John Dillinger's Robin Hood

1017 Words5 Pages
John Dillinger, was born on June 22, 1903 and like any other kid that grew up in a big city like Indianapolis he sought potential and one way Dillinger knew how to get things was by stealing. This man owns some of the greatest robberies that have ever happened. On top of that John Dillinger was nearly invincible, this man could escape almost any situation you put him until he was killed. He was actually well liked by the people because many people compared him to the folktale Robin Hood. By the age of ten he and his buddies were stealing coal they had “pinched” from the Pennsylvania Railroad gondolas. At 16 he quit school and began to work intermittently. A year later his father moved his family to a farm near Mooresville, Ind. Dillinger…show more content…
He quickly found his niche and employment by robbing banks, and almost overnight he became a “Robin Hood” national hero. Even thought people had been killed during these holdups and robberies. Many people across the nation were so fed up with the banks at this time and the loss of their own money a few lives taken was alright by them. The people had felt this gang was stealing from the bank who had originally taken from them. Even the press played him up as a brilliant, daring, likeable individual, basically an equivalent to a “superhero” by taking down banks which had been merciless by forcing debtors to mortgage all that they had. Also these debtors were the ones that were encouraging Dillinger and his gang to keep on keeping on with the robberies. Dillinger became a challenge for law enforcement officials, for he often made them look like fools. One of the main reasons Dillinger was so hard to capture was because of the conflicts between police jurisdictions. But even when Dillinger was captured, he always seemed to find a way to escape. His most famous escape was when he broke out of the heavily guarded Crown Point County Jail armed only with a wooden…show more content…
On 12 October 1933 Dillinger's pals, recently escaped from Indiana's state prison, broke him out of jail. Over the next several months, Dillinger and his gang robbed several banks in Indiana before heading to Florida and then Arizona. He was arrested in Arizona and extradited to Indiana, where he once again escaped jail on 3 March 1934. Dillinger then crossed the Indiana-Illinois state line and headed for Chicago, sparking the interest of federal investigators (in the division that later became the F.B.I.). Over the next four months Dillinger's escapades -- daring robberies and narrow escapes from the law -- were popular newsreel features and he became something of a folk hero. After a tip from informant Ana Cumpanas (a.k.a. Anna Sage), federal agents ambushed Dillinger on 22 July 1934 outside the Biograph Theater in Chicago, where he had just seen the movie Manhattan

More about John Dillinger's Robin Hood

Open Document