Here’s a look back at what happened in the Chicago area on March 3, according to the Tribune’s archives.
Is an important event missing from March 3? Email us.
Front page flashback: March 4, 1934
1934: Gangster John Dillinger broke out of jail in Crown Point, Indiana.
“It was a thorough job of jail breaking that Dillinger did with his little pistol; so thorough that he locked up a total of 33 persons and left them stewing behind bars,” the Tribune reported. “Outsiders had to go into the jail and release the dozen or so locked in guards, who begged from the jail windows for help.”
Vintage Chicago Tribune: John Dillinger’s final days — and the ‘Lady in red’ who helped trap him
Weather records (from the National Weather Service, Chicago)
- High temperature: 80 degrees (1974)
- Low temperature: Minus 6 degrees (1873)
- Precipitation: 1.21 inches (1966)
- Snowfall: 3.9 inches (1960)
1961: Chester Weger was convicted on his 22nd birthday of killing Lillian Oetting, 50, at Starved Rock State Park in Utica. The bodies of Oetting and friends Mildred Lindquist, 50, and Frances Murphy, 47, of Riverside were found on March 16, 1960, in a cave at the state park. They were bound, partially nude and bludgeoned to death, each having injuries consistent with suffering more than 100 blows.
The jury — made up of seven women and five men — fixed Weger’s punishment at life imprisonment. Two jurors become dismayed upon learning that Weger could be eligible for parole in 20 years. As he was led out of court, two sheriff’s deputies reported hearing Weger say, “You’ll never hold me.”
Weger was granted parole on his 24th try, in a 9-4 vote in November 2019. He was released from Pinckneyville Correctional Center in February 2020 and died of cancer in Kansas City in June 2025.
1991: A three-person crew was killed when their U.S. Navy T-39 Sabreliner transport plane crashed into a residential area along Dewes Street on approach to Glenview Naval Air Station. No one on the ground was injured.
1995: U.S. Supreme Court Judge John Paul Stevens refused an emergency appeal by paint manufacturers and retailers to order a stay of enforcement of the 1992 Chicago ordinance that banned the sale and possession of spray paint.
2020: A jury awarded $5.2 million to Stanley Wrice, who spent more than three decades in prison for a Sept. 9, 1982, gang rape after being tortured into a confession by the “midnight crew” of cops under former police Cmdr. Jon Burge.
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