Story Photos
 From a submachine gun and a carved wooden pistol to a 1933 Ford Deluxe V8 and pictures, Kelso resident Jeremy Dillinger is fully into the lore of the man who shares his last name. Bill Wagner / The Daily News
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The Dillinger Connection
Tuesday, January 29, 2008 5:40 AM PST
By Brenda Blevins McCorkle
bmccorkle@tdn.com
Printable version
E-mail this articleJeremy Dillinger’s fascination with the infamous 1930’s bank robber, John Dillinger, comes naturally.
It’s not that there’s any proven family connection. But there is the shared last name, as well as a glancing resemblance between the young Kelso Dillinger and the long-dead criminal.
It was enough to compel Jeremy and his wife, Rachel, to take the leap and become collectors. Their leap included a journey to Michigan to buy a car that’s purported to have been used in one of the many robbery and shootouts on which John Dillinger prided himself . In the process, they scored a cache of memorabilia that includes Dillinger’s eyeglasses, pocket watch, room key and other bits and pieces of a notorius history.
Jeremy Dillinger said he’s been interested in John Dillinger for years.
“Because of the possible relation in the family,” he said.
John Herbert Dillinger “was a notorious and vicious thief,” according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Web site. “From September, 1933, until July, 1934, he and his violent gang terrorized the Midwest, killing 10 men, wounding 7 others, robbing banks and police arsenals, and staging 3 jail breaks -- killing a sheriff during one and wounding 2 guards in another.”
Probably because of widespread feelings of powerlessness during the Depression, the FBI site says, Dillinger became an antihero, stirring “mass emotion to a degree rarely seen in this country.”
He was set up by a Romanian prostitute who worked with the FBI to prevent being deported. As Dillinger came out of the Biograph Theater in Chicago after seeing a Clark Gable movie on July 22, 1934, he was killed in a gun battle with FBI agents. He had just turned 31.
Jeremy and Rachel Dillinger started doing research on the infamous robber and buying memorabilia on eBay. The topper happened when they decided to look for a 1933 Ford just like the one that Dillinger and his gang liked to steal from hapless motorists and use as their getaway car.
Rachel Dillinger checked out the cars on the Internet, and the first to pop up was one that belonged to Jim Farrar from Milan, Mich. The car was part of a larger collection that included personal items that once belonged to John Dillinger.
They contacted Farrar about the Ford and were further intrigued. The vehicle came with several license plates from states such as Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Wisconsin.
“The plates were found in the car, and they’re from all of the states where the banks were robbed,” Rachel said. “They were hidden up underneath the dash, and they didn’t find them until they started restoring the car, tearing it apart.”
The car also had faint scars from what appear to be bullet holes, Farrar said during a telephone interview. He discovered the deformity when neighboring body-shop workers in his hometown stopped by to have a look at the infamous car.
“This one kid said, ‘You know, this car has been shot at. If you catch it in the light just right, you can see where it’s dimpled in a few places,’” Farrar said.
There is no way to pinpoint the car’s original owner, Farrar said. The vehicles that Dillinger used during the robberies were stolen, he added.
Dillinger and his gang “would drive down the highway and pull over in front of people and just take their car,” Farrar said.
The ‘33 Fords were popular at that time, which made the pickings that much easier. “The cars were either black or forest green, and there were a lot of them,” Farrar said, making it a futile effort for the police to put out an APB on a black ‘33 Ford.
The car was also popular because of its V8 engines, Jeremy Dillinger said. “This was the first year of the V8, so it would easily outrun the 4-cylinders.”
All of these details sold the Kelso couple on Farrar’s car.
“We were really amazed,” Rachel said. “Especially that it was for sale.”
Farrar was happy to sell the car to someone who shared the same last name with the man whom he had spent countless hours researching.
“He was very particular about who he was going to sell this to,” Rachel said.
Late last year, the couple traveled to Milan to cart the car and the accompanying memorabilia home. They hired a covered transport for the vehicle to get it home to Kelso.
The Dillingers had already begun creating a vintage vehicle sanctuary in the basement of their home. They tiled the floor in classic black and white to provide constrast for their cars’ vibrant shapes and colors.
Their newest acquisition sits in its own showroom, and the Dillingers surrounded the vehicle with photographs they’d gathered of John Dillinger and press photos from the aftermath of his bank robberies and shootouts.
The other collectibles, such as Dillinger’s pocket watch, which was traced to the criminal via a serial number, and his eyeglasses and apartment key are displayed behind glass.
The Kelso Dillingers also have a copy of a letter that the criminal wrote to Henry Ford in 1934. The letter told the automobile inventor how much he loved his cars.
“Clyde Barrow wrote a letter also,” Rachel Dillinger said. “Henry Ford marveled that these criminals took time out of their busy lives to sit down and write a letter to him.”
It’s easy to see why Barrow and Dillinger would be so complimentary about those Fords, Jeremy said.
“It has a lot of options that they normally don’t have,” he said. “It has electric fan on the column, and a radio instead of a glove box.” The rearview mirror has a pull-chain for a windup clock.
Because of the quality of the car, the accompanying memorabilia and the vehicle history, the couple didn’t hesitate to shell out $40,000 to own the lot and bring it home.
“Generally, a car like this would probably sell for half of that, but the history of it is the big thing, you know,” Jeremy Dillinger said. “To replace this car here ... you would have to go to a museum to find one.”
The man who sports the same last name as the robber was once known as both public enemy number one said the potential blood connection drew him most of all. “One of the main reasons it excites me is that it could have been a relative who drove it.”
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