The autopsy recorded brown eyes. Known descriptions of Dillinger, including records from his incarcerations, consistently noted gray or blue eyes. Dr. Robert Stein, who later examined the question, noted that eye color is difficult to determine accurately in a corpse and that the documentation of eye color in postmortem records is unreliable.
The body appeared taller and heavier than Dillinger’s known dimensions. This was attributed to variations in how measurements were taken and recorded between the arrest records and the autopsy.
The autopsy recorded evidence of a childhood rheumatic heart condition. Dillinger’s Navy enlistment records, taken when he was twenty, had documented a healthy heart. These records were taken approximately ten years apart and reflected different medical examination protocols.
Known scars and moles on Dillinger’s body were not all recorded in the autopsy. Some of this was attributed to the effects of the plastic surgery, which had deliberately removed several moles and altered the scar landscape of his face.
Each of these discrepancies has an explanation consistent with the identification being correct. None of them, individually or in combination, constitutes evidence that the wrong man was shot. They constitute documentation of the imprecision that characterizes post-mortem examination of a body that had been surgically altered, was damaged by gunshot wounds, and was processed under chaotic conditions with thousands of people pressing to get a look.
The formal conclusion of the inquest, conducted the morning after the shooting under Coroner Frank Walsh, was that the dead man was John Dillinger and that the death was justified.