The FBI is worried about conspiracy thoeries and it need look no further than inside its own history.
An unthinkable thing is about to happen.
In June, descendants of the famous gangster John Dillinger filed a request with the Indiana Department of Health to have the folk hero’s body exhumed from his resting place in Indianapolis’ Crown Point Cemetery.
The Indianapolis Star reported a few days ago that the health department granted that request. No date for exhumation has been announced, and since Dillinger was buried under heaps of concrete to reportedly protect him from corpse snatchers, his resurfacing could take a while.
When I first heard the news, I hoped it had something to do with a conspiracy theory that’s floated through the American consciousness for 85 years: that the man buried in that tomb isn’t actually John Dillinger.
And on Thursday, it came out that my wish had been granted.
Carol and Michael Thompson, Dillinger’s niece and nephew, wrote in an affidavit submitted to the department of health that they aren’t sure their uncle is the man FBI agents filled with bullets outside the Biograph Theater on July 22, 1934.
The FBI stands by its story, because of course it does. And sure, the possibility that Dillinger lived past his supposed execution is remote.
But it isn’t impossible. Here are a few reasons why.
The evidence
In the affidavit, the Thompsons go as far as saying they have evidence Dillinger isn’t the man resting in the grave.
They cite autopsy results that prove the person buried in Crown Point didn’t match Dillinger in several key ways. He had different-colored eyes, mismatched fingerprints, and a disparate set of teeth.
The autopsy report itself vanished for 50 years until it was discovered jammed inside a random paper bag at the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office in 1984.
“It is my belief and opinion that it is critical to learn whether Dillinger lived beyond his reported date of death of July 22, 1934,” Michael Thompson wrote in the affidavit obtained by the Indianapolis Star. “If he was not killed on that date, I am interested in discovering what happened to him, where he lived, whether he had children, and whether any such children or grandchildren are living today.”
The plastic surgeon
July 22 was a big night for Melvin Purvis.
He helmed a team of federal and local agents who crouched in the shadows outside the Biograph, waiting for the man they hunted for months to walk into the hot summer night.
A woman named Anna Sage told Purvis that Dillinger was inside watching a showing of “Manhattan Melodrama.”
The FBI’s official story goes like this: Dillinger appeared and the agents gave chase, trapping him in a nearby alley.
Dillinger attempted to draw his own gun, but it was too late. Agents shot him dead and watched as he fell into the street. Onlookers rushed to dip their handkerchiefs and skirt hems in his blood, hoping to escape with a macabre souvenir.
However, press reports from the next day contained a quote from Purvis that added a weird pall of mystery to the whole thing.
“The plastic surgeon did a good job,” Purvis told United Press International. “But I knew Dillinger the minute I saw him.”
Purvis was commenting on a well-known story that Dillinger had sought out plastic surgery to elude capture.
According to the History Channel – which is making a documentary about this whole exhumation process – Dillinger paid “underworld surgeons” $5,000 to perform facial reconstruction on him.
They allegedly sliced off some moles, filled his cleft chin and burned off his fingerprints with chemicals.
But, according to an account published in the Evansville Press on July 23, 1934, morgue attendants and local police who examined the body didn’t see any difference in his appearance.
Reportedly, Dillinger didn’t either. In the wake of the painful procedures, he lashed out at his sketchy surgeons.
“Hell, I don’t look any different than I did!” he allegedly said after staring in a mirror.
If both Dillinger and local police didn’t see a difference in his appearance, why did Purvis? Did the rudimentary black-market surgery work better than initially thought? Was Purvis just adding a little noir-ish twist to the story?
Or did the man outside the Biograph look different for an even simpler reason: because he was a different man? READ MORE: