MOORESVILLE, Ind. | Tonight, when the sun sets over the Northwest Side of Chicago, and the pink neon of the Biograph Theater marquee glows on Lincoln Avenue, the air will be steamy, much like it was 76 years ago when the most wanted man in the country quietly sat in the darkened movie house among an unsuspecting audience.

For 13 months, local, state and federal authorities had pursued bank robber John Dillinger, the face of a revolving gang of Depression-era outlaws that included the likes of Baby Face Nelson and Homer Van Meter. The outlaws opened bank vaults as easily as beer cans, traded shots with law enforcement officials and left a bloody trail from central Indiana to Minnesota, from Iowa to Ohio.

"Manhattan Melodrama," a gritty, Clark Gable crime story, would be the last movie Dillinger would see. After he emerged from the theater, FBI agents closed in and gunned down the man dubbed Public Enemy No. 1 at the mouth of an alley two doors down from the box office.

Dillinger's story ended in Chicago, but it began long before in Mooresville. His family remains in the same town where young John hunted squirrels as a boy, and after decades of silence, some are talking about the man known to them as a kindhearted Christian who played ball and played the role of big brother to his two sisters.

Mike Thompson, 56, lives south of town and works at the nearby Indianapolis Rolls Royce plant. The son of Frances Dillinger, John's youngest stepsister, Mike was born 20 years after the death of his infamous uncle and, like John, grew up walking the same streets.

"I lived with it, being John's nephew all my life," Thompson said Tuesday in the living room where pictures of his uncle, holding a submachine gun and a little black wooden pistol, sit on the mantle. "Never thought much about it. He's part of the family.

"To go around and talk about who my uncle was, it just wasn't something you did."

That changed last year when Thompson and his family crossed paths with author Carol Sissom, an Indianapolis-based crime writer. Thompson's son, Travis, met her at a book signing and struck up a dialog about Dillinger. That resulted in interviews with the family, many through e-mail, which became "Banking with Dillinger," in which Thompson and his mother relayed stories of John's youth.

Meanwhile, director Michael Mann was busy putting together the latest big-screen version of the Dillinger story, "Public Enemies" starring Johnny Depp.

"(Sisson) rushed the book when she found out the movie was coming out because she wanted to get the book out before ..." Thompson said. "But as far as (being) factual, it's got the facts in it, and it talks about John being a Christian, raised as a Christian, and his father being a deacon in the church, and the good side. My mom considered him a typical big brother, who liked to tease her and took her to movies, her and (her sister) Doris, and that's the way she looked at him. He was a big brother."

Bad decisions

Frances Dillinger was 11 when her big brother started making national headlines in 1933. However, it was years before, on Sept. 6, 1924, when he made the decision that put him on a bad road -- robbing the local grocer.

"An older acquaintance of John's, Ed Singleton, (who) was 11 years older than John, he'd met at a pool hall here in Mooresville, and got to runnin' around with him," Thompson said. "(Singleton) talked him into trying to rob Frank Morgan."

Morgan, at 65, was a big man, known to walk home at night with the day's proceeds from his west side grocery store. He was a friend of Dillinger's father, a local farmer who sold produce to Morgan.

Dillinger and Singleton confronted Morgan outside the First Christian Church, but it didn't go well.

"They attempted to rob him, but they never did get the money," Thompson said. "He fought them. Ed Singleton, I think, hit (Morgan) with a baseball bat or a pipe, there are a couple different stories on what he hit him with. Ed actually had a revolver, in his pocket, I guess, and it fell out and went off, so the neighbors come out, and (Ed and John) took off, so they never actually got any money.

"John went up to the pool hall later. He got worried that maybe Frank Morgan was hurt bad, so he went up there and was asking guys in the pool hall if they'd heard anything. ... Well, nobody knew anything, so he kind of gave himself away trying to find out if he was all right or not."

Singleton, who had a record, lawyered up, but Dillinger did not. Instead, his father, John Sr., talked with the judge.

"John hadn't been in trouble before, so the judge pretty much told him that he just needs to tell what he did and they'd take it easy on him," Thompson said. "Instead of taking it easy on him, he gave him 10 to 21 (years). He did 9 and a 1/2 years. Ed Singleton did two years.

"In letters he wrote home, you could tell (John) was bitter over that ... the whole town actually said it was way too cruel of a sentence. Almost everybody in the town signed a petition trying to get the governor to commute the sentence, and even Frank Morgan, the one they attempted to rob, talked to the judge and said it was way too harsh."

From there, Thompson believed his uncle's fate was sealed.

"I think being in there from the age of 21, for 9 and a 1/2 years, being bitter over it, coming out, being the Depression, being an ex-con, it was hard to get a job. He went to church and they kind of shunned him at church when he come out. He couldn't find work, so I think he ended up going to what he learned in prison from Harry Pierpont, (Homer) Van Meter and the guys that ended up being in the gang, actually the ones he helped break out of (prison in) Michigan City.

"So, I think he kind of fell back. The only way he was going to get ahead or do anything was with the guys that he knew in prison. Once he got started, I think he just got in a whirlwind. ... I think he got in so far, there was no stopping."

Local protection

The day after Dillinger was gunned down in Chicago, a newspaper photographer captured young Frances, with a tentative smile and a hand filled with flowers. Her mother, Elizabeth, had died the year before, so she and her sister, Doris, had no choice but to accompany their father, John Sr., on a national public speaking tour in which he told his son's story and preached the mantra that crime doesn't pay.

"They got to meet a lot of interesting people and see and lot of places, so she had an interesting life when she was young," Thompson said, recalling how the family met the mothers of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, outlaw contemporaries of John Dillinger who met the same bloody end. "Bonnie's mom took a liking to my mom. She was just 12. She actually gave her the watch chain that was on Bonnie when she was killed, and she still has it."

After the tour, the family returned to obscurity in Mooresville. Frances married local businessman Paul Thompson in 1943, and moved across town to the only other house she's ever lived in. As a nurse, she worked for a couple of doctors at the local hospital, and with the help of the townsfolk, has been able to live the majority of her life out of the spotlight.

"People know who the family is and the association ... and my mom and the rest of the family were all real well respected. So they were all real protective, especially when people would come down asking questions and stuff," Thompson said.

"Back when they were hunting John, the police would follow my mom and Doris, her older sister, back and forth to school, not trying to catch John, but they were afraid somebody was going to kidnap my mom or Doris. So they kind of watched. And the teachers at school were real protective, and kept a close eye on who was around and asking about them. So the town's always been pretty good, and still is."

The next generation

Thompson's son, Travis, 26, didn't really know the story behind his infamous relation until his teenage years.

"We'd go over to grandma's house and, of course, she always had a picture of John -- the one with the Thompson machine gun and the wooden gun -- and I'd want to know: Who was that?" Travis said. "When I got older, then they kind of explained to me more and more who he was.

"When I got in high school, my freshman year, you were not supposed to take Indiana History (as a freshman). It was a junior or senior class, but the history teacher wanted me to be in his class because of John. I did my report on him, and the kids were all fighting over who wanted to be my partner. They were all like, 'Well, this is going to be an easy assignment,' which it was. My partner really didn't have to do much except for make the scrapbook for us to put all the pictures in. I did all the reporting and everything. A-plus."

Somewhere along the line, the family stories triggered something in Travis, and at 18, he signed up to work with the local police department in nearby Brooklyn, Ind. He later escorted shipments of money to fill ATMs at downstate casinos before taking a law enforcement job with the federal government -- the details of which he asked to keep confidential.

"Some of my buddies in the police department, a bank robbery would happen or something and they'd be like, 'Where were YOU at?'" Travis said. "I got a lot of people joking with me in law enforcement about it. ... I think John would get a kick out of it.

"Getting into government was a lot different than it was in the state. My background investigation for the government was a little different, just because of (John). One good thing about the government, they definitely know everything about you before you show up in front of them."

Travis is not the only Dillinger relative to work on the other side of the law. Among the family heirlooms are a pistol and hunting suit belonging to his outlaw relative, but there's also a watch belonging to John Dillinger's younger stepbrother Hubert. Travis is proud to read the inscription, which bears the dates of Hubert's 21 years of service with the Indiana State Police.

History and Hollywood

The Thompsons, more than most, have a deep appreciation of preserved history. If not for newsreels, Mike Thompson never would have heard the sound of his grandfather's voice.

Though they have not visited many towns where Dillinger robbed banks, they have made the journey to the old Lake County Jail in Crown Point and the John Dillinger Museum in Hammond.

"I'm glad that at the Crown Point jail, they're actually trying to remodel it and bring it back ..." Travis said. "That is part of our history. They shouldn't let that fall apart. People of my generation, some of them don't even know who John was, or that era of history, unless they get it in a history class."

Mike Thompson fondly recalls touring the jail with Frances last summer.

"To actually be there and see where he was and what he did to get out of there, I was totally amazed," he said. "I was thinking, you know, just a little jail, a hallway and out of there. But he actually had to go quite a ways from that back cell, keep getting people and putting them in the cell with the wooden gun, make it through 72 feet of what they called the tunnel up to where he actually got real guns and then got out. Actually found out he went out, and there was no keys. He had to go back in and go back out, and here's the National Guard all out front, surrounding the place, and then he ends up driving away in the sheriff's car. It was pretty amazing."

However, when it comes to the movies that purport to tell his uncle's story, the family has a much different reaction.

"It's different watching it, knowing that's your family," Travis said. "Even though I never met him, when they come to the scene where they shoot him, you're watching one of your family members get executed, basically, on TV. It's a little hard to watch, especially the newest one. It was really close up, a little more graphic than the other films were."

After all the years, Mike Thompson said his mother still sheds tears for her brother when she watches those scenes play out.

"As far as Johnny Depp, I think he did a great job playing John. As far as the movie being factual, it's Hollywood. I think it was a little better than most of them."

Thompson hopes that people will look beyond the movies and search out the facts about John Dillinger. Despite the murder charge filed against his uncle in the shooting death of East Chicago police Officer William Patrick O'Malley, he maintains that "Uncle John" didn't kill anyone.

"There's letters where John wrote his father," Mike Thompson said. "He said, 'Don't believe all these things they write about me,' and he told his father, he said, 'I have never killed anyone.' ... But I think ... if he hadn't got caught up in that, he'd have been your average guy. He might have been a bank president, who knows? ... He just got a raw break and things went the way they went. ... Once it got going, I think he pretty much made up his mind that he definitely wasn't going back to jail.

"I think, and I don't know, but looking at it and hearing my mom talk, I think he kind of knew how it was going to end. He had a short, exciting life, I guess, for 13 months. It's amazing that 76 years after he was killed that there's still such interest in him."