This week in history: Here’s how John Dillinger’s death in Chicago made headlines

The Chicago Daily News splashed John Dillinger’s murder in front of the Biograph Theater on July 22, 1934 across the front page. Here’s the paper’s unique take.

By Alison Martin

FILE - In this undated file photo, John Dillinger is seen. Before becoming Public Enemy No. 1, gangster John Dillinger pulled off his first bank robbery in a sleepy Ohio town. Police captured him months later when they swarmed his girlfriend’s apartment, but within weeks he brazenly strolled out of jail after his gang killed a rural sheriff. (AP Photo/Dayton Daily News, file)

As reported in the Chicago Daily News, sister publication of the Chicago Sun-Times:

Bank robber John Dillinger’s death made the front page of papers all across the United States. On July 23, 1934, Chicagoans awoke to find this splashy headline:

Headline of Chicago Daily News July 23, 1934

Federal agents shot Dillinger outside the Biograph Theater in Lincoln Park on the night of July 22, 1934. The Daily News chose to focus on the dramatic angle of Dillinger’s betrayal by Ana Sage, the infamous woman in a red(-but-really-it-was-orange) dress.

A photograph of Dillinger in the Cook County morgue was printed below the headline. The right-corner photo shows Dillinger’s body on the wagon to the morgue.

John Dillinger on a slab in the Cook County morgue, July 23, 1934. A clearer version of this photo can be found here.

Reporter Robert J. Casey’s story recapped the night’s theatrics, including details about how “fiction shadows truth” as Dillinger left a gangster flick and “walked into the eager arms of fifteen federal agents.” In the morgue, the gangster’s body lay “unaware that he had achieved the greatest triumph of a varied and interesting career by dying.”

Chicago Daily News reporter Robert J. Casey’s story on John Dillinger’s death, July 23, 1934.

Other front page stories included a write-up on the challenge of determining who actually killed Dillinger (none of the federal agents claimed to know which of them fired the fatal shot), and a brief on Dillinger’s father coming to collect his son’s body.

Screen_Shot_2020_07_22_at_5.14.13_PM.png — Two more front page stories from the Chicago Daily News covering John Dillinger’s death, July 23, 1934.

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This week in history: John Dillinger’s death dominates the front page

The Chicago Daily News splashed John Dillinger’s murder in front of the Biograph Theater on July 22, 1934 across the front page. Here’s the paper’s unique take.