John Dillinger's Body

(Post last updated December 5, 2019)

Although John Dillinger was born in Indianapolis (at 2053 Cooper Street), he moved with his family to Mooresville when he was young and spent his formative years here.  (There's a self-guided walking--or driving--tour of significant Dillinger points-of-interest around town.)  After a harsh criminal sentence for a botched local holdup sent him to prison (shaping his unlawful ambitions), he became a hardened criminal, robbing banks and entering American folk legend.

John Dillinger's Funeral

(Mooresville Moments #17)

(Click Above to Play Video) 

After Dillinger was shot by FBI agents in Chicago in July, 1934, his remains were returned to Mooresville before burial at Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis.  Hundreds braved the 103° F. heat wave to see Dillinger’s body at Harvey Funeral Home on July 25, 1934. The line of onlookers circled the block twice (Harvey Funeral Home was located on the southeast corner of Indiana and Harrison Streets).

Hundreds stood in line to see John Dillinger's body at Harvey Funeral Home

(July 25, 1934) (click image to enlarge)

The Indianapolis Star (July 31, 2019) reported that Dillinger's body was scheduled to be exhumed for a documentary on the History Channel,  presumably to extract DNA to compare with that of known Dillinger descendants to establish conclusively that the individual buried in the Crown Hill grave is (or isn't) actually John.  Crown Hill Cemetery, however, balked at the plan, the History Channel bailed on the project, and a lawsuit ensued (no pun intended).  The Indianapolis Star (December 4, 2019) reported that the trial judge ruled Dillinger's body could not be exhumed without Crown Hill's consent.  So we may never know for certain whether Dillinger is actually buried in his family's plot at Crown Hill. 

 File photo from The Indianapolis Star

Some have questioned whether or not John Dillinger was actually shot near Chicago's Biograph Theater in July, 1934.  When John's father saw the body, he said it was not his son, but John was said to have had plastic surgery, which might have changed his facial appearance.  The FBI stated definitively that Dillinger's body was identified at the time.  Not everyone was convinced, however.  Investigators Jay Robert Nash and Ron Offen popularized a theory that another person was shot, and that Dillinger escaped and lived into the 1960s.  In their book, Dillinger: Dead or Alive? (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1970), Nash and Offen reprinted letters purportedly written by John Dillinger from 1959 and 1963, along with photographs alleging to be Dillinger from that time.  Admittedly, there's a strong resemblance in the 1959/1963 photos with Dillinger photos from the early 1930s.  The '59/'63 pictures show a sixty-something man whose face (particularly the ears) resembles a younger Johnny D.

Of course, it's possible to find lookalikes for many famous people, so the '59/'63 claimant could simply have been an opportunist attempting to cash-in on a criminal's infamous past.  For example,  William T. Phillips, a Washington resident who served in prison along with Butch Cassidy, later convinced some of Cassidy's Utah family that he was Cassidy.  Butch reportedly died in Bolivia in 1908, and Phillips died in Spokane in 1937.  Perhaps Dillinger, too, had an imposter who claimed survival; perhaps Dillinger survived after all.  If DNA tests were made of Dillinger's remains, that mystery might be put to rest, but, as it now stands, exhumation seems unlikely.

Dillinger's Hometown Holdup

Everybody has heard about John Dillinger, the famous American bank robber of the early 1930s.  Many people know that he lived for many years in Mooresville, Indiana.  But did you know that Dillinger's "first" holdup (or, at least, the first for which he was arrested) occurred in 1924 next to the First Christian Church on South Jefferson Street?

Our local history video elaborates.

John Dillinger's Hometown Holdup
(Mooresville Moments #7)
by Mooresville Public Library

Frank Morgan Holdup

Mooresville Times

September 12, 1924

John Dillinger's sentencing

Mooresville Times

September 19, 1924

Ed Singleton's sentencing

Mooresville Times

October 17, 1924

Frank Morgan owned and operated the West End Grocery at 135 West High Street in Mooresville.  On Saturday, September 6, 1924, Morgan went home for dinner and took the bulk of the day's cash receipts with him; then he returned to the store, staying open until around 10-11 p.m.  After closing, he was walking down South Jefferson Street when Dillinger jumped him from behind the First Christian Church, striking Morgan over the head with a metal rod.  Dillinger pulled a gun on Morgan, but the two struggled, and the gun fell to the ground, discharging.  When neighbors began to respond to the noise, Dillinger fled east down Broad Alley.

Many people maintain that Dillinger was goaded into attempting to rob Frank Morgan by Edgar Singleton, his cousin, roughly ten years Dillinger's senior.  Dillinger played semi-professional baseball with Singleton in Martinsville (Singleton was an umpire--see clipping below).  Singleton worked at the Mooresville light power plant.  While drinking at Moore & Pearce, a pool room (in the basement of the Lindley Block in downtown Mooresville, which burned down in 1925), Singleton plied Dillinger with enough alcohol to persuade the younger man to stick-up Morgan, thinking the elderly grocer would be carrying cash from his store's Saturday sales.  They didn't know that Morgan had taken the money home earlier and had little cash on his person at the time of the robbery attempt.  Purportedly, Singleton awaited in a getaway car further down South Jefferson from the church (closer to West High Street), but when the revolver went off, Singleton apparently panicked and drove away, leaving Dillinger behind.

Some accounts have Singleton struggling and striking Morgan and dropping the revolver, but it appears that Dillinger's confession admitted that he was the party responsible for the fracas.

Umpire Ed Singleton

Mooresville Times

Thursday, October 8, 1964

Dillinger loitered around the pool room afterwards, asking others there if Morgan was all right (before it became commonly known that Morgan had been attacked, taken home, and stitched up by a local physician).  Dillinger returned home, finally admitting to his father what he had done, and his father encouraged him to turn himself in, thinking John would be shown clemency (it was, after all, his first arrest) that would result in a relatively short jail term.  Dillinger senior expected this episode to scare John straight, but no one anticipated that the Morgan County judge who sentenced Dillinger would invoke the heaviest penalties possible to make an example of him.  Likely, the judge was mindful of Dillinger's having committed battery (grievous bodily harm) upon Morgan and had used a firearm in the crime's commission, both aggravating circumstances necessitating sterner sentencing.  Spending years behind bars with hardened criminals, however, embittered Dillinger and placed him in the ideal environment from which to learn serious larceny skills.  When he finally was released, he was ready to "get even" by robbing banks.  Certainly, Dillinger's father blamed the judge for turning his son toward a life of crime.

What might have happened if Dillinger had received a lighter sentence?  Nobody can know for certain, but he might very well have been "scared straight," perhaps ending up pursuing his semi-professional baseball career at a higher level.  Or perhaps he might have become an ordinary, regular "working Joe."  One thing's for certain:  he would not now be a world-famous bank robber, entering the American folklore of the Great Depression.

Mooresville citizens are proud of their community and the many other people (well-known or otherwise) who have lived here over the years.  But Dillinger still captivates public interest.  He was a bad dude, but he is part of our history.  For better or worse, Dillinger is the town's most famous person.  That remains a sore spot with many longtime locals, many of whom knew the Dillinger family personally and, to spare them heartache and embarrassment, went to great lengths to avoid publicity about the famed criminal.  In 1973, when the local McDonald's franchise decorated the restaurant with Dillinger photos, a contingent of prominent local citizens protested, suggesting that McDonald's could sell its food elsewhere if it insisted upon glorifying Dillinger's unlawful career.  The restaurant took down the decorations in favor of more neutral images.

If we are faithful to local history, we can't ignore John Dillinger, but we needn't sensationalize him, either.  He is just another person in the tapestry of Mooresville's past, available to those interested who wish to learn about his story, one among many, many other stories that are equally worth telling.