Public Enemy No. 1 and The Lady In Red

You may be familiar with Susan Hill’s ghost story, The Woman in Black, or with Wilkie Collins’s mystery, The Woman in White; in fact, there are many stories of ‘White Lady’ ghosts peppered all across the globe.

But if black and white is a bit too monochromatic for your taste, there’s always The Lady, In Red to fall back on. She’s another type of ghost – said to be a rape victim, a prostitute or a jilted lover – and, once again, there are ‘sightings’ recorded in America, England and Ireland, where she wears a blood-red dress and often has a back story associated with hotels and theatres.

The ghostly Lady In Red is new to me – I’d always associated the expression with the song of the same name penned by Chris de Burgh in tribute to his wife.

But there is yet another Lady In Red whose story raises an eyebrow, and it’s a sobriquet that refers to one Anna Sage, a woman who, enticed by money and hope for a brighter future, betrayed America’s ‘Public Enemy No. 1’, bringing his life of crime crashing down in a blaze of gunfire.

It was July 22, 1934, and that rakishly handsome ultimate bad boy John Dillinger donned his straw boater and stepped out of Chicago’s Biograph movie theatre after watching Manhattan Melodrama, starring Clark Gable and Myrna Loy.

John Dillinger

Dillinger (32) was one of the most famous bank robbers in US history, known for a series of robberies and escapes from June 1933 to July 1934. He’d been on a deadly crime spree through Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa, robbing banks and escaping law enforcers in a blizzard of bullets. Putting him out of business was the FBI’s top priority.

Dillinger’s road to notorious armed robber began in 1924, shortly after he deserted from the US Navy, when he was arrested at the holdup of a grocery store in Mooresville, Indiana. Most of his remaining years would be spent behind bars in Indiana State Prison. Paroled in May of 1933, Dillinger didn’t waste any time returning to criminality and along with accomplices, raided five banks in four months.

His crime spree was halted in September of that year he was captured in Ohio and imprisoned, but a month later he was free again after being rescued by five former convicts whose own escape Dillinger had plotted. The rescue resulted in the death of the local sheriff.

The Dillinger gang hit the banks again, doing heists in Indiana and Wisconsin and then travelling through Florida and Arizona before being arrested again.

Dillinger was sent back to his home state, where he was locked up in Crown Point Jail. He hit the country’s headlines again on March 3, 1934, when he made a fake pistol out of a piece of wood covered in black shoe polish and used it to bluff his way past guards and on to freedom.

By crossing state lines in a stolen vehicle, Dillinger had committed a federal offence and was now in the sights of the FBI, who tracked him to the Little Bohemia lodge, just outside Mercer, Wisconsin. Among those hiding out with Dillinger was another notorious bandit, Lester Gillis (aka ‘Baby Face’ Nelson).

Lester Gillis (aka ‘Baby Face Nelson’)

The FBI raid, led by Agent Melvin Purvis, turned into a bloodbath that left several innocent bystanders shot and one FBI agent killed. To add insult to bloody injury, Dillinger and the gang managed to escape.

Lying low, Dillinger used his time to have plastic surgery, removing some moles from his face as well as the distinctive dimple on his chin.

Once the surgery had healed, he was back to ‘work’ on June 30 with a bank heist in South Bend, Indiana, which netted €30,000 and led to more bystanders being shot. It was to be his last robbery due to part played by brothel madam, ‘The Lady In Red’.

Anna Sage (originally Ana Cumpănaș) had moved to America along with her husband from her native Romania. The marriage ended shortly after the birth of her son and Sage took to prostitution to support her and her child, later becoming a madam and opening several brothels.

The money may have been coming in for Sage, but pressure was building because she was under investigation by the US Immigration and Naturalisation Service and was facing deportation back to her homeland on charges of being an ‘alien of low moral character’.

Anna Sage informed to the FBI

But then a ray of hope emerged in early June 1934 when her former employee 26-year-old Polly Hamilton, introduced Sage to her new boyfriend, one John Dillinger (who was using the name Jimmy Lawrence at the time).

Hoping she could cut a deal with authorities about her imminent deportation, Sage met with FBI agent Melvin Purvis on July 19 and told them she would tip them off about Dillinger’s whereabouts at the first opportunity she got.

That chance came three days later when Sage called Purvis to tell him that she, Hamilton and Dillinger were going to the movies together that evening.

To make them more identifiable in the crowd, Sage wore an orange skirt and white blouse (the media later wrongly said she wore red and the sobriquet ‘Lady In Red’ stuck).

On July 22, as Dillinger exited Chicago’s Biograph Theater with the two women. Purvis and his men were waiting. The agent caught sight of Dillinger, let him walk past and then pulled out his gun, yelling, “Stick’em up, Johnnie, we have you surrounded!”

Dillinger began to run, reaching into his trousers pocket to draw a gun, but a hail of gunfire sent him sprawling in a nearby alley. America’s first Public Enemy No.1 was dead, shot through the nape of his neck. It was said that bystanders dipped handkerchiefs and pieces of clothing in his blood as mementos.

Crowds outside the Biograph Theater after the shooting

Giggling onlookers later peered at his body through the glass at the Chicago morgue. Up to 15,000 people are said to have filed past Dillinger’s corpse eager to satisfy their ghoulish curiosity.

For her betrayal Sage received $5,000 reward – half of the reward she had been promised. Despite her hopes, she failed to avoid deportation and was sent back to Romania on April 25, 1936. She died there exactly 11 years later of liver failure.

John Dillinger has gone into criminal history as the rakish, daring gangster who stole more than $300,000 (approximately $6.8million in today’s rate) in a year-long crime spree. Despite his deadly shootouts and the terror that he sowed, he was feted for his escapades and for putting one over on the banks at a time when America’s impoverished masses were hurting deeply from The Great Depression.

The woman who brought Dillinger’s mayhem to an end may not have got all she wanted from her deadly deal with the FBI, but her name and sobriquet live on – not least thanks to a poem written in chalk on the pavement where Dillinger met his end that night on July 22, 1934…

‘Stranger, stop and wish me well,
Just a prayer for my soul in Hell.
I was a good fellow, most people said,
Betrayed by a woman all dressed in red.’