John Dillinger may have patronized a Cuyahoga Falls tavern two weeks before his death in 1934.
Posted on 07/11/2005 1:44:43 PM PDT by nickcarraway
The two well-dressed strangers were extremely polite. They entered the Falls Beverage Shoppe late one evening in July 1934, sat at a table and ordered hamburgers and beer.
``What town is this, please?'' one of the men inquired as waitress Wilda Work brought their sandwiches.
She told him Cuyahoga Falls.
The clock was ticking toward midnight, and the guests were in high spirits at the tavern at 2052 Front St. The older gentleman, a dark-haired fellow in his early 30s, flirted with the married waitress and tried to get her to loosen up a bit.
``Why don't you smile?'' he asked.
The two customers ordered another round of beers and bantered back and forth. When it was time to leave, the older fellow asked Work to bring him a piece of paper.
She thought the request was a little odd at such a late hour, but she handed him a sheet. A few minutes later, the gentlemen got up, paid their check and walked out the door.
``I guess that will hold us until we get to the next town,'' one of them was heard to say.
When the waitress went to clear away the glasses and dishes, she discovered a strange note written in pencil: ``To show a wee bit of daring, Dillinger sat at this table tonight.''
It was just another Ohio sighting of gangster John Dillinger, Public Enemy No. 1.
By the time the waitress looked outside, the strangers were gone. She raced to the Cuyahoga Falls police station to tell officers her story.
``He was as polite as could be,'' Work said of the dark-haired customer. ``He had on a nice light shirt and neatly pressed trousers.
`` `What town is this, please? Won't you bring us another beer, please?' That's the way he talked.''
Police officers were skeptical -- they had heard this kind of thing before -- but they showed Work a recent mug shot of the gangster.
``Sure enough,'' she said. ``That resembles him.''
An Indiana native, Dillinger was known to skulk about Ohio. He robbed his first bank on June 10, 1933, in New Carlisle, escaping with $10,600. That same year, his gang held up banks in Bluffton and St. Marys.
Dillinger was captured in Dayton and sent to the Allen County Jail in Lima, but his gang rescued him Oct. 12, 1933, in a bloody jailbreak. Allen Sheriff Jesse Sarber was shot to death.
The murderous gang terrorized the Midwest, pulling off bank heists in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and South Dakota. Dillinger was feared as a killer but revered as a folk hero. In his hometown of Mooresville, Ind., he was regarded as a modern Robin Hood.
Gangster sightings were common in Northeast Ohio in the 1930s, and they weren't limited to Dillinger. Ma Barker's gang and George ``Machine Gun'' Kelly both hid in Cleveland for a time. Alvin Karpis held up an Erie Railroad train in Garrettsville and a mail truck in Warren.
Bank robber Charles ``Pretty Boy'' Floyd was captured March 8, 1930, in an Akron home. It wasn't his bravest moment. Police found him hiding under a bed on Lodi Street in Goodyear Heights.
Floyd spent three months in the Akron City Jail before being transferred to Toledo. He made a daring escape from a train bound for the Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus, but federal agents finally caught up with him near East Liverpool in October 1934. They gunned him down.
Murderer John ``Red'' Hamilton, Dillinger's close friend and right-hand man, had ties to Ohio, too. His sister lived in Barberton, and police were always wary of an unexpected visit.
False alarm
Public sightings of Dillinger were widespread, although not always reliable. In March 1934, the gang was reported traveling on the Lincoln Highway near Canton in a Ford sedan with Indiana plates. A day later, the car was spotted on State Road in Cuyahoga Falls.
Police called off the chase after determining the sedan was filled with gypsies, not gangsters.
Public hysteria kept feeding the sightings. Authorities were inundated with calls. On any given day, Dillinger might be reported in dozens of cities around the country.
Dillinger's last verified appearance in Ohio was May 3, 1934, when his gang robbed a Fostoria bank.
Two months later, when the well-dressed strangers arrived July 7 at the Falls restaurant, it seemed as if the gang had returned.
``Well, Dillinger was here again over the weekend,'' the Beacon Journal reported nonchalantly.
Timing raises doubt
It's entirely possible, however, that the polite men at the Falls restaurant were simply pulling a fast one on their waitress.
In his 2004 book Public Enemies, author Bryan Burrough reveals that Dillinger moved to Chicago in the first week of July 1934. The gangster attended the World's Fair there on July 10.
How could he have been in Ohio during that narrow time frame? If he left Illinois, it had to be a quick trip.
Two weeks later, John Dillinger, Public Enemy No. 1, was gunned down in Chicago.
Federal agents shot the 31-year-old to death July 22, 1934, as he left the Biograph Theater in Chicago with two female companions: his girlfriend, Polly Hamilton, and Anna Sage, the infamous ``Lady in Red,'' who had tipped off the FBI.
News of the criminal mastermind's demise swept the nation. Gangsters beware: Crime does not pay!
Dillinger was buried in Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis. There is a strange footnote to the story, however.
Indiana farmer John Dillinger Sr., 70, the father of the slain gangster, embarked on a sideshow tour within a couple of weeks of his son's death.
He said he needed the money to pay for his son's funeral expenses and the farm mortgage in Mooresville.
He traveled with a macabre exhibit of Dillinger memorabilia, including machine guns, photographs and the bloodstained shirt his son wore on the night of his death.
The elder Dillinger appeared Aug. 9-12, 1934, at the Summit County Agricultural and Industrial Exposition in Akron.
``I don't know how the Akron people will receive us,'' Dillinger told a reporter in 1934.
``People were right friendly in Indiana, but we're among strangers now.''
More than 200,000 attended the exposition.
The exhibit outraged Akron police and public officials, who accused the Dillinger family of glorifying crime and hurting the morals of youths.
``I don't see anything wrong in what we're doing,'' Dillinger insisted.
Still, he agreed to remove the bloody shirt from the display. That was the last known sighting of John Dillinger in Akron.
The good old days....when we didn't have to worry about the "gangster" strapping on a suicide belt and killing us on buses.
I spotted Hillary the other day. Does that count?
Now, instead of leaving "daring" notes to waitresses, we've got "50-cent" modeling tennis shoes and jeans....
Amazing that it was only a little over a year between his first bank job and his death.
Interesting. Thanks for posting!
I thought Dillinger was gunned down outside a movie house in Springfield, Ohio.
Indianapolis! About a year later.
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