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Until the summer of 1934, shortly after enforcement of the Code, bank robbers and gangsters moved freely throughout the American Heartland. Newspapers and radios unabashedly publicized the inept efforts of the police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in their attempts to capture America’s Public Enemy Number One, John Dillinger. After Dillinger and many of his peers were captured or killed in 1934, the FBI was suddenly respected while the gangster and outlaw were no longer seen as folk heroes.
John Dillinger and Charley Floyd were bank robbers. They were also murderers , but, in the eyes of many ordinary citizens, these men were robbing the banks that were foreclosing on their farms and in which they had lost their life savings. Working-class Americans in 1934 viewed banks as the enemy. In 1933 banks were being robbed and police forces were inept. Outlaws easily evaded capture at every turn, and the public at large sided with the gangsters. Citizens were angry. Their anger was directed at banks for losing their money and taking their homes, at and the government for providing little help. Thus, bank robbers, outlaws, and bootleggers became heroes to the public as this group of criminals was degrading their common enemy. The life of an outlaw seemed romantic and more appealing than that of one who was struggling to eat. Movie studio executives were keenly aware of public attitudes and took full advantage through the production of gangster films. At the theaters moviegoers vicariously lived out the feelings they shared with gangsters.
Studios were careful to depict violence and murder off-camera and filmed dead bodies as bloodless and handsome victims. This romantic vision of crime and death was true in the extra-cinematic escapades of Dillinger and his peers. The public read and heard of bank robberies and the entertaining escapes the outlaws made at the expense of law enforcement. Those romantic notions came to a crashing halt in 1934. received no national notoriety until On May 23, 1934, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were slaughtered in an ambush by police in Gibsland, Louisiana. On the side of a dusty road, one hundred fifty bullets pierced through the couple’s car and into their bodies. When the firing ceased, a lawman approached the vehicle and witnessed an unforgettable scene that was “‘like a slaughterhouse.’”<ref>Bryan Burrough, '' Public Enemies: Americas Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-1934''(New York: Penguin Press, 2004), 359</ref>
