‘Public Enemies’ protagonist had Indiana roots

TOLEDO, Ohio – Before becoming Public Enemy No. 1, gangster John Dillinger pulled off his first bank robbery in a sleepy Ohio town.

However, his Ohio escapades aren’t part of the new movie “Public Enemies,” which tells of his life on the run after an escape from an Indiana prison and of his death in Chicago.

Dillinger, born in Indianapolis, is better remembered for his gang’s crime spree through Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana and for his death outside Chicago’s Biograph Theater, where FBI agents shot him.

The Universal Pictures movie, starring Johnny Depp as Dillinger, focuses on those final months.

Dillinger’s time in Ohio often is overlooked because it wasn’t until months later that he became the FBI’s top priority, said John Carnes, curator of collection at the Allen County Museum in Lima.

“I wasn’t really surprised the movie left it out,” Carnes said. “But it is an important part of the story.”

Universal spokeswoman Jennifer Chamberlain said the film takes place during a specific time in Dillinger’s life and was not intended to be a biopic.

Dillinger had served nearly nine years in a Michigan City, Ind., prison for robbing a grocery when he and his prison buddies hatched a plan that would set in motion his infamy.

They decided Dillinger, would begin knocking off banks so he could buy guns and break his friends out of prison.

In the next few months, he robbed banks in Indiana and then in Bluffton, Ohio.

But just days before the prison break, Dillinger was captured while visiting his girlfriend in Dayton. He was moved 100 miles north to Lima, Ind., where he faced a bank robbery charge in the Bluffton holdup.

Dillinger was playing cards with a few other inmates in Lima on Oct. 12, 1933, when three men claiming to be officers from Indiana walked into the jail.

The three men told Allen County Sheriff Jess Sarber that they wanted to speak to Dillinger. When Sarber asked for their credentials, one of them shot him and then began beating him.

Dillinger heard the gunfire, got up from the card game and grabbed his coat.

Dillinger and the rest of his gang continued robbing banks in the Midwest before they were caught in Tucson, Ariz. Dillinger was taken back to Indiana, where he escaped while awaiting trial on charges that he killed a police officer during a Chicago bank robbery.

By that time, he was the FBI’s Public Enemy No. 1.

The movie, which opened July 1, renews the debate about whether Dillinger was a Robin Hood-type hero for those who were angry with banks and had lost their savings during the Great Depression.

“He was, as far as I’m concerned, a criminal and a murderer,” said Sgt. Tim Garlock, of the Allen County sheriff’s office, who began studying Dillinger’s escape in Lima after he started working in the former sheriff’s residence.

Visitors still stop by about once a month asking to see the old jail, which still looks the same on the outside, Garlock said.

“People,” he said, “still have the fascination for it.”