After Dillinger stunned the country by breaking out of the jail at Crown Point, Indiana with a wooden gun on March 3, 1934, it was suspected that he would try to break his pals out of the death house in Columbus, Ohio.
With Dillinger's death at the hands of the FBI on July 22, 1934, and time running out for them, Makley and Pierpont resorted to other means to get off death row: they would try to duplicate their old friend's feat.