Deviant Criminology
Dr. Richard Weaver Jr., Heather Kenney, and Rachel Czar take listeners on a journey through the world of true crime. With their unique careers in the criminal justice and academic world; they work to provide an entertaining and educational experience for listeners. This podcast examines many areas of true crime including; the formation of laws, cases that defined caselaw, and crimes that impacted the world. Please join us on this journey as we transition from professionals in criminal justice and academia to budding podcasters.
Deviant Criminology
John Dillinger's Descent into Crime
Ever wondered how a small-town boy from Indianapolis ended up as America's most infamous criminal? Join us as we unravel the tumultuous life of John Herbert Dillinger, starting from his early days of petty crime fueled by personal loss and a strict upbringing. You'll learn how Dillinger's failed attempt at reform and a disastrous robbery in Mooresville marked the turning points in his life, transforming him from a troubled youth into a hardened criminal.
Discover the true impact of Dillinger's prison experience, where his fascination with outlaws like Jesse James was nurtured among seasoned inmates. Despite his cooperation with authorities, Dillinger received an unjustly harsh sentence compared to his accomplice, fueling his resentment and criminal evolution. We shed light on how the prison system not only failed to rehabilitate him but also became a breeding ground for further criminal activity, contributing to his infamous reputation during the Great Depression.
Finally, explore the psychological toll of solitary confinement and the broader systemic failures that shaped Dillinger's path. From the Quaker origins of isolation practices to the modern-day repercussions, we examine its detrimental effects on inmates' mental health. Through personal anecdotes and historical context, we offer a comprehensive look at the societal and systemic factors that contributed to Dillinger's legacy, leaving you with a deeper understanding of one of America's most notorious figures.
www.deviantcriminology.com
This is totally one of my favorite topics, so I'm pretty sure we've all experienced that person that's the bully or want to be tough guy. It's not a new thing. That mentality was really common in the early 20th century. We're talking about the era of bank robbers, bootleggers, organized crime. This week's topic really epitomizes that mentality. My great-grandfather once referred to the man we're talking about today as a punk without his gun. So we're talking about a man labeled as public enemy number one by J Edgar Hoover back during the 1930s, and that will be John Herbert Dillinger. I'm Richard.
Speaker 1:I'm Heather Kenney. Okay, so John Dillinger was born on June 22, 1903, so over 100 years ago in Indianapolis, Indiana, which is partially why this is such an interesting topic for us, because we're both from Indiana and both around the Indianapolis area. Now, I didn't hear about many of these stories growing up, but I know that Richard did.
Speaker 2:Being from Indianapolis, like Dillinger is kind of like this folk hero, which I think is kind of an embarrassment really, because he was nothing more than a petty criminal. But one of the things is he's buried at Crown Hill Cemetery and that's one of the biggest cemeteries in Indianapolis. So when we would go visit family members there, we would actually go over to Dillinger's grave and people would leave things there like cash, pennies and things. I guess like an homage to this folk legend in Indianapolis.
Speaker 1:So, as often happened around that time period, dillinger's mother passed away when he was very young. He was being raised in Indianapolis and he was about three years old when his mother passed away and his father had been a grocer and, by all accounts, was a hardworking, very strict person. In one interview with reporters, dillinger said that his father was a firm believer in the idea of spare the rod and spoil the child, so he had that kind of a structure growing up. John Dillinger would later in life, while into his bank robbing era, write to his father saying in part I'm sorry for being a disappointment to him.
Speaker 1:Even in his youth John was a menace in Indianapolis. He oftentimes committed petty crimes and was running with other kids doing vandalism and harassing people, bullying kids that were younger than him. His father, once he had remarried and brought John back into his household, moved them to Morrisville, and when they moved to Morrisville, indiana, it was near his new wife's family. They later had more children. John had half siblings that were part of his family and when they moved to Indianapolis, a big part of that was John's father hoping that John would stay out of trouble and get on a better path for the rest of his life.
Speaker 2:Which is always the best way to try and raise a child Like, oh, everything you know and love, we're going to take you from that because that'll change you. But this failed actually kind of catastrophically. It's amazing how parents seem to think that changing the environment and not just addressing the issues is going to make a difference or fix a child. I know when I was a kid like getting in trouble in the 90s, which is really easy to do that's kind of the thing behind the last key kid concept was I just learned to hide things and do it better, which is kind of what it seems like John learned to do, like he would leave Mooresville and go back to Indianapolis.
Speaker 2:Back in the early 20th century Indianapolis had really invested in like transit in the city. So from Indianapolis to Mooresville, other towns like Greenwood, hendricks County, things like that, there were these really good train systems, kind of like trolley systems that existed that after the 1940s seemed to have disappeared and mass trains in general in Indianapolis kind of disappeared. Mass transit in general in Indianapolis kind of disappeared. You know, I can't imagine how much harder it would have been, as a young man who's already bored in Indianapolis, getting into criminal terminal. Now let's move to Boersville, which is a middle of nowhere. A hundred years later still not a lot to do there.
Speaker 2:So this is a big adjustment for him to have to give up everything, move out there and with his stepmother, who he in the beginning was not very fond of, kind of saw his three half-siblings taking away from his attention and kind of rebelling almost, which I think is something we see in children, especially in mixed homes.
Speaker 2:When a stepmother comes in you have half-siblings there's kind of this almost search for attention and with a strict father there already was kind of a separation in that Even with the move to a new farming community John found ways, like I said, he would sneak back to Indianapolis. In doing research for this I was struck by two things that very much lined up, which first is Dillinger and multiple things that I found researching him Really enjoyed bullying young children, children that were younger than him, smaller than him, which kind of lined up with what my great-grandfather once said, which was that he was just a little punk without his gun. My great-grandfather worked in the car industry in Indianapolis and it was just said in passing once this little they had an interaction with Dillinger, not something that was brought up a lot, so it was just interesting that this is something that stood out to him.
Speaker 1:And I think it's also interesting she brought up the childhood and moving him from one place to another and taking him away from everything that he knew and loved. He was very young when his mother died and I'm sure that during that time period she was probably the primary caregiver, and after she passed away he was three or so years old and then he moved in with his older sister for a while and she took care of him for several years before his father got remarried and at that point his father took him back in. So it was more than just the move from Indianapolis Like he almost lost things when his mother died. He lost it all when he left his sister's house. He lost it all again when his father moved them out to Morrisville. So it was like over and over and over he lost everything.
Speaker 2:And this was a big family too, I think his sister, when he stopped living with her, had seven children of her own at this point. So it was noted that later, when he would go to court or get in trouble, that, like this, big family would show up to support him. But with his consistent rebellion and behaviors and adolescence, john eventually dropped out of school and went to work at a machining company, but this didn't satisfy him, and at some point in his teens Dillinger decides to steal a car from the Quaker church that his family attended and drove it to Indianapolis.
Speaker 1:And I don't know how much you know about Plainfield and the surrounding area, but of course, quakers for those who aren't familiar, it's a religion and with that religious concept they believe in things like equality and peace and simplicity and truth. They were also known to help people who were former slaves and have underground railroad connections and things of that nature because they were very much pacifists connections and things of that nature because they were very much pacifists. And if you look at Plainfield High School, their mascot are the Quakers, because there were so many Quakers in the area. But of course, being sports related, they refer to themselves as the fighting Quakers, which is very ironic because they wouldn't be fighting if they were Quakers.
Speaker 2:But that was the greatest thing growing up in Indianapolis because I went to high school whose mascot was the Giants, so we would play against Plainfield and it was just like the Giants are beating up the Quakers and it just felt so wrong.
Speaker 1:But at the same time it just kind of made sense.
Speaker 2:Dillinger stole the vehicle from his church and drove it to Indianapolis, upon where he parked the vehicle reportedly at the Soldiers and Sailors Monument. This parked the vehicle reportedly at the Soldiers and Sailors Monument. This took some balls because if you're not from Indianapolis, if you've been there, if you're from there, indianapolis is kind of like a target. The center of the city is a circle and at the center of that circle is that Soldiers and Sailors Monument. So for him to park that there, that's the middle of a bustling metropolis at the time. So there would have been cops in the area. People would have been cops in the area, people would have seen him.
Speaker 2:So this is kind of a brash decision, and some people think that this may have been sparked by he was dating a girl at the time whose parents had not approved of them being together. He had sought to marry her. Her father had asked them to wait, let the relationship build a little bit more, and when she sided with her father, he broke it off right around the time that this car theft happened. Of course, being in this big city being very obvious about what he's doing, he does get spotted.
Speaker 1:He took the stolen car there, he parked it and he started walking away and the police spotted him and detained him. The police tried to stop him but during the interaction Dillinger slipped out of his coat and ran away from the police and got away. After the incident and fearing arrest, dillinger decided to join the Navy under a false name and get out of town and hopefully avoid further trouble from further consequences from the trouble he was causing.
Speaker 2:Which this is like a real embarrassment, like being not only just a veteran but a Navy veteran too. It's kind of interesting and sad how many times when you start looking this era during post-World War II and then from the 80s forward, how many people involved in crime at some point were in the military and it's really not all veterans. It's just the fact that so many people serve in the military that you're going to have some bad seeds in there. And of course, at this point Dillinger's 20 years old. It's 1923. He joins the Navy, gets sent to Great Lakes, which at the time I believe 1920s there would have been two naval boot camps at the time. He gets to Great Lakes in probably August. Again, that's kind of not. It's just said that he graduates in October of 1923, which is great because I was lucky enough to go to Great Lakes during the summer and it's beautiful. My dad also went to Great Lakes for boot camp and was there in the winter and Chicago winters are a nightmare. He talked about two feet of snow back in the, I believe, 60s 70s when he went there and I couldn't imagine so, looking at the fact of what happens with Dillinger and his naval career of less than two months. He probably wouldn't have made it through boot camp, but he does make it.
Speaker 2:He gets sent to his duty station, which happens to be the USS Utah, and his job there is basically shoveling coal into the ship's furnaces Back then they were diesel and or coal-fired engines, not as beautiful nuclear as the subs and carriers are today and he lasts less than a month before going AWOL. And once he goes AWOL for one day which is as long as he was gone he comes back, gets detained, gets sent to the brig for 10 days with food, he gets bread and water, that's it. And then they start moving to have him discharged or court-martialed, which that's what a lot of documentaries and stuff call it. That's not what it is in the Navy. It's you would go to captain's mass and then move forward to being discharged. He doesn't even make it that far, he just runs. So he ends up becoming a deserter. He's labeled a deserter by the United States Navy and they put a $50 bounty on his head. But they don't track him, they never go after him and of course he also joined under a false name.
Speaker 1:I think, to pick up on your point about you said so many people who end up having criminal backgrounds also have military service. I think it's also interesting to think about that same time period you're talking about, when people got into trouble. So many of the parents of those children and communities would ship them off to the military, almost like it was their problem, and a lot of people, I think, found themselves, found purpose. Maybe they were bored and now they had structure or the things that they needed to succeed. But of course that's not going to happen for everybody. So if you have a society that's sending huge portions of the population who are troubled to the military, then of course there's going to be people who had military service who end up having trouble later in life which, as you said, it's sad. It's a sad reflection on the military because it's not the vast majority of people in the military.
Speaker 2:And I think it's weird that even from the 1800s to today there are so many people that the military was like the last option. Like I got in trouble, I have to go. Even from the 1800s to today there are so many people that the military was like the last option, like I got in trouble, I have to go. Edgar Allan Poe was the same way. When he kind of became destitute in his younger years he joined the military. He was like this is my way to escape, I've gotten in a little bit of trouble.
Speaker 2:So there seems to be kind of this theme, especially with known pop culture figures, that they had this military career. It just seems that Dillinger just couldn't hack it, which kind of becomes a thing he always wants the easy way out, he always wants the quick fix, the quick buck. And an odd little known fact is even today the United States military if somebody goes AWOL they do put bounties out on somebody's head. Of course it's not like one in dead, but if somebody turns you in and that leads either to your arrest or if you're in another jurisdiction. So if you're on like native land and you go AWOL and they catch you and they turn you in they said his monthly pay in the military was like $18 a month and here you're talking almost three months worth of pay. They're willing to pay to get him back. To throw him out. Just seemed kind of odd.
Speaker 1:I think it goes back to the idea, though, they want to make sure they set an example of people who do those things, and if everybody just leaves and nothing happens to them, then there's no motivation not to leave if you don't want to stick with it.
Speaker 2:But I think at the same time there's also something in there that talks about just that era, because now we think about how hard it is for people to not recognize you in general, because just how many people are there, all social media, phones and everything.
Speaker 2:But back in this time it was really easy just to go one state over and be like, oh, I'm, I'm not, so, and so I'm now bob smith and I do this, and nobody checked that. Like he went in the military serving the government under a fake name and got out. Nobody noticed. Like it's just so weird to think about that time period and for law enforcement, how hard it would have been to track somebody because you've got a picture. But it wasn't like today where you could just put it on the internet, send it to every jurisdiction and be like, hey, this is John Dillinger, this is what we're looking for. You would take a photo in prison and then hopefully may be able to make a copy of it to send to the. It's just I can't imagine, being a former cop, what it would have been like for these and we'll see this later how hard it really was to capture him just because of the lack of ability to share that intelligence.
Speaker 1:Absolutely and to some extent, I think sometimes people didn't care either. Like, if you show up and you do a decent day's work, I'll give you a decent day's pay and we part ways, and that's that. You do a decent day's work, I'll give you a decent day's pay and we part ways, and that's that's it. I think a lot of people didn't care, but they probably should have with him, given his history and given what he ends up doing later in life.
Speaker 2:Yes. So after the Navy attempt that failed horribly, he went back to Indianapolis, and after his return to Indiana from the Navy he met Beryl Ethel Hovias, which I'm probably not saying that name right, but B-E-R-Y-L, you figure out how to pronounce it. I'm going with Beryl. She was 17 years old when they met and they were married on April 12th of 1924. Their marriage would be short, though, as his criminal behavior would lead to trouble.
Speaker 1:So at some point he runs into and meets another person named Ed Singleton, and Ed had already had problems with the law he already had prior criminal history and the two of them start hanging out together, which was not a good combination. So while they're hanging out in Indianapolis they come up with the plan that they're going to rob somebody in Mooresville, and it's a man by the name of Frank Morgan who owned a grocery store. And you would think that they would pick somebody who didn't know them. But Frank Morgan actually knew Dillinger and his father. They knew again through his father that Frank was known to carry money from the day sales from the grocery store on his person when he went home after he closed up the shop. So they knew that he would most likely have a lot of cash on him.
Speaker 2:Now, before we go into this utter shitshow of a failed robbery, it really needs to be pointed out that Mooresville is a small town even today, so in the 1920s this is a very close-knit community and so people in the area knew each other and it stated Frank Morgan, who's their target, is friends with Dillinger's dad and knows Dillinger himself. This just seems to be the dumbest group of supposed genius criminals I've ever heard of in my life. But it's not uncommon. Like you see a lot of thieves. Like it seems they either target people they know or in the area that they reside. So you see that, with a lot of robbers, like we talked about that, in modern days, with like Facebook, like don't put when you're going to be out of town because you're most likely to be robbed by somebody you know or somebody that knows your routine, and that is exactly the situation everybody knew. Frank knew he ran the grocery store and just at some point dillinger had heard from his father that he has this pretend, this proclivity to carry the money home with him at night.
Speaker 1:So which, funny enough, we were talking about50. The amount that they end up stealing from him was approximately $50. And they said that was worth about $917 in 2024 money. So $50 was a good chunk of change back then.
Speaker 1:And as part of their again genius plan, as you were noting, they decide that when they're going to do this robbery, that they're going to have Dillinger, who knows Frank, be the one to confront Frank, and that Ed is going to be the getaway driver.
Speaker 1:So not only are they robbing somebody that they know, the person who knows him the best is the one who's going to go make contact, as if you know Frank's not going to say hey, you know, it was John Dillinger who came and robbed me. So on September the 6th, 1924, they set their plan in motion and Dillinger lays in wait waiting for Frank along the route that he goes home and he's armed with a 32 caliber pistol and a heavy bolt that's wrapped up in a handkerchief. And as Frank passes, dillinger comes up behind Frank and he hits him in the head with that wrapped up bolt in the handkerchief and this reportedly knocks Frank to his knees, but it doesn't quite knock him out. So Dillinger hits him again, but still Frank is fighting and putting up a struggle, not wanting to give up his money.
Speaker 2:This is old school hardcore people Like and I'd be interested. I didn't see a lot about Frank Morgan but for that time period if Frank Morgan may have been like a World War II veteran, a World War I veteran or something. Because this guy's hardcore like you, take two hits and these. This isn't a small bolt Like. This is an industrial size bolt wrapped in a handkerchief. He's hitting the head not once, twice, gets knocked to the ground, screams for help but continues to fight. That is seriously impressive. This guy needs a t-shirt nowadays. So after being hit twice, Frank starts to scream for help. Dillinger pulls out the .32 and attempts to point it at Frank. Frank knocks the gun away and a struggle
Speaker 2:ensues. And this is where kind of the lore and different accounts start to take place. So one of the stories I read was that at some point a shot is fired and neighbors start to come out of their houses. They're turning their lights on in their homes and Dillinger gets spooked. He flees to head towards the getaway vehicle. And this story is that when he gets there, ed had kind of gotten cold feet after hearing the shot and the screams and he had already left. So Dillinger has to hightail it on foot, gets out of there and somehow ends up back in Indianapolis. But there's also another story or another way that it was told.
Speaker 1:And that was that, as the two criminals were leaving, a minister recognized the two men and reported them to police, and then they were arrested the next day, because at that point the police knew exactly who they were looking for.
Speaker 2:So here's where the legal side of this particular case gets a little messed up. We start with the case of Ed Singleton, because Ed had legal counsel and so him and John Dillinger went in front of the same judge on the same day for their initial hearing. Ed pleads not guilty, has a lawyer. So later on it goes to court, goes to trial, he's found guilty. At that point he's facing two to 14 years. He's sentenced, serves two years.
Speaker 2:Now Dillinger, on the other hand, he doesn't have a lawyer and his father kind of talks him in to confessing. He says if you confess and plead guilty, hopefully the court will have leniency on you. So, believing in his father, hoping this is the right thing, he takes the plea deal, confesses and no, the court does not believe in leniency in this situation. So Dillinger is sentenced to 10 to 20 years in prison, which again this kind of baffles me. You have one person who's admitting they're confessing to the crime. They admit their guilt, they plea and they get slammed with this 10 to 20 years. And then the guy who was the getaway driver takes it all the way to trial, found guilty two years. Now I understand that the people in Mooresville, like they all, knew each other as a close-knit community and there's a potential that they were trying to send a message through this, but I don't understand it.
Speaker 1:And I think you get that with a lot of cases. There's a lot of things that you look at and you say you know the prosecution won when they should have lost and they lost when they should have won. And this is one of those cases where it's kind of interesting when you look at it, because after Dillinger pled guilty, he actually turned and testified against Singleton. So in most cases you hear about, because he testified against his co-conspirator, he would have gotten some type of consideration, some type of a lesser sentence because he was testifying against his co-defendant. Same idea Usually, when you plead guilty, there's some type of consideration, some type of a lesser sentence because he was testifying against his co -defendant. Same idea Usually, when you plead guilty, there's some type of consideration because you are admitting what you did was wrong. There's that idea of if you admit you did something wrong, you say you're sorry. You can then do something to change your actions and have a better life after that, whereas if you denied you did anything, you're probably not going to change, you're probably not going to be sorry for it if you say you never did it. So it's definitely interesting.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of different factors that could go into it Just like you were saying. It could be that it was a close-knit community and they wanted to send a strong message that if you lay a hand on somebody there's going to be a problem, whereas with Ed, he was just driving the vehicle. He would have had a lot more deniability in what happened. He could have said I was just driving the car, I didn't think he was going to actually hurt him. I thought he was just going to say give me the money or push him and try to grab it and run away, and he gives him a lot more angles to try to minimize his own conduct and his own culpability in that crime.
Speaker 1:I also saw, though, that there was a change of venue for Singleton, so maybe that was part of it.
Speaker 1:I don't know if, come sentencing, if he actually was in front of the same judge or not.
Speaker 1:A lot of times, change of venues are just for the trial, just so you get a different jury on, so that people don't know who the defendant is, especially back then Because, as you were noting, morrisville was a close-knit community. Everybody knew everybody, so there might have been a feeling that Ed would have gotten a short end of the stick if he was tried in Morrisville because everybody already knew him, everybody already knew he was guilty and they might not have listened to the actual evidence of the case. So there's a lot of different factors at play there and a lot of moving parts, but it is very interesting that Dillinger received such a severe sentence after he pled guilty and he testified against his co-conspirator and his co-conspirator ended up getting two years and walking out the door which and that's what just throws me off, because being a police officer, like one of the things that you try to do with confessions and stuff is the understanding that if you cooperate, like you're gonna get something out of this.
Speaker 2:Not only do you cooperate, this father's a religious person who's kind of standing up for him in the community, like, and they just hammered him and I do. I didn't think about the change of venue, like I know that's something that even modern days and the media back then the press would have been all over this in Mooresville. So I guess that does make a little bit more sense thinking of it that way that hopefully they should have done that with Dillinger as well, but I guess that just wasn't taken into account, since he pled, it just stayed there and it just. That's just still flabbergasts me to a point is that this one singular event is the leading cause of Dillinger's hatred for the government and his nonconformity once he would get out of prison. So he ended up being sentenced to 10 to 20 years. He would spend the next nine and a half years in prison, and this had a very profound impact on Dillinger. Not only did this make him hateful and untrusting of the criminal justice system, but prison would become sort of a criminal college for him.
Speaker 1:And at one point a quote is attributed to him where he said I will be the meatiest bastard you ever saw when I get out of here. And it seems like that's exactly what he tried to do. And when he was in prison he didn't do the type of activities that would have bonded him with other inmates and instead he focused on his job in the prison shirt factory. But he met many other individuals that he would associate with in future crime sprees and got ideas from them about how to commit crimes better.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and one thing that's very interesting is he wasn't very social in prison. That was really documented. But anybody that met him across his lifespan there seemed to almost be this Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde thing. Like everybody and the things that I've seen about him and news stories and interviews that people did with family friends Back during his time, he was very gentlemanlike, like he was very respectful of women. He didn't want to hurt women. He likes children. He was very cordial and we'll see later on that. I mean even sheriff's deputies and prosecutors that would come in contact with him would joke with him and laugh and smile because he just had this air about him.
Speaker 2:But it really seemed like this experience in prison created that colder side that was already there in childhood. He's already committing petty larceny as a child early in his life. We're seeing vandalism, we're seeing violence on younger people, but now he's in prison with these hardcore criminals that now take that little bit of criminal behavior and turn it into an art form. So in prison he would find himself in the company of some very famous bank robbers at the time and thieves, and this would change the course of modern history. He learned from them some of the developing tactics with cars that had come in to style that weren't there when he went in earlier guns that were being developed at the time. They would teach him new tactics that were being used in robbing banks. New tactics were being used in robbing banks.
Speaker 2:So, while in prison, another thing that would happen would be the catastrophic events known as Black Tuesday, which occurred on October 29th 1929, which is also known as the crash of Wall Street, and this is when the stock markets just completely failed and led to the Great Depression, which lasted into the early 1940s. This period led to food shortages, severe unemployment and deflation across the world, and one of the things that would later lead into Dillinger's popularity was one of the things that people blamed at this time period for this was the banks themselves. So there are researchers that believe that it was kind of this dual hatred of of the banks and the rich that were still partially making money off of this, but also the government blaming them for what had happened, that kind of helped folk legends like Dillinger develop.
Speaker 1:That definitely makes sense, because you look at a story like this and you think why would anybody be interested in him or think of him as a good guy? And I think that there's several references where they talk about him being Robin Hood-esque and when you look at it, there's really nothing in here that looks like a Robin Hood attitude. It's not like he's robbing these banks and buying a bunch of food and donating it to a food pantry or delivering money to common people. He's just out for himself.
Speaker 2:Part of that in itself comes from pop culture of the time period and the dime store novels, because he was really infatuated with Jesse James, which was, again, not a good person. This was a criminal. He was a Confederate soldier turned outlaw, and Dillinger wanted to kind of mimic that Billy the Kid as well. He saw Billy the Kid who even back in the dime store novels as well, was seen as kind of this very suave, very romanticized figure that just had this bad side to him. But Dillinger wanted that for himself and started to model himself on that in his 20s, leading into this prison term and everything else.
Speaker 2:So not only does he idolize these very romanticized, officialized, these dime store novels, definitely way over portrayed and a lot of it was fiction. But he wants to be that. And now he's in prison with these actual hardcore criminals and gangsters. So his fantasy world and his reality are now melding into one and they're going to give him the tools to take out this revenge he has. And another event that occurred during this time while he was in prison was that he divorced from beryl. There appears to have been no bad blood about this and in fact years later Beryl would remarry. And when he was released, dillinger supposedly went to see her.
Speaker 1:It was cordial, but she asked him to leave and he didn't come back in a prison. After a petition was signed by 188 people, which included Frank Morgan, who was his victim that he had beat up and tried to rob, dillinger was paroled and utilized his new acquired knowledge from prison and skills to return to his life of crime.
Speaker 2:I think it says a lot that Frank Morgan even signed this petition too, because I think everybody saw even though Dillinger in my knowledge that time period, twenties would have been seen as a child. But even at this time, like his father, frank Morgan, the local clergy of Mooresville and the Quaker church all came forward and said you know, he was a young man when he committed these crimes. He's now spent almost 10 years of his life in prison. He deserves a second chance. Like this is not being reformative at all.
Speaker 2:And there is something to be said about the story of Dillinger that is still relevant today in the prison system, and that's that a majority of our criminal justice system is punitive and it's not rehabilitative at all. There's still a point of view or opinion that prison is more of an education for criminals, like it is criminal college. You go in, you talk to each other, you share things on the yard tactics. I know from my own experiences that some of the things that were taught were like how to get out of tasers. So if you're hit with a taser, how to barrel, roll to get out of it, or tactics to not get caught if you're packaging drugs and things like that.
Speaker 2:And it's still like that, instead of being a system, and maybe for Dillinger, if it had been a system, that A treated him justly in the beginning, but B had taught him some type of skills, had taught him things besides working in this shirt factory of skills, had taught him things besides working in this shirt factory, and I'm sure that there was a way the prisons were making money off of that and they weren't seeing any money of that. So that's a whole other, separate story of of labor and the jail system, but just the fact that it's just punish you're working. You're here not learning new skills that are going to help you when you get out. But here are all these other people around me that hate this system as well. How can we benefit each other, learn from each other and build this new career that he'd have afterward and later these people would go on to actually be people that he would commit crimes with and lead to bigger criminal problems for law enforcement and the justice system.
Speaker 1:Bringing up prisons and things of that nature. At one point in time, when America first started having prisons, they did solitary confinement for everyone and the idea was, if you were alone with your thoughts and didn't see anybody else, that you would have time to reflect on what you had done, have some type of a connection to God and be set back on the right path, Because alone, without distraction, you could really think about what you needed to think about and focus in and hear the voice of God and find your true path. But unfortunately, when they first had those experiments with the whole penitentiary, a lot of those people ended up having severe mental problems because we are social creatures and you try to lock somebody alone in a cell where they see no, one day in and day out, week after week, month after month. Eventually people lose their mind and they figured out that that was what was happening.
Speaker 2:Well, and that was a thing even into the 1980s. We started moving away from that because we learned like not only the psychological effects of being closed in with your own thoughts and you start not being able to hear, the same Facial recognition actually decreases in people. You lose the ability to handle bright lights. There's a really good interview with an individual named Damien Echols who was one of the West Memphis Three who was actually spent many years in solitary and he talks about when he left like there were faces he couldn't recognize anymore that bright light. The first time he saw the sun it physically hurt him and hurt his eyes.
Speaker 2:And now everybody kind of knows these things about solitary confinement and the horrors of it. In New York they got rid of solitary confinement in their criminal code. They can't use it anymore, but now they refer to it as punitive segregation as an alternative to being in general population. It's just solitary confinement. So a lot of jurisdictions have come up with catchy, cute names like protective custody instead of solitary. But we know the damaging effects that solitary confinement, being put in a small room, can have.
Speaker 1:Solitary confinement was started by Quakers. Put in a small room can have. Solitary confinement was started by Quakers. They thought that by removing all of the outside influences of the world, you would have quiet time to think about and connect with God and be able to find the path that you were supposed to be taking, and they also thought that confinement as a punishment was far better than other punishments that had been used in the past, just like we have the no cruel or unusual punishment now.
Speaker 1:There were many things that used to happen to people prior to imprisonment that were frankly horrible, and sometimes those things would include things like fines and forced labor we talk about, like the stockades and things where people were put on public display, public shaming, flogging. Sometimes people would be maimed or even killed as punishments for their crimes, and it also leads to a difficult choice of evils. Right, because if you have a prison where you put everybody in together, you have things like Dillinger's story, where you meet better, stronger, more educated criminals and can refine your craft of being a criminal. But on the flip side, if you keep them all separate, then they go insane and you're still in a spot where there's a problem. So it kind of makes it very difficult to figure out what we really should as a society do with people, because you don't want somebody to further their criminal enterprises and careers by meeting people. But it's also difficult to figure out how to prevent that.
Speaker 2:And I think with solitary, like some of the things that have been done, and I think something that would have helped John here is, if you're going to have somebody in prison, put social workers with them, where they have somebody to talk to like could help him with that early childhood trauma of the loss of his mother, of criminals or maybe criminals who were also getting help, instead of this building nine and a half year hatred that just breeds and breeds with prison guards that probably were not very friendly to them and this sweatshop that he had to work in during the day. So I think seeing all that stuff and knowing what he went through there, the people he worked with, that he spent every day of his life for nine and a half years with, very much explains how, once he gets out very quickly, he goes into this very violent and aggressive life of crime. So next episode we will get into the post-prison bank robbing era and death of John Dillinger.
