Digging Up Dillinger

7: The Fillmore Report Part 5: The Missing Tooth

John Dillinger's missing tooth became an intriguing aspect of his legend. During his criminal career in the early 1930s, Dillinger's missing front tooth became a distinctive feature that often helped authorities and the public identify him. According to reports, he lost this tooth during a confrontation with police or during a scuffle in prison, depending on the source.

This missing tooth added to his image as a daring and defiant figure, emphasizing his run-ins with the law and his ability to evade capture. It also contributed to the folklore surrounding Dillinger, as it was a detail that people remembered and associated with his outlaw persona

Duration:: 52m
Broadcast on:: 15 Jul 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

(upbeat music) - Infamous Indie presents The Digging Up Dillardier Project. Featuring the Texas crime travelers and Travis Thompson. I'm your host, Jill Maloney. In the annals of American crime, few figures loom as large as John Dillardier. A mastermind of bank heists, his name became synonymous with brazen robberies and daring escapes. Two questions of whether he escaped an FBI ambush and the whereabouts of his buried loot persevere. History offers one account, but there are whispers that tell us many more. Join us as we go Digging Up Dillardier. Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Digging Up Dillardier presented by Infamous Indie with the Texas crime travelers and Travis Thompson. No relation to the Thompson submission. Todd Hiles, Stuart Fillmore, Travis Thompson and me, Joe Malillo, your host. Welcome back guys, what's up? Another episode. - Hey, what is happening? - Hey, welcome everyone, love to be here. - We are drinking, having a good old time. We were just saying John Dillardier probably like us with- - I think he'd like hanging out with us. I really do. - I mean- - I think we would like hanging out with him. So let me tell us- - That's probably very true, Travis. - Hey, before you can say that, I just thought of something. In the last episode, you said that you shot Dillinger's Thompson machine gun. - Yes. - Travis, did you get to shoot it too? - I did not. I was back in Morzo when he went north to film. - Yeah. - The FBI took all the credit, didn't they? - Yeah. - Yeah, they just pushed the small law enforcement out of the way and they actually got to do it. - That's how it works, man. - He probably said, "Hey, let's do this after Travis leaves. That way we can shoot it more." - I mean, I had heard rumors about that, but I didn't wanna bring it up. - So, well, to go ahead and continue this theme a little further, not only did I get to continue to Lake County and shoot the machine gun, from there, I got to go up to Little Bohemia in Wisconsin to film some more up there. And while we're there, I forget what they call it, but so, Joe, you may know this, on a TV show, you know, when it goes to commercial, during the series of commercials, there's a little piece in there that's maybe about, maybe 30 seconds long, not even maybe that long, that they show that's from the show, that's just a little teaser that people, what it does, it hooks people into thinking, oh, the show's back on, and so they stay on, and then maybe they'll just stay with the commercials that continue. So, they filmed two or three of these in the bar in Little Bohemia, and as I've maybe mentioned before, you know, I hung out there quite extensively when I was there, and they came up with a bar you hung out at. - Yes, in Little Bohemia, and this is where they filmed it. - It's a historic bar, it was for research, Todd, take it easy. - So, and Todd, I got left out of this too, so. - Yeah, absolutely. - Yeah, I believe it. - So, well, I was not in this, I just got to watch it, but, so it's Josh Gates, and he's at the bar, and he's talking to the bartender, and Josh says, "Hey, I want to order what Dillinger had." What the Dillinger order when he was here, and the bartender says, "Oh, it was the ribeye steak." And Josh says, "Well, how did he have it prepared?" You know, and was it, you know, well done, medium, rare, and the guy goes, "Bloody as hell." So. (laughing) So, I thought that was the funniest little segment that they filmed, but that did not end up making it on the show. It was, you know, but I thought that that little line, "Bloody," and I think the bartender just came up with that on his own, and I think even Josh was stunned at how well that was, but then they ended up not using it. So, anyway. - The cutting room floor is filled with great moments. Yeah, exactly. - Yeah. Again, this is a good point. Why we're doing this podcast is because they don't make good decisions in Hollywood sometimes when it comes to this kind of story. So, we're gonna talk about it, and we're gonna get a little bloody. We're gonna get bloody as hell. - Bloody as hell. (laughing) - On this, I mean, Stuart might get a little tuned up by the time we're done with this, with all those whiskey and drinks. - Well, yeah, here we go. Cheers. - Well, Stuart. - Well, Stuart, remember when we were in Crown Point, and we were all in the porch, and they were filming us, but we were just sitting there telling Joe with us, with Josh Gates, and my father, Mike Thompson, and none of that made it at all. - Yeah. - None of it. And they filmed it. - Yeah. - Yeah, they did, yeah. - And to be clear, Stuart, that's a tease, right, amid commercial tease. I'm assuming that's what you're talking about, where it kind of gives you the impression of your kind of comeback to the show, and then it cuts out to more commercials. - Exactly, yeah. - Yeah, yeah. - That may have been what they called it, Joe, but I was thinking there was some little, like quick, catchy little name for it. Oh, we got to film the-- - There's also a bumper. There's also something called a bumper. - Okay. - That sounds more like it, what they called it. I just don't remember. - Yeah. - Bumpers are more like five seconds. They're like literally-- - Oh, yeah, yeah. - They're like station identifiers right before, and usually on what you'll notice on like TLC or Discovery or History Channel or Investigation Discovery, you'll see like quick informational advertisements for like shows that are coming up on History Channel that are like new or different. They'll put those right before they go back to the show that you're watching on the show. - Yeah, right, yeah. - But cool, what an experience, Stuart. - Oh, it was a blast, and like I said, I was lucky enough to get on two more of those, two more episodes of that show not related to Dillinger, but man, so yeah, the FBI kind of came in and pushed Travis and Mike to the side, and then I got all the glory. - Yeah, they didn't want us hanging around them more. We made Stuart look bad, so they're like, "Hey, you got to stay back." (laughing) - Mr. Hollywood. - Yeah, yeah. - Well, they're afraid, you know, if the Dillinger blood and the FBI agent went to Little Bohemia, we might have a reenactment or something, just, you know, so. (laughing) - Yeah, and then Stuart would be shooting innocent people. Anyway. - 'Cause that's what the FBI did, that's what they did. - They did it, man, that's what the FBI did. They literally killed an innocent person. - It literally killed an innocent civilian, yep. - And they would just kill the wrong one in 1934 to buy grass. - And that's exactly, which again, I think is one of those things that in context can maybe justify or explain why, you know, if there was an imposter. - Yeah, they were just like, "Don't!" Well, we did it again. - Oh my God, we already killed a civilian once. We can't do it again. - Well, what about, when he's coming out of the biograph, you know, they were supposed to light a cigar. We talked about this, and nobody lived a cigar, so like. - Yeah, you know, I don't know if that is maybe just urban legend about the lit cigar. There are very detailed reports about, you know, the takedown at the biograph theater. And I'm not sure I ever really remember seeing anything in the agents themselves that wrote the reports, anything about a lit cigar. Maybe there was, I just don't remember. But the thing that jumps out at me is that no one, no one had actually seen Dillinger in person. They did not know what this guy looked like. And so, you know, they were going on the lady in the orange dress, which the orange dress supposedly looked red in the lights. So how are you sure that this is the woman? The only person that saw Anna Sage prior to this happening was Melvin Purvis. Melvin Purvis was not one of the agents that actually shot Dillinger. So, you know, again, there's just a lot of questions. - Dude, like that way's so heavy with me. That like nobody knew what this dude looks like. It's so hard to imagine that in our world now. How could you not know what someone looks like now? Because of obviously technology and the way things work out. - Well, so to me it's crazy. - There weren't drivers license pictures. - There weren't drivers license photos now. Okay, so like earlier, I think in the last episode, we showed the quick little video of Dillinger that behind bars in Tucson, Arizona, before he was transported to Lake County. Now, you know, there were newsreels. So Dillinger had actually been photographed in newsreels. And, you know, the famous photo at the Crown Point Jail where he's, you know, he's hanging his hand over the sheriff, you know, doing that, you know. So those were available, but no one had ever, no one on that Dillinger squad had seen Dillinger in person. No one knew what this guy looked like. And that, you know, he had had the plastic surgery. He had dyed his hair black, had the mustache. So, you know, I don't know, again, I, man, if I could time travel and go back and, you know, and be there, I would do it in a heartbeat to see what these guys would've seen when Dillinger came out of that border. - If we're gonna do the time travel discussion, I'm gonna guess right now that that's not the first place you would go, you would probably go to JFK's assassination. Is that right? - Yeah, I would, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, me too. - Yeah. - Guys, this is, this is, this is fun. We're just having fun here. If you like listening, like, subscribe, comment, and share, we're looking for everybody to get involved here. We want, we want your opinions. We love the discussion. And ultimately, we're gonna find something, whether it's the truth or confirmation of whatever it used to be. But we're gonna keep going on what we've been doing the last couple of episodes, I think four episodes now. We're gonna go back to the Fillmore Report and we're gonna take a look again. And the first thing is the missing tooth. We're gonna go, we're gonna go over the missing tooth for John Dillinger. I'm gonna share the screen. If you're following along on YouTube, this is a good moment. You could really see it here. The missing tooth, a freeze frame from when he was captured after Phoenix and was right before Crown Point. You gotta put away from Crown Point. So you can see, he's like laughing. And what's crazy, we talked about this video too, is that what is he laughing at? So hard, 'cause it was a really big smile. So that's why you can see the missing tooth. - Yeah, if you actually see this in video, clearly someone says something to him and it just cracks him up. And this is the, I mean, he gives this big grin and you could tell that everybody there thought this was hilarious, whatever it was. And I just wish there were audio of it. It would be fantastic to hear. - When Dillinger was initially incarcerated at Crown Point, Indiana Jail, I'm reading now, by the way, right from the report. In January 1934, he was filmed and photographed by reporters while standing with the district attorney, Robert Estill, and Sheriff Lillian Holly. In one particular moment, he's filmed having this hearty laugh and doing so, his upper teeth were clearly visible and the smile revealed him to have either a missing or partially missing upper right canine tooth. The following photos were taken from the film footage. - Yes, it definitely doesn't look like a piece of spinach. (laughing) There's reference in the FBI Dillinger file to Dillinger having a gold tooth. However, there is no additional confirmation or reference to the gold tooth. The dental records of Dillinger were available for both the US Navy and the Indiana prison records. Those records show that Dillinger had an additional missing tooth as well, although they cannot be seen in available photos or film, unlike other identifying factors that can change post-mortem, like the previously described, clouding in the eyeballs, the teeth do not change after death. The forensic identification standards of the day, dental identification would have been second, only to fingerprints in scientific priority and certainty. Despite its potential significance for identification, the official autopsy on Dillinger completely omitted the description of the teeth. And finally, other than the mention of a possible gold tooth, there is no documented effort in the FBI files to describe Dillinger's dental condition. Would you say that they omitted it on purpose? - Possibly. You know, I'm not willing to necessarily rule that out, but it is strange that there wasn't a description of the teeth. The FBI, I think at that point, was so certain that they had Dillinger through the fingerprint of identification. That was the, fingerprints were the, that was the DNA of the day, that was the most definitive means of identification. They claimed very, very quickly after the biograph shooting that, you know, the Fingerprints matched. It was a positive identification. It was Dillinger, and so maybe I don't know if Dr. Kearns was aware of that. If he had already heard that, maybe I know the bureau was present at the autopsy, and so Kearns must have been aware of that. And so I think something that, you know, examining the teeth and giving a description of the teeth for identification purposes, maybe he just decided, you know, these, these, these boys already got, got him identified to the fingerprints. I'm not going to, I'm not going to bother with the teeth. That's, that's, could be a very reasonable and plausible explanation for why. Doesn't that seem, go ahead, Todd. It looks like I was going to say, you know, it's been 90 years later in the internet, and we talked about this, maybe on the last podcast. But when you look at it, he says, as he's dying, you got me boys. Isn't that good enough right there that I was Dillinger? He whispered it. He said, you got me, boys. Yep, case closed. Well, and I think, I think one of the things, Todd, that we discussed in that conversation was that Dillinger had taken a 45 round to the, the sixth cervical vertebra that deflected up and went straight up his spinal cord and exited out his, just below his right eye. He was still, the heart was still beating when he hit the ground, but I doubt he was conscious. But I think he has the most quotes for last words said, because I think another one said, didn't he say like, "Bye, by birdie?" "Bye, by birdie." I think he sang a little song. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You got me G-men stuff like that. Right, yeah. For those listening, they're kidding. We don't know what he said. There's conflicting reports. If you miss a lesson, yeah, but, yeah, yeah. I don't think if you, you, you have severed your spinal cord at the bottom of your brain cell, like I, the brain stem, I doubt you're saying anything. Right. Do, is there a possibility that Dr. Kearns, cause, cause we talked about this too, we don't feel as if Dr. Kearns was a nefarious character. We don't feel that he was, somebody who was doing a disservice in order to help the FBI. We think he was just doing his job, but why would he miss this if he was a pro? Why would he miss that, especially if it was the second way of identifying a body? Yeah, again, my thought is that he was aware that, that the body had already been identified to the fingerprints. And so, I don't know, it's the most egregious heat wave in Chicago history that night. And let's just get this, let's get this damn thing over with. Yeah, he wants to get home. Or was he pressured? Exactly. It's like what we talked about before, Stuart. We had brought up the JFK case. That stuff came out recently that there was people that pressured the medical examiner. Yep. Absolutely. Yep. There was pressure brought against, uh, certainly one of the doctors that was, uh, president at Parkland, uh, and I, I, I know that for a fact. So what absolutely can happen. I mean, would Hoover, I mean, obviously would have been on the phone with purpose there in this. And we, we have no idea what orders, marching orders was given. I would assume Hoover would want to know 100% in a quick fashion. That was John. Oh, oh man. Big time. Uh, I promise you, one of the first orders of the day was to get his fingerprints. And, and, and again, that's something to me that is really, um, interesting. And I think I pointed out somewhere in the report, probably not right here, but, um, is that. There's not a lot of detail as to who actually did the fingerprint examination. That made the positive identification. It's just, it's just, you know, put out to the world that he's been identified. The, the fingerprints match. Boom. Case closed. But there is not a specific report that details who did it. Uh, what the specific points of identification were, and we're going to get further into this in the fingerprints because this is another area that's questionable. We mean, we might need two hours for the fingerprints for you, Stuart. Yeah, exactly. But, um, but, but, yeah, so, yeah, you're exactly right, Travis. Uh, I promise you the first order business from Hoover would have been to get those fingerprints. This is, this is good stuff. This is good questions. I'm really. And Melvin Purvis was. He was the boss up in Chicago, right? So yes, Melvin Purvis was what, uh, in the, in the FBI, we call them. SACs taught in the Secret Service. You guys call them SACs, but it's the special agent in charge of that field office. And, um, so Melvin Purvis was in charge of that field office. Now, because he had, um, he was effectively being in Chicago. Um, so much of the Dillinger case was, was worked out of Chicago. Um, and it was so much media attention on the Dillinger case. Uh, Melvin Purvis actually started getting more publicity than Jager Hoover did. And, uh, I think, uh, you know, at some point, a lot of people in the public thought that Melvin Purvis was the director of the FBI rather than Jager Hoover. Well, we can't have that. Yep. So it's in, it's in Jager Hoover off. Yeah. So effectively Hoover, uh, without demoting, uh, purvis per se. In other words, he purvis stayed on as, as the SAC or the special agent in charge. But Hoover moved in a guy named Sam Cowley, who was, uh, I think he held the, the title of inspector at the time. Um, and, and effectively, Cowley moves into Chicago and he is Hoover's eyes and ears. And, and effectively has say over whatever happens in Chicago. So, um, I guess on paper, Purvis wasn't demoted, but effectively he was because of the presence of Cowley. And, you know, Cowley will end up later on being killed in a gunfight against baby faced Nelson. Um, but, but Purvis eventually quits the FBI, right? He does. Yeah. He, uh, I think in California. So this all happened in 1934. I want to say Purvis actually quits the FBI in 1935. Um, and then he was from South Carolina, I think maybe a lawyer from there. I don't know what he did in the intervening years, but, you know, Purvis ends up committing suicide in 1960. And it's some reports. I know the Dillinger 73 movie, uh, you know, the end of it says that Purvis killed himself with the same gun that he killed Dillinger with. Well, that's actually false because, uh, Purvis was not one of the, the official shooters. And, um, I'm not sure it's actually clear what, what gun Purvis killed himself with. And believe it or not, on that, there's a few questions about, about that because, um, I want to say some issues came out about that might have been around the time that the guy from 1950 in 1959 comes forward and says, Hey, I'm Dillinger. You didn't get me, uh, you know, in Purvis, the next year commit suicide. There's some, some issues or connections with that. Do you hear some? We hear some really, really, I got a couple of things. One, you know, Purvis's son still alive. All still purpose. He's 80 something years old. Two, the gun that known Purvis committed suicide with the owner of the Dillinger Museum in Nashville, Indiana killed himself with the exact same gun in the museum. I, I never knew that Travis. Are you serious? Yeah. Wow. The owner of the museum killed himself with the gun that Purvis killed himself with in the museum. Is that what you're saying? Remind me of his name, the owner. Um, I'd have to hold on me so I'm going to bring it up because I forget his name. I could get it in a multiple choice question. Um, well, let me just add this too. I think Purvis goes up to California and helps out technical stuff on movies in Hollywood about FBI. And he starts the Junior G-Man Club. And at one point he has like 260,000 kids in his G-Man Junior Club. Yeah. And yeah, all this stuff, he, you know, kind of upends Hoover, you know, and, and so Hoover, Hoover sees Purvis as competition man because, you know, the public sees Purvis as the man that got Dillinger, not Hoover. And his name is Joe Pinkston. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow. I never knew that, man. That is breaking news here on the digging up Dillinger podcast. Wow. Don't be throwing around breaking news. Stuart, you're not allowed. Yeah. That's right. I'm not the journalist here. Sorry. No, I'll tell you. First of all, breaking news. This is another sidebar, but breaking news is the dumbest thing I think that news does. Cause it's breaking. It doesn't, it's just as a, it's a word to catch your attention. Yes. Yep. It can be breaking really in this podcast unless we go out and do something and then it's, it's happening. But yeah, yeah. That's really interesting, Travis. Good. Good job, man. That's, yeah. Wow. I didn't know that one. Yeah. Clear the airways. Clear the airways. And told us that. Well, there's, there's, I don't know if this is true, but I've always heard it that he did it at the foot of Dillinger's wax figure. I don't know if that's true. I don't know if that's true. Creepy as well. Get out dude. That's really. Wow. Is he looking at it? I mean, I've always heard that. I have always heard that. That's how it went down, but I mean, again, you know, I was a little kid. So I, where's the gun today? I'm not sure where that gun is. So I think the, the entire contents of that museum, didn't they end up with that, that the south shore Indiana thing or place or whatever? Yeah. Yep. South shore visitors bureau. Yeah. It's in Hammond, Indiana. Yep. They had a little Dillinger museum up there for a while. Yeah. I think that's one of our major problems is not problems, but challenges is we're, we're have to track down a lot of this to a lot of these artifacts over time. We start, we start losing them. And Travis, you know that too, from just, you know, obviously being a part of the family and being a part of these museums, they close, some of them close down like Crown Point. That one's done. Right? Yeah. Well, that was, that, that, that actually was, that was the same thing. That's where that South shore thing started was at the Crown Point and there was some lawsuit issues that, you know, I guess we won't get into, but, you know, yeah, but. Well, here, you know, the nurse that a fad thing I'm hearing about is that the Crown Point jail. Or just with held at is also closed due to some issues with, um, I don't know what's going on up there with the town or something, but that's what I've heard. Hmm. That's your sad man because that's a really cool place. Really cool. Yes. If you'd like to help the Crown Point jail, please email us at digging up Dillinger. Okay. Gmail.com. Um, guys, we've, we've kind of diverged and I know my job as host is to kind of write the ship here. Yeah. Rain us back in. Come on. We're having fun. If you, you know, frankly, if you guys have a problem with us going off onto these cool stories, forget about you. All right. You can, you know, kick rocks, but this is, this is advanced Dillinger. We told you this at the beginning, I'm going to bring us back. Let's reel it back into the missing scars. We just talked about the missing tooth. It's interesting. I don't know how I feel about it. I don't, you know, on a scale of one to 10, how much is it influencing my, my thoughts on whether it's him or not, I'd say it's right in the middle at a five. Like it's not pushing me towards it's him and pushing me away from it's not him. I don't know. I can't, I can't really, I think it's interesting for sure. It's another question. Right. What did you guys feel about it? So again, about the missing tooth. Yeah. So again, this is all circumstantial evidence. And again, I think we've talked about, you know, most people don't, they consider, well, circumstantial evidence is somehow inferior, somehow not credible. You can't, you know, if it's circumstantial, you have to discount it. Nothing can be further from the truth in reality because, you know, think about the term smoking gun. Oh, you know, that, that, what's the smoking gun of the case? Well, guess what? A smoking gun is circumstantial evidence, direct witness testimonies is direct evidence. And as we've said before, sometimes it can be very unreliable. And so many times you need, you need circumstantial evidence to establish the context for the direct evidence. So, you know, again, the tooth by itself, if someone said, Oh, the whole Dillinger case hinges on the, on this missing tooth and the, and the, the, the pathologist did not describe that in the report, I'd say, so what, no big deal, let's move on. But you know, everything combined with it exactly, you have to take what we're talking about in the context of all these things. And that's what initially, when I started looking into this, taking this in the context of everything, I just kept going. I can't believe how many things there are here that, that all seem to, you know, go to the same thing. Like, well, it just, you don't have a positive identification of Dillinger. I love it. I love it. And, and, and Todd, you look like you're going to say something. Yeah. I was going to say, you know, if you, if you thought about the autopsy that night, if the FBI would have brought the body in and said, Hey, we just found this body in the alley, how did this person die? Maybe there would have been more done to it. But I think they presented it at the autopsy, like this is John Dillinger. We shot him. It's not going to trial. It's, it's not going to court and it just, the autopsy is just done quickly. And again, is this something that he could have overlooked by just quickly trying to get it done? Yep. And, and I think honestly that is the most, the most reasonable explanation. That's most likely what happened. I love it. I, I also think we need to put historical context on this as well. The way I look at it is think about the social phenomenon that was John Dillinger over a year time, right, 14 month period. And then now we're looking at it 90 years. Maybe we're putting too much weight on like, Oh, he was, he's so famous. Like he, he really was, but like also we're, we, you know, are glorifying him years later. And we're looking into this mystery because we're putting so much emphasis on it. Maybe, maybe, you know, think about it. Like this guy has been running for 14 months. It's only been a year. Yeah, he's a social phenomenon, but he's a fad, right? He would, he would something that came up and came down and this was the end of him. And it was kind of like, all right, it, it's not like we're asking, you know, you know, one of the, one of the presidents died, right? And this is the autopsy. It's not like that, that, that Dr. Kearns was like, this is the autopsy, like JFK's autopsy where it's like, Oh my gosh, this is the biggest thing in history. You know, it was just kind of like it was a, it was a gangster who ran and got shot and killed by the, you know, we're putting a way more emphasis on it. So maybe bringing it back down, at least in my mind, bringing it back into reality of let's go back and put ourselves in that moment. It's not as big to them as it is, it would be to us if we were there now, time traveling back to the time travel conversation. Now, on that point, if they 100% believe it was him, they did the report, they notified him. Why would they still come? Why would agents still come back to the family after the fact months after the fact? Yeah. Yeah. Well, and show up with John Senior at Crown Hill Cemetery at the grave site. Right. It seems like you're leading, leading our listeners into, into what we're going to talk about a little bit later too, Travis. I'm sorry, that this brain, I understand we're looking at it this way. I just certain things like that, like, if we're done, you know, he's done, yes, you know, that's why I'm like wondering, did they purposely hurry this up? Yeah. So, you know, again, Joe, you make a very reasonable point and that's what I want to stress is that each one of these things that we point out that regarding this autopsy and some other things actually not related to the autopsy that there's, you know, that maybe question the identity of Dillinger is, again, this stuff has to be taken in context and it has to be taken that, that, you know, there's a certain number of them. And again, I'll allude to this again about the pearl necklace. So you don't have a necklace until you have a certain number of pearls on it, right? And that's the thing. There's a certain tipping point and there's no, there's no hard and fast rule of where that tipping point is is when you have enough evidence to really question something because every case, every investigation, no matter what it is, has some anomalous or some unanswered or mysterious aspects to it that you just don't have answers for. Also every investigation has some kind of administrative or human mistake where something is overlooked, something is just, you know, some aspect of the investigation is not done. It's nothing necessarily nefarious or corrupt. It's just that we're dealing with human beings in all aspects of these things and human beings make mistakes. And so, you know, again, there's a certain number of mistakes that just are going to happen in the course of a case that just, they're just going to happen and, but you have to have to ask yourself, when, when do you say, man, there's just so many of these unexplained things. There's so many seeming mistakes here. When do we really start questioning it? And that's, that's just the point I got to where I said, had I been the case agent on this, I just wouldn't have been satisfied with all these unanswered questions. Yeah. Yeah. At some point, they seem overwhelming. Yeah. Especially that night, why did they go to Anna Sage's apartment and search it? Exactly. Yes. That, I mean, that just, oh my God, that should have been done. Someone should have stayed with her, but they let her go. No one went with her. No one escorted her. It's just like, hey, we got him. Okay. Hey, see you later. What a weird lie. Yeah. Like, what a weird thing that is. Yeah. No, absolutely. She should have been detained right there. And see, what we haven't also said was not only was Dillinger with Anna Sage that night, he was, see, he was actually, I guess, dating maybe is the word, one of Anna's girls, whatever the viewer wants to take from that because Anna Sage was a madam, but Dillinger was, was dating a lady named Polly Hamilton. And that was his, you know, I guess that was his girlfriend at the time. So Dillinger was with Anna Sage and Polly Hamilton. Both Hamilton and Sage were allowed to leave that night. So I mean, you know, Dillinger's been on the run for 14 months. They didn't have a clue where he was after Little Bohemia and, you know, where, where Civilian was killed as we pointed out. And so, you know, you would think that, that Anna Sage and Polly Hamilton have been with him for the last month, at least, you want to fill those blanks in. I mean, because at this point, not all, you know, you've got maybe Dillinger, but they're all the members of the Dillinger gang are still on the run. Dillinger was with Homer Van Meter most of those last few weeks and months of his life. Man, Anna Sage of Polly Hamilton could have given you so much intelligence on what else is going on. A cache of information. Absolutely. And you let them go that night. That's just nuts. It really is. This is again attributed to, in my mind, they're just infants, FBI infants. You know, this is just a new process and they're just not thinking clearly and like, you know, what we know in hindsight, 2020. Right. And yes, there is absolutely some element of that because a lot of this was new. This was a new kind of crime. This was a new kind of thing that had never really been experienced before in law enforcement. So yes, there is a certain element of that, but regardless, it just seems that common sense just says, and you know, and again, maybe I'm biased just looking at it through modern eyes. But it's a good one. It's just common sense just says, Oh my God, list, they need to stay here. I know somebody needs to go talk to them. We need to get all the info we can from them. But you know, to cut them some slack in this investigation, when we talk about little bohemia, we know that they found a gun there. The FBI recovers a pistol and I think they track it from the manufacturer. They track it down to Fort Worth, Texas, where the manufacturer had sold it to. They go through records, Fort Worth sold it to a guy in San Antonio, the FBI interviewed a guy in San Antonio, and they ask about Dillinger, but the FBI agents in San Antonio don't have a picture of Dillinger to show the guy if that he bought that. Now again, we're looking at this in 2024, and you can't even believe that they wouldn't have a picture. Exactly. Somebody that they're going to positively identify, they're confident enough to actually fire bullets at just a month later or less. It's crazy. That is what we're talking about. What's even crazier than that, we know that John Dillinger left stuff in his room in Little Bohemia. Yep. And how do we know that, boys? Well, I know it because I saw it. There's actually a suitcase up at Little Bohemia at that, and then I think Travis, you guys actually have some of that stuff as well. We did. We did have the suitcase that was sent back, and it had other gang members, clothing artifacts, and John's and a ring was all inside a suitcase. Yep. And you have that ring today, Travis? I do. I just don't have it on right now. It just doesn't wear it every day, only on special podcasts. Yeah. Dude, this is great. This is great. All right. Ready for missing scars? Let's do it. You guys ready? Are you okay? Bring it on. You guys are... I know we're getting sidetracked. We're getting sidetracked. No, no, no, no. Yeah, we are. But we're slammed. We are knocking this out of the park, dude. We will keep with the baseball references this entire podcast as our teams. What any are we in right now, then? We're in the middle of the first inning, guys. We put three outs down. All right. So the missing scars is another argument for the Fillmore Report. I'm just going to read a little bit, interrupt, obviously, Stuart, as you feel necessary in everybody else. The FBI identification order commonly called a wanted poster issued for John Dillinger described one half-inch scar on the back of the left hand in a scar of unstated length on the middle of the upper lip. Neither of these scars are described or included in the autopsy performed on Dillinger by Dr. Kearns. This is in contrast to several of their detailed descriptions Dr. Kearns included in the report of scars on the body. It just bothers me that he's including scar report, but not missing teeth anyway. In series of contradictory statements of the FBI after Dillinger's death, Dr. Lozier and Cassidy, who, if you remember, performed a plastic surgery on Dillinger in two sessions, described work that included removal of some moles, filling in a chin dimple, an unspecified work on the tip of the nose and removal of the scar on the upper lip. This might explain what Dr. Kearns emitted them from-- omitted the known scar Dillinger had in the upper lip. However, it is unlikely that Dr. Lozier or Cassidy, who were two highly disreputable individuals whose medical expertise must be questioned, could have performed such a nuanced procedure without leaving a hint of a scar. Dr. Cassidy was so inept he almost killed Dillinger by overdosing him on ether at the start of the operation. Also the exact method carried out in the surgical procedures was not described by either Lozier or Cassidy, but it is also unlikely that either would have had the expertise to cut on the tip of the nose or fill in a chin dimple without leaving a hint of a scar, but no scarring was described by Dr. Kearns in the autopsy on either the nose or the chin. Should I keep going guys or stay safe now? Let me just ask this, Travis, do the family ever talk about how he got those scars? Well, it had to do with Audre identifying the childhood scar that Audre had done. And the childhood scar got it. I'm literally writing this down, folks, that we're not going to forget this because I want Mike Thompson on this podcast answering the good stuff. Right. And just so folks know, this is kind of how an actual investigation proceeds. I mean, you may sit down with some of the people that you work with and you have a series of facts. You don't have the full puzzle, if you will. And you discuss these things, you hash it out. And we talk about who can we talk to that we can fill in this piece of the puzzle and give us this information. This is exactly how it works. So there's nothing just in full transparency. You folks are coming along with us on this investigation. I love it. I'm coming with you too, baby. I'm here too. This is my first investigation not regarding the omission of the one half inch scar in the back of Villager's left hand. It is known that Dr. Kern studied the hands of the body because he fully described the scarring of the fingerprints. Possibly it was an oversight, but a half inch scar would certainly be a noticeable as the small scars would certainly be as noticeable as the small scars on the fingertips because he tried to burn off his fingerprints. In the autopsy report, Dr. Kern has described two vertical scars over the temporal mandible joints on both sides of the face. So I'm assuming the mandible jaw? Yeah, well, I think what that would describe would be some kind of a facelift, some kind of a primitive, brutal facelift. These scars might have been an attempt at a facelift. There you go. Yeah. With Dr. Kern, I love your said, well, it's like you wrote it or something. It's like I wrote it, but contemplated, but not described in a statement regarding the procedures performed. Regardless, the scars were left where apparent and must add further doubt to his or Dr. Cassidy's ability to remove a previous scar, change the nose tip or fill in a chin deep dimple without leaving a scar. The following photograph shows Dillinger in the morgue and the vertical scar described by Dr. Kern's is apparent on the left side of the face. Yeah. Facelift. Weird. Dr. Kern's described a two and a half inch square centimeter purple red area in the sternum area of the body, which is covered by a parchment-like membrane. Yeah. I've pondered that many times as to what exactly he's describing, a parchment-like membrane over the sternum. I think that somebody cut, you know, lozier, these two alcoholic idiots that were doing this plastic surgery, you know, cut some skin from the chest, I guess, over the sternum, you use that for whatever means they used it for to, you know, fill in dimples and that kind of stuff. Because that's all I can figure out what the autopsy is describing about this membrane that's on the chest. And it's such an aware, the sternum area, right under our neck. Yeah. I mean, that's such a weird place. You wouldn't really, you can't assume, you can't, you can't assume like he was shot there. That would be a death blow. Right. That's interesting. Yeah. And there's no good photographs of Dillinger's chest from any of the morgue photos, you know, to get what this, what this, what, what Kearns is talking about. So that, that is just kind of another little mystery. It seems to me, if you're, if you need extra skin, you know, to maybe graft in other places, you know, you'd get that out of the butt or somewhere else where there's a, you know, a meatier skin than on the sternum, because I can feel a few parts on me that maybe are a little softer than others, but my sternum right now, it's like, you know, man, there's not much there. So that had to be painful in itself, but I don't know if maybe that, the skin that specific skin right there was something that at the time they thought, Hey, this is what we need for, you know, nose tissue or something. I don't know. What a weird thing. And then also you could see in like his beard on the picture. Yeah. Like a filling in of nose of the chin dimple, would they just like put, like I can only assume like collagen in it. Like, you know what I mean? Like, what did they do? I don't know. You know, he's drunk idiots, man. Exactly. I would think that they probably made some little incision and maybe stuff some cotton in there or something that that would be more of the following. This is so unsanitary. Let me ask you this, Stuart, take a couple more shots of your whiskey, you know, finish your thing. Yeah, I can see you're almost there. And then come up with an idea on how to fill in Travis's dimple, and that's probably how we did it. I'm not a, I'm not a green to this. Travis, listen, we're going to, we're going to take a couple of scars. You know, it won't be that bad. Just, just have a couple of either shot, if it's for the, if it's for the investigative journey. Yeah. Exactly. And the name of science, you know, that'd be really, that'd be really interesting to see, you know, someone who's like, I don't know, interested in his store. Like cosmetic surgery. Yeah. Like, what would they have done back then? And then influenced by drunk idiots who are trying to kill Dillinger. Who, I think only one of them, I think actually ever even had a medical license, I'm forgetting now, but both of them had criminal records. One may have actually been a doctor at some point, but, but, but, but whichever one had been the doctor, they were long removed by 1934 of being a practicing doctor. Got it. They were both practicing alcoholics and criminals. But I think it goes back to how we talk about that. They don't have a real good photograph and no one, the FBI's ever laid eyes on Dillinger. Why does Dillinger need to do all this? Yo, great point, Tom. I want you to change this, unless he's, well, if you're getting an Oscar to get shot to say that's Dillinger, hey, great point. Exactly. And that way they look at the imposter and they say, well, he doesn't have the scar like Dillinger has. Yep. And then they all say, well, he had plastic surgery. And how do they know he had plastic surgery too? Do we want to interview the two doctors? Yeah, the two doctors and there was actually, they did this at a guy's house and I'm forgetting his name. His first name was Jimmy. Well, maybe I'm wrong about Jimmy because actually, Dillinger was supposedly using the alias of Jimmy Lawrence, but I want to say also that the guy's name was Jimmy that they did this, this plastic surgery at and he was an underworld figure, again, a quasi criminal in himself, that he allowed this to happen and he was allowing them to hide out in this place at the time too. We only got five minutes left for the podcast. Yeah, hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. So one thing that to me really jumped out about the scars was Dillinger was shot in March of 1934 during a bank robbery in Mason City, Iowa. And he was shot actually by a local businessman from a window looking down where the bank robbery was happening. And Dillinger went and actually got treatment from an underworld doctor. The underworld doctor was later interviewed by the FBI, he gave very detailed description of where the wound was, the wound he treated, where it was located. And he described it as being like in the lower right shoulder. So when Dillinger is autopsyed, Kern writes up the report, he does not describe anything in the right shoulder region, just simply that there's a scar, I think on maybe the right side of the lower neck. So again, you have two differing accounts from one doctor that treats the wound and one doctor that sees the scar, that again, if that was the only thing you're talking about, I would say, that's just two guys that just, maybe you're not remembering exactly. But again, it's just something else that adds to this thing that we have these, the scars are just not in the same place. Another pearl, another pearl in the necklace. You guys are great, this is, if you're enjoying this, please tell others about it. We have fingerprints, we have the fingerprints next, for sure. Yes. Yeah. And then the handwriting, all right. We have my guys writing in saying they're Dillinger. Yeah, my favorite one is the guy from 1959 and 1961, saying I'm 1963, excuse me. So four years later, by the way, taking a selfie of himself, pretty cool, probably one of the first selfies ever and sending it in to, you, you not being a boomer, you won't, you won't know this, but I remember from my childhood, there were these photo booths where you could go into. Yeah, I think it was probably a quarter, you put a quarter in and, you know, you sit. It's probably a nickel at your time, but go ahead, man. And, you know, it takes these pictures of you and then you go outside this little booth and you wait. And then a few minutes later, you know, these little, these, I think it's a series of four pictures come out and the machine spits out and you've got that. Something like this? Something exactly like that. And so that's what that picture looks like to me of that guy that sent it in. You're right. You're right. God, you're right. You're always right. He's the FBI. He's always right. Listen, he's retired. He's not always right. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Formerly retired. This has been fun. Another fun episode. We keep coming. We'll come back with more. And as always, guys, you know, we got to keep digging. Yeah, that's it. Love it. All right. Any last words, the fingerprints are going to be a good one. That's going to be a good one. It's going to be a good one. Yes. We're going to need the full, we might go into two parts on the fingerprints. But it depends on how much whiskey Stuart has. All right, we'll see you next time. Thanks for listening. Take care, guys. See you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The "Digging of Dillinger Podcast" is produced by Joe Mulilow and Grace Hiles. The music produced by Eddie Bayless. Follow us on TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube. Until next time, keep digging. [MUSIC PLAYING] (upbeat music) (upbeat music)