Anthony Mackie, Mark Wahlberg, and Dwayne Johnson star in Michael Bay’s too soon 2013 crime film Pain & Gain. This movie was based on a series of articles by Pete Collins which pertains to a group of violent and criminal bodybuilders as well as outright screw ups. Still, if there was an historic incident Michael Bay could do justice to, it’s this one. Yet, this film was met with outrage by their victims and their families nevertheless. Still, the real life Sun Gym gang wasn’t nearly as likeable as the guys in the movie and their crimes were much worse. Still, it probably would’ve been better if Michael Bay had made this movie perhaps 100 years after the events took place.

Despite the 1990s being a period of stability in the United States, there were plenty of stories on crime. After all, this is the decade when you have the O. J. Simpson’s Bronco chase and the media circus surrounding in his trial over the death of his ex-wife and her boyfriend. Of course, I was in preschool at the time but I sort of remember it being covered on the news and yes, I think he did it. Still, you have other stories of wrong doing as well. In Washington D. C., you have Stephen Glass who was a rising star in The New Republic until it was discovered that he was a pathological liar who may have made up stuff in his 27 out of 41 stories for the magazine which led to the rise in online journalism. In New York, you have Jordan Belfort, the so-called “Wolf of Wall Street” (which was also the nickname of Mr. Peabody), whose brokerage firm Sutton Oakmont was known as a den of sin as well as ran a “pump and dump” operation which would land him in prison for money laundering and securities fraud. He’d also share a prison cell with Tommy Chong. In the South you have con artist Steven Russell whose zany schemes and prison escapes seem too incredible to be true at times.Then there’s Miami, which is home of the Sun Gym gang who were a group of hostile bodybuilders known for kidnapping, extortion, and murder. There are a few movies about some of these exploits which contain their share of inaccuracies I shall list accordingly.

Steven Russell:

Steven Jay Russell escaped from prison wearing hot pants and fishnets. (Contrary to I Love You, Philip Morris, he did this wearing a women’s track bottoms and a tie-dyed T-shirt, since trying to escape prison wearing fishnet stockings and hot pants would be a very bad idea for a man {but certainly much more hilarious}. Also, he pulled this off in 1993, when he was still with his previous boyfriend, not Philip Morris as in the film.)

Steven Jay Russell escaped from prison by coloring his white prison uniform with green marker to resemble scrubs. (Yes, he did this but unlike in I Love You, Phillip Morris, there was a prison guard who wasn’t entirely convinced who said, “Damn, doc, those look like prison whites you’re wearing.” He cheerily replied, “Well, don’t shoot.” The guard didn’t.)

Jordan Belfort:

Jordan Belfort met Danny Porush in a restaurant. (Contrary to The Wolf of Wall Street, they met through Porush’s then wife {and first cousin} who met Jordan on the bus. She said Belfort always gave up his seat for her and found out he lived in the same building with them. She introduced her husband to Belfort thinking that he might help Danny with his struggling ambulette business. After their first conversation, Porush decided to take his Series 7 exam and get a stockbroker license.)

Jordan Belfort was arrested for crashing his Lamborghini while high on expired Quaaludes. (Yes, but the real Belfort says it was a Mercedes. He said he was so high in a drug haze that he couldn’t remember causing several different accidents on his way home, yet he did send one woman to the hospital via a head on collision. Interestingly, Belfort would later become a cell mate to Tommy Chong who encouraged him to write his memoirs.)

Jordan Belfort’s brokerage firm taped cash to a woman’s body. (While it’s seen in The Wolf of Wall Street, Danny Porush says it didn’t happen while Belfort says it did.)

Jordan Belfort hosted a dwarf tossing competition at Stratton Oakmont. (Though he considered hiring a dwarves for tossing, he didn’t actually do so. As Danny Porush said, “We never abused [or threw] the midgets in the office; we were friendly to them. There was no physical abuse.” Yet, it’s in The Wolf of Wall Street.)

Jordan Belfort was called “the Wolf of Wall Street.” (Contrary to The Wolf of Wall Street, the nickname came from an article about him. Also, he only briefly worked as a legitimate stock broker on Wall Street before the 1987 Black Monday crash that left him out of a job.)

Jordan Belfort had a chimpanzee at his Stratton Oakmont brokerage firm. (Contrary to The Wolf of Wall Street, he didn’t. According to Danny Porush, “There were no animals in the office…I would also never abuse an animal in any way.” Yet, he did admit to eating a goldfish.)

Jordan Belfort gave his employees at Stratton Oakmont riling motivational speeches. (Yes, but they were more often filled with self-adulation than Leonardo DiCaprio’s in The Wolf of Wall Street. Strangely the real Belfort is now working as a motivational speaker and corporate consultant. Yet, DiCaprio would say, “Jordan stands as a shining example of the trans formative qualities of ambition and hard work, and in that regard, he is a true motivator.” Yet, I’m not sure he’d be good in the role model department after the cheating, drugs, hazing, and his “pump and dump” schemes which led to being criminally charged, serving prison time, and having his company banned from brokerage activities.)

Stephen Glass:

The Stephen Glass story “Hack Heaven” showed how the ill-equipped The New Republic was to handling someone like him (who has systematically undermined the magazine’s editorial process) when it was exposed as a hoax in the Forbes Digital online magazine. (What’s not mentioned in Shattered Glass is that this episode was one of the key moments that established online media as a serious competitor to the traditional print rather than just a novelty. And this happened in 1998.)

Stephen Glass’ was a respected journalist for The New Republic until his “Hack Heaven” article. (Yes, but what Shattered Glass doesn’t point out is that while he enjoyed the loyalty of the staff, his reporting repeatedly drew outraged rebuttals from his article subjects that eroded his credibility and led to private skepticism in The New Republic. When scandal broke, the editor in chief Martin Peretz admitted that his wife didn’t find Glass’ stories credible and stopped reading them. During Glass’ time at the magazine, out of the 41 stories he published 27 of them were found to be either wholly or partly fabricated. He also wrote for other magazines such as The Heritage Foundation’s Policy Review, JFK Jr.’s George, Rolling Stone, and Harper’s. Not only that but he contributed to PRI’s This American Life hosted by Ira Glass {no relation}.)

The Sun Gym Gang:

The Sun Gym gang consisted of 3 main members. (Contrary to Pain & Gain, it was larger with Sun Gym owner John Mese, stripper Sabina Petrescu, and nurse Cindy Eldridge as accomplices.)

Daniel Lugo was single during the kidnapping of Marc Schiller. (He was married twice and both wives played tangential roles in his schemes. His second wife has divorced him since and won sole custody of their two daughters in 1998.)

The need to fund hormone injections motivated Adrian Doorbal’s crimes. (Contrary to Pain & Gain, he didn’t need to commit further crimes to fund them, thanks to Lugo giving him profits from the Medicare scam. He just participated in the Sun Gym gang’s criminal activities all for the violence.)

Daniel Lugo was a vicious bodybuilding moron. (Contrary to Mark Wahlberg’s portrayal in Pain & Gain, he was a smart man according to the guy who brought him down. He had other criminal activities as well such as a fraud conviction and running a lucrative Medicare scam where he bought information about the recipients and billed the government for bogus medical services. Also, he didn’t attend any self-help seminars, wore vanilla scented cologne, or cite Michael Corleone or Rocky as role models.)

The Sun Gym gang disguised as ninjas in order to kidnap Marc Schiller. (Contrary to Pain & Gain, they discussed dressing up as ninjas on Halloween night to abduct Marc Schiller. Rather they talked about dressing up as ninjas as part of their costume as trick or treaters in which they’d nab him when Schiller would give them candy. The Sun Gym gang was a group of bodybuilders in Florida so you can see why this plan was never executed. Yet, it did take about 6 tries for them to kidnap Schiller {Tony Shaloub’s character in the movie}. Still, they did dress in black, paint their faces with military makeup, and wore gloves in one of their kidnapping attempts.)

Daniel Lugo befriended Marc Schiller at the Sun Gym. (Contrary to Pain & Gain, Schiller distrusted Lugo and never went to the gym. It was actually Jorge Delgado who befriended Lugo and targeted Schiller since he worked for the man as did his wife. Not only that, but it was at Delgado’s {not Schiller’s} warehouse where the kidnappers tortured Schiller for a full month before trying to kill him. As the Miami New Times reported, “Throughout his ordeal with the gang, Schiller had been tased, burned, beaten, pistol-whipped, and forced to endure games of Russian roulette. When the gang was done with him, they made him wash down sleeping pills with liquor, put him behind the wheel of his Toyota 4Runner, and rammed it into a utility pole to make it look like a drunk driving accident. Seeing that he was still alive, they then doused the vehicle with fuel and set it on fire with him in it, but Schiller jumped out of the flaming car. Staggering, the gang ran him over twice with a Camry {not a van} and left him for dead. Miraculously, he lived after eventually coming out of a coma and woke up in the hospital.” Details of Schiller’s torture {which was much more of a living hell in real life} and escape were modified for the film. Oh, and even when Schiller was in the hospital, he organized to be transported to one in Staten Island since he was afraid the Sun Gym gang would try to kill him again. He was right.)

Daniel Lugo killed Frank Griga and Krisztina Furton. (Contrary to Pain & Gain, Adrian Doorbal did with Lugo as an accomplice at Doorbal’s Miami Lakes apartment no less. Doorbal cracked the side of Griga’s head with a blunt object, strangled him with a headlock, and injected him with horse tranquilizer. Lugo covered Furton’s mouth and tackled her yet contrary to the film, she was unarmed. Once bound, Doorbal injected her 3 times not 2, which was too much.)

Daniel Lugo and Adrian Doorbal put Frank Griga and Krisztina Furton’s body parts in barrels and dumped them in a lake. (Contrary to Pain & Gain, Lugo, Doorbal, and “Little Mario” Gray put Griga and Furton’s bodies in drums and dumped them in a drainage ditch in southwest Miami. Too bad for them, Furton had breast implants with serial numbers on them which the Miami police used to identify her remains.)

A member of the Sun Gym gang became acquainted with a demeaning Frank Griga while running into him at a strip club. (Contrary to Pain & Gain, Griga was discovered by Adrian Doorbal who spotted a picture of a Lamborghini Diablo in a photo album belonging to one of his stripper girlfriends Beatriz Weiland. He asked who owned it and it turned out that Griga was one of Weiland’s former generous boyfriends. It was she who introduced Griga to the Sun Gym gang.)

A chainsaw the Sun Gym gang planned use for cutting bodies failed to start due to it being clogged by hair. (It was actually due to them forgetting to put motor oil in it and burnt the engine while trying to start it which they returned to the Home Depot which they exchanged for an electric one with a one year guarantee to “handle all your cutting chores quickly and easily” {kind of reminds me of an episode of Dexter here}. Then that’s the time when Furton’s hair got clogged up in the chainsaw, which led to Adrian Doorbal and Daniel Lugo to chop off her head with a hatchet and used a curved blade and pliers to remove the faces and teeth on the heads.)

Jorge Delgado barbecued hands and feet of Frank Griga and Krisztina Furton outside the warehouse. (Contrary to the Dwayne Johnson expy in Pain & Gain, it was Daniel Lugo who did this and it was on a steel drum with an iron grate not an actual grill. He also grilled Griga and Furton’s skull fragments, too. When Jorge Delgado saw this, he yelled at Lugo who reluctantly agreed to move his operation to a nearby rear ally. Thankfully for them, Dexter wasn’t nearby {it being Miami}.)

At least one member of the Sun Gym gang robbed an armored truck only to get his toe shot off. (Contrary to Pain & Gain, this scene with Dwayne Johnson’s character is entirely fictional. Still, Dwayne Johnson’s character in the film as a composite of Jorge Delgado, Carl Weekes, and Mario Sanchez.)

Adrian Doorbal was a mild mannered man. (Contrary to Pain & Gain, he was violent and sadistic just as all his fellow Sun Gym gang members. And he was much more of an unstable lunatic as well.)

Daniel Lugo wanted to kidnap Marc Schiller over the latter stealing $300,000 from him. (Contrary to Pain & Gain, Lugo just wanted Schiller’s assets and used the money stealing as an excuse.)

One of the Sun Gym members worked at a church and had a gay priest come onto him. (Contrary to what goes on with Dwayne Johnson’s character in Pain & Gain, Carl Weekes didn’t work at a church or had an old gay priest come on to him. Yet, he was drug addicted ex-con who found Jesus.)

One of the Sun Gym members testified against is fellow gang members after an attack of conscience. (Contrary to Pain & Gain, Jorge Delgado just testified against his fellow gang members just to get a lenient sentence in which he got 15 years yet only served 7 ½ {while Daniel Lugo and Adrian Doorbal got the death penalty}. Dwayne John’s other real-life counterpart Carl Weekes who drove the car to run over Marc Schiller got 10 years for attempted murder. He served 7. Yet, he was described as a “weakling” by his fellow gang members since he weighed only 140 pounds. Still, like Dwayne Johnson’s character, both Delgado and Weekes declined to participate in subsequent crimes after the whole Marc Schiller thing.)

The Sun Gym gang held Marc Schiller for weeks because he was resisting. (They held him for that long because the paperwork to sign over everything he had took time. Yet, unlike in Pain & Gain, neither Daniel Lugo nor Adrian Doorbal had any qualms about killing him.)

Members of the Sun Gym gang were vicious morons and steroid-using bodybuilders. (Yes, they were steroid using bodybuilders. Yet, they were said to be the worst combination of manipulation, muscle, and murderous intent.)

Cindy Eldridge:

Cindy Eldridge was a heavyset nurse who met Adrian Doorbal during her work at the doctor’s office. They had a whirlwind courtship and married at home. (Contrary to her Rebel Wilson expy in Pain & Gain, she kind of resembled Tanning Salon Barbie and was a real fitness fanatic. Though she was a nurse who referred him to a doctor who used hormone therapy to treat the weak libidos of steroid users, she didn’t meet Doorbal as she was working but they rather met by chance in 1995 at a restaurant in Key Biscayne on the evening of her surprise 31st birthday party. Not only that, but they only married after dating for over a year at a courthouse but the union lasted for four days when she found out, Doorbal only married her so she couldn’t testify against him with regard to his role in kidnapping Marc Schiller or killing Frank Griga and Krisztina Furton, whose blood she helped Doorbal clean up at his home despite not knowing what actually happened at the time {you think she would being a nurse and all}.)

John Mese:

Sun Gym owner and accountant John Mese was arrested at his own gym. (Contrary to the Michael Bay movie, he was arrested during his own bodybuilding competition in downtown Miami. Also, two of the composites to Dwayne Johnson’s character were arrested at home, not at church. )

Marc Schiller:

Marc Schiller was a sleazy criminal. (Contrary to his Tony Shalhoub expy in Pain & Gain, the real Marc Schiller wasn’t a sleazy man in which he said, “There is no resemblance to me at all. I was always a humble, family person.” At the time, he lived in a two story poolside house with a wife and two kids as well as said that he never smoked cigars and was never surrounded by women in scantily clad bikinis {though having the Sun Gym gang kidnap a wholesome family man that Schiller wouldn’t elicit much sympathy on their part, especially since he drove a Toyota not a BMW with a “Miami Bitch” license plate}. He owned the failing Schlotzsky’s Deli franchise but still had seven figures at the bank thanks to his nutritional supplements companies. Still, the sleazy side of the Tony Shalhoub character in Pain & Gain may be based on Frank Griga who ran a phone sex business as well as smoked cigars surrounded by women in bikinis. As far as criminal activity is concerned, after he testified against the Sun Gym gang, he was arrested by federal agents as he left the courthouse. He was charged with orchestrating a Medicare billing scheme through his nutritional supplement companies. To make things worse, Sun Gym gang member Jorge Delgado was one of the witnesses to testify against Schiller, who pled guilty trying to conspiring to defraud the government. He received 46 months in prison and was ordered to pay back the government $14.6 million {it would be reduced to $128,597.87 and Schiller now insists he’s innocent and just too exhausted to defend himself}. Let’s say that unlike Mr. Monk’s kitchen floor, Marc Schiller’s record wasn’t exactly squeaky clean. Nevertheless, Marc Schiller wasn’t happy with Pain & Gain because the kidnapping incident basically ruined his life and he lost everything over it. Today he just lives in a one bedroom apartment, works for a company at $20 an hour, is divorced from his wife and only sees his kids on occasion, and has little interest in socializing and making friends. I think Michael Bay owes him an apology.)

Marc Schiller recognized Daniel Lugo from his cologne. (He recognized Lugo through his voice.)

Marc Schiller had a boat. (Contrary to Pain & Gain, he didn’t but Frank Griga did so Daniel Lugo couldn’t escape in it as he does in the movie.)

Marc Schiller helped catch Daniel Lugo by hitting him with a car in the Bahamas. (Contrary to Pain & Gain, neither Schiller nor Detective Ed DuBois were present at Daniel Lugo’s capture. Instead, Lugo was apprehended at the Hotel Montague in Nassau by a multiagency task force. Also, contrary to the movie, his girlfriend and parents went with him.)

Law Enforcement:

Ed DuBois:

Ed Dubois was a retired detective with a beautiful wife when he got the call from Marc Schiller. (Contrary to Pain & Gain, he was working for the NFL as a security consultant for Super Bowl XXIX in Miami and operating his P. I. firm he inherited from his dad {and as of 2014, he’s still working as private investigator}. He also had a leg up in the investigation because he knew the Sun Gym owner, John Mese. He was also much younger than as played by Ed Harris.)

Miscellaneous:

Frank Griga had a New York accent. (He had a Hungarian accent.)

The 2013 American Hustle starring Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper, Jeremy Renner, Christian Bale, and Jennifer Lawrence is a loose retelling of the Abscam scandal. This was a collaboration between FBI agents and con artists bringing down criminals and corrupt politicians. Of course, while it says that some of the events in this film were true, the real story is much bleaker than what’s depicted on film including the happy ending. Still, the bit about Jeremy Renner giving Christian Bale the microwave as a gift actually happened if it makes you feel better.

The 1970s is a popular decade in movies pertaining to crime in the United States. And the US has more crime stories than just Watergate. You have the story of gangster Frank Lucas also known as Superfly who started as a low ranking gangster to another lord and became a noteworthy drug lord in New York. You have law enforcement officials like Joseph Pistone and Serpico who investigated either the mafia or cops behaving badly within the New York City Police Department. Next you have some of most famous serial killers active at this time like the Zodiac Killer, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy, BTK, David Berkowitz, and others. You have Clifford Irving who fooled McGraw Hill into paying him to write an autobiography of Howard Hughes. Then there’s the scheme which was a collaboration of criminals and the FBI called Abscam that would later lead to the conviction of 19 people including a US senator and 6 US congressmen. Still, while there are plenty of true crime to depict in Hollywood, there are plenty of inaccuracies contained in such films which I shall list accordingly.

Ted Bundy:

Ted Bundy flunked out of law school and psychology classes. (Contrary to the 2002 film about him, he was a poor law student but graduated with honors as a psychology major.)

The “cheerleader” victim’s name was Jane Gilchrist. (Her name was Nancy Wilcox who was leaving a cheerleading competition when Bundy snatched her.)

Ted Bundy’s first arrest and Caryn Campbell’s murder took place in 1976. (They took place in 1975.)

During his first prison escape, Ted Bundy jumped from a window at a lower roof. (According to The Stranger Beside Me, he jumped from the window to the ground.)

Colorado authorities sought the death penalty for Ted Bundy. (They didn’t contrary to the 2002 film.)

Ted Bundy lost total interest in his studies after his girlfriend left him. (Contrary to the film, his breakup led him to study and take even more classes to get into American politics even working in political campaigns for the Republican Party. Also, he and that girlfriend would get back together while he was seeing someone else but would later end that relationship without explanation while they were engaged.)

Ted Bundy hotwired a car. (Contrary to the 2002 film, he found the keys inside it to steal the vehicle. Guess the owner was a complete idiot.)

Ted Bundy’s final victim was a girl rope skipping in the park named Susan Moore. (Her name was Kimberly Leach who was returning to the school gym to retrieve her forgotten purse when Bundy abducted her. She’d never claim it.)

Ted Bundy’s Volkswagen was yellow. (It was tan.)

Ted Bundy’s final arrest for stealing a car in Florida took place in an open field in broad daylight. (Contrary to the 2002 film, it took place in 1978 in a residential neighborhood at 1:00 AM.)

Ted Bundy took a woman from her home by wrapping her in a large sheet and carrying her to his car in front of witnesses in a street. (Contrary to the 2002 film, he stated he was always careful about witness identification.)

Clifford Irving:

Clifford Irving used a Newsweek article “The Secret World of Howard Hughes,” as research for his fake autobiography of Howard Hughes in 1971. (The article came out in 1976 after Hughes died and included a sketch of the last few years of his life. Clifford Irving wouldn’t have access to this like he does in The Hoax. Also, though Irving himself criticized the film, there’s not much I can write about the accuracy since he’s a pretty unreliable person.)

Jimmy Burke:

Jimmy Burke was a nasty and ruthless mobster who loved hijacking trucks. (He was even nastier than Robert DeNiro’s expy portrayal of him in Goodfellas. In real life, he liked to shake down people by locking their kids in the fridge as well as cut his wife’s annoying ex-boyfriend into pieces and committed numerous other murders. He and Vario also ripped of the robbers and other guys involved in the Lufthansa, which nobody got more than a $50,000 cut and most got less {out of a $6 million robbery}. The robbers involved still got murdered for asking for a fair cut. Talk about being screwed royally.)

Paul Vario:

Paul Vario was a likeable capo who helped protect other gangsters from themselves. (Contrary to his Goodfellas expy, he had more direct involvement in the nastier and bloodier crimes committed by his crew. In Wiseguy, Henry Hill recalled Vario attacking a barmaid with a baseball bat after she told his wife they were having an affair. Yet, Wiseguy author Nicholas Pileggi writes, “He abhorred unnecessary violence {the kind he hadn’t ordered}, mainly because it was bad for business.” Oh, and he also had an affair with Henry Hill’s wife while he was in prison.)

Henry Hill:

Henry Hill never personally killed anyone despite being an accomplice in several murders. (He actually had killed three people, contrary to Goodfellas. Yet, he isn’t the most reliable narrator in the movie nor is he meant to.)

Tommy De Simone:

Tommy De Simone was a short violent pistol. (Contrary to the Joe Pesci expy portrayal in Goodfellas, he was about 6’2” and weighed over 200 pounds. Also, he was born in 1950 so he wasn’t the same age as Henry Hill. Not only that, he was a much nastier man than Pesci was in the film. What ultimately led to his murder was that he tried to rape Henry Hill’s wife when he was in prison {though killing Billy Batts may have also had something to do with it, too}.)

Benjamin “Lefty” Ruggerio:

Benjamin “Lefty” Ruggerio was Joseph Pistone’s faithful friend during his time as Donnie Brasco. (He was a genuine thug who Pistone despised. Most of his positive traits in Donnie Brasco were taken from the real life Sonny Black, the only gangster Pistone felt some kinship and considered to have a genuine good side.)

Benjamin “Lefty” Ruggerio was whacked. (Contrary to Donnie Brasco, he was arrested by FBI agents in 1981 and sentence to 20 years in prison thanks to Pistone’s work. He was released in the early 1990s and died of cancer on Thanksgiving 1995 at the age of 72. Yet, Sonny Black certainly was since he was found in a body bag with guns shot wounds and his hands cut off in 1982. Also, it was Sonny Black who removed his jewelry not Lefty.)

Angelo Sepe:

Angelo Sepe was a murder victim found hanging in a meat truck freezer for his involvement in the Lufthansa Heist. (Actually contrary to Goodfellas, this was a how a man named Richard Eaton was murdered {after being tortured by Jimmy Burke} for stealing $250,000 and skimming even more being laundered {he had no involvement with the heist}. As for Sepe, he wasn’t a victim in the Lufthansa Heist, but actually the one carrying out the murders. He’d later be killed by a hit squad for robbing a Lucchese affiliated drug trafficker.)

Sonny Black:

Sonny Black was ruthless and brutal gangster. (Contrary to Donnie Brasco, he was the only gangster whom Joseph Pistone felt any kinship and thought he possessed any redeeming qualities. In Donnie Brasco, his worst traits were taken from Pistone’s earliest mentor who was so notoriously nasty that he was feared and hated by other gangsters and eventually went into hiding, knowing that dozens of New York Mafiosi had been dreaming of putting a bullet into him for decades. His character is absent from the film.)

Frank Lucas:

Frank Lucas paid a cop off on the street for finding his drug stash in his trunk. (Unlike in American Gangster, Lucas paid off the guy at the station.)

Frank Lucas was in prison from 1976-1991. (Contrary to American Gangster, he was out on parole between 1981-1984.)

Frank Lucas kept his money in a doghouse. (He didn’t. Yet, Julie Lucas was said to throw suitcases full of money out the bathroom window during their arrest.)

Julie Lucas left her husband after he was arrested on drug charges. (Contrary to American Gangster, they have been married for over 40 years and are still together to this day. Yet, she did go back to Puerto Rico to raise her kids with her parents.)

Frank Lucas snitched on dirty cops, not drug dealers. (Unlike in American Gangster, he snitched on dirty cops, fellow drug dealers, and members of the mob. Yet, he didn’t do it out of the goodness of his heart.)

Frank Lucas smuggled heroin from Vietnam in the coffins of dead American servicemen. (Though this is in American Gangster, this is highly disputed. Though Lucas claims this, he could sometimes exaggerate the numbers. US Sergeant Lesley “Ike” Atkinson claimed he used teak furniture and military luggage to smuggle the heroin.)

Julie Lucas was well aware of her husband’s business but was uninvolved. (Though she’s shown to be this way in American Gangster, she was certainly an accomplice since she was arrested and convicted for her involvement in Frank’s drug business.)

Frank Lucas and his wife were childless. (Though it’s seen in American Gangster, they actually had seven kids.)

Frank Lucas’ wife Julie was a former Miss Puerto Rico. (Contrary to American Gangster, there was never a woman listed among the Miss Puerto Rico’s winners list by the name of Julie Fariat. Yet, Lucas did meet his wife there while on a retreat to dream up “business” ideas.)

Frank Lucas gave himself away when he wore a fur coat. (Well, it’s kind of exaggerated in American Gangster but the cops already knew who he was by then.)

The Zodiac Killings:

Robert Graysmith was the hero in the Zodiac case. (Contrary to Zodiac, his analysis isn’t universally accepted, though the film doesn’t present him as perfect. Yet, casting Jake Gyllenhaal in that role makes him a more sympathetic character, no matter what he does whether it’s trying to match killings to lunar cycles, badgering witnesses, getting carried away with his own fame, neglecting his family, naming suspects based on unorthodox investigations, quit his job, and gets obsessed with a serial killer. Also, he was cartoonist for God’s sake.)

There were no surviving witnesses in the Zodiac killings. (There were two but they weren’t much help. Still, though the Zodiac killer boasted about killing 37 people, there was only enough evidence to confirm 5 and there were 2 survivors.)

Rick Marshall may have been the Zodiac killer. (Zodiac leaves this open though he certainly wasn’t since the hypothesis was disproved by fingerprint analysis.)

Allen Leigh may have been the Zodiac killer. (This is what Graysmith believed in Zodiac but the evidence against him was seen as circumstantial and his candidacy as a suspect was disqualified due to handwriting analysis and DNA tests.)

The Zodiac killer was responsible for killing 12 people. (He was only confirmed in killing 5 people unlike what Curse of the Zodiac says. And, no, the case wasn’t officially closed in 2004 by the San Francisco Police Department. It’s still open.)

Law Enforcement:

Ritchie Roberts:

Detective Ritchie Roberts was the prosecutor and lead investigator in Frank Lucas’ case. (This wouldn’t be allowed in the United States. Yet, Roberts was the prosecutor but he wasn’t the lead investigator.)

Ritchie Roberts was the main figure in the Frank Lucas investigation. (Contrary to American Gangster, he was relatively minor figure and among a whole squad of guys who worked on it. Ex-New Jersey cops Ed Jones, Al Spearman and Ben Abruzzo played a much bigger role and weren’t happy when they were left out in American Gangster. Jones said, “We spent nearly two years risking our lives on that case, and then we see a guy who had no interest before we made the arrests take the credit. We’re angry.” Yet, Lucas did have a hit on Roberts and Roberts did pay for one of his kids’ education and is his son’s godfather. Yes, they’re still friends to this day.)

During his time in the Frank Lucas case, Ritchie Roberts was in a heated custody battle with his ex. (Sorry, but unlike what American Gangster shows, Roberts never had any children with his first wife. In fact, he told the New York Post that the depiction of his relationship with his first wife was offensive.)

Ritchie Roberts arrested Frank Lucas while the latter was leaving church. (Contrary to American Gangster, the Lucases were arrested in their New Jersey home.)

Joseph Pistone (a. k. a. Donnie Brasco):

The FBI agents working with Joseph Pistone were useless fools. (One of the clownish characters in Donnie Brasco was actually an FBI agent posing as a dangerous mob turf boss during the operation. Also. Pistone was an FBI agent.)

Joseph Pistone was a good looking guy. (Contrary to Donnie Brasco, he looked nothing like Johnny Depp.)

Joseph Pistone began to identify with the members of the Bonnano family during his undercover work as Donnie Brasco. (Contrary to Donnie Brasco, Pistone only had a real relationship with Sonny Black. He found the rest of the gangsters only superficially charming, having to deal with their brutality and lack of any basic humanity day in and day out more or less reinforced his negative views on the Mafia. So, no, he didn’t turn away from the FBI and became a gangster at heart.)

During his time as Donnie Brasco, Joseph Pistone conspired to commit a murder and assaulted a civilian. (Unlike what you see in Donnie Brasco, Pistone wouldn’t have done either since such activities would’ve sent him to jail {though he had 4 contracts to whack people but he claims to have never followed through}. Yet, he and undercover agents did stage fake whacks with the police but the targets would be admitted in a witness protection program. He actually went undercover as a jeweler.)

Abscam:

Melvin Weinberg had been living a life of crime since he smashed windows for his father as a child. (Contrary to American Hustle, he only began working for his father as an adult and after his first marriage to a woman named Mary who had three kids with him {absent from the film and not even mentioned} but David O. Russell you wouldn’t find an overweight Christian Bale {who gained over 40 pounds and avoided the gym for his role} smashing windows as anything adorable. But yes, Weinberg did smash windows to drum up his dad’s business though a later report says he did it at behest of a local union to punish businesses that used non-union glaziers. Not only that but the glass business was heavily corrupt at the time in which companies bribed unions and cheated customers.)

Camden Mayor Angelo Errichetti was a selfless politician who only got involved in Abscam to provide jobs to his constituents. (Like his Jeremy Renner expy, Errichetti did care for the people of Camden, New Jersey, and was widely praised for it. However, he had a reputation for committing crimes. During the Abscam operation, he offered to get the fake sheikh into illegal business such as money counterfeiting and drug smuggling. Oh, and he asked for a $400,000 bribe. Still, at least they got his hair style right.)

Melvin and Cynthia Marie Weinberg were a young couple during the Abscam operation. (Though their expies were portrayed by a pushing 40 Christian Bale and Jennifer Lawrence who’s my age, the real Weinbergs were much older with Melvin in his 50s and Cynthia Marie in her late 40s. However, there was no love pentagon between them that included a mobster and an FBI agent. Still, Weinberg kind of looked like a more or less cleaned up version of Salman Rushide or an Iranian ayatollah in a 1970s business suit.)

Tony Amoroso was a crazy coke head FBI agent involved in Abscam who wore curlers in his hair. (Unlike his expy in American Hustle, Amoroso was only one of a number of agents involved in the scam. Also, there’s no evidence he wore curlers, went nuts, beat up his boss, snorted cocaine, or carried on an affair with Weinburg’s mistress. Bradley Cooper’s character is also an expy for FBI agent John Goode who came up with the Abscam idea in the first place.)

Melvin Weinburg was a kind man who was conflicted between shacking up with his mistress and being a dad to his adopted son. (He abandoned his first wife and their three biological children for his then mistress and later wife Cynthia Marie. Thus, he was more of a scumbag than his Christian Bale expy in American Hustle.)

Cynthia Marie Weinberg nearly blew her husband’s cover and left her husband for a mobster. (Unlike her expy in American Hustle, Cynthia didn’t almost blow her husband’s cover by accident {since she wasn’t involved} or shacked up comfortably with a mobster. In fact, contrary to the Jennifer Lawrence expy she wasn’t a ditz according to columnist Jack Anderson. Rather she was seen as a whistleblower, yet she was devoted to her husband that she sold her engagement ring to bail Mel out when he was arrest for fraud. Yet, she wasn’t aware that her husband was cheating on her even after Mel’s story was told in The Sting Man. Rather, Mel insisted her that the mistress was a figment of journalist-author Robert W. Greene’s imagination just to add sex to the book so it would sell. She fell for it. But she later did find out eventually and confronted Evelyn but it didn’t take place in a ladies’ room nor did it end with a kiss. Nor did her marriage with Melvin end in an amicable divorce. Rather, Melvin abandoned her for his mistress and she hanged herself in 1982 weeks after going to the press claiming that he profited from Abscam and accused her husband of taking bribes and gifts including a microwave oven. She was 50.)

Melvin Weinberg left his wife, Cynthia Marie for Evelyn Knight and lived happily ever after. (Contrary to American Hustle, Weinberg abandoned his wife for Evelyn. Yet, while he and Evelyn did marry and adopted a son {who’s now a cop}, they later divorced. They still live near each other but they aren’t on speaking terms.)

Melvin Weinberg was just a big time con artist before he was recruited as an FBI informant for Abscam. (Contrary to his expy in American Hustle, he had already been an FBI informant for years and had a reputation for always delivering. In fact, he was so good as an informant, he thought he could make a living from it and did it only for the money and legal benefits. He also liked to outsmart corrupt politicians whom he called, “a bunch of perverts, drunks, and crooks.” He managed to get six US congressmen and a senator convicted of bribery {he tried to bribe Larry Pressler and John Murtha but they were too smart to take the case of money he offered them}. Still, many Americans and the US government were ambivalent about Abscam and some called it entrapment. Yet, the fallout of Abscam didn’t make the political figures appear corrupt, just stupid and the American people weren’t happy about it that the Justice Department was forced to issue new guidelines restricting undercover operations against politicians.)

The fake sheikh in the Abscam operation was played by a Mexican American agent who spoke no Arabic. (Contrary to American Hustle, he was played by three agents. First, by FBI agent Mike Dennehy who’s the brother of the Tony and Golden Globe award winning Brian who spoke no Arabic and perhaps made an even less convincing sheikh than a Mexican. Second, by a Lebanese American who probably did. They even added another fictional sheikh promoted to full emir.)

Evelyn Knight was an American woman impersonating a British aristocrat who was involved in Melvin Weinberg’s scams. (Unlike the Amy Adams expy in American Hustle, Knight was actually British but she was involved in her boyfriend’s scams but to a lesser extent and she didn’t know what Melvin did until one of his victims sued him and the Feds had an arrest warrant out for her. Weinberg would agree to help the FBI with 4 cases if charges against her were dropped. Still, she was said to be very beautiful that Melvin called her “Lady Evelyn” though nobody thought she was nobility. Also, she wasn’t involved in Abscam or with an FBI agent {yet she did almost leave Melvin for Wayne Newton}.)

Melvin Weinberg felt so bad for Mayor Errichetti that he tried to engineer a reduced sentence for him. (Like their expies in American Hustle, Weinberg did have a fondness for Errichetti but he made no attempt to protect him from prosecution. Yet, the admiration had more to do with Errichetti being the biggest crook of them all. Also, contrary to Jeremy Renner, Errichetti got a 6 year stint in prison {and served 2 ½ years, not 18 months. Still, Errichetti helped open Abscam wide and connected Weinberg with a whole host of US congressmen.)

Miscellaneous:

Detective John Trupo blew his brains out during the 1970s before his fellow cops could arrest him. (Contrary to American Gangster, Frank Lucas said that he didn’t know what happened to him and is still alive as far as he knows.)

FBI informant Danny Greene was killed in a Cadillac. (Contrary to Kill the Irishman, he was killed in a Lincoln Continental.)

Gangster Carmine Galante was killed during the winter. (He was killed in July 1979, unlike what you see in Donnie Brasco.)

Charles Manson was a serial killer. (Not exactly, but he had a tendency to enable them since his followers certainly were. He’s only know to may have killed one person personally.)

Jeffrey Dahmer was sentenced to 957 years in federal prison. (Contrary to the Jeremy Renner film about him, he was convicted of 15 murders at a state trial in Wisconsin and served his sentence at a state correctional facility.)

Son of Sam was a serial killer in the Bronx. (He was active in Queens.)

Louis Cafora and his wife were found dead in a Pepto-Bismol pink 1979 Coupe DeVille Cadillac by kids playing in a parking lot. (Contrary to Goodfellas, their bodies were never found and the car was a Fleetwood but it was pink. The guy drove it to an FBI investigation in that.)

I couldn’t have a post dedicated to Depression Era outlaws in the movies without using a picture from the 1967 Bonnie and Clyde. Sure this is a very entertaining movie with all the violence and sex any box office smash could ask for starring the sexy Warren Beatty and the sultry Faye Dunaway who have great chemistry. However, remember that this movie doesn’t tell the real story of Bonnie and Clyde who were no more than a couple of ruthless thugs that didn’t rob from the rich to give to the poor. Nor were they that stylish and good looking either.

You’d think that the repeal to Prohibition would lead to less crime now that alcohol was legal again. However, since this was the time of the Great Depression, you’d be dead wrong. Thanks to the Great Depression and the fact that people back then didn’t have the modern conveniences we have now, 1930s America had a new generation of outlaw legends whose exploits were read in the papers or heard on the radio. Sure they weren’t nice people but many of these outlaws seemed to emanate a sense of romanticism during difficult times. People didn’t mind that they robbed banks, killed people, or held people hostage because their adventures provided some sort of escape from the normal hard life of the general population since these guys didn’t let the law stop them. Didn’t hurt that they dressed well, too. Still, many of these Depression outlaws had celebrity status such as John Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, Machine Gun Kelly, Bonnie and Clyde, and the Barker gang. And, yes, the 1930s is a rather popular setting for gangster films as well as movies dealing with crime. Nevertheless, there are some liberties Hollywood tends to take with the facts on many of them which I shall list accordingly.

Outlaws and Gangsters:

Henry Young:

Henry Young was convicted of stealing $5 to save his sister from destitution. (This is from a film called Murder in the First Degree that stars Kevin Bacon which seems so sweet but it’s bullshit. The real Henry Young was a hardened bank robber who had taken a hostage at least on one occasion and committed a murder in 1933. In the 1930s, he had been incarcerated in at least 2 state prisons before landing in Alcatraz. Also, he killed Rufus McCain a year after his return in the general prison population, was only in solitary confinement for a few months {not 3 years and certainly not kept in a dungeon}, and didn’t die at Alcatraz in the early 1940s. In fact, he left Alcatraz in 1948 for the US Medical Center for Federal Prisoners and was transferred to the Washington State Penitentiary in 1954. In 1972, he’d be released, jump parole, and disappear. His whereabouts and fate remain unknown to this day.)

Machine Gun Kelly:

Machine Gun Kelly’s girlfriend was Flo Becker. (Her name as Kathryn Thorne and she was his wife.)

Bonnie and Clyde:

Bonnie Parker pressured Clyde Barrow into robbing banks along with pulling big time heists and the two had sympathy for the dispossessed. (Clyde was already a confirmed criminal who had spent time in jail and killed a man by the time he met Bonnie, who also had a husband in prison {who was an abusive drunk no less}. Clyde more or less wore the pants in the relationship and they may not have been as much in love with each other as the movie implies. Also, neither displayed any sympathies or motives for the unfortunate. Not to mention, Clyde was a careless and remorseless killer in pursuit of small stakes, hardly a sympathetic figure at all. He also had a series of love affairs before he met Bonnie and his strongest commitments to women were to his mother and older sister. Bonnie was more of a criminal groupie more than anything and was depicted as a cigar smoking moll. Besides, they didn’t look anything like Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway and certainly wouldn’t be dressing in those kind of clothes {which resemble designer outfits than anything either of them would actually wear}. Actually their real life counterparts more or less resemble a couple of hicks though Clyde’s brother and sister-in-law were much better looking than Gene Hackman and Estelle Parsons who play them in the film {with the real Blanche Barrow saying about Bonnie and Clyde, “That movie made me look like a screaming horse’s ass.”}. The story of Kathryn Thorne and George Kelly Barnes might have been a better tale to film as a kind of relationship where a woman led a man astray and inflated his criminal ambitions. And as a Robin Hood figure who conducted big time heists and tried to avoid killing, John Dillinger.)

Bonnie Parker smoked cigars. (She didn’t despite the photo. She and Clyde smoked cigarettes. She did drink whiskey though.)

Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow broke the bonds of convention and became a threat to the status quo who didn’t fear cops and lived a life of glamorous luxury outrunning them. (Bonnie and Clyde were sometimes incompetent and often careless crooks who lived a hard life punctuated by narrow escapes, bungled robberies, injury, and murder. Oh, and they became one of the first outlaw media stars when police found photos of them fooling around with guns.)

Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow robbed rich people and banks to give to the poor. (Most of their victims were small town store owners and farmers’ savings banks. During the Depression, they basically robbed from ordinary hard working Americans to give to themselves. What a couple of heroes, yeah right.)

Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow often robbed banks together. (Actually they robbed less than 15 banks during their life of crime, some more than once. Also, they usually got away with very little like $80 in one incident, but. In the more successful robberies, Clyde mostly committed them with a criminal associate named Raymond Hamilton. Bonnie would sometimes drive the getaway car but she’d usually stay a hideout while the rest of the gang robbed the bank. Not to mention, unlike in the 1967 film, Bonnie and Clyde would rarely attempt bank jobs on their own and more commonly robbed grocery stores and gas stations that usually had a low take that they had to commit more robberies just to get by. The frequency of these crimes made the couple easier to track.)

Bonnie Parker fired a gun many times during her crime spree with Clyde Barrow. (There’s been controversy over the shooting of Bonnie who may never have fired a gun and seemed not to have been charged with any capital offense.)

The exploits of Bonnie and Clyde were part of one daring crime spree. (Actually Clyde and Bonnie were imprisoned for stints during their career together. Also, the movie about them leaves out a near-fatal car accident that left Bonnie so badly burned down one leg that she was left permanently disabled as well as the fact they made frequent visits to their families.)

Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were two criminals in love. (Like I said, Bonnie was kind of a criminal groupie who may have had a mental disorder that made her attracted to seriously violent men. This is a sexual fetish called hybristophilia, or “Bonnie and Clyde Syndrome,” which you see with a lot of women who are attracted to convicted murderers or death row inmates with the most famous example being Carol Anne Boone marrying serial killer, Ted Bundy. So the entire romance between Bonnie and Clyde may have had less to do with love and more to do with her disturbing paraphilia. Not only that, while Bonnie was killed at 23, she had been married to another man for seven years and she was wearing her wedding ring when she died.)

Bonnie and Clyde were hunted down by Frank Hamer who was a bounty hunter. (Hamer was actually hired by the Texas prison system administrator to hunt down Bonnie and Clyde but not as a bounty hunter. He was actually an ex-Texas Ranger called out of retirement. Also, unlike in Bonnie and Clyde, he wasn’t an idiot and had never personally interacted with them before the 1934 shoot-out. Thus, he wouldn’t be kidnapped and embarrassed by the Barrow gang. Still, Hamer’s surviving family were so outraged at the man’s depiction that they filed a defamation lawsuit against Warner Brothers which the movie studio settled out of court.)

Bonnie and Clyde were the crime media darlings of their day. (They were around the same time as John Dillinger who the public actually had more sympathy for. Still, when Bonnie and Clyde came out, newspaper columnist Mike Royko printed a number of angry letters from many of the Barrow Gang’s real-life victims. One said: “They got my father. They did him with machine guns. He lived for three days.” Besides, while Dillinger dominated headlines in the United States, Bonnie and Clyde rarely received any newspaper attention outside the Dallas area.)

The Barrow gang sent photos and poetry to the press. (The photos and poetry were found by police who sent them for publication. They took the photos for their own amusement.)

Clyde Barrow died outside the car while Bonnie Parker died in. (Clyde died in the car with Bonnie.)

Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow met when Clyde was at Bonnie’s trying to steal her mother’s car. (According to Bonnie’s mother the two met over a mug of hot chocolate at a friend’s house not during a stick-up. Also, they didn’t go on their crime spree until two years into their relationship. Oh, and Bonnie was unemployed at the time.)

Clyde Barrow was impotent. (He wasn’t. His impotence was invented for the film. Still, he did kill a guy in prison for sexually abusing him though.)

Dillinger and Associates:

Dillinger’s gang was responsible for killing a lot of people. (They were responsible for the deaths of a dozen people. Public Enemies just takes it to the nth power.)

Little Bohemia served as a hideout for the Dillinger gang after a disastrous robbery at Sioux Falls. (Actually this wasn’t the case as depicted in Public Enemies since a lot happened between Sioux Falls and Little Bohemia. The film skips over events like the bank robbery in Mason City, Iowa on March 13, 1934, Dillinger, Billie, and Van Meter’s narrow escape from police in St. Paul on April 1st, and a visit to Red Hamilton’s sister Anna Steve a few days before Little Bohemia.)

The Dillinger Gang expected more than what they got during the Sioux Falls robbery. (Though the gang managed to get $46,000 in the Sioux Falls robbery, unlike in Public Enemies, they expected to net at least six figures at the First National Bank in Mason City, Iowa not Sioux Falls. They knew that there was about $250,000 in the bank’s vault but only netted 1/5th of the money because Red Hamilton got stalled by an intelligent bank manager.)

John Dillinger:

John Dillinger died after Pretty Boy Floyd, Homer Van Meter, and Baby Face Nelson. (He actually got killed before all of them. Dillinger was killed in Chicago on July 22, 1934 while Van Meter was shot to death that August by police in St. Paul. Floyd was gunned down in East Liverpool, Ohio on October 22, 1934 and Baby Face Nelson died in a shootout on November 27, 1934 in Barrington, Illinois. And, no, Melvin Purvis didn’t gun down all of them unlike in Public Enemies save maybe Pretty Boy Floyd.)

John Dillinger said, “Why? I have absolutely nothing I want to do in Indiana.” (He would never say this because he would never have dismissed his home state.)

John Dillinger took 3 people prisoner with a wooden gun during a prison escape. (He took 17 possibly 20. Still, while legend says that he used a gun made out of soap and shoe polish, Dillinger always claimed to have used a wooden gun and there are photos to prove it.)

John Dillinger was present at the Indiana State Prison break that took place on September 26, 1933. (He was imprisoned in Lima, Ohio at the time though he did smuggle guns in the place for his associates while robbing banks during that June but we’re not sure how. Nevertheless, the breakout didn’t happen like in Public Enemies as TTI quotes: “According to Bryan Borrough’s book, the escapees took the guards hostage with the guns, then paraded them into the administration building, while fooling the tower guards into thinking that the prisoners were just being escorted by the day captain. Four of them escaped by taking a visiting sheriff hostage in his car, while Pete Pierpont and his group stole a car from a gas station across the street. Only a clerk was injured, shot in the leg. There was none of the mass bloodshed shown in the movie.” As to John “Red” Hamilton, he was there but he was one of the inmates who escaped {as well as the only one to get recaptured before his death in April of 1934} not just outside the prison helping Dillinger with the breakout. Still, except to Indiana Police Officer Matt Leach, Dillinger was relatively unknown before the mass breakout and was first presumably known to many after he broke out of jail in Lima.)

John Dillinger shot down three people consisting of two detectives during the Racine robbery and a police officer during the Sioux Falls robbery. (Dillinger killed nobody during these robberies. In fact, the only person he’s believed to have actually shot and killed was police officer William O’Malley when Dillinger and Red Hamilton held up the First National Bank in East Chicago, Illinois {allegedly when Dillinger lost his temper}. It was this officer’s murder that Dillinger was standing trial for in Indiana.)

John Dillinger was Public Enemy #1 in 1933. (He didn’t become Public Enemy #1 until his 31st birthday on June 22, 1934.)

John Dillinger was shot in the shoulder during the Sioux Falls robbery. (He was shot a week after that during the robbery of the First National Bank in Mason City, Iowa.)

John Dillinger had a brief conversation with Melvin Purvis during the former’s incarceration. (They may have come close to seeing each other shortly before Dillinger died but they didn’t exchange words. However, Dillinger had multiple in-prison encounters with his original pursuer Indiana State Police detective Matt Leach, who was actually more competent than the FBI in pursuing him.)

John Dillinger died within seconds after being shot by Winstead. (He lived a few minutes before taking his last breath. However, he didn’t say “Bye, bye, blackbird” though.)

John Dillinger was a ruthless gangster that regularly killed innocent people. (He’s only said to have killed one police officer during his entire life and it’s questionable whether he actually did it. Still, he was a blue collar crook who planned his bank robberies around not killing people. He robbed for the money, the thrill, and as revenge against a corrupt system he felt betrayed the common man like himself. He despised cold-blooded killers and Baby Face Nelson because he knew he was a criminal and that the people after him were just doing their jobs. He hated being forced to work with Baby Face Nelson and never even bothered trying to hide it. He even threatened to kill Nelson if he shot anyone needlessly despite that Nelson helped Dillinger escape from Crown Point Prison. The resentment was mutual since Nelson hated how Dillinger got all the attention and how the press was drooling over him with all his sightings making the front page. Those who were killed during his robberies were usually shot either by Baby Face Nelson or Homer Van Meter. Nevertheless, many movies portray Dillinger as a remorseless killer with Public Enemies being no exception.)

John Dillinger’s pocket watch had Billie Frechette’s photo inside. (The photo inside was Polly Hamilton’s not Billie’s.)

John Dillinger drove away from the Crown Point jail in Sheriff Holley’s Ford V8. (Deputy Sheriff Ernest Blunk was the actual driver in the escape and Dillinger didn’t get behind the wheel until after Blunk and Saager were set free outside of Peotone, Illinois.)

John Dillinger was recommended Louis Piquett by Alvin Carpis during his incarceration at Crown Point Prison. (It was prison trusty Sam Cahoon who recommended Piquett, which was arranged by the East Chicago mob.)

John Dillinger was shot from behind outside Chicago’s Biograph Theater while strolling with two women. (He actually pulled a gun and tried to get away after he noticed Melvin Purvis standing aside. The agents opened fire and Dillinger was shot three times with bystanders being injured by bullets and debris. Yet, Public Enemies shows him dying without putting a fight though he was accompanied by Polly Hamilton and Anna Sage {who tipped off the authorities}.)

John Dillinger and Anna Sage were friends before she informed on him. (They were not nor did they know each other long before she tipped the authorities on him, and she mainly did it because she was threatened with deportation. She was just Polly Hamilton’s madam and Dillinger knew her after Little Bohemia.)

John Dillinger walked into police headquarters during his own investigation. (No, but he actually walked into another police station and this was after he received plastic surgery which he thought would make him unrecognizable in public. He just didn’t count on his plastic surgeon reaching out to the FBI.)

John Dillinger didn’t alter his appearance in the final months before his death. (He actually had plastic surgery a month and a half before his death including a fingerprint removal/alteration that his family didn’t recognize him when they saw his corpse. Yet, they managed to identify him because he had a scar on his thigh which he received from a barbed wire fence during a watermelon raid years prior. And no, he didn’t look like Johnny Depp. Still, all movies about him don’t have Dillinger alter his appearance for practical reasons. Yet, playwright Joseph Kesselring would take Dillinger’s plastic surgery bit and run with it in Arsenic and Old Lace. Oh, and like Jonathan Brewster, Dillinger had an alcoholic doctor, too {who was an inspiration for Dr. Einstein in the play}.)

John Dillinger was betrayed since he was making too many waves. (Dillinger had a $15,000 reward on him which would’ve been an irresistible sum to anyone during the Depression. Also, Anna Sage was being threatened with deportation while his plastic surgeon was reaching out to the FBI. Also, Dillinger was getting careless since his plastic surgery that he started appearing in public venues thinking that his altered looks would keep him safe. It was only a matter of time.)

John Dillinger was in rigorous health when he died. (Actually he had a heart condition according to a 1938 book by a physician from the Indiana State Prison.)

John Dillinger saw himself in the PSAs when he was at the movies. (There’s no proof he did but it’s possible.)

Billie Frechette:

Billie Frechette was arrested after the shootout at the Little Bohemia Lodge. (She was arrested before that. Her arrest was partly why Dillinger and his gang went to Little Bohemia so Dillinger could take his mind off his girlfriend. Also, Dillinger was in the same car during Billie’s arrest yet Purvis didn’t take notice until after it drove away.)

Billie Frechette was John Dillinger’s true love. (Yes, he loved her but he had many girlfriends. Still, when Billie got arrested, Dillinger was so distraught that the rest of the gang {even Nelson} had to discourage him from attempting to rescue her. Nevertheless, he moved on to Polly Hamilton two months later.)

Billie Frechette was a sweet and fragile innocent. (Actually she had worked in nudie nightclubs for awhile and had developed an affinity for the wrong kind of men. Oh, and she and Dillinger were only together for six months.)

Billie Frechette was slapped around during her interrogation. (The FBI treated her badly like handcuffing to a chair under bright lights as well as interrogating her relentlessly for 24 hours straight, when she begged to be allowed to sleep. Yet, there seemed to be no slapping but it was enough for Purvis’ secretary to say something about it.)

Anna Sage:

Anna Sage wore red on the day John Dillinger was killed. (She wore orange, not red. Yet, she’s known as “the Woman in Red.” Oh, and she contacted the Chicago police on Dillinger’s whereabouts not the FBI.)

Homer van Meter:

Homer van Meter was shot dead 20 or more times at Little Bohemia by FBI agents. (Contrary to Public Enemies, was killed after Dillinger and managed to escape from Little Bohemia. He was killed by the St. Paul Police Department who shot him 52 times with some of his fingers shot off as well. His death was a lot uglier than portrayed in the film.)

Homer van Meter escaped from Michigan City Prison during the September 26, 1933 breakout. (He had been paroled by that time.)

John “Red” Hamilton:

John “Red” Hamilton had all his digits. (One of his nicknames was “Three Finger Jack” by the authorities because he was missing two fingers from his right hand and would later lose a third during the East Chicago bank job. Still, Public Enemies probably didn’t have the budget to do CGI on the guys hand.)

Red Hamilton was killed at Little Bohemia. (He died from a wound he received during a shootout at a roadblock during the escape from Little Bohemia.)

Pretty Boy Floyd:

Pretty Boy Floyd was shot near an apple orchard. (He was shot in an open field outside a farm house and by a sniper at great distance. Still, he’s alleged to have died unarmed though I highly doubt it. Nevertheless, his funeral was attended by about 20,000 to 40,000 people, the largest in Oklahoma history.)

Pretty Boy Floyd started out as a boxer who fought under his nickname. (This is in a biopic about him but it’s not true. Floyd never had a career as a professional boxer and actually received his nickname from a robbery. It was a nickname he despised.)

Pretty Boy Floyd’s last words were “You have killed me, you can rot in hell.” (Actually it’s said his last words were, “Fuck you. I’m through. You have got me twice.”)

Baby Face Nelson:

Baby Face Nelson was executed by the electric chair 1937. (Contrary to O Brother, Where Art Thou?, he died in a 1934 shootout so his death in the electric chair didn’t happen and he never stepped foot in Mississippi. His death in Barrington, Illinois happened like something you’d see in a Quentin Tarantino movie according to TTI: “In his real shootout on November 27, 1934 in Barrington, Illinois against Agents Samuel P. Cowley and Herman Hollis (both of whom were mortally wounded), Nelson refused to fall despite having been struck a total of seventeen times (Hollis shot him ten times in his legs with a shotgun, and Cowley shot him seven times with a submachine gun). This is attributed to adrenaline surging through his body – which kept Nelson alive for approximately three hours before he succumbed to his wounds. And the bullets that felled Cowley and Hollis were fired after Nelson had been really shot up.” Man, why isn’t this scene in Public Enemies?)

Baby Face Nelson and Tommy Carroll escaped from the Sherone Apartments building when police tried to arrest them. (A bungled up attempt to arrest a criminal did happen at this building but the guy was Verne Miller, who was wanted for the Kansas City Massacre in June 1933. Yet, the Dillinger gang did have a shooting in an apartment building but it was at the Lincoln Court Apartments in St. Paul, Minnesota, which involved Dillinger, Billie Frechette, and Homer van Meter. Basically it consisted of Dillinger and Billie getting away while van Meter fired at the agents.)

Baby Face Nelson and several others were killed when FBI agents raided Dillinger’s hideout. (Though this is Nelson’s death scene in Public Enemies, in reality, it was his most famous escape with every single criminal getting away unharmed. The only casualties were a civilian killed by FBI agents and an Fed killed by Baby Face Nelson himself. Nelson also shot another agent and a police officer there, too. Only three of the gang’s women were taken into custody that consisted of Nelson and Tommy Carroll’s wives and Homer van Meter’s girlfriend. So like Public Enemies the raid at Little Bohemia was a disaster, but for the FBI.)

During the Sioux Falls Robbery, a boy jumped on Baby Face Nelson’s back and struggled with him a few moments before Nelson threw him off shattering a window. (This incident did happen to Nelson but this was during a robbery Merchants National Bank in South Bend, Indiana on June 30, 1934.)

Baby Face Nelson’s real name was George Nelson. (Actually George Nelson was a pseudonym and he hated his nickname “Baby Face Nelson.” His real name was Lester Joseph Gillis. Still, he was a homicidal maniac known for killing more FBI agents in the line of duty than any other person.)

Law Enforcement:

The FBI used enhanced interrogation techniques on Dillinger gang members called the “third degree.” (Though it’s shown in Public Enemies, it’s very unlikely enhanced interrogation techniques were used on Dillinger gang members, though it’s alleged to have happened to other prisoners. Still, agents who tried using physical torture got very little information for the pain they inflicted on prisoners. The senior men got agents who attempted this back in line. Nevertheless, they more likely had these people in the room for hours to wear them down like most law enforcement do but no one wants to see that. Also, when Dillinger heard rumors about an interrogator had done something like this to Billie Frechette, it’s said Dillinger considered assassinating the guy.)

The failure at Little Bohemia was due to poor FBI judgment. (It was also due to J. Edgar Hoover wanting all the credit and glory for his own organization and made it a policy to cooperate as little as possible with other law enforcement agencies. One of the reasons why Purvis didn’t rely on local authorities when he should’ve was because he was worried about what his boss may think. Still, in Little Bohemia, Purvis was basically screwed either way.)

Melvin Purvis:

Melvin Purvis and the FBI were after John Dillinger from the very beginning. (Contrary to Public Enemies, the early hunt for John Dillinger was actually primarily led by the Indiana State Police. In that period, the most the FBI did to get involved in the Dillinger manhunt was attending a number of conferences and offering to help in fingerprinting. After the death of Sheriff Sarber, J. Edgar Hoover actually ignored pleas from then Indiana Governor Paul McNutt for the FBI’s help until Dillinger drove a stolen car over state lines during his escape at Crown Point Prison {because before then, Dillinger hadn’t committed a federal crime}. As for Purvis, he had been SAC of the Chicago field office for several months when Dillinger first began robbing banks.)

Melvin Purvis was assigned to lead the hunt for John Dillinger. (He was the head of the FBI’s Chicago office but the person leading the Dillinger investigation in the final months before Dillinger’s death was fellow agent Samuel P. Cowley. Hoover actually thought Purvis to be quite inept {though he might’ve just said that out of jealousy of Purvis getting all the media attention}.)

Melvin Purvis shot himself with the gun he killed John Dillinger with. (The gun he shot himself with in 1961 was given to him by his colleagues as a retirement gift when he left the FBI in 1935. Dillinger was gunned down in 1934, and not by Purvis. Also, guns make terrible retirement gifts, really.)

The death of Pretty Boy Floyd helped Melvin Purvis land the Dillinger case. (Actually Floyd’s death happened after Dillinger was killed though Purvis was there, but he and his agents had help. It had more to do with Dillinger’s escape from Crown Point prison in which Dillinger drove a stolen sheriff’s car between the Indiana and Illinois state border.)

Melvin Purvis was an experienced FBI agent who was dragged down by well-meaning but raw agents. (He was just as inexperienced as his co-workers. According to Brian Burroughs, “He once “forgot” to arrest George “Machine Gun” Kelly, despite iron-clad intelligence from other FBI agents of a meeting Kelly had planned at a Chicago tavern. And under his leadership, the Dillinger manhunt became a comedy of errors. For months, Purvis inexplicably neglected to order a watch kept on the homes of Dillinger’s family and associates, allowing the outlaw to hide out in ease. Purvis ordered raids on the wrong houses, and arrests of the wrong people. And he and his men lost Dillinger’s trail countless times.  They were finally able to corner him only because an informant, Anna Sage (the fabled ‘woman in red;’ though she actually wore orange, as the film shows’) contacted the Chicago police with information on Dillinger’s whereabouts.” Also, he never threatened to resign unless J. Edgar Hoover obtained experienced law enforcement officials skilled with guns and he wasn’t a fearless man of action.)

J. Edgar Hoover:

J. Edgar Hoover and Agent Melvin Purvis killed John Dillinger. (Dillinger was gunned down by agents Charles Hurt, Charles Winstead, and Herman Hollis. Most historical accounts usually name Winstead as the guy who delivered the fatal shot to the back of Dillinger’s head. J. Edgar Hoover even sent Winstead a letter of commendation for it.)

J. Edgar Hoover was a cross-dressing homosexual momma’s boy. (Well, he and Clyde Tolson were very good friends who spent a lot of time together and were buried side by side. Tolson also inherited the bulk of Hoover’s estate when he died. Still, whether to say Hoover and Tolson were lovers is anyone’s guess {though there were rumors}. However, as to whether he was a cross dresser, we’re pretty sure that this is a myth, though many wish it was true. As for his mother, he actually spied on her. Still, the fact he lived with his mother until her death wasn’t unusual for Hoover’s generation. He was, however, a Freemason and a highly commended one at that.)

The Lindbergh Kidnapping:

The notion of the crime laboratory in the FBI originated with the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby. (The crime lab had been around much earlier according to the FBI’s website. Also, it was actually the New Jersey police headed by Superintendent Norman Schwartzkopf Sr. {father and namesake of the future commander of Desert Storm} that did the work on the Lindbergh kidnapping, including the forensics that led to the mill where the kidnapper was employed. The Treasury Department was also involved with cracking the case with Frank J. Wilson able to incriminate Bruno Hauptmann through the serial numbers on the money that was found at his place.)

The Lindbergh baby kidnapping was a watershed moment in J. Edgar Hoover’s career. (The Lindbergh case actually merits a little more than a couple of pages in any Hoover biography. He wasn’t at the center of the investigation or the subsequent trial.)

Of course, I couldn’t do a post about Prohibition without having a picture from the 1987 film The Untouchables with Kevin Costner as Elliot Ness and Sean Connery who does one of the worst Irish accents ever and still wins an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. Still, while the Brian De Palma film does capture the popular image of Prohibition, it gets the whole story wrong when it came to Al Capone. Elliot Ness didn’t take down Al Capone nor ever met the guy. Nor was Frank J. Wilson a gun toting accountant. He was an IRS agent who spent his time in Chicago gathering information about Capone’s money because tax evasion was the only charge that stuck to him. Also, there were 12 Untouchables, not 4 and none of them died. Neither did Frank Nitti who was Al Capone’s No. 2.

Of course, we can’t talk about 1920s America without discussing Prohibition, which has been one of the default settings for many gangster films since the 1930s which made a fortune in Warner Brothers. From 1920 to 1933 alcohol was illegal in the United States under the 18th Amendment, which was in place thanks to the advocacy of Temperance organizations (though you have to admit, alcoholism was a big problem for much of US history which hurt a lot of families which explains why many people in the movement were also feminists). Still, this didn’t mean that alcohol’s ban was going to stop people from drinking because it wasn’t. Rather it was the reason that people kept on drinking that led to gin being made in bathtubs or by moonshiners, smuggled by organized crime syndicates as well as the likes of men like Al Capone, and served only in hole-in-the-wall bars known as speakeasies that could be highly prone to raids by stolid, humorless cops, or an ambush by Prohibition agents. Still, while Prohibition seemed like a good idea at the time, it actually did more harm than good such as leading to the rise of organized crime and violence in cities, alcoholism among women, people getting seriously ill or possibly dying from drink which you didn’t know what was in it, moon shining, and others. Nevertheless, movies set in this time tend to get a few things wrong, which I shall list accordingly.

Gangsters:

Only Italian led organized crime syndicates got involved in Prohibition. (Actually practically a lot of ethnic groups had their own organized crime syndicate involved during Prohibition, not just the Italians. You had Irish guys like Bugs Moran, Jews like Meyer Lansky, black guys like Bumpy Johnson, and others. Yet, when people think of the mafia, they think of The Godfather for some reason. Oh, and not all Italian gangsters were Sicilian either. For example, Al Capone was Neapolitan.)

Gangster Peter Gusenberg was born in 1898. (He was born in 1888.)

Tommy guns were popular and reliable weapons for gangsters. (What Prohibition Era gangster wouldn’t be without his trusted tommy gun blowing everything around him to bits and killing everyone in sight nicknamed the “Chicago Typewriter”? Actually tommy guns weren’t as popular in Prohibition Era gangland as movies led you to believe since they were subject to frequent jams, which is one of the many problems it had. Nevertheless, its place as one of the first fully automatic weapons and association with gangsters during Prohibition was the inspiration for one of America’s first federal gun control laws, which required to register them.)

Al Capone:

Al Capone saw Enrico Caruso perform at the Chicago opera house while Elliot Ness was investigating him. (Elliot Ness started to investigate Capone in 1929. Enrico Caruso died in 1921, before Capone was just a relative unknown gangster working for Chicago Outfit head Johnny Torrio. Capone would become head of the Chicago Outfit in 1925.)

The jury in Al Capone’s trial was switched to the jury next door after the discovery that the first one had been bribed. (Something like this really happened but not in the way it’s depicted in The Untouchables. In real life, the jury was switched much earlier in the trial according to TTI, “the pool of jurors both sides could select or veto was switched; switching it when they did in the film, even if it had been allowed, would have meant that the new jury was handicapped by having missed the presentation of key evidence.” And no, it wouldn’t be switched with a jury in a divorce case in the next courtroom since divorces are covered by state law and Al Capone was charged with federal tax evasion, cases which wouldn’t be held in the same courthouse.)

Al Capone’s lawyer attempted to enter a plea without his client’s consent. (He never did this because this is a good way to have a mistrial, an overturned conviction, and an attorney disbarment. Al Capone’s lawyer wouldn’t have attempted this because such action would’ve not only cause him to lose his case {which happened anyway} but also to lose his job. For a lawyer to enter a plea without his or her client’s consent falls under Legal Stupidity 101, even in the 1920s.)

When found guilty Al Capone became violently angry over the verdict and punched his attorney. (Capone actually accepted his verdict calmly while meekly proclaiming to the press that he was innocent. He may have often been violent and unpleasant with his competitors and those inside his organization, he was very protective of his public image as a genial, “misunderstood benefactor” of Chicago and took great pains while in public {and dealing with the press} to remain refined, polite, and well mannered. He would’ve never made a public outburst in front of a courtroom, especially in front of the press. Yes, he was prone to temper tantrums but he knew how to behave himself in public.)

Al Capone’s wife was a Chicago single mom named Maureen Flannery with a daughter. (Her name was Mae Josephine Coughlin. She was an Irish American girl from Capone’s native Brooklyn who gave birth to his son before they were married.)

Al Capone last saw Frank Nitti in 1946. (Nitti had killed himself in 1943 so such reunion would’ve been impossible.)

Al Capone beat one of his associates to death with a baseball in front of British journalists at a party. (Yes, Capone is said to have personally attacked people with a baseball bat on at least three occasions but only when he was on the job. He would’ve never acted like that in front of the press or at a public party since he didn’t want people to think he was a violent sociopath.)

Al Capone was born in Italy but raised in a Brooklyn slum. (He was born in Brooklyn in 1899.)

Al Capone was indicted for tax evasion three months after the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre of 1929. (He was indicted and convicted of tax evasion in 1931.)

Al Capone killed Joe Aiello on a train in 1929. (Aiello was killed in a drive by shooting in 1930.)

Al Capone’s scar was caused from broken glass from a window. (It was actually a knife wound he received during an knife fight  he had between Frank Gallucio over a remark he made at the latter’s sister Lena at the Harvard Inn on Coney Island in 1917. Despite having the nickname of “Scarface” Capone was actually his scars which he would come to great lengths to hide in photographs and claim they were war wounds {though he never actually served in the military}.)

Al Capone was faithful to his wife. (Remember he died from syphilis so where did he contract that from? Then again, his son Albert Francis Capone was born with congenital syphilis due to this and that was a month before he married the boy’s mother. Still, it’s been proposed that his ruthless and raging personality was caused by him suffering third stage syphilis though which he probably contracted by the time he was 20 and possibly from his wife. Still, it’s a tough call.)

Al Capone moved to Chicago because he wanted to get in the liquor business there. (That and the fact he left Brooklyn because he was being investigated for murder.)

Frank Nitti:

Frank Nitti was killed by Elliot Ness after taunting him about murdering his partner. (Nitti actually killed himself in 1943 mostly because he had been indicted for extorting the Hollywood film industry and didn’t want to go to prison. It was also rumored he was suffering from terminal cancer. Also, he was a much smarter man that he’s depicted in The Untouchables because he took the reins of Capone’s organization and diversified the Chicago Outfit’s interest after Prohibition ended.)

Frank Nitti was one of Al Capone’s bodyguards. (He was Capone’s second-in-command as well as main enforcer. At least Road to Perdition gets his role right.)

Dutch Schultz:

Dutch Schultz had an unrequited love for a policeman’s wife during Prohibition. (This probably never happened. Also, he was married, sort of though not technically {it’s kind of complicated but he at least had romantic relations with at least two women, possibly having children with one of them}. Still, there’s a movie about his love for a policeman’s wife called Portrait of a Mobster with Vic Morrow.)

Dutch Schultz worked for Legs Diamond and his gang when he started up as a racketeer. (His first boss was named Joe Noe who initially hired him to tend a speakeasy but would make him his partner when Shultz earned a reputation for brutality and having a nasty temper. Also, before Noe hired him, Schultz was just a feeder and pressman for various trucking companies as well as a small time crook who’d already served prison time. Diamond was one of his competitors he had a gang war with.)

Dutch Schultz was shot by his friend Bo Wetzel by mistake, despite betraying him and already had a hit on him. (Actually he was done in by the Mafia Commission {the New York organized crime syndicate}, when he asked them for permission to kill U. S. Attorney Thomas Dewey {who was after him for two tax evasion. Also, he’s the same guy from “Dewey Defeats Truman”} in an attempt to avert his conviction. The Commission unanimously refused {for good reason} but he made an outburst and attempted to kill Dewey anyway. The Commission would later order Schultz’s murder just to save Dewey’s life. He was shot in the men’s room {either peeing or washing his hands} at his Newark, New Jersey headquarters by two hitmen from Murder Inc. Nevertheless, Schultz’s fatal flaw was his own selfish idiocy.)

Law Enforcement:

There were four members of the Untouchables and two of them died. (The Untouchables did exist and were led by Elliot Ness but they consisted of just 12 people and they all survived Prohibition. Oh, and they mostly raided stills and breweries. Also, the Treasury Department didn’t have a single casualty from Prohibition either.)

The Untouchables worked for the Treasury Department. (They were Prohibition agents who weren’t under Treasury Department jurisdiction.)

Law enforcement agents during Prohibition were always clean cut guys who usually didn’t drink. (There was a lot of corrupt law enforcement during Prohibition, since such corruption led many organized crime syndicates prosper and many agents did drink. Elliot Ness was an alcoholic.)

Frank J. Wilson:

Frank J. Wilson was an Untouchable as well as a gun toting accountant. (He wasn’t nor was he a gun toting accountant. He was an IRS agent who took down Al Capone, and he did it without a gun but by gathering information about his finances that revealed millions of dollars the crime boss made during Prohibition. This guy was totally screwed in The Untouchables but he actually ended up having a better life than Ness. He was also an investigator in the Lindbergh kidnapping case and would head the Secret Service before taking a long and comfortable retirement until his death in 1970.)

Elliot Ness:

There was a rooftop chase during Al Capone’s trial when Elliot Ness to the stand. (No there wasn’t but it’s in The Untouchables.)

Elliot Ness took down Al Capone. (The IRS did for Capone was put in prison for tax evasion, specifically by Franklin J. Wilson, though Ness did try to root out corruption in Chicago’s law enforcement while applying pressure to Al Capone’s organization but his raids in illegal breweries were intended as diversions. And no, Capone wasn’t taken down with Ness giving a big gun to a geeky looking accountant on Ness’ team because Ness had absolutely nothing to do with it. Capone wasn’t taken down by guns; he was taken down by some Treasury Department agent investigating the crime lord’s finances for three years, like tracking down his accountants and bookkeepers, that sort of thing. And Al Capone knew this and hired five guys to murder him for it but ended up canceling the hit after urgings from former mentor Johnny Torrio. Seems to me, Al Capone was more scared of some guy from the Treasury Department disguised as a tourist gathering dirt on his finances than the “great” Elliot Ness. It’s pretty funny thinking about it.)

Elliot Ness’ resolve to get Al Capone was only strengthened when Capone and Nitti threatened his loving wife and daughter. (For one, when Ness was assigned to Capone he was a young bachelor still living with his parents though he’d get married later on but his first marriage was a failure. Second, since Ness was a law enforcement officer, to threaten him or any members of his family would’ve been unthinkable for any gangster in the Chicago Outfit. Third, Al Capone wasn’t really scared of him as he was of IRS agent Frank J. Wilson who wanted to know more about his finances though he did underestimate the IRS.)

Elliot Ness once smashed a crate of pretty green parasols from Canada as well as participated on a horseback raid in Montana as well as a shootout in a station. (Ness never did these things. I’m sure anyone writing the screenplay to Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables, just made these things up.)

Elliot Ness was a clean cut law enforcement officer who didn’t drink or fool around. (He used political/family connections to get his Chicago assignment as a Prohibition agent. Also, he was an inveterate philanderer and an alcoholic like Jimmy McNulty, but more of a hypocrite. Not to mention, he was divorced twice by the 1940s, which really said something and the rest of his life was plagued by business failures.)

Miscellaneous:

Al Capone and Elliot Ness met face to face. (They never did.)

Prohibition just consisted of G-Men vs. gangsters. (Actually there were other people involved in Prohibition like moonshiners in the Appalachians, rum runners, speakeasy workers, and such. It wasn’t all gangsters and law enforcement.)

Bootleg alcoholic drinks were safe to drink. (This isn’t always the case and a lot of people died from bad booze during this time.)