John Dillinger Was Here

On October 23, 1933, John Dillinger, then the nation’s Public Enemy No. 1, and some of his gang, including Harry Pierpont, Charles Arthur “Pretty Boy” Floyd, Walter Dietrich, George “Machine Gun” Kelly, and George “Baby Face” Nelson, drove to the Central National Bank on the southwest corner of the Greencastle Town Square and made the biggest haul of their criminal careers, taking $74,728.00 in cash and equities. Already under indictment for the death of Sheriff Jess Saber of Michigan City, Indiana, the gang carried out the Greencastle holdup without killing anyone and drove out of town without obstruction. Dillinger was later gunned down by FBI agents in Chicago at the Biograph Theater on July 22, 1934, ending an eleven year career of crime, and other members of the gang were killed in later gun battles with police. Because the Great Depression forced many bank foreclosures on private properties, foreclosure victims saw the Dillinger gang as a kind of folk hero.

Greencastle, Indiana · United States