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As the night wore on, Cowley’s condition worsened. Just after midnight an agent overheard doctors say he wouldn’t make it till dawn. An hour later Purvis, who had returned to the office, called Washington to report “Mr. Cowley is sinking fast and is not expected to live more than two hours.” Purvis returned to the hospital. Cowley died at 2:17 A.M., November 28, the day before Thanksgiving. His wife, Lavon, collapsed in tears. Doctors gave her a sedative.

Five hours later, at 7:30, police in suburban Winnetka found the FBI car Nelson had stolen in a ditch. Then, as FBI agents descended on the area, an anonymous caller phoned the Sadowski Funeral Home in suburban Niles Center (now Skokie), telling the undertaker, Philip Sadowski, he could find a body beside a local cemetery.em Sadowski passed the tip on to Niles Center police, who passed it to the FBI. Just before noon, police found blood-soaked pants, a shirt, underwear, and socks in a ditch near the cemetery. A half hour later, in another ditch at the corner of Niles and Long Avenues, they found the bullet-riddled nude body of a man wrapped in a blanket. It was Nelson.

Chase had driven the dying Nelson through the streets of Wilmette, following his mumbled directions. About six-thirty they turned into an alley behind a house on Walnut Street and parked in a covered garage. The home was owned by a man named Ray Henderson, who appears to have been an acquaintance of the fence Jimmy Murray. Chase carried Nelson inside and laid him on a bed. Helen stripped off his clothes and wrapped a towel around his midsection in a vain attempt to staunch the blood. Nelson faded quickly, lapsing in and out of consciousness. His last minutes, like his final gunfight, resembled a scene from one of the gangster movies he loved.

“It’s getting dark, Helen,” he whispered at one point. “Say good-bye to mother.” He recited the names of his brothers and sisters. When he asked her to bid farewell to their children, he began to cry. A few minutes later he said, “It’s getting dark, Helen. I can’t see you anymore.” He died at 7:35 P.M.

The next morning Chase laid Nelson’s body in the ditch, then fled. Helen, frightened and unsure what to do, took refuge with her family, where the FBI took her into custody two days later. She missed Nelson’s funeral. He was laid to rest beside his father, in the suburban Chicago cemetery where his grave remains to this day.

The bloodiest day in the FBI’s brief history was followed by two somber funerals. Herman “Ed” Hollis was buried in his native Des Moines, Sam Cowley in Salt Lake City. Cowley’s body lay in state beneath the capitol rotunda while thousands filed by in silence.

Pop Nathan gave Cowley’s eulogy. “We are bringing [Sam] back [to Utah] a national martyred hero,” Nathan said. “The columns of the press are replete with his exploits, and men, women and children in all parts of the country know him now. He is famous, and justly so. And yet Sam Cowley was one of the simplest men I ever knew. He was greatly simple. He was simply great. His was the simplicity of the saints, seers and heroes of the ages, the simplicity of true worth, of true dignity, of true honor. We, of the Division, are very proud of him. As generations of new agents come into our service they will be told of the life and death of Sam Cowley. He will become a tradition. He will have attained earthly immortality.”

Nathan was as good as his word. For decades to come, Hoover held up Cowley as the ultimate FBI man, quiet, hardworking, and dedicated. He remains the most senior agent ever killed in the line of duty.

18

THE LAST MAN STANDING

December 3, 1934, to January 20, 1935

Chicago, Illinois Monday, December 3

That morning a somber group of FBI men began hauling files into a new set of offices in the New York Life Insurance Building, two blocks from the Bankers Building. The situation on the nineteenth floor had grown untenable. Reporters lingered around the clock, pestering Doris Rogers, straining to overhear phone calls and