Everyone should have a mission in life:
John Dillinger was not a killer—at least among the wax figures of 1930s gangsters, fake tommy guns and "Most Wanted" posters in a Hammond museum.
And the notorious outlaw once known as Public Enemy No. 1 has a great-nephew to thank for that.
After an eight-year court battle, the John Dillinger Museum last week started the process of changing all its signs that refer to Dillinger as a murderer or killer. Now they must either add "alleged" to the signs or include a sentence indicating that Dillinger was never convicted of murder.
All because of Jeffrey Scalf of Indiana, whose almost-full-time job is protecting the legacy of a great-uncle he never met and convincing people that, while Dillinger was an outlaw, he was never a killer.
[. . .]
Scalf's attorneys have taken aim at other museums, hotels, restaurants, video games and even the Professional Bull Riders Inc. which tried marketing a bull named Dillinger. Most of the disputes were either settled before suits were filed or have since been resolved.
Yeah, gotta protect the legacy of that poor, misundrestood bank robber. All this nonsense is possible because of Indiana's "postmortem right of publicity" law, which allows descendants to charge for or prevent the use of someone's name, likeness, voice or personality for 100 years after the person's death.
