The announcement that the Dillinger Museum in Nashville, Indiana -- which had recently closed -- has been given a new life in a neighboring town sounded like good news . . . until we read between the lines.

For 20 years the Dillinger Museum was an anachronism in the bed and breakfast community of Nashville. It was the lifelong project of Joe Pinkston, a secretive man who lived in a log cabin and who used his Museum as a soapbox to set the Dillinger record straight.

Whenever we visited the Dillinger Museum we were always impressed -- not only by its contents (which included a bloody life-size wax diorama of Dillinger on the morgue slab, Dillinger's tombstone, his jailhouse letters, and his tommy gun) but that each of its hundreds of displays was accompanied by a single-spaced, typewritten explanation sheet.

Buried among the layers of mind-numbing facts (i.e., Dillinger sat through three screenings of "The Three Little Pigs" before he decided to leave his theater hiding-place and was immediately gunned down by local police) was a HORRIBLE TRUTH: Dillinger was actually a good guy who was paid by the owners of the banks he robbed! Only after the bankers defaulted on their accounts and collected their insurance was the government brought in to kill Dillinger -- according to Pinkston.

Many ridiculed Joe and his "conspiracy" theories. But then in 1996, Joe died mysteriously of self-inflicted multiple gunshot wounds (according to the county coroner). An enlightened few smelled something fishy but kept their thoughts to themselves. Then, when it was announced in late March, 1998, that Joe's collection had been sold by his son to the rival town of Crown Point...well...scales fell from many eyes.

• Is it pure chance that seven of the ten letters in "Crown Point" are contained in "Joe Pinkston" (seven: mystic number of the ancients) and that Dillinger died when a bullet struck a "point" in the "crown" of his head?
• Was it mere coincidence that Joe Pinkston's museum struggled to survive in a town -- Nashville -- that everyone assumed was in Tennessee -- or was it deliberately put there to keep people away?
• What of the supposed "curse" on Dillinger's Trousers of Death -- for many the premier exhibit in Joe's collection? Some are of the opinion that pants and death should not mix. In the past we've scoffed at such notions -- but who's laughing now?

Trousers of Death on display. Also, the contents of his pockets, some pistols, and an NRA* card. Who put that there?

We hope that Crown Point will keep Pinkston's lamp of knowledge burning in its new home -- the old Lake County courts building, next to a bar called The Great Escape. It would be a tragedy for us all if Joe's life's work was stripped of its hidden meaning -- serving only Crown Point's bottom line rather than the pursuit of Truth.

* Okay, okay, this is a bit misleading. It is an NRA card, but that's the National Recovery Act, a government program like the WPA, not the National Rifle Association. [04/12/1998]