NABBING NO. 1: The real story of how Tucson Police captured John Dillinger

For Tucson, the story of John Dillinger is more than a famous gangster’s brief stop in the Old Pueblo. It is tied to Hotel Congress, the Tucson Police Department and Fire Department, a historic courthouse, a local pharmacy museum, a mural and an annual downtown event that draws residents and visitors nearly a century later. Each January, Dillinger Days recreates the arrest of Public Enemy No. 1, but the real capture was less a single dramatic showdown than a chain of lucky observations, firefighter instincts and coordinated police work that ended with an entire gang in custody without a gunshot.

Dillinger and his associates arrived in Tucson around Jan. 21, 1934, trying to disappear after a series of bank robberies, killings and prison escapes across the Midwest. The gang had recently robbed the First National Bank in East Chicago, Indiana, an incident that resulted in the death of a local police officer. Dillinger traveled with Harry Pierpont, Charles Makley and Russell Clark, along with female companions including Evelyn “Billie” Frechette and Opal Long. The group rented a home at 927 North Second Avenue, near East Speedway and North Euclid Avenue. Tucson, then considered remote and rough around the edges, seemed like a useful place to avoid both local authorities and the national law enforcement agencies pursuing them.

The gang’s stay at Hotel Congress created the first major break in the case. Accounts differ slightly on why the group used the hotel, but the available history says the Second Avenue home was undergoing floor waxing, prompting the gang to use aliases and reserve a room for one night. On Jan. 22, Clark reportedly boasted at the hotel about how easily bank robbers could make money with machine guns. Two New York businessmen heard him and raised their concerns with Tucson police. The following morning, a fire began in the hotel basement, apparently after a defective oil furnace ignited nearby firewood. Flames moved through the building and forced guests, including Makley and Clark, to leave from the third floor using a fire ladder.

The fire itself did not identify the gang, but the luggage did. Makley and Clark paid Tucson firefighters William Benedict and John Freeman $12 to bring their bags out of the burning hotel. The bags were unusually heavy because they contained weapons and ammunition. The firefighters later saw the men’s photographs in True Detective Mysteries magazine, which had described the Dillinger gang and its crimes. That recognition led them to notify the Tucson Police Department. Two traveling salesmen also reportedly recognized Clark from his talk at a Tucson nightclub, adding another clue. The FBI had warned Tucson police that Dillinger’s group might be headed to the city, but it was local knowledge and quick reporting that turned the warning into arrests.

Police began taking gang members into custody on Jan. 25. Makley was found at a Tucson electronics store while looking for a police radio. He gave officers an alias, but they recognized him and arrested him. Later that morning, officers went to the Second Avenue house occupied by Dillinger, Clark and their companions. Long had hidden Clark’s gun under a mattress, leaving him without a weapon when officers arrived. The confrontation was still violent. Long slammed an officer’s finger in the door, breaking it, and Clark fought with police before being subdued. He was badly injured and appeared in jail photographs with his head wrapped in bandages. The police action at the house removed one of the gang’s most immediate advantages, but Dillinger was still at large.

Pierpont was arrested around 4 p.m. after police noticed him driving a car with Florida license plates and asked him to come to the station to verify his identity. Once inside, he saw the gang’s luggage and understood that police had connected the evidence to his associates. He tried to conceal Dillinger’s Second Avenue address by putting the information in his mouth and resisted officers intensely. By then, the arrests were unfolding across Tucson, although Dillinger apparently did not yet know what had happened. Around 6:30 p.m., he and Frechette returned to the rental house. Dillinger saw blood left from Clark’s struggle and turned around, but officers were already arriving. Unlike some of the other gang members, he did not reach for a weapon or fight. He raised his hands and surrendered with Frechette.

The men were taken to the Pima County jail in the courthouse on Church Street and arraigned the next day, Jan. 26, in Room 8 of the Pima County Justice Court. Accounts from the period describe crowds entering the jail to see the prisoners, a spectacle Ellen Poulsen, an author who has written two books about Dillinger and his gang, compared to displaying animals. The women hid their faces at the arraignment, while the male gang members had little reason to do so because their identities were already public. Dillinger was sent by plane to Indiana to face the charge involving the East Chicago police officer. Pierpont, Makley and Clark went by train to Ohio. The gang’s weapons haul included three Thompson submachine guns, two Winchester rifles, five bulletproof vests and more than $25,000 in cash. Police also found a bulldog puppy.

The Tucson capture soon became one chapter in a larger and more violent story. Dillinger escaped from an Indiana jail using a carved wooden gun, an episode that became more famous than his arrest in Tucson, and he was later killed by federal agents in Chicago on July 22, 1934. The Tucson arrest nevertheless helped shape the events that followed, because without the capture, Dillinger would not have been sent back to Indiana and would not have had the opportunity to make the wooden gun escape. Pierpont reportedly praised Tucson’s officers as the smartest police the gang had encountered, even while criticizing law enforcement elsewhere.

Today, Tucson preserves the episode through places and objects that make the story part of the city’s cultural landscape. A confiscated Tommy gun remains behind glass at Tucson Police Department headquarters, despite a 2016 request from Peru, Indiana, to return it as part of that community’s history. Dillinger’s chewed gum, collected from beneath the counter of the former Owl Drug Store, is displayed at the University of Arizona’s Coit Museum of Pharmacy and Health Sciences. Dillinger also appears in Victor Ving’s “Greetings from Tucson” mural near East Seventh Street and North Arizona Avenue. Hotel Congress has hosted Dillinger Days for three decades, with reenactments, lectures, music, walking tours and a vintage car show that has included the restored 1923 American LaFrance fire engine that answered the 1934 fire. The staged version captures the broad outline, but the real story rests on the fire, the heavy luggage, the magazine photographs and a day of arrests that Tucson police completed with no shots fired.