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Every year, Tucson comes together to commemorate the capture of Public Enemy Number One, John Dillinger. On January 1934, the Dillinger gang chose Tucson as the place to lay low after their crime sprees. Robbing over 24 banks and four police stations, John Dillinger was the most notorious of all Depression-era gangsters. J. Edgar Hoover launched the modern day FBI as an answer to fighting John Dillinger and organized crime. Most of Dillinger's escapades took place in the midwest, and I've grown up hearing stories about him, but I had never heard about his connection with Tucson before. He was born and raised in Indiana and started his life of crime there. After his first robbery, he was sent to prison, where he learned how to be an even better criminal from some of the best robbers behind bars. He was paroled in May 1933, after serving over nine years in prison. Immediately, he planned his next robbery. He robbed 5 banks before being caught and placed in jail. With the help of his gang, he escaped from the jail and went on to rob a few more banks. At the last bank, in East Chicago, a policeman was shot and
killed, believed to be killed by Dillinger. At this time, Dillinger and the guys went west, finally ending up in Tucson.
Tucson in 1934 was a city of 30,000. It still held vestiges of its Wild West pioneer past. Congress Street, where the Congress Hotel is located, was the heart of downtown. John Dillinger and his gang were staying at the hotel when on the morning of January 22, 1934, a fire broke out from an oil furnace in the basement. The fire shot up the elevator shaft and began to spread on the 3rd floor. The front desk clerk woke up guests and helped them escape to the street. Seven guests (the gang and their women) took a very long time to get their luggage together and when the finally made it to the exit, the hallways were filled with smoke. The Tucson Fire Department saved them, climbing up ladders to help them down to the ground. Two firemen, after a $12/each tip and pleading from the gang, returned to their room and recovered all of the luggage inside. A few days later, those firemen noticed one of the gangsters in a lineup section of a True Detective
Magazine. The notified the police, who started an investigation. The police ended up capturing the entire gang, something that several state combined police forces and the FBI had failed to do.
Dillinger was extradited to Chicago, where he was placed in the county jail at Crown Point. Only a month later, he escaped all by himself, by carving a wooden pistol from a washboard. A little over a month later, Dillinger's girlfriend is caught by special agents from a Chicago restaurant. Dillinger was unable to rescue her. On April 22, 1934 the Dillinger gang escaped from a shootout at the Little Bohemia Lodge in northern Wisconsin. (You can read my dad's blog about the Little Bohemia Lodge here: https://www.travelblog.org/North-America/United-States/Wisconsin/blog-777639.html ) He continues to rob banks until he is shot and killed in an ambush outside the Biograph Theatre in Chicago. This was July 22, 2934. Such a whirlwind of illegal behavior in such a short time!
Dillinger Days in Tucson is an event every year that recreates the fire and subsequent capture of the Dillinger Gang. The Congress Hotel was built in 1919, and after the 3rd floor burned in the fire of 1934, became and stayed a
two-story hotel. Dillinger Days has a recreation of the gang's activities in Tucson which was fun to watch. We also got to see the inside of the Congress Hotel, which still has a lot of its Art Deco design. There was a vintage car show outside the hotel, too.
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Snowhawg
Bob Kribs
Gun Molls
Check out the gang's gun molls as they used to call them.