Bank robber John Dillinger might have thought he’d found the perfect hideout in Tucson, Ariz., in January 1934. The dusty city was a far cry from Chicago, where every law enforcer was looking for him.
“The Dillinger gang was the most notorious gang in America at that time,” said Marshall Trimble, Arizona’s official historian. “Tucson was considered kind of a quiet place in the boondocks.”
But Tucson authorities soon apprehended the Dillinger gang without a single shot being fired, thanks to a fire at a hotel that led them to the outlaws in perhaps the most famous arrest in the city’s history.
The hotel planned to commemorate the event Wednesday with a celebration that will coincide with the premiere of “Public Enemies,” Hollywood’s version of Dillinger’s exploits featuring Johnny Depp as the Depression-era gangster. Christian Bale plays the FBI agent pursuing him.
The event was to include a 1930s-themed evening of cocktails and criminals with lectures about Dillinger and tours given by actors who’ll stay in character.
For more than a decade, Hotel Congress has held an annual “Dillinger Days.” During the third weekend of January, thousands converge on the hotel’s outdoor carnival with games and contests and a show of cars from that era.
“We’re celebrating the police department of Tucson and the capture of John Dillinger. Nobody could get their hands on Dillinger,” said Todd Hanley, operations manager at Hotel Congress.
Jonathan Mincks, a professional entertainer, has played Dillinger at Hotel Congress events for more than 15 years and was to be in character again Wednesday.
“The characters are bigger than life and that’s just fun stuff to play,” Mincks said. “He’s just a cool guy. People loved him. He was thought of as kind of a Robin Hood at that time.”
Dillinger rose to notoriety at a time when the national mood was similar to today’s. Banks were closing. People lost their life savings. This disdain for the financial system coupled with Dillinger’s humble origins only heightened his infamy.
In January 1934, while Dillinger was in Daytona Beach, Fla., two of his fellow outlaws, Russell Clark and Charles Makley, ventured to Tucson.
The men rented a home but also booked rooms at the Congress. When a fire broke out on Jan. 22, 1934, they got firefighters to salvage some of their baggage; the firefighters didn’t realize the bags were so heavy because they were filled with guns.
The next day, those firefighters spotted one of the men’s mug shots in an issue of True Detective magazine.
Tucson cops conducted their own sting operation. Within a few days, five members of Dillinger’s gang were arrested. Dillinger and girlfriend Evelyn Frechette were cuffed almost as soon as they pulled up to the rented house.
Elliott J. Gorn, a history professor at Brown University and author of “Dillinger’s Wild Ride: The Year That Made America’s Public Enemy Number One,” said the response in the media — and perhaps even among the gangsters themselves — was amazement that the Tucson Police Department had succeeded.
“It was sort of ‘Damn, you guys got us,”’ Gorn said. “The quick-drawing Western lawmen could do what the slick city cops in Chicago couldn’t do.”
But the thrill was short-lived. Dillinger was extradited to Indiana, where he escaped and began another robbing spree before he was tracked down by the FBI and shot dead in Chicago later in the summer.
Hotel Congress: www.hotelcongress.com/
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