Title: Account from Eyewitness to Dillinger's Death?
deppaholic - April 14, 2008 11:45 AM (GMT)
This turned up in my alerts this morning. Don't know whether or not it's authentic or where the footage originated...but it is interesting.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=bd4_1208152038Rose
FANtasticJD - April 14, 2008 01:31 PM (GMT)
Thanks for posting this. Very interesting. It sounds real enough but who knows. I notice that he pronounced Dillinger's name the way I read the family still pronounces it: with a hard/mute g rather than the soft g usually heard now.
Cherie - April 14, 2008 01:57 PM (GMT)
I'm not sure if this is real. According to the book, Public Enemies, he was shot closer to 10:30, not midnight, but who knows!
deppaholic - April 14, 2008 02:01 PM (GMT)
| QUOTE (FANtasticJD @ Apr 14 2008, 07:31 AM) |
| Thanks for posting this. Very interesting. It sounds real enough but who knows. I notice that he pronounced Dillinger's name the way I read the family still pronounces it: with a hard/mute g rather than the soft g usually heard now. |
I noticed that, too, FAN. It's a chilling account, especially if it's the real thing. Was he reading it, or reciting it from memory? Couldn't tell...
Rose
Karen - April 14, 2008 02:27 PM (GMT)
WOW Rose, I'm glad that you posted that. It's hard to tell about if he were reading it or had his account memorized. We have to remember that people spoke (I'm sad to say this) more articulately then than we do now. But it seems as though his recounting had been memorized. I thought it interesting that he got a bit more animated there for a while, which makes me think he telling the truth about what he saw. I guess time will tell, but I think it seems pretty dang authentic.
wwjdd - April 15, 2008 12:05 AM (GMT)
That's fascinating. I couldn't place the gentleman's accent. Eastern European maybe.
I do agree that people of that time tended to be much more articulate, but something about parts of that account seemed too "florid" if that makes sense. Very sensationalized and dramatic. And it appeared to me, watching his eyes, that during his recounting of actually seeing Dillinger shot he was reading, perhaps from cue cards. Up until that point his story had seemed simple and to the point, as one would expect.
In my cynic's heart I wondered if perhaps he truly WAS an eyewitness, but that his "account" had been written for him, and polished, at Hoover's orders.
"...I thought he was an innocent man, who had there spent his mortal life in agony, through not fault of his own."
"He dropped as cattle would in a slaughter house. Only...he had a greater fame to himself; a greater name."
"...with his blood oozing all over the street. And Dillinger lay motionless."
I wouldn't put it past Hoover - he certainly villified Ma Barker posthumously.