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family apartment thoroughly bugged, going so far as hiring a Lithuanian man to translate conversations between Karpis’s parents. All they learned was how much his mother and father bickered over who was more responsible for their son’s life of crime. In Tulsa they kept watch on Karpis’s friend Burrhead Keady, even as rumors flew that the inspectors would arrest him. Connelley demanded regular updates on the inspectors’ progress. “[W]e should protect our interests in this,” he wrote the Oklahoma City office on February 17, “to see that nothing is done which will interfere with [our] investigation.”7

The FBI learned of Keady’s arrest only when the Cleveland Plain Dealer announced it on February 27. When agents demanded to know if the report was true, the senior inspector, Sylvester Hettrick, denied it. Arguments broke out between Hettrick’s men and the Cleveland office; the inspectors, openly resentful of the adoring publicity lavished on the Bureau, finally stopped sharing leads with Hoover’s men. Pop Nathan, who shared Connelley’s contempt for the inspectors, ordered agents to ignore them and concentrate on breaking the case on their own. Two weeks later the inspectors picked up Keady’s bartender.

Many of the same leads flowed to the Bureau, but Hoover’s men repeatedly failed to follow them up. Joe Rich, the heroin addict who had robbed the Warren payroll with Karpis, washed up in a Canton, Ohio, jail, where he attempted to swap knowledge for freedom; FBI agents who debriefed Rich simply didn’t believe his tale of robbing the Warren train with Karpis, terming it “quite a fanciful story.” Nor were they all that interested in Clayton Hall. The FBI fielded tips on Hall’s involvement with Karpis from at least three sources. Still, it wasn’t until March 1, six weeks after hearing the first of these tips, that two agents drove out to Hall’s home outside Youngstown. They watched it a few hours, then left. The idea that Karpis might be employing a sheet-metal worker was apparently too far-fetched for the agents to pursue. They left Clayton Hall for the inspectors.fb

In Chicago, Connelley wearily took stock of their investigation. They

On Wednesday, March 25, Connelley telephoned the Cleveland SAC and asked him to find Hall. An agent named E. J. Wynn drove to Youngstown that day and discovered him at home. Hall conceded that he had known Freddie Hunter for years. He identified a photo of Karpis as Hunter’s pal “Ed King,” and admitted the two men had visited him as recently as January. It was the best lead the FBI had uncovered in more than a year. Agent Wynn gave Hall $5 and told him to be at the Bureau’s Cleveland office for a debriefing the next day at 1:00.

Connelley hurried to Cleveland for the meeting. But at 1:00 Hall didn’t show. When he hadn’t appeared by nightfall, Connelley drove to Youngstown to look for him. His wife said he had left that morning. She thought he was going to the FBI. The next morning two more agents visited the Hall home. Mrs. Hall said her husband had come home late the previous night, but had left again that morning. Suspecting Hall was trying to avoid them, the two agents parked nearby and watched the house. A few minutes later a Ford drove by. One of the two men inside could be seen jotting down their license plate number. They were postal inspectors; the agents were sure of it. Irked, the agents drove to the Youngstown post office, where the inspectors were based. They saw the Ford parked outside. From an upstairs window, the inspectors saw them.

A little bit later, the phone rang in the Cleveland office. On the line was Sylvester Hettrick, the lead postal inspector. He wanted to meet. Agent Wynn drove to the Youngstown post office and found himself in a room with eight irritated inspectors, their point man, Joe Anderson, and two members of the Ohio State Highway Patrol. Inspector Hettrick announced that they had detained Clayton Hall. After being threatened with prosecution for the Garrettsville robbery, Hall was now claiming he could produce Karpis. But he insisted he would divulge all details