It was one of the most highly publicized criminal trials of the 20th century-- so much so that it twice came close to ending in a mistrial. Nearly every public figure in America weighed in with a comment on the proceedings, and plenty of well-known individuals outside the U.S. did too for that matter. Its verdict would serve as grist for the mills of Hollywood and set the stage for the most dramatic escape attempt in the notorious history of Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary. The defense’s star witness, nicknamed “the Woman in Red” by the scandal sheets of the day, would gradually metamorphose from gangster’s moll to proto-reality celebrity. The FBI agent who sealed the defendant’s fate with his expert testimony on behalf of the prosecution would see his career rise through the ranks of the bureau until, by the time of his retirement in the 1960s, he held a position of authority surpassed only by that of bureau director J. Edgar Hoover.

   The trial of notorious bank robber John Dillinger would seize the collective imagination of the American public and never let it go. Despite the fact that he had brutally killed scores of people during his infamous crime spree, in some circles he was considered almost a folk hero for his defiance of the financial establishment critics of capitalism held responsible for the Great Depression then plaguing America along with much of the rest of the world. The FBI had to break up no less than five separate conspiracies to break him out of jail while he was being tried for the crimes he’d committed, and before he finally met his end courtesy of the submachine guns of Alcatraz’s security guards, the island prison’s warden was forced to deal with two additional plots to free the infamous gangster.

   The road to Dillinger’s indictment, conviction, and eventual demise began on July 22nd, 1934 with a seemingly ordinary trip to the movies to see the crime epic Manhattan Melodrama. Sitting just two seats from Dillinger was an off-duty sheriff’s deputy who recognized the gangster from a newspaper photograph; he summoned an usher and told him to call the police, then waited for Dillinger to let his guard down. Before Dillinger knew what was happening, the deputy and six other patrons had subdued him and local and state police were en route to the theater along with a sizable party of FBI personnel.

   If there were a Depression-era equivalent of videos going viral, it most likely would have been the Chicago Tribune’s publication of an amateur photographer’s snapshot of Dillinger being hauled away in handcuffs by three FBI agents. The day after that particular photo was printed, it started to get re-published in other Midwestern papers; in about a week it was turning up in nearly every major daily paper and magazine on the East Coast. Within two weeks after the photo had first been printed, Dillinger was officially indicted on more than two dozen criminal counts related to his violent bank-robbing spree through the Midwest. He and a number of his accomplices were incarcerated at Cook County Jail pending the start of Dillinger’s trial.

    The second-most famous photo to emerge from Dillinger’s arrest was his official mug shot after he was booked. In it, Dillinger’s face displayed a smorgasbord of emotions: disgust over being captured and locked up, defiance of the state and federal law enforcement agencies which had hunted him for so long, contempt at those who didn’t share his outlaw attitudes, hope that popular pressure would in time force his accusers to let him go. But his hopes of avoiding a criminal trial would be swiftly dashed; on August 2nd, 1934, the same day World War I field marshal and German president Paul von Hindenburg died, Dillinger was indicted on forty-seven counts related to his bank-robbing sprees across the Midwest. Shortly after his indictment, Dillinger was taken to Marion Federal Penitentiary in Illinois to await opening arguments in his trial.

     Dillinger became a kind of outlaw superstar among his fellow inmates, some of whom were themselves serving time for armed robbery or related offenses. He came perilously close to organizing a shadow administration inside the prison before the warden ordered him moved to solitary confinement. And even after he was put in solitary, the infamous gangster continued to give prison officials the willies with his vulture-like countenance and Jack the Ripper-esque demeanor.

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     On the day the prosecution and defense gave their respective opening statements in Dillinger’s trial, the public galleries in the courtroom were as packed as a Broadway theater for the opening night of a hit musical. People were clamoring to see the notorious gangster and his moll, a woman popularly known in the tabloids of the time as “the Woman in Red”. She’d been by Dillinger’s side on the day he was arrested and visited him in jail every week since then; before long, she’d be more famous than any other woman in America with the possible exceptions of Amelia Earhart and Eleanor Roosevelt. The New York Times alone printed at least eleven photographs of “the Woman in Red” during the trial’s first week.

      She’d been born Ana Cumpănaş, but was also known as Anne Sage and would be immortalized as “the Woman in Red” thanks to her highly visible role in the Dillinger trial. Of Romanian descent, Cumpănaş had been managing a brothel frequently patronized by Dillinger over the weeks immediately before his arrest; before the trial started she had been facing deportation as an “undesirable alien”, but after a late- night visit to the establishment in question some of the same federal immigration agents who’d originally been clamoring for her deportation were all of a sudden strangely predisposed to be lenient towards her-- much to the displeasure of J. Edgar Hoover.

      Radio programmers back east saw a potential audience gold mine in Cumpănaş/Sage. The gossip commentators in particular were itching to get an exclusive interview with the woman who’d been the center of Dillinger’s social universe before he was collared. The former brothel operator-turned-defense witness for America’s most notorious gangster was bombarded with offers from the country’s major radio networks for the rights to her story. The fact that she could prompt such offers in the socially and morally conservative climate of those times is proof positive of the tight grip Cumpănaş held on the collective imagination of the American people.

    And if the radio networks were eager to get an interview with “the Woman in Red”, the movie newsreel companies were utterly obsessed with her. Hearst Movietone, for one, offered her an advance of $100,000 for an exclusive sit-down with one of their correspondents; Fox countered with an offer of $200,000 in exchange for the exclusive film rights to her life story. Nor was this fascination with Cumpănaş/Sage limited to American filmmakers-- German director Leni Riefenstahl, Adolf Hitler’s personal documentarian, attempted countless times to get a visa to the United States in order to speak with Sage. Even Sergei Eisenstein, the Soviet filmmaker best-known in the West for his epic drama Battleship Potemkin, found Sage’s story fascinating enough to invite her to come to Moscow to tell it to the Soviet people.

    The presiding judge in the trial was less than thrilled with all of this hoopla; at one point he threatened to ban all reporters from the courtroom. This naturally drew vocal protests from the print and broadcast media covering Dillinger’s trial, and the judge backed off from this threat when one of his colleagues pointed out that imposing such a ban might technically be interpreted as a violation of the 1st Amendment...

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