Up until June 17 , 1933 , Pretty Boy Floyd conduct a relatively unremarkable spirit in and out of jail as a Midwestern hoodlum . He wasrobbing banksand payroll , stealing cars , murdering rival goon , all the while escaping police custody by jump from trains and obscure out in the trusty Cookson Hills of Oklahoma .
But on that particular June mean solar day in Kansas City , his monotony career took a striking bend for the defective . Or at least that ’s what J. Edgar Hoover’sFederal Bureau of Investigationdecided . And in those bad old days , you really did n’t require to antagonise the FBI .
The Kansas City Massacre
According to the FBI , events unfolded as follows . A murderous crook advert Frank Nash was in the Union United States Penitentiary , Leavenworth , Kansas , for one of several 25 - class stint , when he lam onOct . 19 , 1930 . Less than a year after , Nash managed to aid seven other prisoners bust out of Leavenworth as well . In the meantime , the FBI climb a giant manhunt that traverse the continent . They finally go after down Nash in Hot Springs , Arkansas .
It was now just a simple thing of getting their outlaw back to Kansas via train . But then some of Nash ’s buddies got wind instrument of the transport and cooked up a system to free him when the train show up .
The chronicle give way that Floyd and his buddy , Adam Richetti , happened to drive into Kansas City the 24-hour interval before the train was due . They met up with Nash ’s pals and offered to help with the schema to free him . When Nash get , he was escorted to a waiting car byseven officer . They were virtually all seated inside the fomite when , from out of nowhere , gunmen open up fire on them .
Four military officer died ; two survived by play all in and Nash , the very person the crooks were trying to free , was shoot dead in the back prat of the car . The gunmen take flight , and Floyd and Richetti were identify as they ran .
Pretty Boy Floyd , who made a habit of boasting about his offence , maintain to the very end of his life that he had nothing to do with what became known as the Kansas City Massacre . But it did n’t matter . J. Edgar Hoover had already eliminatedJohn Dillinger , whom he ’d dubbed Public Enemy No . 1 , and now he turn his sight on Pretty Boy Floyd .
Who Was Charles “Pretty Boy” Floyd?
Charles Arthur Floyd was born in Georgia onFeb . 3 , 1904 , and his family moved to Hanson , Oklahoma , in 1911 , an area that had been , just a few age earlier , part of the Cherokee Nation . The syndicate settled down on the sharpness of the Cookson Hills , a territorial dominion of duncical , scrubby clash , which had serve to hide manyfamous outlawsover the 10 , as it would Floyd himself in later years .
But if law of proximity to this law - break heritage inspired Floyd ’s subsequent career , he showed no signs of deviance in his early life . On the reverse . He was known as a shaver who loved his mother , looked up to his male parent , protected his sibling and helped out on the farm .
And although the Floyds operate intemperately , it was difficult to scrape more than a meagre living from their land area . At the years of 14 , Floyd went off to ferment as a harvest hand on larger farms , and there he met other traveling workers who exposed him to a rougher , hard musical mode of existence . When he returned home , his family unit felt that he had changed .
On May 16 , 1922 , Floyd was arrested for the first meter . The crime was the larceny of$3.50 in dime bag , nickels and penniesfrom a local billet office . Although he was by and by bear due to a deficiency of witnesses , it was the beginning of a farsighted , hostile family relationship with the law that would reach its stopping point Oct. 22 , 1934 .
The FBI’s Public Enemy No. 1
In the months following the Kansas City Massacre , the FBI mounted a giant manhunt for its raw Public Enemy No . 1 . Floyd was doing a decent job of place down in the mouth and evading police trap until he and Richetti wrecked a car in rural Ohio onOct . 20 , 1934 . Their two comrade , Beulah and Rose Baird , drove the car to the nearest town for repairs while Floyd and Richetti reclined on the side of the road to wait .
A passing automobilist spotted Floyd and Richetti in suits catnap next to their heavy weapon and reported their incongruous mien to the local law chief who went to have a aspect . But when the police chief showed up with his team and approach the two manpower , the gangsters open up ardor . Floyd scrambled up the embankment and cope to fly in a hail of police bullet , but Richetti was outgunned before he could escape . Once Richetti was place , the police realize that the escapee was none other than the FBI ’s Public Enemy No . 1 — Pretty Boy Floyd .
By that evening , famedFBI agent Melvin Purvisarrived with his team . In the interim , Floyd had flag down a passing car , which then run out of gas . Floyd , with the equipment driver in towage , commandeer a second car and its equipment driver . But when the three men see a route block , Floyd ordered the car turn around and they flee , pursued by the constabulary .
At a critical juncture , Floyd jumped from the car and get off into the woods firing behind him as he run . He stayed in the woods for nearly 48 hours until he stumbled across a farmhouse inhabited by a widow name Ellen Conkle . claim to be a missed hunter , Floyd managed to get anexcellent hot repast from Conkle , but it was to be his last .
A local Fannie Farmer had spotted Pretty Boy Floyd and telephone the pig . When the police showed up , Floyd operate across a field of corn - stubble head for the woods , but nine officers blaze at him , firing a grand full of93 shot . Floyd accrue , wounded , essay to uprise and run away but was hit again and fell . The officers caught up to him , have his guns and moved him to the shade of an apple tree diagram . Purvis query him about the Kansas City Massacre , but Floyd refused to talk and in just minutes was dead .
A Plot Twist
decennium by and by , one of the local cops on the scene , a retired World War I sniper named Chester Smith claimed inTime magazinethat he was the one who bring Floyd down with his Winchester rifle , and not an FBI agent as was state in the prescribed report . And , in an explosive allegation , Smith aver that Purvis dictate one of his men to then shoot Floyd dead in cold blood .
The FBI strongly rejects this call , notice that the grounds provided by the autopsy and the coroner ’s report disproves this edition of issue . They also affirm that Smithwasn’t even at the scene .
What is n’t in dispute is that Floyd ’s funeral was massive . More than20,000 peopleshowed up to compensate their respects ( or gawk as the case may be ) . In the yr after his decease , the fable of Pretty Boy Floyd retain to grow . Like many crook , Floyd formulate a repute as a Robin Hood of variety who would ruin mortgage text file whenever he fleece a bank . And as is the font with most other alleged Robin Hoods , this unselfishness has never been proven . But that has n’t lessen his fame , or his reputation .
