John Dillinger

Johnnie Boy

Johnnie Boy (UPI)

Little Johnnie Dillinger was a bad boy.  The older he got, the worse his delinquency became.  Johnnie was born in a quiet middle class Indianapolis neighborhood on June 22, 1903.  His father, John Wilson Dillinger, was a somber, church-going grocer who did his very best to inculcate into his son his own strict moral standards.  While his father was a stern disciplinarian, it did not stop him from indulging the lad with material goods, bicycles and toys.

Johnnie's mother died of a stroke when he was only three years old.  His sixteen-year-old sister Audrey took over as the woman of the house.  This arrangement did not last long as in a little more than a year, Audrey married and began a home of her own.  When Johnnie was nine, his father married a young woman named Elizabeth Fields.  While, the boy was initially jealous of the warmth and affection that his father gave to his new bride, eventually Johnnie came to admire and adore his stepmother.

Not long after, Johnnie became the leader of a kid gang called the Dirty Dozen.   Eventually the gang started stealing coal from the Pennsylvania Railroad cars that came through the neighborhood.  Inevitably, they were caught and taken to Juvenile Court.  Dillinger was the only one of the kids that wasn't intimidated by the courtroom and judge.  Almost as a precursor of things to come, "Dillinger stood arms folded, slouch cap over one eye, staring steadily at the judge -- and chewing gum.  When the judge ordered him to take off the cap and remove the gum, Dillinger smiled crookedly and slowly stuck the gum on the peak of his cap." (Toland)

By this time, Dillinger had a new baby brother.  He and his closest friend, Fred Brewer, who was the product of a broken marriage, stuck together constantly.  The two boys often played in a wood veneer mill and learned how to run the saw when nobody was around.  One day they tied another boy on the carrier and turned on the large circular saw.  It was only when the boy was a yard away from death, did Dillinger turn it off.

John Dillinger, Sr. (Wide World Photos)

His father was becoming increasingly concerned about Johnnie and he had every right to be.  Beatings and other punishments just made Johnnie more defiant.  One afternoon, when he was thirteen, he and his buddies grabbed a girl and took her into an old shack where they each took a turn with her.

Against his father's wishes, he quit school at the age of sixteen and went to work at the veneer mill.  He demonstrated great mechanical aptitude, but the job was boring and he quit.  Then he got a job as a mechanic.  All was well for a little while and his father breathed easier.  But Johnnie's good behavior didn't last.  Soon he was staying out until the early morning hours, totally focused on the opposite sex.

Dillinger's father made a major decision: he was ready to retire and indulge in his dream of owning a farm, so he sold his grocery store and several houses he owned.  Then they all moved to the wholesome rural atmosphere of a farm in Mooresville, his second wife's place of birth.

John in high school (UPI)

Again, Johnnie behaved well initially and enrolled in the local high school, but he had no interest and failed every subject except "applied biology."  Eventually, when the local girls got tired of his antics, Johnnie quit school and went back to work eighteen miles away in Indianapolis.  Dillinger's favorite role model at the time was Jesse James.  What impressed him most about this frontier outlaw was his courage and his politeness, especially to the ladies.

His behavior made living in the house with his father intolerable, so he moved to Martinsville where he could spend all of his spare time hanging around the pool hall and seducing one girl after another.  One girl alone commanded his respect -- his uncle's stepdaughter Frances Thornton.  He was ready to renounce his wild life and marry her, but the uncle forced the relationship to break up.  It had a lasting effect on him.

After so much rejection from respectable girls in Mooresville and other places, he threw in his lot with the women whose love he could buy.  He ended up with a severe case of gonorrhea and eventually was fired from his job.

One night in 1923, Johnnie had a date.  He needed a car, but his father wouldn't let him use his, so he stole a new car from a church parking lot.  Eventually, a policeman caught up with him, but he escaped as the cop tried to arrest him.  The next day, Johnnie enlisted in the Navy using an out-of-town address.

For someone like Johnnie, the discipline of the military was intolerable.  Eventually, he ended up in the brig after going AWOL.  Not surprisingly, he deserted and ended up back in Mooresville at his father's home.  In 1924, he married a sixteen-year-old girl named Beryl Hovius.

But married life didn't change him.  He was caught stealing a load of chickens.   Had it not been for the elder Dillinger's money and influence, Johnnie would have gone to jail right then.  But, jail was inevitable and there was nothing Johnnie's father could do to stop it.

Johnnie started hanging around with an undesirable named Ed Singleton.  The two of them decided to rob a kindly old grocer named B. F. Morgan.  One September evening in 1924, Johnnie mugged the old man and slammed him on the head with a huge bolt wrapped up in a handkerchief.  The revolver Johnnie was carrying discharged in the direction of the old man and Johnnie was afraid that he had shot Morgan.  In a panic, Johnnie ran to the getaway car where Singleton was waiting.

The police determined who was responsible and arrested Johnnie.  His father didn't believe in hiring a lawyer for his guilty son, so Johnnie went to trial without counsel.  The prosecutor had convinced his father that if Johnnie confessed that the court would be lenient.

The prosecutor lied.  The judge sentenced Johnnie to Pendleton Reformatory for ten to twenty years.  Ed Singleton, who was an ex-con, had a different judge and a lawyer and received a much lighter sentence.  Johnnie was very bitter.

Relentlessly defiant, Johnnie told the superintendent of the reformatory, "I won't cause you any trouble except to escape.  I can beat your institution."