a wall after
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: only a few months because he just could not stand
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: the authority. So you see this pattern forming early. He
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: cannot function within a rigid system. He chafs against it instantly.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: But the real turning point, the moment John Dillinger becomes Dillinger,
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: is in nineteen twenty four. He's back in Indiana. He's young,
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: he's married, but he can't hold down a job. And
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: he meets this pool shark named Ed Singleton.
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: Singleton is the catalyst. He's older, he's street smart, and
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: they decide to rob a local grocer, a guy named
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: Frank Morgan in Mooresville.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: And this wasn't some slick operation, oh not at all.
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: It was clumsy. They hit Morgan with an iron bolt
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: wrapped in a handkerchief. Morgan wasn't seriously hurt, and he
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: actually recognized them. They were caught almost immediately.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: Now this is where the story pivots. This is where
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: the American justice system makes a decision that in hindsight
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: looks like a catastrophic error.
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: It's a textbook example of judicial disparity. You have Singleton,
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: the older accomplice, the brains. Arguably, he pleads not guilty,
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: He gets a lawyer, he fights the charge and the
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: result he gets sentenced two years.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: Two years okay, and Dillinger.
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: Dillinger listens to his father. His dad, the grocer has
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: this kind of old world morality. He tells john Son,
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: just confess, throw yourself on the mercy of the court,
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: be honest, and they'll go easy on you.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: Famous last words.
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: Right. So Dillinger pleads guilty without a lawyer, and the judge,
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: maybe wanting to make an example of this bad seed,
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: slaps him with ten to twenty years.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: Wait wait ten to twenty for a botched robbery where
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: the guy got two. That is staggering.
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: It destroyed him psychologically. You have to put yourself in
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: his shoes. He's twenty one. He tried to do the
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: right thing by confessing, and the system just crushed him.
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: He felt betrayed by his father's advice and completely betrayed
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: by the law. He went into that prison a confused kid,
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: but he came out a bitter, hardened man.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: I've seen prisons of that era described as universities of crime.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: That is literally what it was for him. He spent
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: nearly a decade in Indiana State Prison. He wasn't just
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: sitting in a cell staring at the wall. He was networking.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: He was learning from seasoned bank robbers, guys like Harry Pierpont.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: He was getting an education.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: He was He learned how to scout a bank, how
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: to crack a save, how to time the alarms, how
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: to organize a crew. When he was finally parolled in
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: nineteen thirty three, he wasn't rehabilitated. He was improved. He
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: graduated with honors in bank robbery.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: And the timing of his release is so critical. It's
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: May nineteen thirty.
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: Three, the absolute bottom of the Great Depression.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: We need to paint that picture for the listener. It's
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: not just that people were poor. The entire economic engine
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: of the country had seized up. Banks were failing by
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: the thousands. People's life savings were just gone, evacorating overnight.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: Farms were being foreclosed on.
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: Exactly so to the average American in the Midwest, the
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: bank wasn't a place of security, It was the villain.
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: The banks were taking the land. The banks were kicking
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: families out of their homes. So when Dillinger comes along
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: and starts emptying their.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: Vaults, the public doesn't see a criminal.
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: They see an avenger. They see someone fighting back.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: He had that immediate robinhood aura. But let's be real.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: Was he actually giving money to the poor. Was he
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: handing out cash on the street corners.
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: No, that's the myth. He wasn't a philanthropist. He was
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: spending that money on nice clothes, fast cars, and hiding out.
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: But it was his style that won people over. He
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: was charismatic. He was incredibly polite during robberies.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: That's the thing you always hear.
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he would vault over the counter. That's where he
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: got the nickname the jack Rabbit, and he would tell
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: the tellers, don't worry, the bank's money is insured. I'm
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: not here for your money. I'm here for the bank's.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: Money, and that distinction matters. I'm not robbing you, I'm
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: robbing the institution.
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: Precisely, in a time when everyone felt helpless against these giant,
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: faceless economic machines, here was a guy who just walked
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: in and took what he wanted. He represented agency. He
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: was doing what every farmer who lost his land wished
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: he could do.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: It reminds me of that whole gangster era pantheon. He
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: had Bonnie and Clyde, Marl Bart, pretty Boy Floyd.
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: It was a cultural moment where the outlaw was the
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: hero because the law seemed to have failed the people
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: so profoundly.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: And speaking of pretty Boy Floyd, I want to touch
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: on a specific myth that comes up a lot, this
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: persistent idea that when he robbed banks, he would take
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: the mortgage papers out of the filing cabints and burn them,
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: thereby freeing local farmers from their debts.
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: Ah.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: Yes, the great mortgage burning myth. It's a very sticky,
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: very romantic idea. It was popularized by Woody Guthrie in
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: the Ballad of Pretty Boy Floyd. Guthrie sings about how
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: he laid the mortgage papers on the floor and set
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: them afire.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: So is there any truth to it? Did it happen?
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: Well, historians are pretty skeptical. I think there's some anecdotal
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: evidence he might have destroyed some unrecorded notes that of
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: pure spite or just chaos during a robbery. But was
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: there a systematic campaign to a race debt? Almost certainly not.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: He wasn't spending valuable getaway time sorting through filing cabinets
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: to find the deed to the.
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: Smith farm exactly the cash and running. But The fact
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: that people believed it is the point, isn't it.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: It is the point.
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, The public was desperate for a savior, even if
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: that savior was a guy with a machine gun. They
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: projected their hopes onto these criminals. They wanted them to
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: be more than just thieves.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: Which brings us back to Dillinger. The public loved him,
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: but the law finally caught up. It's early nineteen thirty four.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: He's captured in Tucson, Arizona.
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: Bad luck really, a fire broke out in his hotel.
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: The hotel congress and the firemen who were carrying his
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: luggage down recognized him from the papers.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: So he gets extradited back to Indiana, specifically to the
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: Lake County Jail and Crown Point. And this is where
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: the hubris of the local authorities just goes completely off
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: the charts.
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: Crown Point was the pride of Indiana law enforcement. Sheriff
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: Lillian Hawley, one of the first female sheriffs, by the way,
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: and the prosecutor, Robert Estill were incredibly proud of this facility.
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: They boasted to the newspapers that it was escape proof.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: They're just asking for it, they really were.
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: They invited the press to see Dillinger to photograph him.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: There's that famous photo of prosecutor is still standing next
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: to Dillinger. It still has his arm around Dillinger's shoulder. Yeah,
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: they're both kind of smirking. It looks like a Buddy
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: comedy poster.
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: That photo destroyed as Still's political career. It looked like
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: the law was cozying up to the criminal. It showed
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: a total lack of seriousness. They were treating him like
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: a celebrity trophy, not a dangerous prisoner. They thought we
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: have him. The game is over.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: And then comes March third, nineteen thirty four, The Legend
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: of the Wooden Gun. How does this actually happen? Walk
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: us through the mechanics of it.
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: Okay, so Dillinger is in his cell. He somehow obtains
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: a piece of wood. Sources vary. Some say it was
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: a piece of a washboard, others say it was a
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: chump of flooring from under his bed. But he has
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: a razor blade and he spends his time whittling it
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: into the shape of a Colt point three to eight automatic, an.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: Arts and crafts project in the middle of a maximum
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: security lockdown. It's incredible.
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: He then uses shoe polish to diet black. Now in
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: a well room, under close inspection, it probably looked like
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: a piece of wood. But in the dim light of
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: a jail corridor, with the adrenaline pumping, it looked like
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: a gun. It looked like a gun. So on the
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: morning of the escape, he waits for a guard to
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: come near. He jams this object into the guard's ribs
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: and says something like open up or I'll blow.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: Your head off, and the guard freezes.
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: The guard freezes, he opens the cell. Dillinger then forces
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: that guard to call over the other guards one by one.
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: He rounds them all up and locks them in the cells.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: The ultimate humiliation. He swaps places with his captors.
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: But he didn't stop there. He needs a getaway car,
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: so he goes to the garage, and of all the
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: cars he could have taken, he steals the sheriff's personal vehicle,
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: Sheriff Lillian Hawley's brand new nineteen thirty three Ford V eight.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: We need to pause on the car because the four
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: G eight isn't just a detail in this story. It's
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: practically a character.
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: It is before the V eight fast cars were for
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: the rich, they were Dusenbergs or Cadillacs. Henry Ford put
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: a powerful VS engine into an affordable, lightweight chassis. This
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: meant that suddenly a bank robber could drive a car
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: that was faster than almost any police car on the road.
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: It was a technological absolutely.
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: Clyde Barrow famously wrote a letter to Henry Ford thanking
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: him for making such a fine getaway car.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: So he takes the fastest car in the county, the
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: sheriff's own car, and he drives away. But here is
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: the crucial legal detail that changes American history. He drives
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: that car across the state line from Indiana into Illinois.
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: And that was his fatal mistake, not the escape, the
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: border crossing.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: Because of the Diar Act.
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: Explain with edis right, the National Motor Vehicle Theft Act
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: of nineteen nineteen. See Back then, policing was hyper local.
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: If an Indiana sheriff chased a criminal to the Illinois border,
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: they essentially had to stop. They had no jurisdiction. It
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: was like a magic force field for.
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: Criminals, a jurisdictional black hole exactly.
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: So Congress passed the Dire Act, which made it a
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: federal crime to transport a stolen vehicle across state lines.
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: The moment Dillinger crossed that line in a stolen car,
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: he handed the case to the Bureau of Investigation.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: So let me get this straight. The FEDS couldn't hunt
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: him for robbing a state bank.
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: No, that's a state crime.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: They couldn't hunt for killing a local cop state crime.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: But they could hunt him for stealing a ford.
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: That is the hook.
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: The stolen ford gave j Edgar Hoover the legal key
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: to enter the room. It wasn't the body count, it
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: was the car.
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: So let's bring in the other titan of this story, Yeah,
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: j Edgar Hoover. If Dillinger is the chaotic rock star,
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: Hoover is, well, how would you describe him.
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: Hoover is the architect. He is the ultimate creature of
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: the system. He was born in DC, lived with his
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: mother until she died when he was in his forties.
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: He never married. He was a man of extreme discipline,
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: extreme routine.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: And his first job was at the Library of Congress.
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: Which is perfect for him, isn't it. It completely defined
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: his worldview. He learned the power of collating material, indexing, filing.
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: He realized that information is power, but only if you
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: can find it when you need it. He believed that
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: if you could catalog the world, you could control it.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: He rises through the Department of Justice very, very fast.
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: He heads the Radical Division during the first Red Scare
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: in nineteen nineteen, hunting communists. By nineteen twenty four he's
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: the director of the Bureau of Investigation, and he starts
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: cleaning house immediately.
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah.
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: He hated the old image of the federal agent. In
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: the early twenties, agents were often political hacks, sometimes corrupt,
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: often sloppy. Hoover said he didn't want agents who looked
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: like truck drivers. He wanted lawyers and accountants. He wanted
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: men in suits. He stopped hiring women. He wanted a
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: force that looked like a board of professional business men.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: He was gentrifying the police force.
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: And scientizing it. He was obsessed with fingerprints. He centralized
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: the fingerprint database in Washington, building the largest collection in
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: the world. He built forensic labs. He wanted to turn
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: crime fighting from a messy, intuitive art into a precise,
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: cold science.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: Here's the problem. In nineteen thirty three, the PubL it
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: didn't care about fingerprints. They didn't care about accountants and suits.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: They love the outlaws.
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: Right, Hoover was losing the pr war badly. He needed
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: a win to justify his budget, his authority, his very existence.
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: So he launched what was essentially a marketing campaign. He
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: coined the term public enemy.
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: It's a branding exercise completely.
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: He wanted to strip away that Robin Hood veneer. He
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: wanted the public to see these men as rats, scum menaces.
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: He needed a villain so he could be the hero.
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: Dillinger became public Enemy number one.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: It's important to note, though, that Hoover wasn't just doing
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: this for his own ego. Local police were legitimately overwhelmed.
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: Right, that is true. We have to be fair to
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: the context. Local police departments had six shot revolvers and
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: maybe a couple of slow sedans. The gangsters had Thompson
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: submachine guns, bulletproof vests, and these supercharged V eight fords.
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: The police were outgunned and outruns.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: They were fighting a different kind of war.
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: They were so the federal intervas via the Dire Act.
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: It wasn't just a power grab. It was a necessary
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: evolution to handle a new class of criminal that operated regionally,
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: not just locally.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: So the stage is set, Hoover has his jurisdiction, he
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: has his GM and his government men, and manhunt for
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: Dillinger is on. But initially it is a complete disaster.
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: It's a catastrophe. You have to remember Hoover hired lawyers
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: and accountants. They were great at paperwork. They had very
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: very little training in actual gunfights.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: Which leads us directly to Little Bohemia. This is the
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: low point for the early FBI, it really is.
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: It's April nineteen thirty four. The FEDS get a tip
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: that the Dillinger gang, which now includes the infamous baby
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: Face Nelson, is hiding out at a lodge in northern
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: Wisconsin called Little Bohemia.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: And baby Face Nelson he's a different breed than Dillinger, isn't.
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: He totally different? Dillinger had a code of sorts. He
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: avoided killing if you could help it. Baby Face Nelson
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: was a psychopath. He enjoyed violence. He was a stone
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: cold killer. So you have a very dangerous crew hold
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: in that large The.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: Feds surround the place at night, it's freezing.
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: Cold, and everything goes wrong. From the start. Dogs start barking,
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: alerting the gang inside. Then three men walk out of
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: the lodge and get into a car to leave the agents.
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: Nervous and jumpy in the dark, shout.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: Halt, but the men don't hear them.
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: Maybe the car radio was on, maybe the engine was loud.
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: They start to drive away and the agents just opened fire.
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: They riddled the car with bullets.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: But it wasn't the gang.
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: No, it was three local workers from the Civilian Conservation
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: Corps who had just stopped in for a beer. The
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: agents killed one of them and wounded the others innocent civilians.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: That is an absolute nightmare scenario.
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: And then it gets worse. The actual gang. Here's the shots.
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: They know what's happening. They escape out the back windows,
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: down toward the lake. They flank the agents. Baby Face
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: Nelson encounters a federal agent named W. Carterbaum. Nelson walks
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: right up to him and shoots him dead. The entire
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: gang escapes into the darkness, and.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: The Feds are left with what a dead agent, a
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: dead civilian, and an empty lot exactly.
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: Hoover must have been apoplectic. Calls for his resignation were
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: ringing through Washington. The press tore him apart. It proved
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: momentarily that his elite g men were incompetent.
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: The pressure was on.
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: Hoover basically told his men get Dillinger or else. The
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: gloves came completely off. It wasn't about rushing him for
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: trial anymore. It was an extermination mission.
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: And Dillinger feels the heat. He knows he can't run forever.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: This is where we get the gruesome details about him
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: trying to change his appearance.
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: He and Homer van Meter went to a shady underworld doctor.
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: They wanted plastic surgery to change their faces. It was
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: barbaric surgery for the time. The doctor used harsh chemicals
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: and crude incisions. Dillinger ended up just looking like John
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: Dillinger with a swollen, lumpy face.
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: It didn't work, and they tried to remove their fingerprints.
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: They poured acid on their fingertips. They tried to burn
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: the ridges off, but fingerprints are incredibly resilient. They grow back.
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: It just shows the level of desperation. They were being
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: hunted like animals, and they knew it.
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: And finally the trap snaps shut, not because you have a
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: brilliant detective deduction, but because of a betrayal. Enter the
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: famous lady in.
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: Red Anna Sage. Her real name was Anna kopen I.
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: She was a Romanian immigrant running a brothel in Chicago,
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: and she was facing deportation for moral turpitude. She was
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: desperate to stay in.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: America, so she contacts the FBI.
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: She reaches out to Melvin Purvis, the head of the
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: Chicago office. She says, I can hand you Dillinger. He's
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: taking me and another woman to the movies in exchange.
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: I want the reward money and I want you to
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: stop my deportation. I want to stay.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: The date is July twenty tenth, nineteen thirty four. It's
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: a sweltering hot night in Chicago.
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: One of the hottest summers on record. Dillinger loves movies,
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: and ironically, they go to the Biograph Theater to see
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: Manhattan Melodrama, a gangster movie starring Clark Gable where the
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: gangster character gets executed.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: Life imitating art. He's watching a movie about a gangster
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: who dies while the FEDS are waiting outside to kill him.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: It's surreal and.
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: Anna Sage wears a drea a skirt that was actually orange,
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: but under the artificial lights of the theater Marquee, it
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: looked blood red. And that's how the legend of the
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: lady in Red was born.
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: The movie ends, they walk out. Melvin Purvis is standing
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: by the entrance.
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: Purvis lights a cigar. That was the pre arranged signal
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: to the other agents scattered around. That's him.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: Dillinger was an animal when it came to survival instincts.
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: He must have sensed something was wrong.
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: He did accounts very but most say he glanced at
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: the agents, his eyes widened for just a second, and
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: he reached for his pocket, or at least made a
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: move that looked like he was reaching for a gun.
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: He bolted, darting toward an alley.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: And that was it.
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: That was it. Three agents opened fire. Dillinger was hit
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: three times. The fatal bullet entered the back of his
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: neck and exited just under his right eye. He fell
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: face down on the pavement. Public Enemy number one was dead.
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: The scene immediately afterward. It's one of the most disturbing
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: parts of this whole story for me.
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: It was macabb the movie let out, and people realize
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: what had happened, and a crowd gathered instantly, and people
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: were dipping their handkerchiefs, newspapers, even the hems of their
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: skirts into the pool of blood on the pavement.
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: They wanted a souvenir, a relic of his death.
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: It just shows that he wasn't really a person to
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: them anymore. He was an event. He was a celebrity,
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: and they wanted a piece of the story.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: And what about Anna Sage, the lady in Red. Did
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: she get her deal? Did she get to stay in America?
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: That is the ruthless efficiency of the bureau. She delivered
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: the most wanted man in America, but the government claimed
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: she hadn't provided enough information or they simply reneged on
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: the deal. She was deported to Romania. A few years later.
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: She died there in poverty, used and discarded.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: Wow, so Dillinger is dead. But of course, whenever a
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: figure this large dies under these circumstances, the conspiracy theories
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: start almost immediately.
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: Did Jimmy Lawrence theory? It's a persistent one. This is
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: the idea that the FBI, desperate for a win after
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: the Little Bohemia disaster, shot the wrong man, a small
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: time hood named Jimmy Lawrence who looked a bit like him,
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: and then just claimed it was Dillinger to save face.
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: Is there any actual evidence for this?
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: Well, the theorists point to the autopsy. The report noted
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: the body had brown eyes. Dillinger famously had gray eyes.
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: It noted a rheumatic heart condition. Dillinger's Navy records said
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: his heart was perfect. The body was also supposedly missing
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: a tooth that Dillinger had.
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: That does sound suspicious on the surface.
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: It does until you look at the science. Eyes can
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: cloud over and appear brown after death due to hemorrhage
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: or other decomposition processes. A heart condition can easily develop
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: in the years after a Navy physical, and most importantly,
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: the fingerprints.
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: Match Hoover's prize system.
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: His prize system confirmed it was Dillinger, But the fact
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: that the theory persists tells you everything you need to know.
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: The public didn't trust the government's narrative. They wanted to
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: believe the jack rabbit got away one last time.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: And they're still looking for his money, aren't they.
• 22:52
  Speaker 3: The buried loops, Oh, the buried loot.
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: There are these enduring legends that he buried suitcase with
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: the two hundred thousand dollars near lie Bohemia during the escape.
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: People have been digging up those woods for ninety years
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: with metal detectors.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: Has anyone ever found anything not a dime.
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: And truthfully, these guys spent money as fast as they
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: stole it. Bribes, cars, lawyers, women, hideouts. It's incredibly expensive
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: being a fugitive. There probably is no pot of gold.
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: So the gangster era effectively ends. Dillinger is gone. But
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: this brings us to the real legacy because Hoover Hoover
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: is just getting started.
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: This is the key takeaway of the whole story. Dillinger
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: was a flash in the pan. His entire crime spree
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: lasted about fourteen months. Hoover stayed in power until nineteen
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: seventy two.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: Nineteen seventy two is nearly fifty years.
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: He served under eight presidents. He outlasted everyone, and he
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: took the machinery he built to catch bank robbers, the surveillance,
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: the files, the federal reach, and he turned.
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: It toward a new enemy, subversives.
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: Exactly once the bank robbers were gone, he needed a
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: new threat to justify his power and his budget, so
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: he pivoted to hunting political dissenters, civil rights leaders, anti
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: war protesters, anyone who challenged his idea of America. This
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: leads us to the darker side of the FBI co
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: intel pro.
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: The counterintelligence program. This is the dirty tricks era.
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: We're talking about, infiltrating the Black Panthers to sew discord.
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: We're talking about the infamous anonymous letters sent to Martin
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: Luther King Junior, suggesting he commits suicide or they'd release
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: tapes of his affairs, the smear campaign against the actress
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: Gene Seeberg for supporting black nationalist groups. Hoover used the
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: immense power of the state to crush ideology he didn't like, and.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: He maintained this power for so long. Through the Secret File.
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: He was the master of leverage. He kept files on everyone, politicians, celebrities, activists.
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: He knew about JFK's affairs. He knew about Congressman's drinking
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: problems and gambling debts. There is a recording of President Nixon,
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: a man who has plenty paranoid himself, saying he couldn't
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: fire Hoover because he was afraid of what Hoover had on.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: When the president of the United States is afraid of
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: his own police chief, you have a fundamental problem.
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: That is the danger of centralizing that much information and
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: power in one man's hands for that long.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: We also have to touch on Hoover's personal life because
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: it's such a huge part of the mythology now, the
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: persistent rumors about his sexuality.
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: It's the great paradox of his life. He was a
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: lifelong bachelor. His closest companion by far was Clyde Tolsen,
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: his associate director. They ate every meal together, they went
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: on vacation together. They are buried near each other.
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: And the famous cross dressing story.
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: That comes largely from a story by a woman named
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: Susan Rosenstyle who claims she saw him wearing a black dress, stockings,
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: and a wig at a party at the Plaza Hotel.
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: Historians are split. Many think it was a fabrication by
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: mobsters trying to discredit him. Others say his homosexuality was
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: an open secret in Washington.
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: And the irony is.
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: The tragic irony, is that Hoover used the FBI to
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: viciously hunt down gay people in the government during the
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: Lavender Scare, purged them, labeled them security risks, all while
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: living this very ambiguous private life himself.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: It connects to the white Christian nationalism angle that some
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: sources mention, who reviewed the FBI as a kind of
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: moral crusader force he did.
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: He saw himself as the guardian of traditional American values
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: against he saw as godless communists and general moral decay.
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: He wasn't just enforcing the law, he was enforcing a
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: specific social and moral order.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: So when we look back at this whole collision, Dillinger
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: versus Hoover, what is the bottom line? What's the real takeaway?
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: The bottom line is the trade off. By chasing monsters
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: like Dillinger, who was a violent criminal. Let's not forget
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: that he wasn't a hero. We created a monster of
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: our own, the surveillance state exactly. We traded the chaos
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: of the wooden gun for the cold, silent order of
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: the secret file. We got a professional, scientific police force
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: that ended that era of the violent bank robber, but
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: we also got an apparatus that has the power to
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: watch us, record us, and intimidate us.
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: It is fast to think that a guy carving a
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: piece of wood in a jail cell in Indiana is the
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: butterfly effect that leads in a way to the modern
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: NSA and the FBI as a political force.
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: History turns on those small, weird moments. If Dillinger doesn't
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: steal that specific Ford v. Eight if he crosses the
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: line in a different car, maybe the FBI never gets
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: the jurisdiction it needed to build its empire.
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: Before we go, I'm going to leave you with a thought.
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: We love the movie version of the gangster. We love
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: the myth of the rebel, but the reality was bloody, desperate,
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: and brief, and the institution created to stop that gangster
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: became more powerful and more permanent than any criminal could
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: ever dream of being. It begs the question who is
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: the real public enemy, the man who robs the bank
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: or the man who watches you while you sleep.
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: That is the question we are still asking today.
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: If you enjoyed this journey into beyond infographics, please do
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: us a huge favor and rate us five stars on
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: your podcast app. It really helps the show grow. Thanks
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: for listening. To see you next time.