On This Day, July 22

1. 1934: Public Enemy No.1 gets gunned down

Notorious criminal John Dillinger was gunned down outside the Biograph Theater in Chicago on this date in 1934. Dillinger had been deemed “Public Enemy No.1” by J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI, for the countless banks he had robbed and the casualties left along the way. With the help of other infamous criminals such as “Baby Face” Nelson, Dillinger and his gang stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from banks in Wisconsin, Chicago, and Indiana, which in the era of the great depression that was a small fortune. In July of 1934, the FBI recruited Romanian-born Anna Sage, who was a madam of a brothel in Chicago Dillinger frequented. Sage was a friend of Dillinger but turned on him for leniency in her upcoming deportation hearing and hoping to receive the $10,000 reward for his capture. On this day Sage and Dillinger attended a movie at the Biograph, the gangster film Manhattan Melodrama. She was supposed to wear an orange dress in order to identify Dillinger when they walked out of the movie, however the lights at the theater made the dress appear red instead. This would earn her the nickname “lady in red”. After being ordered to surrender Dillinger attempted to flee, but only made it to the alley where it was reported that he tried to pull a gun which forced officers to open fire.