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By Root 2254 0

General Homer Cummings, tracked down at Washington’s Union Station, where he was boarding a cross-country train toward a Hawaiian vacation, put Dillinger’s death in the broadest context, making clear it was a product of New Deal-style federalist thinking. “This marks the end of the trail for John Dillinger, but it is not the end of the trail for the Department of Justice,” he said. “For us this is but one more episode in the carefully planned campaign against organized crime which we have been conducting for more than a year.” Without any hint of irony—given the lack of cooperation between the FBI and Chicago police—he added, “What has happened is an illustration of the success that can be accomplished by concentrated effort and fullest coordination between federal and local authorities. To bring about this sort of friendly and helpful cooperation is one of the cardinal points in our movement to suppress crime.”

The next morning Dillinger’s death was front-page news around the world, dominating headlines in New York, London, Moscow, and Berlin. The European papers played up the lack of warning Dillinger was given before being shot in the back. In Germany a Nazi newspaper used this as ammunition for a broadside against America. “Is a cop calling a man by his first name before shooting him down a sufficient trial?” an editorialist wrote. “Does a country in which this happens still deserve the name of a country of law and order?”17

American newspapers had no such doubts. Much of their coverage focused on Purvis, who while reading congratulatory telegrams gave interviews and posed for photographers in his office all day Monday. The caption beneath his picture in the Chicago Daily Times that evening—HE GOT HIS MAN—was typical. The New York Evening Journal printed a series of Dillinger photos arrayed like scenes from a movie, calling it “Underworld Melodrama—in Three Scenes—(A U.S. Production directed by Melvin Purvis).” Time printed a photo of Purvis shaking hands with Homer Cummings captioned, MELVIN PURVIS AND FRIEND. While Sam Cowley, whom the Tribune continued to identify as “Purvis’s chief assistant,” shunned the press, Purvis gave interviews in which his ego was vividly on display. Talking to a Daily Times reporter, he referred to the FBI’s as-yet-unnamed snitch as “my informant” and embellished the story of lighting his cigar.

“There was no response from my men,” Purvis said. “I’ll confess I was under a strain and extremely uncomfortable when Dillinger saw my signal and gave me a dirty look . . . Once I spotted him I knew him at once, because of those killer’s eyes of his.”18

This was not the way Hoover wanted FBI agents to behave, as Purvis would soon learn. There was much work still to be done, in fact, and Cowley excluded Purvis from almost all of it. Monday night, while Cowley grappled with an array of pressing issues, Purvis was sent to the railroad station to pose for photographs with Homer Cummings. The following evening he flew to Washington, where he posed for more photos with Hoover; Cowley apologized, saying he was too busy to go. Hoover announced both Purvis and Cowley were given raises. For the moment, it appeared Purvis had been freed from the director’s doghouse.

“The shooting and killing of John Dillinger by the Agents of your office under your admirable direction and planning are but another indication of your ability and capacity as a leader and an executive,” Hoover wrote Purvis the morning after the shooting. “[I]t again confirms the faith and confidence which I have always had in you . . . This would not have been accomplished had it not been for your unlimited and never-ending persistence, effective planning and intelligence . . .”19

The attention lavished on Purvis did not sit well with the East Chicago police. Zarkovich gave several interviews, trying hard to direct credit to the East Chicago police. Like Purvis, he freely embellished his story, telling reporters he had seen Dillinger attending movies at the Biograph several times. He also claimed the East Chicago police had Van Meter and