Mooresville, Indiana, January 25, 1934.

A gentle, kindly old man broke into sobbing grief when he learned that John Dillinger, notorious desperado, had walked into a police trap in Tucson, Arizona.

It was John W. Dillinger, 73-year-old father of the long-harried leader of a

gang of fugitive convicts. Roused from sleep by a reporter at his farm home near here,

he came to the door clad in a flannel nightshirt and heard the news that his son had at last

fallen into the hands of officers.

When his sobs had subsided, he talked a little in a shaking voice about his boy.

Since last fall, when young Gillinger was delivered from the Lima, Ohio jail, by gunmen

who killed the sheriff, the father has lived in constant fear that his son himself

would be killed in a battle with officers. He has expressed hope that the fugitive would make

his way to South America or Mexico and dropped from sight. Tonight, when he learned his son

had been captured without resistance, he expressed vast relief.

I don't believe they have anything on him in any of those killings, the elder Dillinger said.

Again, he expressed his relief that Dillinger was taken alive, thank the reporter for the information, and returned to bed. True Crime Historian presents Yesterday's News, a reading from America's historic newspapers.

I'm Richard O. Jones, here to present Chapter 3 of the first volume of The Gangster Chronicles, a special edition

of yesterday's news, focusing on the notorious scoundrels of the Prohibition and Depression

eras. We're beginning this series with newspaper accounts of the Trail of Terror blazed by one of

America's most famous, dare I say most beloved gangsters, John Dillinger.

From the time he was paroled from the Michigan City Prison in May 1933, to the time he was

gunned down by police on a Chicago sidewalk 14 months later, John Herbert Dillinger was one of America's

most notorious scoundrels.

In Chapter 1, we looked at the escape of 10 convicts from the Indiana Penitentiary

...