John Dillinger, Public Enemy No. 1, lived up to the title bestowed upon him on his birthday of June 22nd, 1934, by J. Edgar Hoover's Division of Investigation. The popular bandit cemented his national notoriety when on Saturday, March 3, 1934, around 9 a.m. he broke out of the Lake County Jail (the so-called escape-proof jail) in Crown Point, Indiana. Dillinger had been in Crown Point since his extradition from Arizona in January awaiting trial for the alleged murder of East Chicago Police Officer O'Malley. On that morning, using a gun which had been carved out of wood from a washboard and blackened with shoe polish, he took two of his keepers hostage. After locking up the warden, Lou Baker, and getting the drop on the turnkey and one of the national guardsmen there to prevent such a breakout, Dillinger commandeered two machine guns. After freeing a fellow inmate, he ultimately made his way out a side door of the "heavily fortified" jail and proceeded to make his getaway in the sheriff's V-8 Ford.
Dillinger's bold escape set off a flurry of reports of sightings across the midwest in the days that followed. The escape caused a political uproar. In the escape he had made one vital mistake, in driving the stolen sheriff's car across the state line toward Chicago, he had violated the one law that could involve federal agents at the time, the National Motor Vehicle Theft Act. It was an error that would set the stage for his ultimate demise outside of a Chicago theater four months later.