Public Enemy Era
Pretty Boy Floyd
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Charley “Pretty Boy” Floyd was born in Georgia on February 3, 1904 but his family moved to Oklahoma when he was ten years old. The drudgery of farm work held little attraction for him and he spent five years in prison for robbing a store in 1925, failed to go straight after he was released, was caught robbing a bank in Ohio, escaped by jumping out of a train and moved to Kansas City where he began holding up banks. When two ex-convicts ambushed and killed six police officers in Missouri on January 2, 1932, local newspapers seized on the fact that he was a suspect and started to blame every bank robbery on him, turning him into a celebrity. Although he was innocent of the crime, Floyd embraced his Jesse James like status and wrote a letter to the governor saying that he only robbed the rich, which was popular in poor Oklahoma. His fame grew after he survived two separate shootouts with police.
However, living on the run had made Floyd want to retire by the spring of 1933. His dissatisfaction with the outlaw life was largely fueled by the arrest of several of his relatives, which unsurprisingly reduced the number of safe houses available. Unfortunately, the car that he and his partner Adam Richetti stole for his retirement getaway broke down and he was recognized as it was being repaired on June 16. Fortunately, Richetti captured the local sheriff before he could arrest Floyd. With the sheriff as a hostage, the local police were unable to pursue and the outlaws reached Kansas City that evening.
When four lawmen were gunned down outside the Kansas City train station the next day in a failed attempt to rescue bank robber Frank Nash, Floyd was a natural suspect. However, only one witness identified him, and the FBI agents felt the evidence was too slim to make him a priority, choosing to focus on hitman and bank robber Verne Miller, who was known to be a friend of Nash. Furthermore, Floyd disappeared from public view for the next few months, so he was basically ignored by the Bureau.
Floyd’s status changed dramatically on March 14, 1934 when fingerprints from Miller’s home, which had been misfiled for months, were examined, and one of them belonged to Adam Richetti. With a suspect in the Kansas City Massacre, the FBI sprang into action. At least, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover ordered it to spring into action but the Oklahoma office did not have the manpower needed to follow up leads on the Barker-Karpis gang and the Clyde Barrow gang, so little progress was made at first. Moreover, John Dillinger’s escape from the jail at Crown Point on March 3 and his subsequent alliance with Baby Face Nelson meant that far more agents were assigned to the hunt for him than for Floyd. No one really knows what Floyd did during the months that he was hiding, although there are rumors that he and Richetti robbed a bank in South Bend along with Dillinger and Nelson. Alvin Karpis admitted that Floyd proposed doing a job together but he felt the heat was not worth it.
Despite Richetti’s fingerprints, not a single informant was able to provide evidence that confirmed that Floyd had worked with Miller. This would change in August when a Kansas City gangster named Johnny Lazia was killed and one of the bullets turned out to have been fired by the same gun that was used in the massacre. The FBI knew that Jack Griffin had been one of Lazia’s killers but Griffin had disappeared and would most likely be killed by Lazia’s men in revenge. Fortunately, one of Griffin’s partners, Michael LaCapra, turned himself into the Kansas City Police after he barely survived an assassination attempt. Seeking protection, he told FBI agents the entire story of the massacre. Miller had asked Lazia for men to free Nash but Lazia had refused since it would attract too much attention. However, he had introduced Miller to Floyd, who needed money. When Floyd was wounded in the shootout he was treated and hidden by Lazia’s men.
FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s announcement that Floyd had been involved in the Kansas City Massacre flushed him out into the open. Floyd and Richetti’s car broke down in Ohio on October 20 and while they were waiting for their girlfriends to get a mechanic, a local police officer was alerted by suspicious neighbors and arrested Richetti, but Floyd got away. Despite being pursued by a posse, Floyd disappeared into wild country. The sheriff who had caught Richetti proved unwilling to work with the FBI team led by Melvin Purvis. Despite the lack of cooperation, Purvis sent agents all over the area. Aside from the twenty FBI agents, two hundred police and sheriff’s deputies were manning roadblocks. After hiding in the woods and cadging a meal from a widow living alone, he had gotten a lift with her brother-in-law the next day but they ran into two cars filled with local police and FBI agents, including Purvis. Floyd ran out of the car and headed for the woods but was hit twice and fell to the ground where he was disarmed by the police. While waiting for medical help he refused to answer questions about the Kansas City Massacre and died of his wounds before a doctor could arrive.
When reporters showed up, Purvis received all of the attention, to Hoover’s irritation. Despite Hoover’s orders to the contrary, Purvis gave interviews and told his version of the story. The press gave him credit for the deaths of both Dillinger and Floyd, which infuriated Hoover, who felt that any credit should go to the Bureau and senior field agent Sam Cowley, in that order.
There is still no official evidence that Floyd took part in the massacre but Volney Davis from the Barker-Karpis gang stated that Miller had said that Floyd had been his partner and Alvin Karpis confirmed that Floyd had told him the same thing.
Richetti was tried in June 1935 for his involvement in the Kansas City Massacre and the surviving lawmen swore that they recognized him even though their statements made at the time claimed that they had seen nothing. Their testimony ensured that Richetti received a death sentence and he died in a gas chamber on October 7, 1938.
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Pretty Boy Floyd (1960)
Directed by Herbert J. Leder, starring John Ericson and Barry Newman
Tells the story of Pretty Boy Floyd, who was involved in the Kansas City Massacre and became a successful bank robber until the FBI finally tracked him down.
A Bullet for Pretty Boy (1970)
Directed by Larry Buchanan, starring Fabian and Jocelyn Lane
Pretty Boy Floyd becomes an outlaw after killing the man who murdered his father.
Dillinger (1973)
Directed by John Milius, starring Warren Oates and Ben Johnson
Following the death of several FBI agents during the Kansas City Massacre, FBI agent Melvin Purvis vows to capture or kill a number of famous outlaws including Machine Gun Kelly, Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson, and John Dillinger. (please click here to read the review)
Public Enemies (2009)
Directed by Michael Mann, starring Johhny Depp and Christian Bale
Led by Melvin Purvis, the FBI pursues notorious outlaw John Dillinger during the Public Enemy Era. (please click here to read the review)
Public Enemies: America’s Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34. Bryan Burrough, New York: The Penguin Press, 2004.
The author grew up listening to stories about Bonnie and Clyde, and decided to write the book because there was no single history of that period, partially because the FBI files had only been released in the late 1980s. His access to previously sealed FBI files means that the story is as much about the evolution of the FBI as it is about the gangsters themselves. It is a superb, one-stop look at that brief period where outlaws seemed to roam free. Ignoring the easy approach of dividing the book into several sections that focus on individual gangs, the story is told in chronological order, which might appear confusing to some readers but serves to show how interrelated the events were. Most of the gangs knew each other and their paths crossed more frequently than I would have thought, which may help to explain why the FBI was so confused in the beginning. Burrough’s attention to detail is impressive, he shows what happened to the main FBI agents, the surviving outlaws who ended up in prison, and their various girlfriends and accomplices. What is odd is that once the War on Crime was over, no one really talked about it. The agents rarely told their families, while the families of the outlaws often preferred to move forward and leave their tainted past behind them.
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