John Dillinger's Last Night: The Lady in Red and the FBI

On July 22, 1934, America's most wanted man watched a gangster film and walked out of the Biograph Theater on Lincoln Avenue — straight into an FBI ambush. John Dillinger, bank robber and public enemy number one, had been betrayed by a Romanian-born brothel madam named Ana Cumpănaş (known in press reports as "the Lady in Red," though she actually wore orange). She had tipped off FBI agent Melvin Purvis in hopes of help avoiding deportation. She was deported anyway, in 1936. Dillinger was shot three times as he ran for the alley beside the theater. He fell at the mouth of the alley and was pronounced dead at Alexian Brothers Hospital. Bystanders reportedly dipped their handkerchiefs and dress hems in his blood as souvenirs. The Biograph Theater still stands at 2433 N Lincoln Avenue, a theater building whose resident company, Victory Gardens, went largely dormant in 2022 and is now rebuilding under interim leadership, with a production planned for fall 2026. No marker stands at the spot where Dillinger fell.