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“Halt!” Purvis shouted. Shouts of “Halt! Stop!” came from all directions. Floyd kept running. Behind the garage he raced into an open field. At the far end of the field, maybe two hundred yards away, was a stand of woods. Floyd ran for it, zigzagging across the open field.

“Let him have it!” Purvis shouted.

Gunshots rang out. The Bureau men had pistols and shotguns and a Thompson gun. Their bullets splintered Mrs. Conkle’s apple tree; leaves and limbs rained down into the yard. Floyd kept running through the field, looking back over his right shoulder, then his left. More shots rang out. Several officers fired where they stood, others ran after Floyd into the field. As he neared the crest of a rise, Floyd’s right arm flew up and he fell forward, landing heavily on his left side in the grass.

Three of the East Liverpool policemen were the first to reach him. As they did, Floyd swung his arm around to defend himself, his .45 caliber pistol poised to fire. Officer Chester Smith grabbed Floyd’s wrist and wrenched the gun from his hand as a second officer fell onto Floyd and pinned him to the ground. Floyd reached for a second pistol in his waistband, but the third officer, Herman Roth, took it first.eh

“Lay still! Lay still!” one of the men yelled as Floyd finally ceased struggling.

The East Liverpool police chief, Hugh McDermott, ran up.

“How bad are you hurt?” he asked.

“I’m done for,” Floyd rasped. “You’ve hit me twice.” He was right: A .45 slug had hit below the left shoulder blade and lodged in his chest. Another bullet had struck his right side and come to rest below his heart. His lungs, ribs, and heart had all been damaged.

“What’s your name?” Officer Montgomery asked. By then Purvis and the other FBI men had run up.

“Murphy,” Floyd said. “Where’s Eddie?” He was using Richetti’s alias.

“Eddie who?” Montgomery asked.

“Where’s Eddie?”

“I don’t know,” Montgomery said.

“Oh hell,” Floyd said.

“What’s your name?” Montgomery asked again.

“Murphy!” Floyd said. He spat the word.

“Your name’s Floyd!” Purvis said.

Floyd just stared.

“Is your name not Charles ‘Pretty Boy’ Floyd?” Purvis repeated.

Floyd’s mouth twisted into a half smile.

“Yeah, I’m Floyd,” he said.

Purvis trotted back to his car to call a doctor and notify Washington of Floyd’s capture; there was no phone at the Conkle farm, so Purvis took an agent and drove back to a store in the town of Clarkson. When Purvis left, Agent Sam McKee hunched down beside Floyd and began questioning him. He asked if Floyd had been involved in the Union Station Massacre. “To hell with Union Station,” Floyd said.

“You’re dying,” McKee said.

“I know I’m through,” Floyd said. He was weakening fast.

“Then do the decent thing and tell me what you know about the massacre at Union Station,” McKee said.

Floyd said nothing.

“Is it not true that you, Adam Richetti, and Verne Miller did the shooting at Union Station?”

Floyd’s eyes flashed. “I ain’t tellin’ you nothin’, you son of a bitch,” he said. A moment later Floyd seemed to lapse into a state of semiconsciousness. McKee gave up the questioning. Floyd’s condition deteriorated quickly. In minutes he seemed to be near death.

“Who tipped you I was here?” he asked in a lucid moment. Several times he tried to rise. The East Liverpool men held him down. Floyd was fading fast. “Fuck you,” he said at one point. At 4:25 he said, “I’m going,” and died.ei

Floyd’s body was brought into the Sturgis Funeral Home in Wellsville, which was soon mobbed with reporters and curious townspeople. Much to Hoover’s dismay, more reporters were drawn to Purvis than the body. He was mobbed when he showed up at the funeral home, where Hoover reached him about five-thirty, an hour after the shooting. “Purvis advised that he had his picture taken, that he had been receiving inquiries from newspapers, whereupon I instructed him to tell the newspapers [all] statements would have to come from Washington,” Hoover wrote in a memo.