John Herbert Dillinger became a national figure during the early 1930s in the Unites States. His daring and brutal bank robberies made him the center of a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) mahnunt, and his subsequent death at the hands of the FBI helped solidify the FBI as a crime-fighting force while also ensuring Dillinger's place in U.S. history.

Dillinger was born on June 22, 1903, in Indianapolis, Indiana, the son of a middle-class grocer father. As a teenager, Dillinger got into trouble and dropped out of school. His father sold his business and moved to rural Indiana in hopes of changing his son's outlook, but this proved a futile effort. Dillinger got into trouble with the law, joined the Navy and then promptly deserted. By 1924 he was back in Indianapolis, now married but without prospects.

Dillinger and another man, having ben unable to find work, robbed a grocery...