Mob FilesPublic-domain archive of American organized crime
First page of a typed memorandum for file by Special Agent C. B. Winstead concerning the Dillinger case.
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Memorandum for file by Special Agent C. B. Winstead, 25 July 1934: the weapons at the Biograph Theatre

Two-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.

Date
1934-07-25
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 work of the United States government, public domain under 17 U.S.C. § 105. The stored image is a grayscale render of the Vault viewer's page scan.

Part 01 of the FBI Vault’s John Dillinger file, pages 35 and 36 of the viewer; Bureau serial 62-29777-1-14. The memorandum is Special Agent C. B. Winstead’s own account of what happened outside the Biograph Theatre in Chicago on 22 July 1934. This page files it only for the weapons it names. Winstead writes that he “pulled the Division .45 Automatic, with which he was armed,” and that, when he asked a police officer to look for a gun, “Mr. Purvis stated that he had already taken a gun out of his hand, and that it was a .380 calibre Colt Automatic.”

The typed year looks like “1954” in the scan because of the typeface; the content fixes it as 1934. Page 35 is stored here; the second page is in the Vault at the same URL. The memorandum is a statement by an agent involved in the event and is not an independent record of it.

Object: Typed memorandum, two pages
Maker: C. B. Winstead, Special Agent
Date: 25 July 1934
Provenance: Bureau serial 62-29777-1-14, released in the FBI Vault
Appears in: FBI Vault, John Dillinger, Part 01, pages 35-36

itemFBI history: weapons found at the Lincoln Court Apartments, St. Paul (Dillinger case, March 1934)The FBI's Dillinger history states what agents found at the Lincoln Court Apartments in St. Paul: a Thompson submachine gun with the stock removed, two automatic rifles, a .38 caliber Colt automatic with twenty-shot magazine clips, and two bulletproof vests.