FBI says it killed Dillinger; family seeking exhumation not convinced

The FBI on Thursday released a statement saying its agents got the right man more than 85 years ago when they fatally shot notorious gangster John Dillinger outside a Chicago theater, as relatives dispute that the body they seek to exhume from an Indianapolis cemetery is his.

The FBI’s Chicago office took the unusual step of issuing the statement in response to affidavits from some relatives of Dillinger who say they want his body exhumed from an Indianapolis cemetery because there is “evidence” that federal agents shot the wrong man in 1934.

The statement says FBI agents shot and killed Dillinger on July 22, 1934, “as he reached for a pistol from his trouser pocket” outside the Biograph Theater. The FBI says Dillinger was pronounced dead at a Chicago hospital and “a wealth of information supports Dillinger’s demise” including fingerprint matches.

The agency says it’s a “common myth” that “a stand-in” and not Dillinger was the man killed, saying that such claims “have been advanced with only circumstantial evidence.”

The Indiana State Department of Health released affidavits signed by Mike Thompson and Carol Thompson Griffith, who say Dillinger was their uncle. They want the body exhumed for a forensic analysis.

The Chicago Sun-Times and WLS-TV in Chicago first reported on the affidavits supporting an exhumation permit. The permit was approved in July. A&E Networks says the exhumation will be covered as part of a documentary for The History Channel.

Thompson and Thompson Griffith say say in the affidavits supporting an exhumation and reburial permit they’re seeking to have “a body purported to be John H. Dillinger” exhumed from Crown Hill Cemetery for a forensic analysis and possible DNA testing.

In their affidavits, both say that “evidence” includes that the eye color of the man killed outside that theater didn’t match Dillinger’s eye color, that his ears were shaped differently, that the fingerprints weren’t a match and that he had a heart condition. They say they want the body exhumed and subjected to a forensic analysis and possibly DNA testing “in order to make a positive identification.”

“It is my belief and opinion that it is critical to learn whether Dillinger lived beyond his reported date of death of July 22, 1934. If he was not killed on that date, I am interested in discovering what happened to him, where he lived, whether he had children, and whether any such children or grandchildren are living today,” both say in the documents.

The Indianapolis-born Dillinger was one of America’s most notorious criminals. The FBI says Dillinger’s gang killed 10 people as they pulled off a bloody string of bank robberies across the Midwest in the 1930s. Dillinger was never convicted of murder.