The Last Bank Dillinger Robbed

On June thirtieth, nineteen thirty-four, John Dillinger walked into the Merchants National Bank in downtown South Bend. It was the last bank robbery he would ever commit.

By that summer, Dillinger was the most famous criminal in America. The FBI had named him Public Enemy Number One. He had escaped from custody twice, the second time from a supposedly escape-proof Indiana jail using a fake gun carved from wood. He had been featured on the covers of major national magazines. His name sold newspapers.

The South Bend robbery was carried out by Dillinger and members of his gang. They took cash from the vault, used customers and bank employees as shields moving toward their getaway cars, and exchanged gunfire with police and bystanders on the street outside. A South Bend police officer was killed and several bystanders were wounded in the exchange. Several people were wounded. Dillinger and the gang escaped.

Twenty-two days later, on July twenty-second, nineteen thirty-four, Dillinger was shot and killed outside the Biograph Theater in Chicago by FBI agents who had been tipped off that he would be there. He was thirty-one years old.

The Merchants National Bank robbery is documented in South Bend's historical record as the final act of Dillinger's career. The city became, without choosing it, the last stop on a criminal biography that had run through Indiana, Ohio, South Dakota, and Iowa. He was born in Indianapolis. He committed his last robbery in South Bend. Indiana, in that sense, held both ends of the story.