Official and Confidential_ The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover - Anthony Summers [43]
One morning in 1960, two months after Purvis’ appointment as Chief Counsel to a Senate committee, his wife heard the crack of a pistol shot. She found her husband dead, at fifty-six, with a .45 automatic in his hand. Purvis had committed suicide, the press reported, following months of pain from chronic back trouble.
The Purvis family was not so sure. The death came just weeks after the fatal shooting of the old bootlegger Roger Tuohy – right after his release from jail for a kidnapping he had not committed – in a case Purvis had directed. Thirty-six hours before Purvis died, he had been visited by someone driving a large black car with out-of-state plates. The next morning he called a lawyer to discuss his will. Of all the weapons in his large collection, it was the pistol of a thirties gangster that was found in his dead hand the next morning. Edgar expressed no sadness, made no comments to the press and sent no message of condolence to Purvis’ widow. Mrs Purvis, for her part, sent Edgar a bitter telegram:
WE ARE HONORED THAT YOU IGNORED MELVIN’S DEATH. YOUR JEALOUSY HURT HIM VERY MUCH BUT UNTIL THE END I THINK HE LOVED YOU.
Along with Edgar, another FBI official scribbled negative comments in the file when Purvis died – Associate Director Clyde Tolson. Long since, in a conversation with socialite Anita Colby, Edgar had added a new wrinkle to the mythology about John Dillinger. ‘Edgar told me,’ Colby recalled, ‘that it wasn’t Purvis who got Dillinger, it was Clyde Tolson. He said they just let Purvis take the credit, but Clyde really did it.’
This was yet another example of Edgar’s capacity for untruth. Bureau records show Tolson was at headquarters the day Dillinger died. He may, however, have been a key factor in what really went wrong between Edgar and Purvis: Clyde Tolson had for some time been Edgar’s constant male companion, and would remain so for nearly half a century.
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‘Words are mere man-given symbols for thoughts and feelings, and they are grossly insufficient to express the thoughts in my mind and the feelings in my heart that I have for you.’
J. Edgar Hoover, in letter to Clyde Tolson, 1943
Clyde Anderson Tolson was born in 1900 near Laredo, Missouri, in the heart of the Corn Belt. His parents were poor, and a move to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, did not bring prosperity. Clyde’s father, a Baptist who eked out a living first as a small-time farmer, later as a freight guard on the railroad, told his two sons to go out into the world and better themselves.
Clyde took the train to Washington when he was eighteen, after a year at business college. He was a good-looking young man, with piercing black eyes and an athletic build, a careful dresser who favored cream linen jackets and spectator shoes, but nothing too fancy. He could have passed, the press would note later, ‘for a slightly studious customers’ man or a very junior partner in a brokerage firm.’
Clyde got a job as a clerk at the War Department, and flourished. By the time he was twenty, thanks to an appetite for work and an astonishing ability to absorb vast quantities of information, he had become Confidential Clerk to the Secretary of War. Eight years later, feeling it was time to move on, he began attending night classes in law at George Washington University.
As a boy, Clyde and his friends had played a game they called Jesse James, after the outlaw. Clyde’s grandfather’s cattle had been stolen by James, so he always wanted to play the role no one else wanted – the Sheriff. He wore a silver star, which he carried in his pocket long after he grew out of