Public Enemies_ America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI - Bryan Burrough [228]
Dillinger pitched forward, bumped into a woman in front of him, then staggered a step or two before falling face first to the pavement at the entrance to the alley. Winstead was the first to reach him. Purvis hustled up and grabbed the pistol from Dillinger’s hand. The rookie, Jack Welles, ran up in time to see Dillinger’s lips moving.14 Someone said, “Don’t move,” but Dillinger lay still. He was dead.
Pandemonium erupted. Women ran screaming. A Chicago woman named Etta Natalsky was hopping about, shouting, “I’m shot!” She had been hit in the leg by a ricochet, as had a housemaid named Theresa Paulus, who was struck in the knee; she lay beside the alley, blood staining her dress. Neither woman was hurt seriously. When they realized the shooting had stopped, a number of people stepped forward to stare at the body. A circle formed, men craning their necks to get a glimpse. A dozen FBI agents ran up, urging the crowd to move back.
Within moments the name began surging through the crowd: Dillinger. They got Dillinger. An ambulance was called. Two cars of police rolled up, responding to a call of shots fired, and their occupants pushed back the crowd. Attendants arrived and lifted the body into an ambulance and took it to Alexian Brothers Hospital, where it was laid on the front lawn until a coroner came out and pronounced Dillinger dead. The body was then taken to the Cook County Morgue.ds
A mystery that bedeviled Dillinger enthusiasts for years was the disposition of $1,200 in cash Dillinger carried at the time he was shot. Agent Dan Sullivan found the money. According to a story that Sullivan told the FBI alumni newsletter in 1978, he was one of two agents who accompanied Dillinger’s body to the morgue. When the ambulance arrived a crowd formed, and at one point two men identifying themselves as Chicago detectives stepped forward. As Sullivan recalled, “One of them asked if that was really Dillinger in the wagon and when I said it was, he asked if they could climb inside and look at the body. They came out a minute later and left. When we got inside the morgue and they started stripping the body, they found something like fifty-seven cents on him. I sat there bug-eyed.”dt The actual figure was $7.70—a five-dollar bill, two singles, and seventy cents in change.
When word of the shooting hit the radio, hundreds of Chicagoans descended on the Biograph. Crowds thronged the alley’s entrance until nearly dawn. All that remained to be seen was a pool of Dillinger’s blood. Even that didn’t last long, as dozens of men and women pressed their handkerchiefs into it, taking home gruesome souvenirs to show their families. The bloodlust wasn’t limited to the crowds. The next morning a man showed up at the Bankers Building to offer Purvis cash for the shirt he had worn; it contained a drop of Dillinger’s blood.
Late that night a reporter brought news of his son’s death to John Dillinger, Sr. He collapsed into a chair at his farmhouse. “Is it really true?” he asked. “Are you sure there is no mistake?” Told there wasn’t, the elder Dillinger said, “Well, John is dead. At last it has happened—the thing I have prayed and prayed would not happen. I want the body brought back here. I’m so sick I can hardly talk.”15
In Washington, reporters confronted Hoover as he hurried into his office. He deflected entreaties to boast, emphasizing the Bureau’s hunt for Van Meter and Nelson. “This does not mean the end of the Dillinger case,” he said. “Anyone who ever gave any of the Dillinger mob any aid, comfort, or assistance will be vigorously prosecuted.”16
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