In Killing the Mob, Bill O’Reilly and co-author Martin Dugard trace the brutal history of 20th Century organized crime in the United States, and expertly plumb the history of this nation’s most notorious serial robbers, conmen, murderers, and especially, mob family bosses. In the following excerpt, O’Reilly and Dugard recount the legendary escape of infamous criminal John Dillinger.
The man with four months to live is about to bust out of jail. This is a cold and rainy Saturday morning. Thirty-year-old John Dillinger, America’s most famous bank robber, has finished his meager prison breakfast and now mills around with fourteen other inmates in a jailhouse corridor. He enjoys his only “exercise” of the day but has much more on his mind.
Dillinger is a charming celebrity inmate, standing five feet, seven inches, with a crooked smile, trim athletic build, and thinning brown hair. He is well known as a ladies’ man. A career criminal from Indianapolis whose only legitimate job was a short stint in the U.S. Navy, Dillinger has spent his adult life in and out of prisons. Nevertheless, he has become famous. Such is Dillinger’s notoriety that the prosecuting attorney and sheriff in his current court case both demanded to have a picture taken with their arms around his shoulders.
