Pretty Boy Floyd and the Kansas City Massacre

Pretty Boy Floyd started out doing farm work, but in his late teens he ran off to try his hand at crime. He earned a Robin Hood-like reputation, and became famous for his supposed involvement in the Kansas City Massacre. But did he deserve the credit?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Deblina Chocolate Boardy and I'm Fair Dowdy. And in
our recent episode about Mob Barker, we talked a fair
bit about Alvin Carpas, who many believe was the true

(00:22):
mastermind behind the Barker Carpass gang, and we talked about
how he was the last of the four original criminals
to where the title public Enemy number one to be caught.
So with this fun fact, I realized that we had
covered three of those original four over the past couple
of years, Dillinger, baby Face, Nelson and Carpus, and that

(00:43):
of course left only one the subject of this podcast,
Pretty Boy Floyd. We've done a series and not even
realized it. So Floyd wasn't as famous as some of
those other gangsters during his lifetime, and he was often
overshadowed by what was going on with Dillinger and some
of the others two, but he's still a really interesting character,
if only for this sort of Robin Hood like reputation

(01:05):
that he earned along the way, which might remind a
few you guys of the Australian Bushrangers that we've covered
in the past. They also had these steal from the rich,
give to the poor kind of reputations about them. But
even though Floyd wasn't as well known during his lifetime,
he did become a lot more famous toward the end
of his life and after his lifetime for his supposed

(01:26):
involvement in one of the most pivotal crimes in the
nineteen thirties, at least as far as the FBI is concerned,
and that was the Kansas City massacre. It was a
crime that resulted in the deaths of several men, mostly
peace officers such as policemen and FBI and one criminal,
Frank Nash. According to Brian Burrow's book Public Enemies, America's

(01:48):
greatest crime wave in the birth of the FBI, it
was quote at the time, the second deadliest murder of
law enforcement officers in American history, and it officially kicked
off j Edgar who or his war on crime, which
we've talked about quite a bit. But how much did
pretty Boy Floyd actually have to do with it? And
that's a question that people have been asking since this

(02:09):
massacre happened, and it's part of what we're going to
take a look into today. Yeah, But first, of course,
as always, we want to take a look at how
Floyd got his start in crime, because at first he
seemed to be kind of an okay kid. At least
he wasn't as bad as the Barker boys were at
a very early age. So Floyd was born Charles Arthur
Floyd on February third, nineteen o four, in Bartow County, Georgia,

(02:33):
where he helped pick cotton as a boy and helped
earn money for his family. I always think of Bartow
County is where our thunderstorms come from from the from
the weather maps. But Floyd was one of six surviving
kids of Walter Lee and Mamie Floyd, and in nineteen
eleven his parents decided to get out of Bartow County
and try their luck out west. They moved out to

(02:56):
Cookson Hills outside of Hanson, Oklahoma, where his father worked
as a tenant farmer and probably also a bootlegger, which
in retrospect might not have helped his son stay out
of trouble. So early on, Floyd worked in the fields
with the rest of his family, but according to the
Oklahoma Historical Society, he was a bright and somewhat mischievous kid,

(03:16):
and so he got bored with farm work pretty quickly.
He liked to escape from his um more boring duties
and stories of outlaws like Jesse James, which I feel
is kind of a recurring theme we see with a
lot of Barker. Yeah, exactly like mob Barker, like so
many of the outlaws that we cover. But by the
time he was in his teens, Floyd had learned to

(03:37):
make a moonshine and he'd earned his first nickname, which
was Chalk because he really liked to kind of homebrew
beer known as Choctaw. He got into a few scrapes
with the law and his teen years, but nothing too serious. Though.
He did go on the road as a hired hand
for a little while when he was sixteen, and he
got involved in some bootlegging and other illegal activities before
he returned to Oklahoma again. He was a good looking

(04:00):
kid too, He was about six ft two. He was
really popular with women, though. He settled down in when
he married Ruby Hardgraves, who was the daughter of a
tenant farmer, and they had one son together. So Floyd
really seemed to care a lot about his new wife
his little son, but it didn't take long again for
him to get tired of farm life, another recurring theme

(04:21):
with a lot of these a lot of these folks,
And by in n he partnered up with John Hildebrand,
who was more seasoned in the criminal lifestyle than Floyd was,
and together they went off to Missouri, where, according to
Mike Mayo's book American Murder, they pulled off a few
small time robberies. But that September, though, Floyd decided to

(04:41):
set his his sights a little bit higher and took
part in a payroll robbery at Kroger's food store, which
brought in eleven thousand, nine and twenty nine dollars. And
after that, you know, feeling pretty pretty comfortable, suddenly he
had a big time. He bought a flat she knew car.
He went off to Arkansas to celebrate with his wife,

(05:04):
but it didn't take long for the cops to track
him down, and by that November he had been sentenced
to five years in the Missouri State Penitentiary. His wife, Ruby,
divorced him while he was locked up in January of
nine and got full custody of their son, and she
decited neglect for the reason behind the divorce. But Floyd

(05:24):
was released in prison not too long after that, actually,
March of nine, and like a lot of criminals we've discussed,
he left this period of incarceration much better prepared for
a life of crime than when he entered it. He'd
picked up some tips while he was locked up, and
he made some friends in there, including the bank robber
Red Lovett, who was his first partner in crime when

(05:44):
he was released. In his book, Burrow actually says that
Floyd tried to quote go straight for a while after
he was released from prison, but that the police hounded
him so much he felt persecuted and decided to jump
back into the game. Whether or not that happened, we
do know for sure that he did get back into crime.
He hooked up with Red and other gangsters in Kansas City,

(06:07):
and this is also where he learned to use a
tommy gun, had another recurring theme in a lot of
these gangster episodes, but according to Encyclopedia Britannica, the tommy
gun really became his professional trademark, and he also started
up a new relationship, this time with his future girlfriend,
Juanita Baird, who was a prostitute and was married at

(06:29):
the time too. So soon enough, with Tommy gun and Toe,
he pulled off several bank robberies in Ohio. He worked
with various accomplices, but again it wasn't long before he
got caught, this time in Akron after a shootout with
the police. This time he got a heavier sentence too. Yeah,
he was sentenced to fifteen years in prison. But while

(06:51):
he was being transported to the Ohio penitentiary by train,
he busted out of the bathroom window and jumped out,
still shackle with the train still moving. After this, yeah,
I mean determined, and yeah it's shuic idle true too.
But to some people that's probably seemed pretty impressive, right.

(07:14):
So after this, Floyd's name began to be better known,
of course, but he was also a fugitive, so he
was pretty much on the run from this point on.
He didn't exactly lay low because of that, though. He
robbed several banks throughout the Midwest and even murdered a
few people along the way, so adding some more crime,
some more offenses to his rap sheet, including he killed

(07:35):
a police officer in Bowling Green, Kentucky. That was one
of his murders that's credited to him and Offo. During
this time, somewhere along the way, he picked up that
nickname pretty Boy, which he apparently did not like. He
preferred chalk. And according to an article by Mary Jane
Porter in the Pueblo Chieftain, there's some debate over where
the moniker pretty boy really came from. So some possibilities

(07:59):
it could have been from a Kansas City madam. I
really like this possibility, who apparently said quote, I'll take
you from myself, pretty boy. Other people claim that he
was called pretty boy behind his back. That would partly
explain why he didn't really like the nickname. But he
was called this because he used to preen in front
of mirrors, and because he was such a ladies man,

(08:19):
so cute nicknames aside. As well known as he was,
Floyd nearly got caught by police in nineteen thirty one,
and after that he decided to return to Oklahoma, where
he picked up other accomplices and started robbing local banks.
And this is where that Robin Hood, the Robin Hood
stories about him really started to pop up. It said

(08:39):
that Floyd would tear up mortgage papers during his bank robbery,
so This is very reminiscent of the Ned Kelly story.
Um that we we mentioned bush Rangers in the beginning
of the podcast. So the working class loved him because
he was basically liberating them from their obligation to these institutions,
and Mayo writes that he'd also give some stolen money

(09:00):
to the poor people that he met. This was a
smart business move too, though it wasn't just generosity because
according to Encyclopaedia Britannica, this giving to the poor folks
made locals loyal enough to him that they could actually
protect him, or they would protect him, making it a
lot harder for law enforcement to get a hold of him.

(09:21):
So he became known in Oklahoma as the robin Hood
of Cooks and Hills. He became known as the Phantom
of the Ozarks. Really, these mythological sort of names for
him a lot different from pretty Boy with the Tommy
gun robbing bank, so he was kind of a folk
hero at that point in a way. At first, this
probably seems like a pretty sweet set up for him,

(09:43):
but gradually Floyd's fame began to grow, especially after he
survived a couple of shootouts with police and he was
implicated in the ambustion killing of six law enforcement officers
in early nineteen thirty two, which incidentally did not make
him very popular with to the general public. According to
Burrow's book, Floyd actually didn't have anything to do with

(10:05):
that nineteen thirty two ambush, though. He was actually getting
tired of life on the run and by ninety three
had stopped robbing banks, choosing instead to hide out with
his relatives if he was hoping for some relaxing time
with relatives, though that didn't happen because several of his
relatives started being hassled and arrested, and so Floyd decided

(10:26):
to skip town for a bit and headed to Kansas
City with another criminal named Adam Ricketty, who's less experienced
gang Floyd had been mentoring in a sense those sort
of his retirement plan. He was like, well, I won't
rob banks anymore, but I'll kind of supervise you guys
and help you out. But they were very good at
kind of take on an Adam Worth sort of role

(10:47):
on not quite as successfully though, right The problem was
if Floyd truly wanted to lay low, that is, if
we're going with that theory, his arrival in Kansas City
was pretty ill timed to the arrival of another well
known and wanted gangster, Frank Jelly Nash. Nash was another
career criminal we mentioned him in the Barker episode you

(11:09):
may remember as an accomplice and at least one of
their crimes, and he'd robbed stage coaches, committed murder, probably
worked with al Capone at some point, and Nash had
gone to prison a couple of times and been pardoned,
but when he was sentenced to five years and eleven
worth in nine four, he later escaped in nineteen thirty
and the FBI had been searching for him intensely for

(11:31):
quite some time. Agents finally caught up with Nash in
Hot Springs, Arkansas on June sixteenth, nineteen thirty three. And
Hot Springs was another kind of hot bed for criminals,
much like St. Paul, Minnesota, which we mentioned in the
Barker episode. Again to agents and a police chief from
Oklahoma who had previous experience with Nash and could recognize

(11:53):
him on site, arrested Nash and took him to Fort
Smith and it was kind of a perilous journey because
the Hot Springs East Department was corrupt again the criminals
kind of ran the city and they had infiltrated the
police department, so they were the agents who had exactly
They were actually afraid that they wouldn't make it out
of the state without getting shot. So they came up

(12:15):
with this very carefully thought out plan to transport Nash
to Kansas City and not get shot in the process.
And because it was risky to wait in Kansas City
for a connecting train because Kansas City, again was also
basically run by criminals, they were planning to meet up
with two more agents in town and a police escort

(12:36):
that would drive them the rest of the way to
leave and Worth. But when they got to Union Station
in Kansas City the morning of June sev someone was
waiting for them there, and as the agents and the
cops and Nash we're all getting into their cars, they
heard somebody shout up up, get your hands up, and
then somebody said let them have it. Suddenly they were

(12:58):
under heavy machine gun fire, and when all of it
was over, there were three cops, one FBI agent, and
Nash all dead. Um. So, as we mentioned earlier, this
incident really kicked off the war on crime, and whoever
immediately launched an investigation. He said, quote, whoever did this
must be exterminated, and they must be exterminated by us.

(13:22):
But another immediate result of the crime is that the
FBI ended its official ban on weapons. It's hard to
believe that there ever was one, right, Yeah, I didn't
know that before researching this. But before this time, agents
weren't really supposed to carry guns. Afterwards, though, they had
machine guns on hand at their disposal to help them
hunt down the assassins of the massacre. So where does

(13:45):
Floyd come into all of us, Because we've kind of
gotten away from him for a couple of minutes, and
you're probably thinking, well, obviously he must have been one
of the gunmen. After all, he did arrive in Kansas
City the night before June six, and people were aware
that he was in town him because of a run
in that he had had with the law a couple
of days earlier elsewhere in Missouri. So Floyd did make

(14:06):
it on the suspect list right away, But according to Burrow,
he wasn't considered a serious suspect of at first because,
out of the dozens of witnesses who were interviewed right
after the massacre, only one woman identified him as one
of the gunmen, and the agents were having a hard
time really connecting him to others that they knew were
sort of involved in the situation, and they didn't have

(14:27):
too many concrete details anyway. The one person that they
determined was definitely involved was the ex sheriff turned criminal
named Verne Miller, but at first they thought his two
accomplices were two of the seven prisoners who Nash had
helped to bust out of prison before. And I think
here it's worth talking about, like what exactly went down
with this Nash FBI police shootout. Was it some kind

(14:51):
of rescue attempt and Nash justs wound up Dad too,
or was it something else? Well, it's unclear, and it's
interesting because it is murky. Also, the purpose behind the
shooting is murky, and the people who were involved is
also a situation that we're still questioning today, or some
people still question today. I mean there are people, you know,

(15:14):
the FBI, for example, definitely thinks it was a rescue
attempt and it seems to have definitely started out that way.
But you know, there are others now who say, well,
these were experienced gangsters and if it was really a
rescue attempt, then why did they kill Nash too with
just random machine gun fire? It doesn't seem like the
most precise way to go about saving your buddy, Yeah,

(15:38):
but it doesn't really seem like the most precise way,
as you pointed out before, to to just kill someone either,
because why would they have killed FBI agents in the
process of knowing that the heat would have been You're
going to bring down a whole lot of heat if
you get in that deep by um. Yeah, killing police
officers and an FBI agent. But so a lot of
uncertainty there what really was going on it. Floyd himself

(16:01):
always denied that he had anything to do with this shooting,
but the heat was still on him because, as you said,
you know, he was known to have been in town.
So he went to hide out in Buffalo, New York
for a little bit. Eventually, though, he and Ricketty were
accused of being gunmen in the massacre, and Floyd made
his way on up to the public enemy's list. That's

(16:23):
how he got there. On October twenty two four, Floyd
and Ricketty were making their way back toward Oklahoma. Floyd
was headed home again with Juanita and her sister. When
Floyd ran the car off the road in Ohio, the
women went to get the car fixed, and in the meantime,
the men were spotted and they were recognized, so law

(16:43):
enforcement officials obviously got on this right away and Ricketty
was captured, but Floyd managed to escape into the woods
and he made it to a farm. At this point, though,
the man hunt was officially on and it was actually
led by g Man Melvin Purvis, whom we've discussed before
in previous Gangster episodes. He happened to be in Ohio
at the time, and agents eventually did catch up with

(17:05):
Floyd too while he was trying to get a ride
with a farmer, and when he saw them, he jumped
out of the car, maybe kind of trying to recreate
his train experience, jumped out of the car, tried to
escape into the woods on foot, but they shot at
him and he was taken down, and as the agents
approached him, he said, quote, I'm done for You've hit
me twice, and they tried to question him while he

(17:28):
was dying, and he did admit he was pretty boy Floyd,
but he refused to admit involvement in the massacre. So
there you have it right up unto the end, Floyd
maintaining his innocence with the massacre. On their website, the
FBI called his death quote another key victory in the
war against the gangsters. Incidentally, Ricketty later got the death

(17:51):
sentence he was executed. Um. But what's interesting, though, is
because well, the FBI seems to accept without question that
Floyd was a gunman in the masacre, at least according
to the articles about the incident on their website. Plenty
of other sources, including Burrows and Mayo's book, Porter's article,
even Floyd's Encyclopedia Britannica entry seemed to be kind of doubtful,

(18:16):
as his deathbed words might not deathbed but death field
words might indicate, or at least they're not as definitive
about it about resolving the question. The Oklahoma Historical Society
those does say definitively that newer evidence shows that Floyd
definitely wasn't involved in this crime. So it's interesting just
to see how different people handle it. One definitely paints

(18:40):
him as guilty and others say on. Another fun thing
of looking at some of these gangster episodes, seeing how
the FBI reflects on these cases with mob Barker, it
was a little bit of a surprise to me that
they were saying, yeah, she might not have really done
any of these crimes, whereas this one, it's still pretty firm. Yes,

(19:01):
Floyd participated in this. Yeah, so to them it's case closed.
To others it's not so much. But even the FBI
points out that after his death, the legend of pretty
Boy Floyd and even his Robin Hood reputation continued to flourish. Uh.
You could see references to this effect pop up kind
of all over the place. For example, Grapes of Wrath.

(19:23):
I didn't remember this, but he's mentioned in there as
a tragic figure who was kind of forced into his
fate by the economic circumstances surrounding him. And one thing
that's mentioned a lot as folk singer Woody Guthrie famously
wrote a ballot about him, and it ends like this,
It goes, Yes, as through this world I've wandered, I've
seen lots of funny men. Some will rob you with

(19:44):
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. Robin Hood indeed brings to
mind sharing at the mortgage papers and giving some of
the spoils to people he encountered. I think it's so

(20:05):
interesting with these gangsters, how there are different pictures of them,
whether they're murdering people something most folks can agree is
not a nice thing to do, or possibly giving back
a little bit. There are other ways to be charitable,
of course. Yeah, it just seems like these two images
Floyd are so far apart. You know, the victim who

(20:26):
wanted to help people, wanted to get out of yeah,
I didn't want to be a gangster anymore, didn't want
to rob banks. And then there's the other side, the
ruthless gangster who was violent and yes he did kill people,
maybe ten, maybe more, and you know, didn't have any
remorse for these things that he did. So you know,

(20:46):
as we usually say, the truth is probably somewhere in
the middle. But we can speculate about that and that's
kind of fun. So in the meantime, I think we
can talk about some listener mail too. We have a
postcard here from Lister Karen, and you know how we
love postcards. So we wanted to share it. So we

(21:07):
always pick up in the summer too. Everybody starts traveling,
they do, we get where you all go, and it's
fun because we have new decorations for our cubes. So
Karen says, I just completed the Communo to Santiago, where
I had been carefully saving your podcast to listen to
along the way. The walk was both a challenging journey,
both physically and spiritually, and I appreciate your company along

(21:27):
the way. She also says that the Communo would be,
of course an interesting topics thousands of years old and
has every kind of adventure you can think of. So
and that's a suggestion we've first see before, as well
as other famous walks and pilgrimages. And alright, maybe a
list or something on some of it. I was just
about to say, maybe a little list doesn't order. So
if you have any suggestions for us for any walks

(21:49):
that you might like to see included on that list,
or other adventures that you'd like us to cover, please
write us. Where a history podcast at Discovery dot com.
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In this in history and if you want to learn
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(22:10):
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