Dillinger escape car

In this first episode of the exciting story of John Dillinger and his jailbreak the listener learns how John Dillinger was wanted for killing a police officer during a bank robbery when he was captured in Tucson Arizona. He was extradited to Indiana where he was held without bond in the Lake County jail, located in Crown Point, Indiana. Lake County had a woman sheriff, Lillian Holley, who would pose for publicity pictures with her famous prisoner.

On May 3rd, 1934, myth has it that Dillinger carved a gun out of either a bar of soap or a wooden washboard. A trusty named Sam Cahoon entered an exercise area where Dillinger was being held with others waiting to take their Saturday night bath. Dillinger took the trusty hostage with the gun and left the exercise area. He found a county fingerprint expert, Ernest Blunk, in the corridor and used him as a hostage to lure in other guards and locked them up. Using Blunk as a hostage, he and another prisoner, Herbert Youngblood, went outside and encountered a county mechanic and several county sheriff patrol cars. He asked which one was the fastest and the mechanic indicated to a V-8 Ford and they took the mechanic and Blunt along as they drove away. This was the car owned by Sheriff Holley, adding insult to injury. The fugitives drove away and later released their hostages, broke the spotlight off the police car. and were soon were observed crossing the state line between Indiana and Illinois. This brought the F.B.I. into the investigation.

This podcast is taken directly from the newspapers articles written at the time by means of a dramatic reading by the professional actor, Paul Kim.

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