AKIPRESS.COM - There’s a Colt Thompson submachine gun on display inside the police department of Tucson, Arizona. Officials there say it belonged to John Dillinger, one of the most infamous gangsters in the U.S. history who was deemed Public Enemy No. 1 by the FBI.

But according to city officials in Peru, there’s a problem: the gun didn’t belong to Dillinger, and it doesn’t belong to the Tucson Police Department. They say it belongs to Peru, according to wlfi.com.

Josh Sigler, administrative assistant to Peru Mayor Gabe Greer, said after conducting extensive research, he’s convinced Dillinger brazenly stole the gun from the Peru Police Department in October 1933, along with other weapons and police equipment.

When Dillinger was finally apprehended by Tucson police three months later in January 1934, they confiscated the submachine gun, commonly referred to as a Tommy gun. They kept it, and have never given it back, Sigler said.

He said the proof is the serial number on the gun, which is 5878. According to a notice issued by the Peru police chief after the robbery, that was the serial number on the weapon stolen by Dillinger.

That’s been confirmed by research completed by Gordon Herigstad, who published a book called “Colt Thompson Submachine Gun Serial Numbers & Histories”. The book details the narrative of every submachine gun that was ever manufactured outside of wartime production – all 15,000 of them.

According the book, Tommy gun 5878 was purchased and shipped to the Peru Police Department in 1929, along with a second Tommy gun with the serial number 7117.

Dillinger and his gangster accomplice, Harry Pierpont, robbed the police station, stole the Tommy gun, and then used it to hold up the First National Bank of East Chicago on January 15, 1934, according to the book. The gun was captured with Dillinger in Tucson on January 25, 1934.

The second gun avoided capture at the time of the hold up. The gun had jammed earlier that day and had been taken apart and put in a drawer. The Peru Police Department still has the weapon.

Sigler said with two sources citing the serial number of the stolen Tommy gun, and Herigstad’s research confirming it wound up on display at the Tucson police department, it’s clear that the gun belongs to Peru.

The Peru heist was part of a string of high-profile robberies pulled off by the Dillinger's gang in late 1933. The crew also robbed the police stations in Auburn; Lima, Ohio; and Racine, Wisconsin, and knocked off other places in Indiana, including in Warsaw, Montpelier and Greencastle. The crime spree came to an end out in Tucson. The gang had holed up in The Hotel Congress to lay low from the law. On January 22, 1934, while the gang was there, the hotel caught fire. Dillinger was identified by the firefighters and taken into custody. All the weapons he’d stolen during his escapades in the Midwest were confiscated.

Although some of the guns were returned to the places where they had been stolen, the Tommy gun from Peru never made it home, according Herigstad’s research.

His book reports there was apparently “some friction” between the governors of Indiana and Arizona, which may have contributed to the gun staying in Tucson.

Sigler said whatever the reason, it’s time for the gun to return home.