Ohio angle left out of new Dillinger movie

TOLEDO (AP) — Before becoming Public Enemy No. 1, gangster John Dillinger pulled off his first bank robbery in a sleepy Ohio town.

Police captured him months later when they swarmed his girlfriend’s apartment, but within weeks, he brazenly strolled out of jail after his gang killed a rural sheriff.

His Ohio escapades aren’t part of the new movie “Public Enemies,” which tells of his life on the run after an escape from an Indiana prison and of his death in Chicago. But his rise from small-town bank robber to America’s most wanted man can be traced to a string of holdups during the summer of 1933 and the daring escape that left the Ohio lawman dead.

Even though Dillinger didn’t kill the sheriff, it was the first murder in which he was involved, said John Carnes, curator of collections at the Allen County Museum in Lima.

“After the sheriff was killed,” Carnes said, “everybody knew about him.”

Dillinger, born in Indianapolis, is better remembered for his gang’s crime spree through Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana and for his death outside Chicago’s Biograph Theater, where FBI agents shot him.

The Universal Pictures movie, starring Johnny Depp as Dillinger, focuses on those final months. Dillinger’s time in Ohio often is overlooked because it wasn’t until months later that he became the FBI’s top priority, Carnes said.

“I wasn’t really surprised the movie left it out,” Carnes said. “But it is an important part of the story.”

Universal spokeswoman Jennifer Chamberlain said the film takes place during a specific time in Dillinger’s life and was not intended to be a biopic.

The movie, which opened July 1 and features Christian Bale as FBI man Melvin Purvis, renews the debate about whether Dillinger was a Robin Hood-type hero for those who were angry with banks and had lost their savings during the Great Depression.

“He was, as far as I’m concerned, a criminal and a murderer,” said Sgt. Tim Garlock, of the Allen County sheriff’s office, who began studying Dillinger’s escape in Lima after he started working in the former sheriff’s residence.