Image: Charles “Pretty Boy” Floyd (Public Domain)

On this day in history, October 22, 1934, Charles “Pretty Boy” Floyd was shot and killed by multiple gunshots by Bureau of Investigation officers in a cornfield in East Liverpool, Ohio. Floyd, Public Enemy No.1 since the death of fellow gangster John Dillinger on July 22, 1934, who had been a fervently chased fugitive for four years, used his final breath to deny his participation in the infamous Kansas City Massacre, where four officers were shot to death at a train station. Floyd died shortly afterward.

Charles Floyd grew up in Akins, Oklahoma. When running a small farm in the extreme drought conditions of the late 1920s became hopeless, Floyd tried his luck at bank robbery. He was soon behind bars in Missouri for robbing a St. Louis payroll delivery. In 1929, he was paroled and learned that Jim Mills had killed his father. Mills, who had been cleared of the charges, was never seen nor heard from again. It was believed that Floyd had murdered him.

Moving on to Kansas City, Floyd got involved in the city’s expanding criminal landscape. A local prostitute gave Floyd the nickname “Pretty Boy,” which he despised. He robbed several banks in Missouri and Ohio with a few buddies he had met in prison. Still, he was ultimately apprehended in Ohio and sent to prison for 12-15 years. On the way to the jail, Floyd smashed out a window and jumped from the speeding train. He reached Toledo, where he connected with Bill “The Killer” Miller.

The two went on a crime binge across numerous states until Miller was killed in a pitched battle with police in Bowling Green, Ohio, in 1931. Afterward, he returned to Kansas City, where he murdered a federal agent during a raid and became a nationally notorious crime figure. This time Floyd fled to the wilderness of Oklahoma. The locals there, stumbling because of the Depression, were not about to turn on an Oklahoma native for robbing banks. Floyd became a Robin Hood-type figure, always staying one step ahead of the law. Even the Joads, characters in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, spoke well of Floyd.

Yet not everyone was so charmed by “Pretty Boy.” Oklahoma’s governor put out a $6,000 bounty for his capture. On June 17, 1933, Floyd gained even more notoriety when law enforcement officials were ambushed by a machine-gun attack in a Kansas City train station while transferring criminal Frank Nash to prison. It was never established whether Floyd was responsible; the FBI and the nation’s press blamed the crime on him anyway. Subsequently, the pressure increased to secure the notorious criminal, and the FBI was finally successful in October 1934.

On October 22, according to the FBI (as the Bureau of Investigation was known after it changed its name to the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1935), their agents alone partook in the closing clash. Local police arrived only after the final fight with Floyd. According to the FBI, four BOI agents and four officers from the East Liverpool Police Department were hunting the area south of Clarkson, Ohio, in two cars. They noticed a car move from the backside of a corn crib and then moved back. Floyd then appeared and drew a .45 caliber pistol, and the BOI agents began shooting. Floyd allegedly stated, “I’m done for. You’ve hit me twice.”

Nevertheless, a news report from the time maintains that Floyd crepy out of the corncrib toward the Dyke automobile and then changed course toward a wooded ridge. BOI agent Purvis yelled, “Halt,” but Floyd continued. Purvis called out “Fire,” and four bullets mortally wounded Floyd. He was put in handcuffs. Floyd asked: “Who the hell tipped you?” Floyd never answered Purvis’s questions about the Kansas City Massacre but did say, “I a Floyd… Where is Eddie?” (referring to Adam Richetti, who had been captured the day before). Floyd stated, “You got me twice.” Purvis did not disclose Floyd’s last words. Four days earlier, Floyd and two accomplices had robbed a bank of $500; Floyd’s share of his previous bank robbery was $120. Among Floyd’s possessions found on him were a watch and a fob. Each had ten notches, apparently for the ten persons Floyd had killed.

Retired East Liverpool police captain Chester Smith characterized the events of that day another way in a 1979 issue of Time magazine. He was attributed with shooting Floyd first, and he said he had deliberately wounded Floyd but not killed him. “I knew BOI agent Purvis couldn’t hit him, so I dropped him with two shots from my .32 Winchester rifle.” Smith’s interpretation was that Floyd fell and did not recover his grip, and Smith then disarmed him. At that point, Purvis came closer and ordered, “Back away from that man. I want to talk to him.” Purvis questioned Floyd briefly and was cursed for his efforts, so he ordered BOI agent Herman Hollis to “fire into him.” Hollis then fired upon Floyd at point-blank range with a submachine gun, murdering him. Smith was asked by the interviewer if there was a cover-up by the FBI, and he replied: “Sure was because they didn’t want it to get out that he’d been killed that way.”

According to an FBI agent in the 1970s, officers of the East Liverpool Police Department only arrived after Floyd was already dead. He also maintained that when the four agents confronted Floyd, he turned to shoot them, and two of the four fired on Floyd and mortally wounded him instantly. Smith’s account states that Herman Hollis shot the wounded Floyd on Purvis’s order, but the agent maintains that Hollis was not even present that day.

Floyd’s body was embalmed and temporarily put on display at the Sturgis Funeral Home in East Liverpool, Ohio, before being forwarded to Oklahoma. His body was put on public display in Sallisaw, Oklahoma. His funeral was attended by 20,000 to 40,000 people and, to this day, remains the largest funeral in Oklahoma history. He was buried in Akins, Oklahoma.

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