After her release from prison, Frechette participated in a nationwide carnival tour in which she appeared as an attraction alongside other figures associated with famous criminals. The tour was lucrative and brief, and Frechette eventually settled in Wisconsin. She died in 1969, three and a half decades after Dillinger’s death.
Her absence from the Biograph is a small but resonant detail: the woman most closely associated with Dillinger’s personal life was in federal custody while the FBI was closing the case. The woman who accompanied him to the theater was someone he had been dating for a matter of weeks.
—
## The Reward Structure and Anna Sage’s Fate
The rewards posted for information leading to Dillinger’s capture reflected the multiple jurisdictions that had interests in him.
The total reward money accumulated across the various postings reached approximately $15,000. This was a substantial sum by Depression-era standards — more than many workers earned in a year — but it was modest compared to the resources the FBI had expended in pursuing the case. The Bureau’s expenditures on the Dillinger manhunt were estimated at approximately $2 million, against gang takings estimated at approximately $500,000.
Anna Sage’s claim on the reward money was complicated by the fact that she had provided information and not physically captured anyone. The standard for distributing reward money in this period was not entirely clear, and the competing claims of various agencies and informants created administrative complexity. Sage reportedly received approximately $5,000 of the posted rewards.
She had hoped for considerably more — not just in money but in legal protection. Her expectation that cooperation with the FBI would result in the Department of Labor abandoning its deportation case against her was always, as the agents had warned her, uncertain. The agents who worked with her had been careful to promise nothing beyond bringing her cooperation to the department’s attention. That promise they kept.