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John Dillinger

John Herbert Dillinger (June 22, 1903 – July 22, 1934) was an American gangster during the Great Depression. He commanded the Dillinger Gang, which was accused of robbing twenty-four banks and four police stations. Dillinger was imprisoned several times and escaped twice. He was charged with but not convicted of the murder of an East Chicago, Indiana, police officer, who shot Dillinger in his bullet-proof vest during a shootout; it was the only time Dillinger was charged with homicide.

Dillinger courted publicity. The media printed exaggerated accounts of his bravado and colorful personality, and described him as a Robin Hood-type figure. In response, J. Edgar Hoover, director of the Bureau of Investigation (BOI), used Dillinger as justification to evolve the BOI into the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), developing more sophisticated investigative techniques as weapons against organized crime.

After evading police in four states for almost a year, Dillinger was wounded in a gunfight and went to his father's home to recover. He returned to Chicago in July 1934 and sought refuge in a brothel owned by Ana Cumpănaș, who later informed authorities of his whereabouts. On July 22, 1934, local and federal law-enforcement officers closed in on the Biograph Theater. When BOI agents moved to arrest Dillinger as he exited the theater, he attempted to flee, but was fatally shot; the lethal use of force by the agents would eventually be ruled justifiable homicide.

Family and background
John Dillinger was born on June 22, 1903, at 2053 Cooper Street, Indianapolis, Indiana, the younger of two children born to John Wilson Dillinger (1864–1943) and Mary Ellen "Mollie" Lancaster (1870–1907).

Dillinger's parents had married on August 23, 1887. His father was a grocer by trade and, reportedly, a harsh man. In an interview with reporters, Dillinger said that his father was firm in his discipline and believed in the adage "spare the rod and spoil the child." His mother died in 1907, just before his fourth birthday. That same year, Dillinger's older sister Audrey married Emmett "Fred" Hancock, in a marriage that produced seven children. She cared for her brother for several years until their father remarried in 1912 to Elizabeth "Lizzie" Fields (1878–1933); they had three children.

Formative years and marriage
As a teenager, Dillinger was frequently in trouble for fighting and petty theft; he was also noted for his "bewildering personality" and bullying of smaller children. He quit school to work in an Indianapolis machine shop. Fearing that the city was corrupting his son, Dillinger's father relocated the family to Mooresville, Indiana, in 1921. Despite his new rural life, however, Dillinger's wild and rebellious behavior was unchanged. In 1922 he was arrested for auto theft, and his relationship with his father deteriorated.

In 1923, Dillinger's troubles resulted in him enlisting in the United States Navy, where he was a Petty officer third class Machinery Repairman assigned aboard the battleship USS Utah (BB-31). He deserted when his ship was docked in Boston a few months into his service, and was eventually dishonorably discharged.

Dillinger returned to Mooresville, where he met Beryl Ethel Hovious. The two married on April 12, 1924. Despite Dillinger's attempts to settle down, he found it difficult finding a job. He subsequently began planning a robbery with his friend, ex-convict Ed Singleton.

Dillinger and Singleton robbed a Mooresville grocery store, stealing $50 (about $917 in 2024). During the robbery, Dillinger struck a victim on the head with a machine bolt wrapped in a cloth and carried a gun which, although it discharged, hit no one. While leaving the scene, the criminals were seen by a minister who recognized the two men and reported them to the police. They were arrested the next day. Singleton pleaded not guilty, but after Dillinger's father (the local Mooresville deacon) discussed the matter with Morgan County prosecutor Omar O'Harrow, his father convinced Dillinger to confess to the crime and plead guilty without retaining a defense attorney.

Dillinger was convicted of assault and battery with intent to rob, and conspiracy to commit a felony. He expected a lenient sentence of probation as a result of his father's discussion with O'Harrow but was sentenced instead to ten to twenty years in prison. Dillinger's father told reporters he regretted his advice and was appalled by the sentence, pleading with the judge to shorten the sentence without success. En route to Mooresville to testify against Singleton, Dillinger briefly escaped his captors but was apprehended within a few minutes. Singleton had a change of venue and was sentenced to a jail term of two to fourteen years. He was killed on September 2, 1937, when he fell asleep on railroad tracks while drunk.

Prison time
Incarcerated at Indiana Reformatory and Indiana State Prison between 1924 and 1933, Dillinger developed a criminal lifestyle. Upon being admitted to prison, he was quoted as saying, "I will be the meanest bastard you ever saw when I get out of here." His physical examination at the prison showed that he had gonorrhea, treatment of which at the time was painful. He became resentful against society because of his long prison sentence and befriended other criminals, including seasoned bank robbers Harry "Pete" Pierpont, Charles Makley, Russell Clark and Homer Van Meter, who taught Dillinger how to be a successful criminal. The men planned heists that they would commit soon after they were released. Dillinger also studied Herman Lamm's meticulous bank-robbing system and used it extensively throughout his criminal career.

Dillinger's father began a public campaign to have him released and was able to obtain 188 signatures on a petition. On May 10, 1933, after serving nine and a half years, Dillinger was paroled. Released at the height of the Great Depression, Dillinger, with little prospect of finding employment, immediately returned to crime.

On June 21, 1933, Dillinger committed his first bank robbery, stealing $10,000 ($241,190.77 in 2024) from a bank in New Carlisle, Indiana. On August 14 he robbed a bank in Bluffton, Ohio. Tracked by police from Dayton, he was captured and later transferred to Allen County jail in Lima to be indicted in connection to the Bluffton robbery. After searching him before putting him into the prison, the police discovered a document which appeared to be a prison escape plan. They demanded Dillinger tell them what the document meant, but he refused.

Earlier, Dillinger had helped conceive a plan to enable the escape of Pierpont, Clark and six other prison acquaintances. He had friends smuggle guns into their cells, which they used to escape four days after Dillinger's capture. The group that formed up, known as "the First Dillinger Gang,” consisted of Pierpont, Clark, Makley, Ed Shouse, Harry Copeland and John "Red" Hamilton, a member of the Herman Lamm Gang. Pierpont, Clark and Makley arrived in Lima on October 12, 1933, where they impersonated Indiana State Police officers, claiming they had come to extradite Dillinger to Indiana. When the sheriff, Jess Sarber, asked for their credentials, Pierpont shot Sarber dead, then released Dillinger from his house. The four men escaped back to Indiana, where they joined the rest of the gang.

Bank robberies
Dillinger is known to have participated with the Dillinger Gang in twelve separate bank robberies, between June 21, 1933, and June 30, 1934.

Evelyn Frechette
Evelyn "Billie" Frechette met Dillinger in October 1933, and they began a relationship the following month. After Dillinger's death, Billie was offered money for her story and wrote a memoir for the Chicago Herald and Examiner in August 1934.

Escape from Crown Point, Indiana
On January 25, 1934, Dillinger and his gang were captured in Tucson, Arizona. Dillinger was extradited to Indiana and escorted back by Matt Leach, the Chief of the Indiana State Police. He was taken to Lake County jail in Crown Point, Indiana, and jailed for charges for the murder of a policeman who was killed during a Dillinger gang bank robbery in East Chicago on January 15, 1934.

Local police boasted to area newspapers that the jail was escape-proof and had posted extra guards as a precaution. However, on Saturday, March 3, 1934, Dillinger was able to escape during morning exercises with fifteen other inmates. Dillinger produced a pistol, catching deputies and guards by surprise, and was able to leave the premises without firing a shot. Almost immediately afterwards conjecture began whether the gun Dillinger displayed was real or not. According to Deputy Ernest Blunk, Dillinger had escaped using a real pistol. FBI files, on the other hand, indicate that Dillinger used a carved fake pistol. Sam Cahoon, a trustee who Dillinger took hostage in the jail, also believed Dillinger had carved the gun, using a razor and some shelving in his cell. In another version, according to an unpublished interview with Dillinger's attorney, Louis Piquett, investigator Art O'Leary claimed to have snuck the gun in himself.

On March 16, Herbert Youngblood, who escaped from Crown Point alongside Dillinger, was shot dead by police in Port Huron, Michigan. Deputy Sheriff Charles Cavanaugh was mortally wounded in the gunfight and later died. Before his death, Youngblood told officers Dillinger was in Port Huron, and officers immediately began a fruitless search for the escaped man. An Indiana newspaper reported that Youngblood later retracted the story and said he did not know where Dillinger was at that time, as he had parted with him soon after their escape.

Dillinger was indicted by a grand jury, and the Bureau of Investigation (a precursor of the Federal Bureau of Investigation) organized a nationwide manhunt for him. Just hours after his escape from Lake County jail, Dillinger reunited with his girlfriend, Billie Frechette.

According to Frechette's trial testimony, Dillinger stayed with her for "almost two weeks." However, the two had actually traveled to the Twin Cities and taken lodgings at the Santa Monica Apartments in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where they stayed for fifteen days. Dillinger then met Hamilton, and the two mustered a new gang consisting of Baby Face Nelson's gang, including Nelson, Homer Van Meter, Tommy Carroll and Eddie Green.

Three days after Dillinger's escape from Crown Point, the second Gang robbed a bank in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. A week later they robbed First National Bank in Mason City, Iowa.

Setting
On Tuesday, March 20, 1934, Dillinger and Frechette relocated into the Lincoln Court Apartments in St. Paul, Minnesota, using the aliases "Mr. & Mrs. Carl T. Hellman" in Apartment 303. Daisy Coffey, the landlord, testified at Frechette's trial that she spent most evenings during Dillinger's stay observing what was happening. On March 30, Coffey went to the FBI's St. Paul field office to file a report, including information about the couple's new Hudson sedan parked in the garage behind the apartments.

Surveillance
As a result of Coffey's tip, the building was surveilled by two agents, Rufus Coulter and Rusty Nalls, but they saw nothing unusual because the blinds were drawn. The next morning, at approximately 10:15 a.m., Nalls circled around the block looking for the Hudson but observed nothing. He parked, first on Lincoln Avenue (the north side of the apartments), then on the west side of Lexington Avenue, at the northwest corner of Lexington and Lincoln, and remained in his car while watching Coulter and St. Paul Police detective Henry Cummings pull up, park and enter the building. Ten minutes later, by Nalls's estimate, Van Meter parked a green Ford coupe on the north side of the apartment building.

Shootout
Meanwhile, Coulter and Cummings knocked on the door of Apartment 303. Frechette answered, opening the door two to three inches. She said she was not dressed and to come back. Coulter told her they would wait. After waiting two to three minutes, Coulter went to the basement apartment of the caretakers, Louis and Margaret Meidlinger, and asked to use the telephone to call the Bureau. He quickly returned to Cummings, and the two of them waited for Frechette to open the door. Van Meter then appeared in the hall and asked Coulter if his name was Johnson. Coulter said it was not, and as Van Meter passed on to the landing of the third floor, Coulter asked him for a name. Van Meter replied, "I am a soap salesman." Asked where his samples were, Van Meter said they were in his car. Coulter asked if he had any credentials. Van Meter said "no," and continued down the stairs. Coulter waited ten to twenty seconds, then followed Van Meter. As Coulter reached the lobby on the ground floor, Van Meter began shooting at him. Coulter hastily fled outside, chased by Van Meter. Van Meter ran back into the front entrance.

Recognizing Van Meter, Nalls pointed out the Ford to Coulter and told him to disable it. Coulter shot out the rear left tire. While Coulter stayed with Van Meter's Ford, Nalls went to the corner drugstore and telephoned the local police, then the Bureau's St. Paul office, but could not get through because both lines were busy. Van Meter, meanwhile, escaped by hopping on a passing coal truck.

Frechette, in her harboring trial testimony, said that she told Dillinger that the police had shown up after speaking to Cummings. Upon hearing Van Meter firing at Coulter, Dillinger began shooting through the door with a Thompson submachine gun, sending Cummings scrambling for cover. Dillinger then stepped out and fired another burst at Cummings. Cummings shot back with a revolver, but quickly ran out of ammunition. He hit Dillinger in the left calf with one of his five shots. He then hastily retreated down the stairs to the front entrance. Once Cummings retreated, Dillinger and Frechette hurried down the stairs, exited through the back door and drove away in the Hudson.

Aftermath
After the shootout, Dillinger and Frechette drove to Eddie Green's apartment in Minneapolis. Green telephoned his associate Dr. Clayton E. May at his office at 712 Masonic Temple in downtown Minneapolis (still extant). With Green, his wife Beth and Frechette following in Green's car, the doctor drove Dillinger to an apartment belonging to Augusta Salt, who had been providing nursing services and a bed for May's illicit patients, whom he could not risk seeing at his regular office, for several years. May treated Dillinger's wound with antiseptics. Green visited Dillinger on Monday, April 2, just hours before Green was mortally wounded by the Bureau in St. Paul. Dillinger convalesced at May's until Wednesday, April 4. May was promised $500 for his services but received nothing.

Return to Mooresville
After the events in Minneapolis, Dillinger and Frechette traveled to Mooresville to visit Dillinger's father. Friday, April 6, 1934, was spent contacting family members, particularly his half-brother Hubert Dillinger. On April 6, Hubert and Dillinger left Mooresville at about 8:00 p.m. and proceeded to Leipsic, Ohio (approximately 210 miles away), to see Joseph and Lena Pierpont, parents of Prohibition Era gangster, Harry Pierpont. The Pierponts were not home, so the two headed back to Mooresville around midnight.

On April 7 at approximately 3:30 a.m., they rammed a car driven by Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Manning near Noblesville, Indiana, after Hubert fell asleep behind the wheel. They crashed through a farm fence and about 200 feet into the woods. Both men made it back to the Mooresville farm. Swarms of police showed up at the accident scene within hours. Found in the car were maps, a machine gun magazine, a length of rope, and a bullwhip. According to Hubert, his brother planned to pay a visit with the bullwhip to his former one-armed "shyster" lawyer at Crown Point, Joseph Ryan, who had run off with his retainer after being replaced by Louis Piquett. At about 10:30 a.m. on April 7, Billie, Hubert and Hubert's wife purchased a black four-door Ford V8, registering it in the name of Mrs. Fred Penfield (Billie Frechette). At 2:30 p.m., Billie and Hubert picked up the V8 and returned to Mooresville.

On Sunday, April 8, the Dillingers enjoyed a family picnic while the FBI had the farm under surveillance nearby. Later in the afternoon, suspecting they were being watched (agents J. L. Geraghty and T. J. Donegan were cruising in the vicinity in their car), the group left in separate cars. Billie drove the new Ford V8, with two of Dillinger's nieces, Mary Hancock in the front seat and Alberta Hancock in the back. Dillinger was on the floor of the car. He was later seen, but not recognized, by Donegan and Geraghty. Eventually, Norman, driving the V8, proceeded with Dillinger and Billie to Chicago, where they separated from Norman.

The next afternoon, Monday, April 9, Dillinger had an appointment at a tavern at 416 North State Street. Sensing trouble, Billie went in first. She was promptly arrested by agents, but refused to reveal Dillinger's whereabouts. Dillinger was waiting in his car outside the tavern and then drove off unnoticed. The two never saw each other again.

Dillinger reportedly became despondent after Billie was arrested. The other gang members tried to talk him out of rescuing her, but Van Meter encouraged him by saying that he knew where they could find bulletproof vests. That Friday morning, late at night, Dillinger and Van Meter took a hostage, Warsaw, Indiana police officer Judd Pittenger. They marched Pittenger at gunpoint into the police station, where they stole several more guns and bulletproof vests. After separating, Dillinger picked up Hamilton, who was recovering from the Mason City robbery. The two then traveled to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where they visited Hamilton's sister Anna Steve.

Escape at Little Bohemia
The Bureau received a telephone call Sunday morning, April 22 that John Dillinger and several of his confederates were hiding out at a small vacation lodge called Little Bohemia near present-day Manitowish Waters, Wisconsin.

Dillinger and some of the gang were upstairs in the lodge and began shooting out the windows. While the BOI agents ducked for cover, Dillinger and his men fled from the back of the building.

Hiding in Chicago
By July 1934, Dillinger had absconded, and the federal agents did not have any information about his whereabouts. He had, in fact, gone to Chicago where he used the alias of Jimmy Lawrence, a petty criminal from Wisconsin who bore a close resemblance to Dillinger. Working as a clerk, Dillinger found that, in a large metropolis like Chicago, he was able to live an anonymous existence for a while. What he did not realize was that the federal agents' dragnet happened to be based at Chicago. When the authorities found Dillinger's blood-spattered getaway car on a Chicago side street, they were positive that he was in the city.

Plastic surgery
According to Art O'Leary, as early as March 1934, Dillinger expressed an interest in plastic surgery and had asked O'Leary to check with Piquett on such matters. At the end of April, Piquett paid a visit to his old friend Dr. Wilhelm Loeser. Loeser had practiced in Chicago for 27 years before being convicted under the Harrison Narcotic Act in 1931. He was sentenced to three years at Leavenworth, but was paroled early on December 7, 1932, with Piquett's help. He later testified that he performed facial surgery on himself and obliterated the fingerprint impressions on the tips of his fingers by the application of a caustic soda preparation. Piquett said Dillinger would have to pay $5,000 for the plastic surgery: $4,400 split between Piquett, Loeser and O'Leary, and $600 to Dr. Harold Cassidy, who would administer the anaesthetic. The procedure would be done at the home of Piquett's longtime friend, 67-year-old James Probasco, at the end of May.

On May 28, Loeser was picked up at his home at 7:30 p.m. by O'Leary and Cassidy. The three of them then drove to Probasco's place. Dillinger chose to have a general anaesthetic. Loeser later testified:

I asked him what work he wanted done. He wanted two warts (moles) removed on the right lower forehead between the eyes and one at the left angle, outer angle of the left eye; wanted a depression of the nose filled in; a scar; a large one to the left of the median line of the upper lip excised, wanted his dimples removed and wanted the angle of the mouth drawn up. He didn't say anything about the fingers that day to me.

Cassidy administered an overdose of ether, which caused Dillinger to suffocate. He began to turn blue and stopped breathing. Loeser pulled Dillinger's tongue out of his mouth with a pair of forceps, and at the same time forcing both elbows into his ribs. Dillinger gasped and resumed breathing. The procedure continued with only a local anesthetic. Loeser removed several moles on Dillinger's forehead, made an incision in his nose and an incision in his chin and tied back both cheeks.

Loeser met with Piquett again on Saturday, June 2, with Piquett saying that more work was needed on Dillinger and that Van Meter now wanted the same work done to him. Also, both now wanted work done on their fingertips. The price for the fingerprint procedure would be $500 per hand or $100 a finger. Loeser used a mixture of nitric and hydrochloric acid—- known commonly as aqua regia.

Loeser met O'Leary the next night at Clark and Wright at 8:30, and they once again drove to Probasco's. Present this evening were Dillinger, Van Meter, Probasco, Piquett, Cassidy, and Peggy Doyle, Probasco's girlfriend. Loeser testified that he worked for only about 30 minutes before O'Leary and Piquett left.

Loeser testified:

Cassidy and I worked on Dillinger and Van Meter simultaneously on June 3. While the work was being done, Dillinger and Van Meter changed off. The work that could be done while the patient was sitting up, that patient was in the sitting-room. The work that had to be done while the man was lying down, that patient was on the couch in the bedroom. They were changed back and forth according to the work to be done. The hands were sterilized, made aseptic with antiseptics, thoroughly washed with soap and water and used sterile gauze afterwards to keep them clean. Next, cutting instrument, knife was used to expose the lower skin ... in other words, take off the epidermis and expose the derma, then alternately the acid and the alkaloid was applied as was necessary to produce the desired results.

Minor work was done two nights later, Tuesday, June 5. Loeser made some small corrections first on Van Meter, then Dillinger. Loeser stated:

A man came in before I left, who I found out later was Baby Face Nelson. He came in with a drum of machine gun bullets under his arm, threw them on the bed or the couch in the bedroom, and started to talk to Van Meter. The two then motioned for Dillinger to come over and the three went back into the kitchen.

Peggy Doyle later told agents:

Dillinger and Van Meter resided at Probasco's home until the last week of June 1934; that on some occasions they would be away for a day or two, sometimes leaving separately, and on other occasions together; that at this time Van Meter usually parked his car in the rear of Probasco's residence outside the back fence; that she gathered that Dillinger was keeping company with a young woman who lived on the north side of Chicago, inasmuch as he would state upon leaving Probasco's home that he was going in the direction of Diversey Boulevard; that Van Meter apparently was not acquainted with Dillinger's friend, and she heard him warning Dillinger to be careful about striking up acquaintances with girls he knew nothing about; that Dillinger and Van Meter usually kept a machine gun in an open case under the piano in the parlor; that they also kept a shotgun under the parlor table.

O'Leary stated that Dillinger expressed dissatisfaction with the facial work that Loeser had performed on him. O'Leary said that, on another occasion, "that Probasco told him, 'the son of a bitch has gone out for one of his walks'; that he did not know when he would return; that Probasco raved about the craziness of Dillinger, stating that he was always going for walks and was likely to cause the authorities to locate the place where he was staying; that Probasco stated frankly on this occasion that he was afraid to have the man around."

Agents arrested Loeser at 1127 South Harvey, Oak Park, Illinois, on Tuesday, July 24. O'Leary returned from a family fishing trip on July 24, the day of Loeser's arrest, and had read in the newspapers that the Department of Justice was looking for two doctors and another man in connection with some plastic surgery that had been done on Dillinger. O'Leary left Chicago immediately, but returned two weeks later, learned that Loeser and others had been arrested, telephoned Piquett, who assured him everything was all right, then left again. He returned from St. Louis on August 25 and was promptly taken into custody.

On Friday, July 27, Probasco fell to his death from the 19th floor of the Bankers' Building in Chicago while in custody. On Thursday, August 23, Homer Van Meter was shot and killed in a dead-end alley in St. Paul by Tom Brown, former St. Paul police chief, and then-current chief Frank Cullen.

Polly Hamilton
Rita "Polly" Hamilton was a teenage runaway from Fargo, North Dakota. She met Ana Ivanova Akalieva (Ana Cumpănaș; a.k.a. Ana Sage) in Gary, Indiana, and worked periodically as a prostitute in Ana's brothel until marrying Gary police officer Roy O. Keele in 1929. They divorced in March 1933.

In the summer of 1934, the now 26-year-old Hamilton was a waitress in Chicago at the S&S Sandwich Shop located at 1209½ Wilson Avenue. She had remained friends with Sage and was sharing living space with Sage and Sage's 24-year-old son, Steve, at 2858 Clark Street.

Dillinger and Hamilton, a Billie Frechette look-a-like, met in June 1934 at the Barrel of Fun night club located at 4541 Wilson Avenue. Dillinger introduced himself as Jimmy Lawrence and said he was a clerk at the Board of Trade. They dated until Dillinger's death at the Biograph Theater in July 1934.

Betrayal
Division of Investigations chief J. Edgar Hoover created a special task force headquartered in Chicago to locate Dillinger. On July 21, Ana Cumpănaș, a madam from a brothel in Gary, Indiana, also known as "The Woman in Red" contacted the FBI. She was a Romanian immigrant threatened with deportation for "low moral character" and offered agents information on Dillinger in exchange for their help in preventing her deportation. The FBI agreed to her terms, but she was later deported nonetheless. Cumpănaș revealed that Dillinger was spending time with another prostitute, Polly Hamilton, and that she and the couple were going to see a movie together on the next day. She agreed to wear an orange dress, so police could easily identify her. She was unsure which of two theaters they would attend, the Biograph or the Marbro.

On December 15, 1934, pardons were issued by Indiana Governor Harry G. Leslie for the offenses of which Ana Cumpănaș was convicted.

Cumpănaș stated that on Sunday afternoon, July 22, Dillinger asked her whether she wanted to go to the show with them (Polly and him).

She asked him what show was he going to see, and he said he would 'like to see the theater around the corner,' meaning the Biograph Theater. She stated she was unable to leave the house to inform Purvis or Martin about Dillinger's plans to attend the Biograph, but as they were going to have fried chicken for the evening meal, she told Polly she had nothing in which to fry the chicken and was going to the store to get some butter; that while at the store she called Mr. Purvis and informed him of Dillinger's plans to attend the Biograph that evening, at the same time obtaining the butter. She then returned to the house so Polly would not be suspicious that she went out to call anyone.

A team of federal agents and officers from police forces from outside of Chicago was formed, along with a very small number of Chicago police officers. Among them was East Chicago Police Department Sergeant Martin Zarkovich, the officer to whom Cumpănaș had acted as a criminal informant. At the time, federal officials felt that the Chicago Police Department was thoroughly corrupt and could not be trusted; Hoover and Purvis also wanted more of the credit. Not wanting to take the risk of another embarrassing escape of Dillinger, the police were divided into two groups. On Sunday, one team was sent to the Marbro Theater on the city's west side, while another team surrounded the Biograph Theater at 2433 N. Lincoln Avenue on the north side.

Shooting at the Biograph Theater and death

At approximately 8:30 p.m., Sage, Hamilton, and Dillinger were observed entering the Biograph Theater, which was showing the crime drama Manhattan Melodrama, featuring Clark Gable, Myrna Loy, and William Powell. During the stakeout, the Biograph's manager thought the agents were criminals preparing for a robbery. He called the Chicago police, who dutifully responded and had to be waved off by the federal agents, who told them that they were on a stakeout for an important target.

When the movie ended, Purvis stood by the front door and signaled Dillinger's exit by lighting a cigar. Both he and the other agents reported that Dillinger turned his head and looked directly at the agent as he walked by, glanced across the street, then moved ahead of his female companions, reached into his pocket but failed to extract his gun, and ran into a nearby alley. Other accounts stated Dillinger ignored a command to surrender, whipped out his gun, then headed for the alley. Agents already had the alley closed off.

Three men pursued Dillinger into the alley and fired. Clarence Hurt shot twice, Charles Winstead three times, and Herman Hollis once. Dillinger was hit from behind and fell face first to the ground.

Dillinger was struck four times, with two bullets grazing him and one causing a superficial wound to the right side. The fatal bullet entered through the back of his neck, severed the spinal cord, passed into his brain and exited just under the right eye, severing two sets of veins and arteries. An ambulance was summoned, although it was soon apparent Dillinger had died from the gunshot wounds; he was officially pronounced dead at Alexian Brothers Hospital. According to investigators, Dillinger died without saying a word. Winstead was later thought to have fired the fatal shot, and as a consequence received a personal letter of commendation from J. Edgar Hoover.

Two female bystanders, Theresa Paulas and Etta Natalsky, were wounded. Dillinger bumped into Natalsky just as the shooting started. Natalsky was shot and was taken to Columbus Hospital.

Dillinger was shot and killed by the special agents on July 22, 1934, at approximately 10:40 p.m, according to a New York Times report the next day. Dillinger's death came only two months after the deaths of fellow notorious criminals Bonnie and Clyde. There were reports of people dipping their handkerchiefs and skirts into the pool of blood that had formed, as Dillinger lay in the alley, as keepsakes: "Souvenir hunters madly dipped newspapers in the blood that stained the pavement. Handkerchiefs were whipped out and used to mop up the blood."

Funeral
Dillinger's body was available for public display at the Cook County morgue. An estimated 15,000 people viewed the corpse over a day and a half. As many as four death masks were also made.

Dillinger is buried at Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis. Dillinger's gravestone has been replaced several times because of vandalism by people chipping off pieces as souvenirs. Hilton Crouch (1903–1976), an associate of Dillinger's on some early heists, is buried only a few yards to the west.

Literature

 * "The Shooting of John Dillinger Outside the Biograph Theater, July 22, 1934" a narrative poem by David Wagoner published in his collection Staying Alive (1966). The poet postulates some underlying reasons for the unfolding chain of events, significantly from Dillinger's perspective.
 * John Dillinger is frequently referred to in the work of William S. Burroughs. An example is the poem "Thanksgiving Prayer" that is dedicated to Dillinger "in hopes he is still alive".
 * John Dillinger is featured as a character in The Illuminatus Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson.
 * John Dillinger is frequently alluded to in the works of Thomas Pynchon.
 * John Dillinger is the main character in Jack Higgins Thunder at Noon.
 * John Dillinger is referenced in one of Robert Indiana's 'Column' sculptures (c.1960)

Movie depictions
Dillinger features as an incidental character in Joel and Ethan Cohen's O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)
 * 1935: The MGM crime movie Public Hero No. 1 incorporates fictionalized details from Dillinger's narrative, including a gun battle at a Wisconsin roadhouse and the killing of the fugitive gangster (Joseph Calleia) as he leaves a theater.
 * 1941: Humphrey Bogart played a Dillinger-like role in High Sierra, a movie based loosely on research into Dillinger's life by W.R. Burnett.
 * 1945: Lawrence Tierney played the title role in the first movie dramatization of Dillinger's career; Dillinger.
 * 1957: Director Don Siegel's movie Baby Face Nelson, featured Mickey Rooney as Nelson and Leo Gordon as Dillinger.
 * 1965: Young Dillinger, featuring Nick Adams as John Dillinger, and Robert Conrad as "Pretty Boy" Floyd.
 * 1969: Director Marco Ferreri's movie Dillinger Is Dead includes documentary footage of real John Dillinger as well as newspaper clips.
 * 1971: Appointment with Destiny; The Last Days of John Dillinger, narrated by Rod Serling, 52 minutes. Shot in newsreel style, very accurate for its time. The late Joseph Pinkston served as technical advisor. Pinkston himself makes an uncredited cameo in the Biograph sequence, playing an agent.
 * 1973: Dillinger, directed and written by John Milius with Warren Oates in the title role, presents the gang sympathetically, in keeping with the anti-hero theme popular in movies after Bonnie and Clyde (1967).
 * 1979: Lewis Teague directed the movie The Lady in Red, featuring Pamela Sue Martin as the eponymous lady in the red dress. However, in this movie, it is Dillinger's girlfriend Polly in red, not the Romanian informant Ana Sage (Louise Fletcher). Sage tricks Polly into wearing red so that FBI agents can identify Dillinger (Robert Conrad) as he emerges from the cinema.
 * 1991: A TV movie Dillinger, featuring Mark Harmon
 * 1995: Roger Corman produced the fictional movie Dillinger and Capone, featuring Martin Sheen as Dillinger and F. Murray Abraham as Al Capone. Dillinger survives the theater stakeout when the FBI mistakenly guns down his brother and is then blackmailed by Capone into retrieving $15 million from his secret vault.
 * 2004: Teargas and Tommyguns; Dillinger Robs the First National Bank, DVD, Mason City Public Library, 38 minutes. Documentary regarding the bank robbery, including contemporary interviews with still-living witnesses; also contains the H.C. Kunkleman movie in its entirety.
 * 2009: Director Michael Mann's movie Public Enemies is an adaptation of Bryan Burrough's book Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933–34. The movie features Johnny Depp as John Dillinger, Marion Cotillard as Billie Frechette, and Christian Bale as FBI agent Melvin Purvis. Although the movie has accurate portrayals of several major moments in Dillinger's life—- such as his death and dialogue at his arraignment hearing—- it is inaccurate in some major historical details, such as the timeline (and location) of deaths of major criminals including Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson, and Homer Van Meter.
 * 2012: British actor Alexander Ellis portrayed Dillinger in the first Dollar Baby screen adaptation of Stephen King's short story, "The Death of Jack Hamilton".

Other references

 * The experimental metalcore musical band The Dillinger Escape Plan is named for Dillinger.
 * A tavern in the Greenbelt 3 shopping mall, in Makati in the Philippine Islands, is named "Dillinger 1903," referencing his name and year of birth.
 * Dillinger is mentioned in 1973 Elton John's song "The Ballad of Danny Bailey (1909–34)" from Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.
 * In The Simpsons episode "Treehouse of Horror IV", Dillinger appears as a member of the Jury of the Damned.
 * Woody Allen's character's failed prison escape in the movie Take the Money and Run is a parody of Dillinger's 1934 escape.
 * In the movie High Fidelity the main character Rob references the shooting at the Biograph movie theater, but gets several details wrong, including who tipped off the federal agents.
 * The song, "Reverie", by Protest the Hero (Palimpsest, 2020) depicts Dillinger's hardening into "the meanest bastard you've ever seen" during incarceration.
 * Headie One references Dillinger in his 2021 single "Siberia".
 * Referenced in Seinfeld Season 4 "The Handicap Spot"
 * Referenced in The Newsroom Season 2, Episode 2 "The Genoa Tip"
 * Referenced in The Americans Season 2, Episode 11, "Stealth" (38:23)
 * Referenced in Breaking Bad Season 5, Episode 15, "Granite State" by Saul
 * The pseudonym for American rapper and producer Daz Dillinger was named after him.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: John Dillinger


text:
Gentleman's Agreement

Gentleman's Agreement is a 1947 American drama film based on Laura Z. Hobson's best-selling 1947 novel of the same title. It concerns a journalist (played by Gregory Peck) who poses as a Jew to research an exposé on the widespread antisemitism in New York City and the affluent communities of New Canaan and Darien, Connecticut. It was nominated for eight Academy Awards and won three: Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress (Celeste Holm), and Best Director (Elia Kazan).

The movie was controversial in its day, as was a similar film on the same subject, Crossfire, which was released the same year (though that film was originally a story about anti-homosexuality, later changed to antisemitism).

In 2017, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Plot
Widowed journalist Philip Schuyler Green moves to New York City with his aging mother and his young son Tommy. Phil meets with magazine publisher John Minify, who asks Green, a gentile, to write an article on antisemitism. At first, he is not enthusiastic about the story.

At a lunch party, Phil meets Minify's niece Kathy Lacey, who is actually the person who suggested the story idea. The next day, at home, Phil admits his surprise after learning that the idea came from "a girl". His mother mocks him for his anti-female prejudice. Phil then tries to explain anti-Jewish prejudice to his son. Realizing how difficult it is to explain these topics, he decides to write the story.

Phil and Kathy begin dating and Phil adopts a Jewish identity to write the story from a fresh perspective. They agree to keep it secret that Phil is not Jewish. Despite seeming to have liberal views, Kathy is taken aback after learning of Phil's plan.

At the magazine, Phil is assigned a secretary, Elaine Wales. She turns out to be Jewish, but changed her name to get the job. After learning of Wales' experience from Phil, Minify orders the magazine to adopt hiring policies that are open to Jews. Phil meets fashion editor Anne Dettrey, who becomes a good friend and potentially more, particularly as strains develop between Phil and Kathy.

After completing his service in WWII, Dave Goldman, Phil's childhood friend, moves to New York and lives with the Greens while searching a job and a home for his family. Being Jewish, Dave also experiences antisemitism. Housing is scarce in the city, but it is particularly difficult for him, since not all landlords will rent to a Jewish family.

While researching his story, Phil experiences several incidents of bigotry. When Phil's mother becomes ill with a heart condition, the doctor discourages him from consulting a specialist with a Jewish name. After hearing Phil is Jewish, the doctor becomes uncomfortable and leaves.

In addition, the janitor is shocked to see that a Jewish name is listed on the mail box. Furthermore, when Phil wants to celebrate his honeymoon at a swanky hotel, the manager refuses to register Phil, whom he tells to go elsewhere.

Tommy also becomes the target of bullies because of this. Phil is troubled by the way Kathy consoles Tommy, telling him their taunts of "dirty Jew" are wrong because he is not Jewish, not that the epithet is wrong in and of itself.

Kathy's attitudes are revealed further when she and Phil announce their engagement. Her sister Jane invites them to a celebration in her home in Darien, which is known to be a community where Jews are not welcome. Fearing an awkward scene, Kathy wants to tell her family and friends that Phil only pretends to be Jewish, but he dissuades her. At the party, everyone is friendly to Phil, though many people cancel at the last minute.

Dave announces he will have to quit his job because he cannot find a residence for his family. Kathy owns a vacant cottage in Darien and Phil sees it as a solution to Dave's problem. Kathy, however, is unwilling to offend her neighbors by renting it to a Jewish family. Phil breaks his engagement to her and announces he will be moving away from New York when his article is published. When it comes out, it is well received by the magazine staff.

Kathy meets with Dave and tells him how sick she felt when a party guest told a bigoted joke. However, she has no answer when Dave asks her what she did about it. She realizes that remaining silent condones the prejudice.

The next day, Dave announces that he and his family will be moving into the cottage in Darien and Kathy will be moving in with her sister next door to make sure they are treated well. Moved by this, Phil reconciles with Kathy. His mother, still recovering from her heart condition, tells Phil that his article has given her new hope for the future, a new motivation to get well.

Production
Zanuck decided to make a film version of Hobson's novel after being refused membership in the Los Angeles Country Club, because it was assumed (incorrectly) that he was Jewish. Before filming commenced, Samuel Goldwyn and other Jewish film executives approached Darryl Zanuck and asked him not to make the film, fearing it would "stir up trouble". They also warned that Hays Code enforcer Joseph Breen might not allow the film to pass the censors, as he had been known to make disparaging remarks about Jews. There was also concern that Dorothy McGuire's character being divorced would offend the National Legion of Decency.

The role of Phillip Green was first offered to Cary Grant, but he turned it down. Peck decided to accept the role, although his agent advised him to refuse, believing Peck would be endangering his career. Jewish actor John Garfield agreed to play a lesser role in the film to be a part of it.

Portions of the film were shot on location in Darien, Connecticut.

Reception and box-office
Gentleman's Agreement received a generally favorable reception from influential New York Times critic Bosley Crowther. Crowther said that "every point about prejudice which Miss Hobson had to make in her book has been made with superior illustration and more graphic demonstration in the film, so that the sweep of her moral indignation is not only widened, but intensified thereby". However, Crowther also said that the movie shared the novel's failings in that "explorations are narrowly confined to the upper-class social and professional level to which he is immediately exposed". He also said the main character's shock at the extent of anti-Semitism was lacking in credibility: "It is, in a careful analysis, an extraordinarily naive role."

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an aggregate score of 82% based on 83 critic reviews, with an average rating of 7.1/10. The website's consensus reads: "It occasionally fails to live up to its subject matter – and is perhaps an 'important' film more than a 'great' one – but the performances from Gregory Peck and Dorothy McGuire are superb."

The New York Herald Tribune described it as a "brilliant blow against racial and religious intolerance". The Daily Mirror assessed it as "the most explosive picture of the year" and "one of the most exciting and punch-laden pictures you've ever seen."

In addition to winning Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Supporting Actress (Celeste Holm), Gentleman's Agreement was one of Fox's highest-grossing movies of 1947. The political nature of the film, however, upset the House Un-American Activities Committee, with Elia Kazan, John Garfield, and Anne Revere all being called to testify before the committee. Revere refused to testify and although Garfield appeared, he refused to "name names". Both were placed in the Red Channels of the Hollywood Blacklist. Garfield remained on the blacklist for a year, was called again to testify against his wife, and died of a heart attack at the age of 39 before his second hearing date.

In recognition for producing Gentleman's Agreement, the Hollywood chapter of B'nai B'rith International honored Darryl Zanuck as its "Man of the Year" for 1948. On Sunday, December 12, a gala commemoration evening was held in downtown Los Angeles at the Biltmore Hotel before a crowd of over a thousand. Among the tributes to Zanuck, New Mexico Senator Clinton Anderson said, "He does not storm up and down the streets of a community, urging its citizens to do good. He does not fill the pages of books with words that string together into a sermon. He allows you to be seated comfortably in a theater, to be absorbed in a problem and to walk out into the night with your thoughts clarified and your lips saying, 'This situation ought to be changed'." After the formal speeches there was a star-studded variety show, including the debut before the Hollywood film world of the team of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis.

The movie was an unexpected hit at the box office. According to Variety, it earned $3.9 million in rentals in the US in 1948.

Leonard Maltin said "sincere...then-daring approach to the subject matter is tame now."

title: Gentleman's Agreement


text:
Saint Valentine's Day Massacre

The Saint Valentine's Day Massacre was the murder of seven members and associates of Chicago's North Side Gang on Saint Valentine's Day 1929. The men were gathered at a Lincoln Park, Chicago garage on the morning of February 14, 1929. They were lined up against a wall and shot by four unknown assailants, two of whom were disguised as police officers.

The murders resulted from the competition for control of organized crime in the city during Prohibition between the largely Irish North Siders, headed by George "Bugs" Moran, and their largely Italian Chicago Outfit rivals led by Al Capone. The perpetrators have never been conclusively identified, but former members of the Egan's Rats gang working for Capone are suspected of involvement; others have said that members of the Chicago Police Department who allegedly wanted revenge for the killing of a police officer's son played a part.

The Massacre
At 10:30 in the morning on Saint Valentine's Day, Thursday, February 14, 1929, seven men were murdered at the garage at 2122 North Clark Street, in the Lincoln Park  neighborhood of Chicago's North Side. They were shot by four men using weapons that included two Thompson submachine guns. Two of the shooters were wearing police uniforms, while the others wore suits, ties, overcoats, and hats. Witnesses saw the men in police uniforms leading the other men at gunpoint out of the garage after the shooting.

The victims included five members of George "Bugs" Moran's North Side Gang. Moran's second in command and brother-in-law Albert Kachellek (alias James Clark) was killed along with Adam Heyer, the gang's bookkeeper and business manager; Albert Weinshank, who managed several cleaning and dyeing operations for Moran; and gang enforcers Frank Gusenberg and Peter Gusenberg. Two associates were also shot: Reinhardt H. Schwimmer, a former optician turned gambler and gang associate; and John May, an occasional mechanic for the Moran gang.

Chicago police officers arrived at the scene to find that victim Frank Gusenberg was still alive, despite having sustained 14 bullet wounds. He was taken to the hospital, where doctors stabilized him for a short time and police tried to question him. When the police asked him who did it, he reportedly replied, "I won't talk, For God's sake get me to a hospital." He died three hours later. The massacre was an attempt to eliminate Bugs Moran, head of the North Side Gang. Al Capone, who was at his Florida home at the time, was widely assumed to have been responsible for ordering the massacre. The impetus for the plan may have been the North Side Gang's hijacking of some expensive whisky being illegally smuggled by Capone's gang from Canada across the Detroit River.

Moran was the last survivor of the North Side gunmen; his succession had come about because his similarly aggressive predecessors, Hymie Weiss and Vincent Drucci, had been killed in the violence that followed the murder of their original leader, Dean O'Banion.

Several factors contributed to the timing of the plan to kill Moran. Moran and Capone had been vying for control of the lucrative Chicago bootlegging trade. Moran had also been muscling in on a Capone-run dog track in the Chicago suburbs, and he had taken over several saloons that were run by Capone, insisting that they were in his territory. Earlier in the year, North Sider Frank Gusenberg and his brother Peter unsuccessfully attempted to murder Jack McGurn. The North Side Gang was complicit in the murders of Pasqualino "Patsy" Lolordo and Antonio "The Scourge" Lombardo. Both had been presidents of the Unione Siciliana, the local Mafia, and close associates of Capone.

The plan was to lure Moran to the SMC Cartage warehouse on North Clark Street on February 14, 1929, to kill him and perhaps two or three of his lieutenants. It is usually assumed that the North Siders were lured to the garage with the promise of a stolen, cut-rate shipment of whiskey, supplied by Detroit's Purple Gang, which was associated with Capone. The Gusenberg brothers were supposed to drive two empty trucks to Detroit that day to pick up two loads of stolen Canadian whisky.

All of the victims were dressed in their best clothes, with the exception of John May, as was customary for the North Siders and other gangsters at the time. Most of the Moran gang arrived at the warehouse by approximately 10:30 a.m., but Moran was not there, having left his Parkway Hotel apartment late. He and fellow gang member Ted Newberry were approaching the rear of the warehouse from a side street when they saw a police car nearing the building. They immediately turned and retraced their steps, going to a nearby coffee shop. They encountered gang member Henry Gusenberg on the street and warned him, so he too turned back. North Side Gang member Willie Marks also spotted the police car on his way to the garage and ducked into a doorway and jotted down the license number before leaving the neighborhood.

Capone's lookouts likely mistook one of Moran's men, probably Albert Weinshank, who was the same height and build, for Moran himself. The physical similarity between the two men was enhanced by their dress that morning; both happened to be wearing the same color overcoats and hats.

Witnesses outside the garage saw a Cadillac sedan pull up to a stop in front of the garage. Four men emerged and walked inside, two of them dressed in police uniform. The two fake police officers carried shotguns and entered the rear portion of the garage, where they found members of Moran's gang and associates Reinhart Schwimmer and John May, who was fixing one of the trucks. The fake policemen then ordered the men to line up against the wall, then signaled to the pair in civilian clothes who had accompanied them. Two of the killers opened fire with Thompson sub-machine guns, one with a 20-round box magazine and the other a 50-round drum. They were thorough, spraying their victims left and right, even continuing to fire after all seven had hit the floor. Two shotgun blasts afterward all but obliterated the faces of John May and James Clark, according to the coroner's report.

To give the appearance that everything was under control, the men in street clothes came out with their hands up, prodded by the two uniformed policemen. Inside the garage, the only survivors in the warehouse were May's dog "Highball" and Frank Gusenberg, despite 14 bullet wounds. He was still conscious, but he died three hours later, refusing to identify the killers.

Victims

 * Peter Gusenberg, a front-line enforcer for the Moran organizations
 * Frank Gusenberg, the brother of Peter Gusenberg and also an enforcer
 * Albert Kachellek (alias "James Clark"), Moran's second in command
 * Adam Heyer, the bookkeeper and business manager of the Moran gang
 * Reinhardt Schwimmer, an optometrist who had abandoned his practice to gamble on horse racing and associate with the gang
 * Albert Weinshank, who managed several cleaning and dyeing operations for Moran; his resemblance to Moran is allegedly what set the massacre in motion before Moran arrived, including the clothes that he was wearing
 * John May, an occasional car mechanic for the Moran gang

Investigation
The Valentine's Day Massacre set off a public outcry which posed a problem for all bosses of the National Crime Syndicate. Within days, Capone received a summons to testify before a Chicago grand jury on charges of federal Prohibition violations, but he said he was too unwell to attend.

It was common knowledge that Moran was hijacking Capone's Detroit-based liquor shipments, and police focused their attention on Detroit's predominantly Jewish Purple Gang. Landladies Mrs. Doody and Mrs. Orvidson had taken in three men as roomers ten days before the massacre, and their rooming houses were directly across the street from the North Clark Street garage. They picked out mugshots of Purple Gang members George Lewis, Eddie Fletcher, Phil Keywell, and his younger brother Harry, but they later wavered in their identification. The police questioned and cleared Fletcher, Lewis, and Harry Keywell. Nevertheless, the Keywell brothers (and by extension the Purple Gang) remained associated with the crime in the years that followed. Many also believed that the police were involved, which may have been the intention of the killers.

On February 22, police were called to the scene of a garage fire on Wood Street where they found a 1927 Cadillac sedan disassembled and partially burned, and determined that the killers had used the car. They traced the engine number to a Michigan Avenue dealer who had sold the car to a James Morton of Los Angeles. The garage had been rented by a man calling himself Frank Rogers, who gave his address as 1859 West North Avenue. This was the address of the Circus Café operated by Claude Maddox, a former St. Louis gangster with ties to the Capone gang, the Purple Gang, and the St. Louis gang, Egan's Rats.

Police could not turn up any information about persons named James Morton or Frank Rogers, but they had a definite lead on one of the killers. Just minutes before the killings, a truck driver named Elmer Lewis had turned a corner a block away from 2122 North Clark and sideswiped a police car. He told police that he stopped immediately but was waved away by the uniformed driver, who was missing a front tooth. Board of Education President H. Wallace Caldwell had witnessed the accident, and he gave the same description of the driver. Police were confident that they were describing Fred Burke, a former member of Egan's Rats. Burke and a close companion named James Ray were known to wear police uniforms whenever on a robbery spree. Burke was also a fugitive, under indictment for robbery and murder in Ohio. Police also suggested that Joseph Lolordo could have been one of the killers because of his brother Pasqualino's recent murder by the North Side Gang.

Police then announced that they suspected Capone gunmen John Scalise and Albert Anselmi, as well as Jack McGurn and Frank Rio, a Capone bodyguard. Police eventually charged McGurn and Scalise with the massacre. Capone murdered Scalise, Anselmi, and Joseph "Hop Toad" Giunta in May 1929 after he learned about their plan to kill him. The police dropped the murder charges against Jack McGurn because of a lack of evidence, and he was just charged with a violation of the Mann Act; he took his girlfriend Louise Rolfe across state lines to marry.

The case stagnated until December 14, 1929, when the Berrien County, Michigan Sheriff's Department raided the St. Joseph, Michigan bungalow of "Frederick Dane", the registered owner of a vehicle driven by Fred "Killer" Burke. Burke had been drinking that night, then rear-ended another vehicle and drove off. Patrolman Charles Skelly pursued, finally forcing him off the road. Skelly hopped onto the running board of Burke's car, but he was shot three times and died of his wounds that night. The car was found wrecked and abandoned just outside St. Joseph and traced to Fred Dane. By this time, police photos confirmed that Dane was in fact Fred Burke, wanted by the Chicago police for his participation in the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.

Police raided Burke's bungalow and found a large trunk containing a bullet-proof vest, almost $320,000 in bonds recently stolen from a Wisconsin bank, two Thompson submachine guns, pistols, two shotguns, and thousands of rounds of ammunition. St. Joseph authorities immediately notified the Chicago police, who requested both machine guns. They used the new science of forensic ballistics to identify both weapons as those used in the massacre. They also discovered that one of them had also been used to murder New York mobster Frankie Yale a year and a half earlier. Unfortunately, no further concrete evidence surfaced in the massacre case.

Burke was captured over a year later on a Missouri farm. The case against him was strongest in connection to the murder of Officer Skelly, so he was tried in Michigan and subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment. He died in prison in 1940.

Bolton revelations
On January 8, 1935, FBI agents surrounded a Chicago apartment building at 3920 North Pine Grove looking for the remaining members of the Barker Gang. A brief shootout erupted, resulting in the death of bank robber Russell Gibson. Taken into custody were Doc Barker, Byron Bolton, and two women. Bolton was a Navy machine-gunner and associate of Egan's Rats, and he had been the valet of Chicago hit man Fred Goetz. Bolton was privy to many of the Barker Gang's crimes and pinpointed the Florida hideout of Ma Barker and Freddie Barker, both of whom were killed in a shootout with the FBI a week later. Bolton said he took part in the St. Valentine's Day Massacre with Goetz, Fred Burke, and several others.

The FBI had no jurisdiction in a state murder case, so they kept Bolton's revelations confidential until the Chicago American newspaper reported a second-hand version of his confession. The newspaper declared that the crime had been "solved", despite being stonewalled by J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, who did not want any part of the massacre case. Garbled versions of Bolton's story went out in the national media. Bolton, it was reported, said that the plan to murder Bugs Moran had been plotted in October or November 1928 at a Couderay, Wisconsin resort owned by Fred Goetz. Present at this meeting were Goetz, Al Capone, Frank Nitti, Fred Burke, Gus Winkler, Louis Campagna, Daniel Serritella, William Pacelli, and Bolton. The men stayed two or three weeks, hunting and fishing when they were not planning the murder of their enemies.

Bolton said that he and Jimmy Moran were charged with watching the S.M.C. Cartage garage and phoning the signal to the killers at the Circus Café when Bugs Moran arrived at the meeting. Police had found a letter addressed to Bolton in the lookout nest (and possibly a vial of prescription medicine). Bolton guessed that the actual killers had been Burke, Winkeler, Goetz, Bob Carey, Raymond "Crane Neck" Nugent, and Claude Maddox (four shooters and two getaway drivers). Bolton gave an account of the massacre different from the one generally told by historians. He said that he saw only "plainclothes" men exit the Cadillac and go into the garage. This indicates that a second car was used by the killers. George Brichet said he saw at least two uniformed men exiting a car in the alley and entering the garage through its rear doors. A Peerless Motor Company sedan had been found near a Maywood house owned by Claude Maddox in the days after the massacre, and in one of the pockets was an address book belonging to victim Albert Weinshank. Bolton said that he had mistaken one of Moran's men to be Moran, after which he telephoned the signal to the Circus Café. The killers had expected to kill Moran and two or three of his men, but they were unexpectedly confronted with seven men; they simply decided to kill them all and get out fast. Bolton said that Capone was furious with him for his mistake and the resulting police pressure and threatened to kill him, only to be dissuaded by Fred Goetz.

His claims were corroborated by Gus Winkeler's widow Georgette in an official FBI statement and in her memoirs, which were published in a four-part series in a true detective magazine during the winter of 1935–36. She revealed that her husband and his friends had formed a special crew used by Capone for high-risk jobs. The mob boss was said to have trusted them implicitly and nicknamed them the "American Boys". Bolton's statements were also backed up by William Drury, a Chicago detective who had stayed on the massacre case long after everyone else had given up. Bank robber Alvin Karpis later said to have heard secondhand from Ray Nugent about the massacre and that the "American Boys" were paid a collective salary of $2,000 a week plus bonuses. Karpis also said that Capone had told him while they were in Alcatraz together that Goetz had been the actual planner of the massacre.

Despite Byron Bolton's statements, no action was taken by the FBI. All the men whom he named were dead by 1935, with the exception of Burke and Maddox. Bank robber Harvey Bailey complained in his 1973 autobiography that he and Fred Burke had been drinking beer in Calumet City, Illinois at the time of the massacre, and the resulting heat forced them to abandon their bank robbing ventures. Historians are still divided on whether or not the "American Boys" committed the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.

Other suspects
Many mobsters have been named as part of the Valentine's Day hit team. Two prime suspects are Cosa Nostra hit men John Scalise and Albert Anselmi. In the days after the massacre, Scalise was heard to brag, "I am the most powerful man in Chicago." Unione Siciliana president Joseph Guinta had recently elevated him to the position of the Unione's vice-president. Nevertheless, Scalise, Anselmi, and Guinta were found dead on a lonely road near Hammond, Indiana on May 8, 1929. Gangland lore has it that Capone had discovered that the pair were planning to betray him. Legend states that Capone produced a baseball bat at the climax of a dinner party thrown in their honor and beat the trio to death.

In 1995 Chicago criminologist Arthur Bilek, who had researched the massacre through FBI files and court transcripts for 30 years, named the participants in the massacre to have been Capone henchmen "Machine Gun" Jack McGurn, who assembled the murder team that included lookouts Byron Bolton, Jimmy Moran (no relation to Bugs) and Jimmy McCryssen. Their job was to watch the garage and alert Tony Accardo and the other triggermen—Fred Burke, Gus Winkler, Freddie Goetz and Robert Carey—when Bugs Moran appeared at the site. Another team member, according to Bilek, was Claude "Screwy" Maddox, who procured the killers' transportation—a car resembling those used by police. With the stage set, Capone and McGurn established alibis: Capone going to Florida; McGurn checked into a hotel with his wife, Louise Rolfe. His claims were backed up by the former FBI agent William Roemer, who had heard claims of Tony Accardo also being involved as one of the shooters on several occasions by Murray "The Camel" Humphreys through a microphone planted in the Chicago Tailor shop in 1959.

Murder weapons
Police tested the two Thompson submachine guns (serial numbers 2347 and 7580) found in Fred Burke's Michigan bungalow and determined that both had been used in the massacre. One of them had also been used in the murder of Brooklyn mob boss Frankie Yale, which confirmed the New York Police Department's long-held theory that Burke had been responsible for Yale's death.

Les Farmer, a deputy sheriff in Marion, Illinois purchased gun number 2347 on November 12, 1924. Marion and the surrounding area were overrun by the warring bootleg factions of the Shelton Brothers Gang and Charlie Birger. Farmer had ties with Egan's Rats, based 100 miles away in St. Louis, and the weapon had wound up in Fred Burke's possession by 1927. It is possible that he used this same gun in Detroit's Milaflores Massacre on March 28, 1927. Chicago sporting goods owner Peter von Frantzius sold gun number 7580 to a Victor Thompson, also known as Frank V. Thompson, but it wound up with James "Bozo" Shupe, a small-time hood from Chicago's West Side who had ties to various members of Capone's outfit. Both guns are currently in the possession of the Berrien County, Michigan Sheriff's Department.

Crime scene and bricks from the murder wall
The garage at 2122 N. Clark Street was demolished in 1967, and the site is now a parking lot for a nursing home. The bricks of the north wall against which the victims were shot were purchased by a Canadian businessman. For many years, they were displayed in various crime-related novelty displays. Many of them were later sold individually, and the remainder are now owned by the Mob Museum in Las Vegas.

In popular culture
The Saint Valentine's Day Massacre has been portrayed, referenced, or emulated in the following works:

Biographical

 * Al Capone, a 1959 film directed by Richard Wilson, starring Rod Steiger as Capone
 * Seven Against the Wall, a 1959 episode of Playhouse 90 directed by Franklin J. Schaffner, starring Paul Lambert as Capone
 * The St. Valentine's Day Massacre, a 1967 film directed by Roger Corman, starring Jason Robards as Capone
 * Capone, a 1975 film directed by Steve Carver, starring Ben Gazzara as Capone
 * The Untouchables, a 1987 film directed by Brian De Palma, which briefly mentions the massacre
 * The Making of the Mob: Chicago, a 2016 miniseries about Al Capone, which reenacts the scene of the massacre
 * Gangster Land, a 2017 film about Al Capone
 * The massacre takes place during the time jump between the fourth and fifth seasons of Boardwalk Empire, but is referenced in the fifth season, set in 1931. Bugs Moran's gang is listed among the Mafiosi whose run-ins with Al Capone ended badly, and a real picture from the massacre is shown.

Fictional

 * Scarface, a 1932 gangster film directed by Howard Hawks that is loosely based on the life of Al Capone and depicts a version of the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre
 * Some Like It Hot, a 1959 comedy directed by Billy Wilder in which Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon play characters on the run after witnessing the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre
 * Oscar, a comedy film directed by John Landis in which Sylvester Stallone's character is implied to have been at the massacre.
 * In The Rocketeer (1991) Neville Sinclair gives gangster boss Eddie Valentine an ironic "Happy Valentine's Day" greeting as a reference to both Eddie's name and his impending execution by Nazi commandos.
 * Mafia 3, although mentioned only in a newspaper, Sal Marcano and his brothers slaughtered their former boss and his men. This event is referred to as the "All Saints Day Massacre".

Other

 * St. Valentine's Day Massacre: In Your House, produced by the World Wrestling Federation (WWF; WWE as of 2002); a pay-per-view (PPV) professional wrestling event. It took place on February 14, 1999, at the Memphis Pyramid in Memphis, Tennessee. The title of the event alludes to the Saint Valentine's Day massacre.
 * The St. Valentine's Day Massacre, the intended album title for rapper 50 Cent's second studio album. It was later retitled The Massacre, due to date pushbacks. The album was released on March 3, 2005.

title: Saint Valentine's Day Massacre


text:
Ayodhya

Ayodhya is a city situated on the banks of the Sarayu river in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. It is the administrative headquarters of the Ayodhya district as well as the Ayodhya division of Uttar Pradesh, India.

Ayodhya was historically known as Saketa. The early Buddhist and Jain canonical texts mention that the religious leaders Gautama Buddha and Mahavira visited and lived in the city. The Jain texts also describe it as the birthplace of five tirthankaras namely, Rishabhanatha, Ajitanatha, Abhinandananatha, Sumatinatha and Anantanatha, and associate it with the legendary Bharata Chakravarti. From the Gupta period onwards, several sources mention Ayodhya and Saketa as the name of the same city.

The legendary city of Ayodhya, popularly identified as the present-day Ayodhya, is identified in the epic Ramayana and its many versions as the birthplace of the Hindu deity Rama of Kosala and is hence regarded as the first of the seven most important pilgrimage sites for Hindus. The Ayodhya dispute was centered on the Babri mosque, built 1528–29 under the Mughal emperor Babur and said to have replaced a temple that stood at the birth spot of Rama. In 1992 a Hindu mob demolished the mosque, provoking riots throughout the country. In 2019 the Supreme Court of India ruled that the land belonged to the government per tax records, and ordered it to be handed over to a trust to build a Hindu temple. It also ordered the government to give an alternative 5 acre of land to the Uttar Pradesh Sunni Central Waqf Board to build another mosque, the land for which was acquired by the Government in Dhannipur in Ayodhya district and handed over to the Board. The construction of Ram Mandir commenced in August 2020 and the temple was consecrated with the deity of Balak Ram on 22 January 2024.

In 2023, a Diwali celebration in Ayodhya, broke the Guinness World Record for the largest display of oil lamps with 2,223,676 displayed on the eve of Diwali.

Etymology and names
The word "Ayodhya" is a regularly formed derivation of the Sanskrit verb yudh, "to fight, or wage war". Yodhya is the future passive participle, meaning "to be fought"; the initial a is the negative prefix; the whole, therefore, means "not to be fought" or, more idiomatically in English, "invincible". This meaning is attested by the Atharvaveda, which uses it to refer to the unconquerable city of gods. The ninth century Jain poem Adi Purana also states that Ayodhya "does not exist by name alone but by the merit" of being unconquerable by enemies. Satyopakhyana interprets the word differently, stating that it means "that which cannot be conquered by sins" (instead of enemies).

"Saketa" is the older name for the city, attested in Sanskrit, Jain, Buddhist, Greek and Chinese sources. According to Vaman Shivram Apte, the word "Saketa" is derived from the Sanskrit words Saha (with) and Aketen (houses or buildings). The Adi Purana states that Ayodhya is called Saketa "because of its magnificent buildings which had significant banners as their arms". According to Hans T. Bakker, the word may be derived from the roots sa and ketu ("with banner"); the variant name saketu is attested in the Vishnu Purana.

The older name in English was "Oudh" or "Oude", and the princely state it was the capital of until 1856 is still known as Oudh State.

Ayodhya was stated to be the capital of the ancient Kosala kingdom in the Ramayana. Hence it was also referred to as "Kosala". The Adi Purana states that Ayodhya is famous as su-kośala "because of its prosperity and good skill".

The cities of Ayutthaya (Thailand), and Yogyakarta (Indonesia), are named after Ayodhya.

History

Ancient Indian Sanskrit-language epics, such as the Ramayana and the Mahabharata mention a legendary city called Ayodhya, which was the capital of the legendary Ikshvaku kings of Kosala, including Rama. Neither these texts, nor the earlier Sanskrit texts such as the Vedas, mention a city called Saketa. Non-religious, non-legendary ancient Sanskrit texts, such as Panini's Ashtadhyayi and Patanjali's commentary on it, do mention Saketa. The later Buddhist text Mahavastu describes Saketa as the seat of the Ikshvaku king Sujata, whose descendants established the Shakya capital Kapilavastu.

The earliest of the Buddhist Pali-language texts and the Jain Prakrit-language texts mention a city called Saketa (Sageya or Saeya in Prakrit) as an important city of the Kosala mahajanapada. Topographical indications in both Buddhist and Jain texts suggest that Saketa is the same as the present-day Ayodhya. For example, according to the Samyutta Nikaya and the Vinaya Pitaka, Saketa was located at a distance of six yojanas from Shravasti. The Vinaya Pitaka mentions that a big river was located between the two cities, and the Sutta Nipata mentions Saketa as the first halting place on the southward road from Shravasti to Pratishthana.

Fourth century onwards, multiple texts, including Kalidasa's Raghuvamsha, mention Ayodhya as another name for Saketa. The later Jain canonical text Jambudvipa-Pannati describes a city called Viniya (or Vinita) as the birthplace of Lord Rishabhanatha, and associates this city with Bharata Chakravartin; the Kalpa-Sutra describes Ikkhagabhumi as the birthplace of Rishabhadev. The index on the Jain text Paumachariya clarifies that Aojjha (Aodhya), Kosala-puri ("Kosala city"), Viniya, and Saeya (Saketa) are synonyms. The post-Canonical Jain texts also mention "Aojjha"; for example, the Avassagacurni describes it as the principal city of Kosala, while the Avassaganijjutti names it as the capital of Sagara Chakravartin. The Avassaganijjutti implies that Viniya ("Vinia"), Kosalapuri ("Kosalapura"), and Ikkhagabhumi were distinct cities, naming them as the capitals of Abhinamdana, Sumai, and Usabha respectively. Abhayadeva's commentary on the Thana Sutta, another post-canonical text, identifies Saketa, Ayodhya, and Vinita as one city.

According to one theory, the legendary Ayodhya city is the same as the historical city of Saketa and the present-day Ayodhya. According to another theory, the legendary Ayodhya is a mythical city, and the name "Ayodhya" came to be used for the Saketa (present-day Ayodhya) only around the fourth century, when a Gupta emperor (probably Skandagupta) moved his capital to Saketa, and renamed it to Ayodhya after the legendary city. Alternative, but less likely, theories state that Saketa and Ayodhya were two adjoining cities, or that Ayodhya was a locality within the Saketa city.

As Saketa
Archaeological and literary evidence suggests that the site of present-day Ayodhya had developed into an urban settlement by the fifth or sixth-century BC. The site is identified as the location of the ancient Saketa city, which probably emerged as a marketplace located at the junction of the two important roads, the Shravasti-Pratishthana north–south road, and the Rajagriha-Varanasi-Shravasti-Taxila east–west road. Ancient Buddhist texts, such as Samyutta Nikaya, state that Saketa was located in the Kosala kingdom ruled by Prasenajit (or Pasenadi; c. sixth–5th century BC), whose capital was located at Shravasti. The later Buddhist commentary Dhammapada-atthakatha states that the Saketa town was established by merchant Dhananjaya (the father of Visakha), on the suggestion of king Prasenajit. The Digha Nikaya describes it as one of the six large cities of India. The early Buddhist canonical texts mention Shravasti as the capital of Kosala, but the later texts, such as the Jain texts Nayadhammakahao and Pannavana Suttam, and the Buddhist Jatakas, mention Saketa as the capital of Kosala.

As a busy town frequented by travellers, it appears to have become important for preachers such as Gautama Buddha and Mahavira. The Samyutta Nikaya and Anguttara Nikaya mention that Buddha resided at Saketa at times. The early Jain canonical texts (such as Antagada-dasao, Anuttarovavaiya-dasao, and Vivagasuya) state that Mahavira visited Saketa; Nayadhammakahao states that Parshvanatha also visited Saketa. The Jain texts, both canonical and post-canonical, describe Ayodhya as the location of various shrines, such as those of snake, yaksha Pasamiya, Muni Suvratasvamin, and Surappia.

It is not clear what happened to Saketa after Kosala was conquered by the Magadha emperor Ajatashatru around fifth century BC. There is lack of historical sources about the city's situation for the next few centuries: it is possible that the city remained a commercial centre of secondary importance, but did not grow into a political centre of Magadha, whose capital was located at Pataliputra. Several Buddhist buildings may have been constructed in the town during the rule of the Maurya emperor Ashoka in the third century BC: these buildings were probably located on the present-day human-made mounds in Ayodhya. Excavations at Ayodhya have resulted in the discovery of a large brick wall, identified as a fortification wall by archaeologist B. B. Lal. This wall probably erected in the last quarter of the third-century BC.

After the decline of the Maurya empire, Saketa appears to have come under the rule of Pushyamitra Shunga. The first century BC inscription of Dhanadeva suggests that he appointed a governor there. The Yuga Purana mentions Saketa as the residence of a governor, and describes it as being attacked by a combined force of Greeks, Mathuras, and Panchalas. Patanjali's commentary on Panini also refers to the Greek siege of Saketa.

Later, Saketa appears to have become part of a small, independent kingdom. The Yuga Purana states that Saketa was ruled by seven powerful kings after the retreat of the Greeks. The Vayu Purana and the Brahmanda Purana also state that seven powerful kings ruled in the capital of Kosala. The historicity of these kings is attested by the discovery of the coins of the Deva dynasty kings, including Dhanadeva, whose inscription describes him as the king of Kosala (Kosaladhipati). As the capital of Kosala, Saketa probably eclipsed Shravasti in importance during this period. The east–west route connecting Pataliputra to Taxila, which earlier passed through Saketa and Shravasti, appears to have shifted southwards during this period, now passing through Saketa, Ahichhatra and Kanyakubja.

After the Deva kings, Saketa appears to have been ruled by the Datta, Kushan, and Mitra kings, although the chronological order of their rule is uncertain. Bakker theorises that the Dattas succeeded the Deva kings in the mid-1st century AD, and their kingdom was annexed to the Kushan Empire by Kanishka. The Tibetan text Annals of Li Country (c. 11th century) mentions that an alliance of king Vijayakirti of Khotan, king Kanika, the king of Gu-zan, and the king of Li, marched to India and captured the So-ked city. During this invasion, Vijayakirti took several Buddhist relics from Saketa, and placed them in the stupa of Phru-no. If Kanika is identified as Kanishka, and So-ked as Saketa, it appears that the invasion of Kushans and their allies led to the destruction of the Buddhist sites at Saketa.

Nevertheless, Saketa appears to have remained a prosperous town during the Kushan rule. The second century geographer Ptolemy mentions a metropolis "Sageda" or "Sagoda", which has been identified with Saketa. The earliest inscription that mentions Saketa as a place name is dated to the late Kushan period: it was found on the pedestal of a Buddha image in Shravasti, and records the gift of the image by Sihadeva of Saketa. Before or after the Kushans, Saketa appears to have been ruled by a dynasty of kings whose names end in "-mitra", and whose coins have been found at Ayodhya. They may have been members of a local dynasty that was distinct from the Mitra dynasty of Mathura. These kings are attested only by their coinage: Sangha-mitra, Vijaya-mitra, Satya-mitra, Deva-mitra, and Arya-mitra; coins of Kumuda-sena and Aja-varman have also been discovered.

Gupta period
Around the fourth century, the region came under the control of the Guptas, who revived Brahmanism. The Vayu Purana and the Brahmanda Purana attest that the early Gupta kings ruled Saketa. No Gupta-era archaeological layers have been discovered in present-day Ayodhya, although a large number of Gupta coins have been discovered here. It is possible that during the Gupta period, the habitations in the city were located in the areas that have not yet been excavated. The Buddhist sites that had suffered destruction during the Khotanese-Kushan invasion appear to have remained deserted. The fifth-century Chinese traveller Faxian states that the ruins of Buddhist buildings existed at "Sha-chi" during his time. One theory identifies Sha-chi with Saketa, although this identification is not undisputed. If Sha-chi is indeed Saketa, it appears that by the fifth century, the town no longer had a flourshing Buddhist community or any important Buddhist building that was still in use.

An important development during the Gupta time was the recognition of Saketa as the legendary city of Ayodhya, the capital of the Ikshvaku dynasty. The 436 AD Karamdanda (Karmdand) inscription, issued during the reign of Kumaragupta I, names Ayodhya as the capital of the Kosala province, and records commander Prithvisena's offerings to Brahmins from Ayodhya. Later, the capital of the Gupta Empire was moved from Pataliputra to Ayodhya. Paramartha states that king Vikramaditya moved the royal court to Ayodhya; Xuanzang also corroborates this, stating that this king moved the court to the "country of Shravasti", that is, Kosala. A local oral tradition of Ayodhya, first recorded in writing by Robert Montgomery Martin in 1838, mentions that the city was deserted after the death of Rama's descendant Brihadbala. The city remain deserted until King Vikrama of Ujjain came searching for it, and re-established it. He cut down the forests that had covered the ancient ruins, erected the Ramgar fort, and built 360 temples.

Vikramditya was a title of multiple Gupta kings, and the king who moved the capital to Ayodhya is identified as Skandagupta. Bakker theorises that the move to Ayodhya may have been prompted by a flooding of the river Ganges at Pataliputra, the need to check the Huna advance from the west, and Skandagupta's desire to compare himself with Rama (whose Ikshvaku dynasty is associated with the legendary Ayodhya). According to Paramaratha's Life of Vasubandhu, Vikramaditya was a patron of scholars, and awarded 300,000 pieces of gold to Vasubandhu. The text states that Vasubandhu was a native of Saketa ("Sha-ki-ta"), and describes Vikramaditya as the king of Ayodhya ("A-yu-ja"). This wealth was used to build three monasteries in the country of A-yu-ja (Ayodhya). Paramartha further states that the later king Baladitya (identified with Narasimhagupta) and his mother also awarded large sums of gold to Vasubandhu, and these funds were used to build another Buddhist temple at Ayodhya. These structures may have been seen by the seventh century Chinese traveller Xuanzang, who describes a stupa and a monastery at Ayodhya ("O-yu-t-o").

Decline as a political centre
Ayodhya probably suffered when the Hunas led by Mihirakula invaded the Gupta empire in the sixth century. After the fall of the Guptas, it may have been ruled by the Maukhari dynasty, whose coins have been found in the nearby areas. It was not devastated, as Xuanzang describes it as a flourishing town and a Buddhist centre. However, it had lost its position as an important political centre to Kanyakubja (Kannauj). At the time of Xuanzang's visit, it was a part of Harsha's empire, and was probably the seat of a vassal or an administrative officer. Xuanzang states that the city measured about 0.6 km (20 li) in circumference. Another seventh-century source, Kāśikāvṛttī, mentions that the town was surrounded by a moat similar to that around Pataliputra.

After the fall of Harsha's empire, Ayodhya appears to have been variously controlled by local kings and the rulers of Kannauj, including Yashovarman and the Gurjara-Pratiharas. The town is not mentioned in any surviving texts or inscriptions composed during 650–1050 AD, although it may be identified with the "city of Harishchandra" mentioned in the eighth-century poem Gaudavaho. Archaeological evidence (including images to Vishnu, Jain tirthankaras, Ganesha, the seven Matrikas, and a Buddhist stupa) suggests that the religious activity in the area continued during this period.

Early medieval period
According to Indologist Hans T. Bakker, the only religious significance of Ayodhya in the first millennium AD was related to the Gopratara tirtha (now called Guptar Ghat), where Rama and his followers are said to have ascended to heaven by entering the waters of Sarayu.

In the 11th century, the Gahadavala dynasty came to power in the region, and promoted Vaishnavism. They built several Vishnu temples in Ayodhya, five of which survived till the end of Aurangzeb's reign. Hans Bakker concludes that there might have been a temple at the supposed birth spot of Rama built by the Gahadavalas (see Vishnu Hari inscription). In subsequent years, the cult of Rama developed within Vaishnavism, with Rama being regarded as the foremost avatar of Vishnu. Between the 13th and 18th century, Ayodhya's importance as a pilgrimage centre grew.

In 1226 AD, Ayodhya became the capital of the province of Awadh (or "Oudh") within the Delhi sultanate. Muslim historians state that the area was little more than wilderness prior to this. Pilgrimage was tolerated, but the tax on pilgrims ensured that the temples did not receive much income.

Mughal period

Under Mughal rule, the Babri mosque was constructed in Ayodhya. The city was the capital of the province of Awadh (mispronounced as "Oudh" by the British), which is also believed to be a variant of the name "Ayodhya".

After the death of Aurangzeb in 1707 AD, the central Muslim rule weakened, and Awadh became virtually independent, with Ayodhya as its capital. However, the rulers became increasingly dependent on the local Hindu nobles, and control over the temples and pilgrimage centres was relaxed.

British period
In the 1850s, a group of Hindus attacked the Babri mosque, on the grounds that it was built over the birthplace of the Hindu deity Rama. To prevent further disputes, the British administrators divided the mosque premises between Hindus and Muslims.

Ayodhya was annexed in 1856 by the British rulers. The rulers of Awadh were Shia, and the Sunni groups had already protested against the permissive attitude of the former government. The British intervened and crushed the Sunni resistance. In 1857, the British annexed Oudh (Awadh) and subsequently reorganised it into the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh.

Independent India
A movement was launched in 1984 by the Vishva Hindu Parishad party to reclaim the Babri mosque site for a Rama temple. In 1992, a right wing Hindu nationalist rally turned into a riot, leading to the demolition of the Babri mosque. A makeshift temple at Ram Janmabhoomi for Ram Lalla, infant Rama was constructed. Under the Indian government orders, no one was permitted near the site within 200 yards, and the gate was locked to the outside. Hindu pilgrims, however, began entering through a side door to offer worship.

In 2003, the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) carried out an excavation at the mosque site to determine if it was built over the ruins of a temple. The excavation uncovered pillar bases indicating a temple had been in existence under the mosque. Besides Hindus, the Buddhist and Jain representatives claimed that their temples existed at the excavated site.

On 5 July 2005, five terrorists attacked the site of the makeshift Ramlalla temple in Ayodhya. All five were killed in the ensuing gunfight with security forces, and one civilian died in the bomb blast triggered as they attempted to breach the cordon wall.

On 30 September 2010, the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court ruled that one-third of the disputed land should be given to the Uttar Pradesh Sunni Central Waqf Board, one-third to the Nirmohi Akhara and one-third to the Hindu party for the shrine of "Ram Lalla" (infant Rama). The court further ruled that the area where the idols of Ram are present be given to Hindus in the final decree, while the rest of the land shall be divided equally by metes and bounds among the three parties. The judgment, along with evidences provided by the Archaeological Survey of India, upheld that the Babri Masjid was built after demolishing the Hindu temple, which is the birthplace of Rama, and that the mosque was not constructed according to the principles of Islam. The final verdict by the Supreme Court on the case ruled the disputed land in the favour of Hindus for the construction of Ram Mandir and ordered an alternative piece of land be given to the Muslim community for the construction of a mosque.

In a judgement pronounced by a 5 judge bench of the Supreme Court of India on 9 November 2019, the land was handed over to the government to form a trust for the construction of a temple. The court instructed the government to also allot a plot of 5 acres in Ayodhya to the Uttar Pradesh Sunni Central Waqf Board to construct a mosque/Masjid.

Some South Koreans have identified the "Ayuta" mentioned in their ancient Samgungnyusa legend with Ayodhya. According to this legend, the ancient Korean princess Heo Hwang-ok came from Ayuta. In the 2000s, the local government of Ayodhya and South Korea acknowledged the connection and held a ceremony to raise a statue of the princess.

Ram temple
On 5 August 2020, the prime minister of India, Narendra Modi, laid the ceremonial foundation stone for a new temple at what is believed to be the birthplace of the god, Ram. It was planned to build a new township, Navya Ayodhya, on a 500 acre site next to the Faizabad-Gorakhpur highway, which will have luxury hotels and apartment complexes.

The Ram Mandir (lit. 'Rama Temple') is a Hindu temple complex in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, India. Many Hindus believe that it is located at the site of Ram Janmabhoomi, the mythical birthplace of Rama, a principal deity of Hinduism. The temple was inaugurated on 22 January 2024 after a prana pratishtha (consecration) ceremony.

Demographics
As of the 2011 Census of India, Ayodhya had a population of 55,890. Males constituted 56.7% of the population and females 43.3%. Ayodhya had an average literacy rate of 78.1%. As per the religion data of 2011 Census, the majority population is of Hindu religion with 93.23%, and Muslims comes the second with 6.19%.

Geography and climate
Ayodhya has a humid subtropical climate, typical of central India. Summers are long, dry and hot, lasting from late March to mid-June, with average daily temperatures near 32 °C. They are followed by the monsoon season which lasts till October, with annual precipitation of approximately 1067 mm and average temperatures around 28 °C. Winter starts in early November and lasts till the end of January, followed by a short spring in February and early March. Average temperatures are mild, near 16 °C, but nights can be colder.

Places of interest
Ayodhya is an important place of pilgrimage for the Hindus. A verse in the Brahmanda Purana names Ayodhya among "the most sacred and foremost cities", the others being Mathura, Haridvara, Kashi, Kanchi and Avantika. This verse is also found in the other Puranas with slight variations. In Garuda Purana, Ayodhya is said to be one of seven holiest places for Hindus in India, with Varanasi being the most sacrosanct.

Ram Mandir
Ram Mandir, also known as the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Mandir, is a Hindu temple complex under construction in Ayodhya. The site is significant to Hindus as it is believed to be the birthplace of their revered deity Rama. Balak Ram or the Infant form of Rama is the presiding deity of the temple consecrated on 22 January 2024.

Hanuman Garhi Fort
Hanuman Garhi, a massive four-sided fort with circular bastions at each corner and a temple of Hanuman inside, is the most popular shrine in Ayodhya. Situated in the centre of town, it is approachable by a flight of 76 steps. Its legend is that Hanuman lived here in a cave and guarded the Janambhoomi, or Ramkot. The main temple contains the statue of Maa Anjani with Bal Hanuman seated on her lap. The faithful believe wishes are granted with a visit to the shrine. Kanak Bhawan is a temple said to have been given to Sita and Rama by Rama's stepmother Kaikeyi as a wedding gift, and only contains statues of Sita with her husband.

Ramkot
Ramkot is the main place of worship in Ayodhya, and the site of the ancient citadel of its namesake, standing on elevated ground in the western city. Although visited by pilgrims throughout the year, it attracts devotees from all over the world on "Ram Navami", the day of the birth of Rama. Ram Navami is celebrated with great pomp in the Hindu month of Chaitra, which falls between March and April. Swarg Dwar is believed to be the site of cremation of Rama. Mani Parbat and Sugriv Parbat are ancient earth mounds, the first identified by a stupa built by the emperor Ashoka, and the second is an ancient monastery. Treta ke Thakur is a temple standing at the site of the Ashvamedha Yajnya of Rama. Three centuries prior, the Raja of Kulu built a new temple here, which was improved by Ahilyabai Holkar of Indore in 1784, the same time the adjacent Ghats were built. The initial idols in black sandstone were recovered from Sarayu and placed in the new temple, which was known as Kaleram-ka-Mandir. Chhoti Devkali Mandir is the temple of goddess Ishani, or Durga, Kuldevi of Sita.

Nageshwarnath Temple
The temple of Nageshwarnath was established by Kush, son of Rama. Legend has it that Kush lost his armlet while bathing in the Sarayu, and it was retrieved by a Nag-Kanya who fell in love with him. As she was a devotee of Shiva, Kush built her this temple. It was the only temple to survive when Ayodhya was abandoned until the time of Vikramaditya. While the rest of city was in ruin and covered by dense forest, this temple allowed Vikramaditya to recognise the city. The festival of Shivratri is celebrated here with great splendor.

Other places of interest

 * Brahma Kund
 * Ram ki Paidi

Memorial of Heo Hwang-ok
The legendary princess Heo Hwang-ok, who married king Suro of Geumgwan Gaya of Korea, is believed by some to be a native of Ayodhya. In 2001, a Memorial of Heo Hwang-ok was inaugurated by a Korean delegation, which included over a hundred historians and government representatives. In 2016, a Korean delegation proposed to develop the memorial. The proposal was accepted by the Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav.

Sister cities

 * 🇰🇷 Gimhae, South Korea
 * The mayors of Ayodhya and Gimhae signed a sister city bond in March 2001, based on Ayodhya's identification as the birthplace of the legendary queen Heo Hwang-ok.
 * 🇳🇵 Janakpur, Nepal.
 * Ayodhya and Janakpur became sister cities in November 2014. Ayodhya is the birthplace of Rama and Janakpur is the birthplace of his consort, Sita.

Road
Ayodhya is connected by road to several major cities and towns, including Lucknow (130 km), Gorakhpur (140 km), Prayagraj (160 km), Varanasi (200 km) and Delhi (636 km).

A direct bus service has been started between Ayodhya and Janakpur (birthplace of Sita), in Nepal as a part of Ramayana circuit.

Rail
The city is on the broad gauge Northern Railway line on Pandit Din Dayal Upadhyay Junction and Lucknow main route with Ayodhya Junction and Ayodhya Cantt railway stations.

Ramayana Circuit Train : Special Train that runs from Delhi to main sites of the Ramayana Circuit

Flight
The nearest airports are Maharishi Valmiki International Airport, Ayodhyadham is 5 km away, Chaudhary Charan Singh International Airport in Lucknow, 134 km away, Prayagraj Airport, 166 km away.

title: Ayodhya