Mob FilesPublic-domain archive of American organized crime
Typed page numbered 2 of a Bureau report describing agents' positions near the Biograph Theatre on Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, on the night of July 22, 1934.
Open the full imageJPG, 1000 × 1267 px, 0.2 MB

Bureau account of the agents' positions at the Biograph Theatre, 22 July 1934 (Vault, Dillinger Part 01, page 29)

Page 2 of a typed Bureau account in the FBI Vault's Dillinger file: Purvis and Brown near "the Biograph Theatre, 2433 Lincoln Avenue, Chicago," Dillinger seen entering at 8:50 p.m., and where each agent was posted. A copy is stored here.

Date
1934
Kind
case-file
Source
FBI Records: The Vault
Retrieved
2026-10-12
Rights
A record of the Federal Bureau of Investigation released under FOIA in the FBI Vault. A United States government work, public domain under 17 U.S.C. § 105. The stored image is a grayscale render of the Vault viewer's page scan.

This is viewer page 29 of Part 01 of the FBI Vault’s John Dillinger file, a typed page numbered “- 2 -.” The first page of the account and its author were not identified from the viewer’s text layer, and the page itself is undated. It describes the night of July 22, 1934.

It reads: “At seven thirty o’clock on the night of July 22, 1934, Special Agent in Charge, M. H. Purvis, and Special Agent R. D. Brown proceeded to a point near the Biograph Theatre, 2433 Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, Illinois.” Sergeant Zarkovich of the East Chicago, Indiana police and Special Agent C. B. Winstead went to the Marbro Theatre. “At eight fifty P. M. Dillinger and two women companions were observed entering the Biograph Theatre.” The page then assigns positions: Special Agents C. O. Hurt and H. E. Hollis, with two East Chicago officers, “to seize Dillinger as he was leaving the Theatre”; other agents to close in from the north and south, to stand across the street, and to cover the alley exits at the southeast corner and on the north side.

The page stops before the shooting. The FBI history page says Winstead, Hurt and Hollis were the agents who fired. Winstead’s own memorandum of 25 July 1934 is filed from the same part of the Vault file.

itemMemorandum for file by Special Agent C. B. Winstead, 25 July 1934: the weapons at the Biograph TheatreTwo-page memorandum by Special Agent C. B. Winstead on the events outside the Biograph Theatre, Chicago, on 22 July 1934. It records the weapons involved: the "Division .45 Automatic" Winstead carried and a ".380 calibre Colt Automatic" that Winstead says Purvis told him he had taken.itemJohn Dillinger, Part 02 (FBI Vault): Bureau memoranda of 1934 and the memorandum of 10 August 1935 on the shootingSecond part of the FBI Vault's Dillinger file, 44 viewer pages of Bureau memoranda from July and August 1934, ending with a memorandum dated 10 August 1935 on the facts of the 22 July 1934 shooting.itemJohn Dillinger's death mask (FBI artifact)Plaster death mask of John Dillinger held by the FBI. The FBI says Harold May of the Reliance Dental Manufacturing Co. made it at the Cook County Morgue about twelve hours after Dillinger's death on 22 July 1934. A copy of the FBI's photograph is stored here.