The Prohibition Era and the Theater of Criminal Versus Lawman

The aftermath of the "Kansas City Massacre." Public Domain

During the years of World War I, America experienced an economic boom. The farming industry of the Midwest and the South benefited from the agricultural demands. The war economy lowered the pre-war unemployment rate from 7.9 percent to 1.4 percent. Then, the war ended.

America experienced a brief recession from August 1918 to March 1919, and then a longer and more severe recession between January 1920 to July 1921. With the election of Warren G. Harding, the American economy experienced a rebound, resulting in the Roaring ‘20s. The decade was defined by decadence, speakeasies, and crime—all set to the tune of jazz. The era seemingly resulted less from the economic recovery and more from the 18th Amendment—the ill-conceived notion to prohibit the manufacture, transport, and sale of alcohol.

During the opening years of the 1920s, Charles Arthur Floyd straddled the fence between honest worker and criminal. By the time he was in his late teens, he had worked farms, built fences, bootlegged, and had minor scrapes with the law. In 1924, at the age of 20, Floyd returned to his home state of Oklahoma, got married, had a son, and toiled as a tenant farmer. His farming days would be short lived. In 1925, he traded five gallons of corn whiskey for a pistol and hopped a train to St. Louis, where he committed his first robbery. The result of the robbery was $11,929 and a five-year sentence in a Missouri prison.

A crop of Pretty Boy Floyd's FBI mugshot. Public Domain

Depression and Dust Bowl

Bank run during the Great Depression, February 1933. Public Domain

While Floyd sat in prison, the era of mob bosses, such as Al Capone, Bugsy Siegel, and Lucky Luciano, had begun. Their era, just as with the Roaring ‘20s, would end with a crash. The roar and decadence of the 1920s came to an abrupt halt on Oct. 28, 1929. The stock market collapsed, sending Americans of all stripes into financial hysterics. Over the ensuing months, Americans rushed to their banks to get their deposits out or as much of it that they could. Banks failed, corporations tanked, unemployment skyrocketed, and lines for soup kitchens became a common sight nationwide. Those in the Midwest and South suffered more than anyone as the economic disaster was exacerbated by the climactic disaster. Farmers in Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Texas, and Floyd’s own Oklahoma were struck by the Dust Bowl.

Severe water erosion on an Alabama farm during the Dust Bowl in 1937. Public Domain

In his classic novel “The Grapes of Wrath,” John Steinbeck vividly described the scene: “And then the dispossessed were drawn west—from Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out, tractored out. Car-loads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and restless—restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do—to lift, to push, to pick, to cut—anything, any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to live. Like ants scurrying for work, for food, and most of all for land.”

When the Great Depression hit, the end of repeal of the 18th Amendment was still four years away. The combination of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl did more than force people from their homes. It forced some to pursue financial stability through illegal means.

Agent Versus Criminal

To stem the tide of Prohibition-related crimes, Congress created a new federal task force in 1927 called the Bureau of Prohibition (BOP)—its most famous agent being Eliott Ness. The Bureau of Investigation (BOI)—later named the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 1935—had been used to investigate Prohibition crimes, but there were more urgent problems, such as murder and robbery. J. Edgar Hoover, who had been head of the BOI since 1924, had slashed the department in almost half. His plan was to turn the Bureau into an efficient, crime-fighting organization with agents who were above reproach. One such agent was Melvin Purvis, who joined the BOI the same year the BOP was created. Purvis became one of the Bureau’s fastest rising stars. In 1932, he became head of Chicago’s Division of Investigation, a position he had held in Birmingham, Cincinnati, and Oklahoma City.

Prohibition agents destroying barrels of alcohol. Public Domain

By the time Purvis became lead investigator in Chicago, Capone had been sentenced to prison, but it was still one of the country’s most dangerous cities. Also by this time, Floyd had become one of the nation’s most famous and endearing criminals. Although his nickname was “Pretty Boy” Floyd, many citizens in the Midwest and the South, especially in Oklahoma, viewed him as a modern day “Robin Hood.” Floyd had already scored dozens of successful bank robberies, including the robbery of his hometown’s Sallisaw State Bank with his partner George Birdwell.

He and Birdwell had not only successfully robbed the bank in broad daylight, but had done so with his friends and family knowing he would beforehand. Several members of his family, including his grandfather, sat outside the bank to witness the crime.

One newspaper reported that the illegal spectacle “was like the hometown performance of a great actor who has made good on Broadway.”

Floyd garnered his “Robin Hood” reputation by helping locals in various ways, like helping change someone’s tire, purchasing groceries for the poor, or giving large sums of money to fellow Oklahomans. Such a reputation, however, didn’t stop local, state, and, eventually, federal law enforcement from tracking him down. Although he had escaped several close shaves with the law, it was the reputation-changing event known as the “Kansas City Massacre” that changed Floyd’s luck.

The Massacre

On June 17, 1933, at a train station in Kansas City, a deadly shootout took place. It resulted in the death of five men. The day before, Otto Reed, an Oklahoma police chief, and two BOI agents, Frank Smith and F. Joseph Lackey, had arrested criminal Frank Nash in Hot Springs, Arkansas. When they arrived in Kansas City, they were met by several other officers and BOI agents. Unfortunately, several gunmen were there to whisk away Nash. When the officers and agents got Nash to the cars for transport, the gunmen opened fire. Nash, Reed, agent R.J. Caffrey, and officers W.J. Grooms and Frank Hermanson of the Kansas City Police Department were killed.

The aftermath of the "Kansas City Massacre." Public Domain

Floyd immediately relayed a message to Kansas City Chief of Detectives Thomas Higgins, claiming he was not involved in the shooting. Higgins believed Floyd was not involved. Forensic evidence apparently showed that most of the men killed in the shootout were from errant shots by one of the BOI agents. None of that mattered, however. Floyd’s days as a successful bank robber and one of America’s most appealing criminals were numbered. In fact, his appeal was gone. The American public was outraged at peace officers being killed indiscriminately. Hoover claimed if he was given the tools, his bureau could solve the case and bring the perpetrators to justice. Within a year, he received his wish.

The “Kansas City Massacre” empowered the BOI in several ways: Agents were able to legally carry guns, make arrests, and cross state lines in pursuit of criminals.

Ending Prohibition, Returning West

For the rest of the country, it had one of its wishes granted. Prohibition was overturned with the ratification of the 21st Amendment in December of 1933. That following year, Floyd and his accused co-conspirator Adam Richetti, who had been lying low in New York since the Kansas City incident, decided to head west to Oklahoma. The conditions, however, were hardly as they would have wished, and they would never reach their home state.

A massive dragnet across the country was conducted in search of Floyd and Richetti. The Bureau’s top agent, Purvis, however, was focused on arresting the man Hoover deemed “Public Enemy Number One”: John Dillinger. Purvis and his fellow agents tracked Dillinger for several months, nearly capturing or killing him several times. It was not until July 22, 1934, that Purvis, along with agents Clarence Hurt, Charles Winstead, and Herman Hollis, gunned down Dillinger near Chicago’s Biograph Theater. The designation of “Public Enemy Number One” now belonged to Floyd.

J. Edgar Hoover declared Pretty Boy Floyd to be "Public Enemy Number One." Public Domain

The noose around Floyd and Richetti was tightening, and now Purvis was in pursuit. Nonetheless, Floyd and Richetti continued robbing banks. On Oct. 19, 1934, they robbed the People’s Bank of Tiltonsville in Ohio. The following day, Richetti was arrested by local law enforcement, but Floyd got away.

The End of ‘Pretty Boy’ Floyd

Floyd fled to East Liverpool, where he stumbled into a farmhouse. He asked the owner of the farm, Ellen Conkle, for food. She served what would be his last meal: coffee, potatoes, spare ribs, rice pudding, and pumpkin pie. Floyd thanked her and gave her a dollar. The famous bank robber returned to the road and noticed a car coming. It was Conkle’s brother and sister-in-law. Floyd asked if they could return him to the highway. They acquiesced, but before they got far, two cars cut them off. Floyd urgently asked them to drive behind the house. Floyd then quickly exited and fled on foot.

The Purvis-led agents and officers fired at the fleeing wanted man. As Conkle recalled, “Floyd ran about 200 feet across my field before he fell.” It was during this week in history, on Oct. 22, 1934, that “Pretty Boy” Floyd, one of the nation’s most famous criminals, was taken down by Melvin Purvis, one of the nation’s most successful federal agents.

Papers across the country filled its headlines with the news of Floyd’s death. For Oklahomans, it was a sad day. As the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl raged on, their modern-day Robin Hood was dead. Approximately 20,000 from at least 20 states attended Floyd’s funeral on Oct. 28 (historian Michael Wallis suggests more than 30,000 people).

The following year, the Bureau of Investigation was renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Hoover maintained his position as director until 1972. He became an American legend, but the “Kansas City Massacre” served as an early example of his ruthless and unscrupulous method of achieving results, which included ignoring evidence and intimidating witnesses. While Purvis was heralded by the press for his success against Dillinger and Floyd, Hoover’s jealousies eventually forced Purvis to resign from the FBI. Hoover also went out of his way to sabotage Purvis’s attempt at a career in law enforcement. On Feb. 29, 1960, Purvis died, possibly by suicide.

Melvin Purvis, federal agent who took down John Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd. Public Domain

The Dust Bowl ended in 1936. The economy rebounded when Europe dragged the world into another war. The era of mob bosses had only just begun, and the FBI would take the lead in facing down the criminal underworld.

For those criminals who had died during the era of Prohibition and the Great Depression, they would often be remembered romantically, and arguably none more so than “Pretty Boy” Floyd. Steinbeck mentioned him in his “Grapes of Wrath,” but it was the well known Oklahoma-native songwriter Woody Guthrie whose veneration of Floyd and vilification of bankers remained in the American psyche, writing:

Yes, as through this world I’ve wandered I’ve seen lots of funny men; Some will rob you with a six-gun, And some with a fountain pen. And as through your life you travel, Yes, as through your life you roam, You won’t never see an outlaw Drive a family from their home.

Never miss a This Week in History story! Sign up for the American History newsletter here.

What arts and culture topics would you like us to cover? Please email ideas or feedback to [email protected]