It happened outside Chicago's Biograph Theater at 10:40pm. He was shot by US federal agents.

After a full life of crime, Dillinger was finally caught with the help of a Romanian born brothel owner who was facing a deportation hearing, Anna Sage; the $10,000 bounty on his head didn't hurt either.

Sage and Dillinger went to the Biograph Theater to watch the gangster movie Manhattan Melodrama. The FBI knew this and laid in wait outside the theater waiting for the couple to come out.

Sage had agreed to wear an identifying orange dress, which actually looked red ("the lady in red") under the lights outside the theater. Dillinger ran when he was ordered to surrender and in the ensuing gunfire two bystanders were wounded.

The official records show that it was Dillinger who was gunned down that night, but conspiracy theorists maintain it wasn't him. They refer to autopsy findings which apparently do not match Dillinger's medical records.

In his career of crime, John Dillinger had been associated with the deaths of 7 police officers, 3 federal agents and the robbing of 11 banks for more than $300,000.