Article: East Peoria Woman Remembers Making Dillinger's Death Mask

EAST PEORIA Viewing the corpse of John Dillinger, the most notorious outlaw of his time, 19-year-old embalming student Marjorie Eker was struck by a peculiar sight.

The desperado, wanted for robbing more than 100 banks, had polished fingernails and toenails.

"One of his girls had a beauty shop," she said recently in recalling her role nearly 60 years ago in making a death mask of Dillinger, after he was trapped by 22 FBI agents as he came out of Chicago's Biograph movie theater and shot dead in 1934.

The teenage student, now Marjorie McDougall, remembers being summoned to the Cook County Morgue the night of July 22, 1934, by a teacher at the Worsham College of Embalming, where she ...

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