Dillinger’s guns, letters to go up for auction

DALLAS — In a letter from jail, John Dillinger tells his father he knows he’s been a disappointment but also assures him that he’s “not guilty of half of the things I am charged with and I’ve never hurt anyone.”

The letter written in neat cursive dated Sept. 29, 1933 — about two weeks before a group of friends broke him out of the Lima, Ohio, jail, killing the sheriff in the process — is among a dozen artifacts from the famed Depression-era bank robber that Heritage Auction Galleries will offer in December.

Dennis Lowe, director of arms and militaria at Heritage, said that the collection of Dillinger items, which he expects to sell for $600,000 to $800,000, are significant because they come from Dillinger’s family.

The items, consigned by Dillinger’s half-sister, also include three of Dillinger’s firearms, a wool hunting suit in red-and-black plaid and two items he had on him when he was shot to death at the age of 31 by federal agents outside Chicago’s Biograph Theater on July 22, 1934: a pocket watch and a dollar bill with his blood on it.

The auction also will feature a wooden gun that Dillinger’s relatives believe he used to escape from an Indiana jail, though an Indiana museum says it has the real wooden gun.

Mike Thompson, Dillinger’s 55-year-old nephew of Mooresville, Ind., said that there is no mystery surrounding any of the other items as they have been in the family all this time and most have a direct link from Dillinger’s father to Thompson’s mother, Frances Thompson, Dillinger’s last surviving sibling.

Frances Thompson, 87, also of Mooresville, said the infamous gangster was a typical older brother, who teased her and took her to movies.

“Like any brother, he teased me a lot. He loved to do that,” said Frances Thompson, who was 12 when Dillinger was killed and subsequently accompanied their father, a church deacon, on a lecture tour advising that crime doesn’t pay.

Dillinger and his gang attracted a lot of publicity during a yearlong crime-spree that started in 1933 that included bank robberies, shootouts, jail breaks and according to authorities, the killing of 10 people.

During the Depression, people were losing their savings as banks were failing, so part of the public was cheering on the bank robber, said Elliott Gorn, a professor of history and American studies at Brown University who wrote “Dillinger’s Wild Ride: The Year That Made America’s Public Enemy Number One.”

“There’s something that resonates about this story,” he said.

Dillinger’s relatives don’t believe he killed anyone himself, Mike Thompson said.

Indeed, it was never proven that Dillinger himself killed anyone during his crime spree, Gorn said.

“Is he guilty of putting people in harm’s way? Clearly. Did he shoot and kill anyone himself? That would be pretty hard to prove,” Gorn said.

A turning point in Dillinger’s life seems to be the 8½ years he spent in prison after taking his father’s advice and confessing to trying to rob a grocer in Mooresville, where the family had moved when Dillinger was a teen. His accomplice pleaded not guilty, stood trial and was sentenced to two years in prison. Dillinger, who the FBI says was convicted of assault and battery with intent to rob and conspiracy to commit a felony, was released on parole in May 1933 at the age of 29.

“It certainly embittered Dillinger,” Gorn said. “In prison he learned how to be a first rate criminal.”

In one letter from prison that’s expected to fetch $80,000 to $125,000, Dillinger instructs his father how to go about securing his release on parole, Lowe said.

The one disputed item that will go up for bid is a wooden gun that Dillinger’s relatives believe he used to break out of jail in Crown Point, Ind., on March 3, 1934, while awaiting trial in the killing of a policeman.

Dillinger gave the wooden gun to his father, who later gave it to his eldest daughter, Audrey Hancock. But she lost track of it. The family believes it’s a wooden gun found among the possession’s of Hancock’s and Dillinger’s brother, Hubert Dillinger, after his death in 1974.

But The John Dillinger Museum in Hammond, Ind., believes they have the real fake gun. Speros A. Batistatos, who runs the agency that operates the museum, said the museum purchased the wooden gun in 1997 from a collector who had operated a Dillinger museum in Nashville, Ind. He said Hancock, who died in 1990, signed a letter verifying that gun was authentic.

Mike Thompson couldn’t explain the discrepancy, saying he doesn’t know if Hancock knew about the gun found in her brother Hubert’s possessions.

On the Net:

Heritage Auction Galleries, www.ha.com