Original subtitles

Tonight, the legendary death of John Dillinger, public enemy number one.

The feds told the world they killed the infamous bank robber. They gunned him

down in public right outside a very crowded biograph theater.

Dillinger was a folk hero. Upon his death, thousands of people came to view

body and even mourn at his funeral.

But was the corpse in Chicago's Cook County morgue truly John Dillinger?

His dad looked at the body and said, that's not my boy.

Even at the funeral, there were whispers that this was not John Dillinger in

that coffin. John Dillinger was an escape artist, and some say he pulled

ultimate escape.

Now, we'll explore the top theories surrounding the demise of one of

most infamous gangsters.

Did Dillinger set up a path scene to take the fall?

After he was supposed to be dead, people claimed they saw Dillinger in several

different states.

Did the FBI really kill John Dillinger? And if they didn't, where did he go?

On his 31st birthday, June 22nd, 1934, John Dillinger is named America's

very first public enemy number one.

Dillinger and his gang commit some 24 bank robberies across the Midwest, while

stealing as much as $7 million in today's currency.

In the throes of the Great Depression, Dillinger's daring crimes make him a

to millions of Americans.

who blame banks for their struggles.

In October 1933,

Dillinger and some associates rob a bank in Greencastle, Indiana.

As the story goes, there is near the bank teller a farmer who is just

that these armed men have just stormed the bank.

Had some cash sitting on the counter, and Dillinger said to the farmer, is

your money or the bank's? And the farmer said, it's mine.

And Dillinger said, keep it.

We only want the banks.

So those seven words were what made him into the anti -hero Robin

Hood and kind of somebody who really got the attention of the entire country.

For Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who is newly elected, this could be a

huge problem.

Hardcore criminals who are robbing banks with guns are considered folk heroes.

And FDR instructs J. Edgar Hoover to put a stop to it.

I repeat that this is a time when law enforcement must fight for its right to

conquer the criminal world.

At this point, the Bureau is only about 25 years old. It's relatively young.

And its powers are somewhat limited. Its agents can't carry guns.

At this point, they're not really empowered to make arrests.

And most significantly, they are only allowed to punish federal crimes.

State crime falls within the jurisdiction of the states. Hoover would

to have done something about it. Doing something about it would be great for

own reputation and the reputation of his Division of Investigation. But yeah,

there is no federal law that Dillinger has broken in 1933.

Then, in 1934, after killing a police officer during a bank robbery in East

Chicago, Indiana, John Dillinger's gang flees to a hotel in Tucson, Arizona.

When a random fire breaks out, firefighters find Dillinger's stash of

bulletproof vests, and $25 ,000 in cash stolen from the East Chicago robbery.

Within days, Dillinger is captured by local police and arrested.

There are a number of states that want him extradited. And Indiana wins because

it is in Indiana that Dillinger shoots a police officer.

Dillinger is sent to Lake County Jail in Crown Point, Indiana, which is,

according to many, escape proof.

On March 3, 1934, after less than three months in jail, Dillinger escaped.

using a fake pistol.

Dillinger carved a fake gun either out of potato, a bar of soap, or a piece of

wood that he blackened with shoe polish.

There are also some who believe that it was a real gun.

For a prisoner to use a fake gun has led to a number of alternative theories.

One is that he might have, in fact, bribed the guards.

Dillinger's prison break.

gives J. Edgar Hoover the opportunity he's been looking for.

After his escape, he steals the sheriff's car.

And by stealing the sheriff's car and going across state lines, that is a

federal crime.

Now J. Edgar Hoover has the authority and the jurisdiction to stick his

agent on John Dillinger.

Six weeks after Dillinger's prison escape...

Hoover's agent in charge, Melvin Purvis, is at the Bureau's Chicago office when

he gets a call from a tipster.

According to FBI records, the tipster is a relative of Emil Winotka, who's the

proprietor of a vacation lodge in northern Wisconsin called The Little

And the tip is an exciting one. It suggests that Dillinger and some of his

associates are holed up there.

Melvin Purvis calls in agents from all over, and they descend on this lodge

after dark, and they wait for Dillinger.

But the takedown doesn't go as planned.

When three men emerge from the lodge and get into a car, the agents open fire,

killing one man and wounding his two companions.

There is this barrage of guns.

Only in its aftermath does Purvis realize that they have made a terrible

mistake.

All of this confusion is going on, and then they find out that the three men

that were shot, one of whom died, had nothing to do with the gang. They were

just three innocent guests who were staying at the lodge.

At this point...

Dillinger and all his men know that something's going on outside, and

pretty much goes out the windows and out the back door, and not a single one of

them were caught. None of them were killed. None of them were wounded, even.

bad press from this little Bohemia incident was yet another black eye to J.

Edgar Hoover.

He and Melvin Purvis are both in danger of losing their jobs, and it is really

from that point on that the order regarding John Dillinger is shoot to

It was necessary for local law enforcement officers somewhere in the

States to each day, every day of the year, protect their own lives by

to kill.

Three months after the Little Bohemia disaster, Agent Purvis and his men chase

man they claim is Dillinger into an alley next to the Biograph Theater in

Chicago and shoot him dead.

Word quickly spread.

It's Dillinger. The public was enthralled by the idea. They rushed to

crowded into what should have been a crime scene. And as they're loading the

body up into a police wagon, there is a puddle of blood left in the alleyway.

Right there on the bricks, everybody can see it. So everyone starts rushing in

with whatever they've got, handkerchiefs, shirt sleeves, anything

dipping it in the blood so they can take home a souvenir.

The body is publicly displayed in Chicago.

Over 15 ,000 curious spectators come to see the outlaw's body.

People flooded down to the Cook County Hospital. They were peering in the

window, shouting. People were trying to sell tickets.

They just wanted to be part of history.

The story shared by J. Edgar Hoover and the Bureau is the most commonly accepted

one. That the man killed outside the biograph was John Dillinger.

But just how did federal agents know where to find Dillinger?

The generally accepted explanation is one offered by Hoover himself.

It starts with a Chicago madam named Anna Sage.

Anna Sage is running a couple of brothels in the area.

She is an immigrant to the United States from Romania. She was a lady of the

evening. facing possible deportation. And so what better way to get in the

graces of the police department and the Bureau of Investigation than to give up

public enemy number one?

She has a friend on the East Chicago Police Force, a Martin Zarkovich, who

ultimately then connects her with the Bureau of Investigation.

On or around July 19th, Sage meets with Purvis.

When I learned he was Dillinger, I knew he had been killing without mercy.

So I went to a policeman I knew, and he arranged a conference with a government

agent. She tells Purvis that Dillinger has been hanging out with a woman she

knows named Polly Hamilton.

So Anna Sage says, okay, he's going to be at the Biograph Theater this

particular night with me, with Polly. What I'm going to do is I'm going to

an orange dress so that you can see me in the crowd.

Well, Purvis, of course, you know, this is almost too good to be true. And so

then on the night of July 22nd, Anna Sage, Polly Hamilton, they show up at

Biograph Theater with John Dillinger.

Purvis and his agent, along with a couple of East Chicago cops, go to the

Biograph Theater to apprehend or execute John Dillinger.

Purvis is stationed outside of Sinema so that when Sage...

and Pauly and Dillinger emerge, he lights a cigar.

This is the signal to his men that it's Dillinger and they're to take him down.

Now, according to Melvin Purvis, he shouted out, stop there, Johnny, we've

you surrounded.

Then Dillinger reaches into his pocket, grabs a gun, begins running down the

street, gets to the mouth of the alley where he is shot to death by unnamed

federal agents.

and dies there in the alleyway. The body is brought to the Cook County Morgue,

where pathologist Jerome J. Kearns identifies it in his autopsy report as

Dillinger.

The coroner declares, yes, this is the body of John Dillinger, which is, of

course, a huge victory for J. Edgar Hoover, who had just had a series of

failures prior to this, and it launches Melvin Purvis.

into celebrity status dillinger is packed up sent to indiana where his

has come to claim the body as more and more things started to come out

started to be asked about the official story according to some who were on hand

his father originally said that's not my son

His sister, Audrey, said something similar, but then they turned his body

and there was a scar on the back of his thigh that she said, oh, that is him,

because when they were kids, he gashed his leg open on barbed wire.

Similar to events in Chicago, crowds flock to Dillinger's viewing in Indiana

see his embalmed corpse before it's interred.

The funeral home is overwhelmed by curious onlookers.

There were even offers to the father of up to $10 ,000 to publicly display John

Dillinger's body.

And that was one thing that John Dillinger's father did not want to do.

At this point, there was a real threat of grave robbery.

And so they encased his coffin in cement to prevent such a thing from ever

transpiring. However, not everyone believes that John Dillinger is the

that is lying in that grave.

Three days after the killing at the Biograph Theater, the body of the man

down by federal agents is buried at Crown Hill Cemetery in Mooresville,

We know that the shooting of John Dillinger happened a little after 10 p

and we know that there was an autopsy in Chicago.

Once the family was able to get the body, now they had to drive six hours to

Indiana for what ultimately became a wake.

A viewing and a burial.

All of this happened in less than 48 hours.

What was the rush?

They got that body in the ground in an awful hurry. And the suspicion then is

that maybe they did that because they knew that the body did not belong to

Dillinger.

Before the burial, the viewing is held at the Harvey Funeral Home in

hometown of Mooresville.

As family members and mourners file past the deceased, whispers begin that the

man in the coffin isn't John Dillinger.

A barber in Indiana who claims to be familiar with Dillinger has cut his

looks at the corpse and says, no, that's not him because Dillinger's hair was

not that dark.

And then this leads to other claims about the proportions of the body.

According to an author named J. Robert Nash, in a book called The Dillinger

Dossier, John Dillinger's father goes to buy him a suit for his funeral. But

once the suit was put on him, it was completely the wrong size. They say that

the sleeves obliterated the hands.

It was also reported that the body's fingerprints didn't match Dillinger's

fingerprints that were in a police file. And one of the ears?

was a little bit off as well. According to this theory, the other big issue was

that John was missing his right incisor tooth, but the corpse wasn't.

It was reported that on the scene, when Melvin Purvis first turns over the body,

he says out loud, this doesn't look like Dillinger.

Then realizing that there are a lot of spectators around that heard him, he

rather loudly says, ah, yes, that's a great bit of plastic surgery, that. And

some people say John Dillinger, along with a lot of other gangsters from this

era, did frequently undergo plastic surgery.

A doctor named Wilhelm Lozier even claims he helped Dillinger change his

appearance. The person who allegedly had performed the plastic surgery on John

Dillinger was Dr. Lozier, and he had been connected with... crime groups for

number of years.

Dr. Wilhelm Lozier practiced in Chicago for nearly three decades before being

convicted in 1931 for dealing in illegal narcotics.

He was paroled from prison in December of 1932.

Less than two years later, he claims he is summoned to work on Dillinger.

Lozier confesses to having performed plastic surgery on Dillinger between May

28th and June 5th. He admitted to the fact that over several months that he

worked on Dillinger, especially his facial appearance, but even using acid

alter his fingerprints. He had moles removed.

He had scars fixed. He had the cleft in his chin, which was one of his most

distinguishing features.

The cleft was filled in.

The official autopsy report, written by Dr. Jerome Kern, raises even more

questions about the man killed at the Biograph Theater.

In his report... Dr. Kearns notes that Dillinger's eyes were brown.

Now, this contradicts Dillinger's naval records, which lift his eyes as blue,

and wanted posters for Dillinger, which described his eyes as being gray.

The autopsy revealed that he had a heart problem, but...

Dillinger was an athletic guy.

John Dillinger played on the semi -pro team when he was at the penitentiary in

Michigan City. And even the governor of Indiana remarked about what a great

player he was at shortstop.

He was very athletic. Look at the bank robberies that he committed, the jumping

over the counters and the running and the getting into cars.

And these are all things that whoever this dead man was could not have done.

Is it possible?

That someone else was killed in place of Dillinger?

According to Nash, there is another man named Jimmy Lawrence living in Chicago

at the same time as Dillinger. He is a small -time crook. He had moved there

from Wisconsin.

He does have a striking resemblance to John Dillinger, and he also has a heart

condition identical to the one that is noted on the autopsy report.

According to author and investigator J. Robert Nash, Jimmy Lawrence becomes key

to Dillinger's plan to outfox the FBI.

It was after Little Bohemian.

Dillinger is seriously thinking about getting away.

One of Dillinger's last associates, a guy named James Blackie Audet, he says

that John Dillinger paid a man named Jimmy Lawrence thousands of dollars to

convince... Polly Hamilton and Anna Sage, that he was, in fact, the infamous

outlaw, John Dillinger.

According to Blackie Audet, it is not Dillinger, but Lawrence, who ends up

accompanying Sage and Hamilton to the Biograph Theater, and who ends up shot

dead in the alley outside.

After Dillinger is supposedly killed, then this Jimmy Lawrence disappears.

It's never heard from again.

But that...

In theory, it requires us to answer other questions.

Chief among them, what happened to the real John Dillinger?

Despite the FBI's certainty that their agents killed John Dillinger outside the

Biograph Theater on the night of July 22, 1934, some, like author J. Robert

Nash, insist the dead man wasn't actually Dillinger.

Instead, the outlaw had a plan.

to fool the fbi and he had help nash claims that dillinger knew the agents

had an order to shoot to kill he also knew that hoover wasn't going to give

the chance to embarrass the bureau again in order for john dillinger to

successfully create this plan he absolutely would need the help of local

enforcement. And many people know exactly who that individual would be.

the individual who put Anna Sage in contact with Melvin Purvis, a known

entity on the East Chicago Police Force named Martin Zarkovic.

East Chicago is in Lake County, Indiana, about 25 miles south of Chicago along

the lake.

It is an industrial town with fights like prostitution and gambling that is

controlled by the Chicago mob.

Rumors are rampant in East Chicago that not only Zarkovich, but his captain,

Timothy O 'Neill, that they're taking orders from the Chicago mob.

Allegedly, they have contacts within the local prostitution circles that would,

of course, include Anna Thage.

Anna Thage was known to run a call girl service in Chicago, one of her clients

being... John Dillinger.

The motive for for Zarkovich was he was being paid off by Dillinger to fake

Dillinger's death. According to this theory, Zarkovich got Anastasia

He sends her to Melvin Purvis and then, you know, maneuvers himself into the

whole thing, too. So I went to a policeman I knew and he arranged a

with the government agent.

According to Nash, Anna Sage knew who Jimmy Lawrence was, she knew that he was

going to be set up to be John Dillinger, and she knew that he would also take

the fall for John Dillinger as well. Melvin Purvis had never seen John

in person, so he could have easily have been fooled by a decoy.

According to FBI records, when the man with Anna Sage and Polly Hamilton sees

law enforcement closing in on him, he grabs a pistol from his pocket and runs

toward the alley.

According to FBI account, three Bureau of Investigation agents shoot him.

Five shots fired, three strikes the man in the alley outside.

When Dr.

Kearns was conducting the autopsy, he stated that the fatal shot hit him in

back of the neck, it exited out his right eye, and he fell.

Now, there are stories that claim that he was executed.

In the alley, because of the angle of the bullet.

J. Robert Nash contends that the angle at which the bullet is entering suggests

it's an execution -style shot, because the kill shot travels and exits upward,

which again suggests that you're not going to be standing up. He would have

to have already been on the ground for the bullet to exit through that specific

trajectory.

The three agents who the FBI say shot at Dillinger never indicate who fired the

fatal bullet.

But some say it wasn't one of the feds. It was two of the East Chicago cops on

the detail that night.

Didn't anyone wonder why at the Biograph Theater that night there were federal

agents there and East Chicago policemen, not Chicago policemen, who had no idea

this was going on?

It's possible that they were building this plan for Jimmy Lawrence to die in

John Dillinger's place.

According to Nash, when Melvin Purvis gives the sign, Zarkovich and O 'Neal

move in, pushing this man into the alley and down to the ground, firing on him

while he is prone, execution style, really eliminating any possibility that

this patsy Jimmy Lawrence would live to tell his tale.

Zarkovich gets $5 ,000 in federal reward money for his role at the Biograph.

in addition to any money he allegedly may have gotten from Dillinger.

Meanwhile, some believe John Dillinger, very much alive, continues his plan to

dupe Hoover's FBI.

Shortly after the Biograph shooting, according to John Dillinger's good buddy

Blackie Audette, Blackie Audette goes to a cabin in Illinois and meets up with

John Dillinger.

Blackie Audette said to him, OK, John, you're dead. Let's get the hell out of

here. And that Dillinger said, there's one thing I want to take care of first.

don't want anyone digging up that body.

So a few days later, Dillinger's dad arrives with a concrete truck and

this coffin in concrete and in steel to make sure that nobody can dig up this

body. John Dillinger's family, you know, were farmers. His dad didn't have a lot

of money.

So the question that begs to be asked and answered is, where did he get the

money to encase this casket in cement?

As if this story wasn't audacious.

Enough. Audette takes it a step further and claims he and Dillinger joined the

crew of workmen who buried the body and then encased it in cement.

But what about Dillinger's sister, Audrey?

She identified the body as her brother's after seeing a telltale scar.

Maybe the sister and the father both realized that was not John Dillinger and

they were just trying to cover the fact.

that maybe John Dillinger was still very much alive.

Was public enemy number one John Dillinger taken out by the FBI in 1934?

Or did he pull off a brilliant escape?

If Dillinger did flee, where did he go?

A letter received in Indiana in 1959 offers a possible clue.

25 years after the alleged assassination, the Indianapolis Star

receives a letter from someone claiming to be John Dillinger and his postmarked

Hollywood, California.

The author of the letters claims that he knew the FBI was setting a trap for him

and that he knew that Jimmy Lawrence was the man killed at the Biograph Theater.

The letter read, although the body was identified as mine, The face and

fingerprint did not match.

To prove the fact, I am sending a photo of John Dillinger as he appears today.

And he enclosed a photograph, which, I'll be honest with you, it looks an

lot like an older John Dillinger.

A few years later, though, another letter shows up. Now, this one shows up

the Little Bohemia Lodge. In the letter, the writer says, I'm sending a letter.

And photo of Dillinger as he looks today.

The man shot was James Lawrence, who told the woman in red that he was

Dillinger. This letter, like the previous one that was sent in 1959, also

photo of someone who has a bit of a resemblance to an older John Dillinger.

this one is also addressed from Hollywood, California.

The handwriting in both letters is compared to a 1929 letter Dillinger

his family while he was locked up at an Indiana reformatory.

The handwriting in both of these letters from Hollywood, California, was

compared to a John Dillinger letter that was written in 1929.

And unfortunately, it's inconclusive. Some handwriting experts say it matches,

and some say it doesn't.

There may be additional evidence to support the idea that Dillinger lived a

quiet, anonymous life in California, starting with the recollections of a man

named Russell Lee Clark.

Russell Lee Clark is the last surviving member of Dillinger's gang.

Nash interviews him just after he gets out of prison in 1968, which turns out

be four months before he dies.

Clark robbed banks with Dillinger from October of 33 to January of 34.

before he was arrested and sentenced to life in prison, four months before the

Biograph shooting took place.

Now, Russell Lee Clark says, I've been in touch with his sister, Audrey.

We've been communicating, and she's been going to California quite a bit.

Clark then asks, why is it that Audrey spends so much time visiting California

when she has no known relations in the state?

During his interview, he told him that John Dillinger was living in La Puente,

California, which is about 20 miles outside of Los Angeles.

The big question is, where is John Dillinger? We feel him to be in the Los

Angeles area, and quite probably alive today.

Intrigued, Nash travels to La Puente to follow up on Clark's lead.

La Puente, it's a place where people could disappear to. And this was not all

that uncommon.

People who could get away would disappear and live under an assumed

Nash says he follows this lead up, going all the way to La Puente, where he

gathers evidence that he says proves that Dillinger is there.

He finds a man who somewhat matches the description, who is working as a

machinist.

On one of Dillinger's old wanted posters, indeed, one of his professions

listed as machinist.

Nash meets him in a dark room. This man who tells him that he's John Dillinger

and now he's a machinist in California, that he hadn't really been killed at the

Biograph Theater.

It raises many questions.

Why go to all of the trouble of faking your death and then establishing a new

life only to invite attention?

onto yourself, to begin to send letters and photographs to people who would then

publicize them, almost inviting people like Nash to track you down, inviting

perhaps the FBI to track you down. What if you were not worried about the FBI

finally tracking you down? Because you know they're never going to pursue this.

As newspaper headlines pout the dramatic death of gangster John Dillon.

An autopsy is performed on his alleged corpse, and a coroner's inquest is

convened to determine the precise cause of death.

Inquests like these routinely involve witness testimony, but only one witness

the biograph shooting is called before the verdict is pronounced.

Justifiable homicide by officers of the federal government.

It was reported that the man who ran down Dillinger was not present.

The man whose bullet killed Dillinger was not named. And the actual inquest

into this incident lasted all of about 20 minutes.

The article also notes that the two women, Hamilton or Sage, are not allowed

speak to the press at all. The East Chicago police officers on the scene

that two federal justice officers performed the execution.

The two were never named.

The executed man also apparently had a gun, but this gun was never found, and

was never even part of the inquest.

If we're talking about public enemy number one, you would do this absolutely

the book. The whole inquest was done very quickly. The entire purpose of it

seemed to have been that it was in the interest of the FBI to make this go away

very quickly.

So from all of these...

Missing pieces of this puzzle. There are some people that speculate that

someone's aiming to just suppress as much information as possible. The Bureau

Investigation says, we got our men. We're an effective force of the

We know what we're doing. There are plenty of other bad guys out there. We

to go get them.

Pretty Boy Floyd is the new public enemy number one. But three months after

Dillinger's death, he's gunned down.

And then Babyface Nelson is killed a month after that.

This string of headline -making shootings.

raises the profile of J. Edgar Hoover and his Bureau of Investigation.

Imagine if the public had learned that the Bureau investigation had killed the

wrong guy in that alley. There'd be no way that J. Edgar Hoover would ever let

the possibility of John Dillinger being alive permeate. There's no way. It would

have been an epic embarrassment for J. Edgar Hoover.

So this string of successes really finally elevate J. Edgar Hoover and the

to the status that they were hoping for. They are shining heroes.

Is it possible Hoover himself engineered a cover -up?

Some speculate the answer could be yes.

Hoover would go to any length to cover up any mistakes that his fledgling FBI

had going because they couldn't take the publicity, not after Little Bohemia,

when he almost lost his position.

J. Edgar Hoover by now has spent tens of millions of dollars in pursuit of John

Dillinger. And to have word get out now that all of that money was spent for

naught and misused, it would have not only destroyed J. Edgar Hoover's career.

but probably the Bureau as well.

If the FBI mistook Jimmy Lawrence as John Dillinger and killed the wrong man,

Dillinger has to disappear.

This theory holds they actually broker a deal between Dillinger and the FBI that

will have Dillinger agree, when compensated, to vanish and live the rest

of his days in anonymity, and that in return, the FBI will leave him alone.

The Bureau had been embarrassed so many times by John Dillinger from these

escapes and the ridicule, which has led some to contend that it would be easier

to simply make a deal with Dillinger, that Dillinger would willingly stay in

hiding, remain anonymous, and never embarrass the FBI again.

To keep the truth from coming out, key witnesses would have to be silenced.

People like Anna Sage.

Anna Sage is given a $5 ,000 reward for her role in the apprehension of John

Dillinger.

In this version of the story, that $5 ,000 is less a reward than it is hush

money. Anna Sage, in spite of what she had hoped she was going to get out of

deal, she ended up getting deported back to Romania.

Adding to speculation around an FBI cover -up, the Dillinger autopsy report

missing in 1934, only to be found 50 years later.

The autopsy report is found in March of 1984 in the basement of the Cook County

Medical Office in a brown paper bag. How does one of the most interesting, one

of the most important autopsy reports just go missing like that? Yeah.

You're inclined to believe that the autopsy reveals all of these

Well, maybe there was a reason to cover it up so that people couldn't know the

truth, that it wasn't Dillinger who was gunned down outside the biograph.

Five months from November 1933 to April 1934, John Dillinger has a 26 -year

-old girlfriend named Evelyn Furchette, nicknamed Billy.

Frechette was born to a French father and a Native American mother. She lived

the Menominee Reservation in Wisconsin.

At age 18, Billy Frechette moves to Chicago.

She works as a waitress and as a nursemaid.

In November of 1933, she meets Dillinger at a dance hall.

She describes him as someone who treated her very well.

She says he was a gentleman, and the fact that he's a scoundrel doesn't

the fact that to ladies, he could very well be very charming.

By all accounts, they have a real love affair.

Allegedly, Evelyn Billy Frechette and John Dillinger had a plan to escape this

life of crime.

Dillinger and Frechette actually live together for a time. And the story we

is of Billy playing more or less the good housewife.

Then, on April 9th, 1934, Frechette is arrested.

And he sees her get arrested inside of a bar, and he initially planned some

rather daring attempts to help her escape.

John wanted to break her out. It was too dangerous. He couldn't do it. He

couldn't take the risk.

She remained in jail until 1936.

Burchette is behind bars when she learns that her outlaw boyfriend has been

killed at the Biograph Theater.

Blackie Audet says that after the shooting at the Biograph Theater,

that he would take him west to a reservation in Oregon where he could

Billy Frechette.

She, however, still had two years left on her prison sentence.

Dillinger apparently could not wait that long.

Could Dillinger's relationship with Frechette have inspired his choice of a

hiding place?

There has been speculation that Dillinger could have easily have hid out

Native American reservation after he disappeared and started living an

life.

According to Audette, he took Dillinger to the Beattie Reservation in Klamath

County, Oregon. And it's there that Dillinger apparently met a Native

woman and ended up having four children with her.

Through Billy, he knew people in the Native American community, presumably.

And it was not uncommon for people who did want to disappear to go to Indian

reservations. According to one Raymond Kakwatosh, who grew up on the Menominee

Reservation in Wisconsin, Dillinger was a somewhat frequent visitor, where he

was harbored at different points in his criminal career.

John Dillinger used the reservation as sort of a sanctuary because the

local police and the state police could not go on the reservation.

If Dillinger needed a place to get lost and to escape after the shooting at the

Biograph, a Native American reservation would probably be the best place,

considering that on Native American reservations, state authorities...

have no jurisdiction, and also Native Americans, not the biggest fan of the

United States government.

Dillinger, being seen as this hero, was always considered welcome on these

reservations. According to Blackie Audet, when the reservation in Oregon

John Dillinger stays in the area and lives there for the rest of his life as

farmer. If that is the case, it raises the question once again of just who is

buried in Indiana.

In 2019, Dillinger's niece and nephew sought to answer that question by

a permit to exhume the body.

John Dillinger's niece and nephew, Carol and Michael Thompson, present an

affidavit to Indiana saying they have reason to believe that the body buried

there is not that of their uncle.

One would think...

that if the FBI really wanted to put an end to this speculation, we certainly

have the technology now through DNA to find out who's buried in that grave.

The Chicago FBI office, in response to this affidavit, releases a statement

saying that, nope, 100%, the man in that grave is John Dillon.

In addition, Crown Hill Cemetery, where Dillinger is buried, opposed exhuming

his body.

The cemetery cited its duty to ensure the safety and integrity of the grounds

and those interred there.

Ultimately, a Marion County judge ruled that Dillinger's family cannot exhume

the body without the cemetery's consent.

Since then, Dillinger's family has called off any effort to exhume the

for so many, the fact remains that until there is a DNA test, Taken of that

body, we will not know who was buried under John Dillinger's name.

John Dillinger has been called America's first celebrity criminal. And 90 years

after his death, or perhaps his escape, Dillinger remains one of the most famous

gangsters in American history.

Genetic analysis could finally answer the question.

of whether the notorious bank robber, John Dillinger, was truly killed outside

the Biograph Theater 90 years ago.

But as long as the courts deny permission to exhume the body, there

those who suspect that on that July night in 1934, public enemy number one

have made his greatest escape.

I'm Lawrence Fishburne. Thank you for watching History's Greatest Mysteries.