Whatchya gonna do?
Now I can’t get that song out of my head.
Before you say it, no, that’s not Johnny Depp’s photo on the left. Does look like him though. I wonder why …
This week, Professor Alex Taylor discusses John Dillinger’s terminal criminality. Could it have been prevented if he’d been shown a little love early on? Would it have gone differently if his gatekeepers had shown this former nobody a modicum of compassion instead of throwing the book at him? Or, is this truly a case of one’s fabric being cut from the cloth of evil? Truth or excuse? Question marks or statements?
😉
Published in the Gainesville Times January 31, 1989.
Transcript and a reader note follow the article.
TRANSCRIPT:
As we sat watching murderer Ted Bundy’s mother courageously trying to explain why her son became a monster, we wondered how so many parents manage this unbearable task. What happens when the child of loving, caring parents becomes a social outcast because of criminal deeds? What goes wrong? What is the tiny spark that brings forth the evil lurking within all of us?
I remember the story of another young man who could have been a productive citizen—except for that one spark of evil.
Said to have been born in 1903, near the railroad tracks of Indianapolis, Ind., the young man became a street urchin at age 3 when his mother died. His father drifted around, leaving the boy to steal coal from the railroad gondolas, then sell it to residents of his neighborhood. He was in the sixth grade when his first arrest came—for stealing coal.
Drifting around for several more years, the young man entered the U.S. Navy where he apparently served well. For some unexplained reason, when he was 20 years old, he simply walked away from his duty post and returned to Indiana. It was here he met an old friend, Ed Singleton, who was much older and considerably more seasoned a criminal.
The two decided to rob a local grocer who was carrying home the day’s receipts. One of the men hit the grocer over the head with a small iron tool that was wrapped in a handkerchief. The weapon was so small that the grocer simply turned around and began resisting.
Both men were quickly apprehended. Singleton received two years in prison, but the young man, after being promised a lighter sentence if he cooperated, was given 20 years at hard labor.
Having spent most of his adult life in prison, this man was released in May 1933, with 200 residents of his hometown of Mooresville, Ind., including the grocer victim, petitioning the governor or to win his release.
But now the man was very bitter. Bitter with the long prison sentence; bitter because he was treated badly by other prisoners, and bitter because fate had dealt him a losing hand at birth.
He immediately set about exacting revenge against society by planning and committing some of the country’s most notorious bank robberies and murders. During a short span of 11 months, from September 1933 to July 1934, he robbed more than 20 banks and murdered 15 people. Using the tactics of America’s most successful bank robber, Herman K. “Baron” Lamm, the young man and his gang plundered three million dollars, engaged in several spectacular jail breaks, and fought their way out of numerous police traps. In his gang was a short, violent-tempered malcontent named Lester Gillis, whom history will remember as “Baby Face Nelson.”
But society’s patience and the young man’s criminal career, were on a collision course. On the night of July 22, 1934, as he left the Biograph Theatre in Chicago with friends Polly Hamilton and Anna Sage, several FBI agents opened fire, killing him instantly. Thus, John Herbert Dillinger, public enemy No. 1, ended his life as it began—in the streets of a cold and uncaring city.
Could one small, seemingly insignificant incident early in his life have prevented Dillinger from becoming a monster?
Alex Taylor’s column on crime appears Tuesdays in The Times.
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Nearing the end, folks! Alex Taylor’s Tuesday Crime Stories only has a few left, so we’re going to take a short break and resume the column on December 7th, 2021. See you then!
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