When it comes to whether the body inside 1930s gangster John Dillinger’s grave will actually be exhumed, Indiana’s Crown Hill Cemetery says it has the last word.
And the cemetery says it refuses to open the grave for “a decades-old conspiracy theory that Dillinger was not, in fact, shot and killed by the FBI, properly identified by his family or buried at Crown Hill, in 1934.”
But with Dillinger’s descendants still insisting they should be allowed to confirm the identity of the body buried there, the question could ultimately be up to a judge. A court hearing is now set for Wednesday, records show, months after plans emerged this summer to exhume the bank robber’s grave over “evidence” that someone else could be buried there.
Meanwhile, the Indiana State Department of Health has given its approval for the exhumation to move forward on New Year’s Eve.
Two of Dillinger’s descendants made national news this summer by filing affidavits claiming to have “evidence” that the person fatally shot outside Chicago’s Biograph Theater on July 22, 1934, may not have been Dillinger.
“This evidence includes the non-match of his eye color, the ear shape and protrusion from the head, the fingerprints not matching, the existence of a heart condition and the apparent non-match of the anterior teeth,” the affidavits said.
Dillinger purportedly had plastic surgery done to alter his appearance while he was on the run.
Though plans for an exhumation had initially been part of a documentary planned by the History Channel, the network pulled out of the project in September. Meanwhile, Crown Hill Cemetery officials also apparently had second thoughts.
Michael Thompson, who has identified himself as Dillinger’s nephew, claims the cemetery changed its position after plans to open the grave made headlines.
Still, his lawyers wrote in a court filing that, “no family members have formally opposed” the exhumation, and they said Thompson “should not be prohibited from confirming identity merely because his uncle was an infamous bank robber.”
They made clear they don’t intend for the exhumation to become a media spectacle.
“The parties have always intended to conduct the work after hours, under cover of a canopy and with adequate security to protect the grounds and privacy of the family and crew while work is conducted,” Thompson’s lawyers wrote.
But lawyers for Crown Hill say Indiana law essentially gives the cemetery veto power over the project. They pointed to a statute that says, unless a body is being removed from a grave for an autopsy or to be moved to another location, it “shall not be removed from a cemetery” without, among other things, the written consent of the cemetery.
“That should conclude the matter,” Crown Hill’s lawyers wrote.
Still, Thompson’s lawyers say “it is inconceivable” that Indiana’s legislature “intended to deny a family member the opportunity to disinter to confirm that the person in the grave was correctly identified at time of death, once evidence emerges that misidentification may have occurred.”
“Crown Hill is correct that the state has an interest in ensuring that those buried in Indiana cemeteries continue to rest in peace,” they wrote. “But this tenet surely assumes the person who is ‘resting’ is in fact the person whose name is on the headstone!”
