• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Now clearly seeking to embarrass Hoover, McKellar pressed for his qualifications to run the Bureau. Hoover pointed out he had been with the Department of Justice nineteen years.

“I mean crime school,” McKellar said.

“I learned first-hand,” Hoover said.

“Did you ever make an arrest?”

“No sir; I have made investigations.”

“How many arrests have you made, and who were they?”

Hoover mentioned several cases he had handled as a Justice Department prosecutor. “Did you make the arrests?” McKellar asked.

“The arrests were made by . . . officers under my supervision.”

“I am talking about the actual arrests,” McKellar said. “You never arrested them, actually?”12

Afterward, Hoover returned to his office, as angry as he had been in his life. It was galling that after everything the Bureau had achieved—Dillinger, Kelly, Floyd, Nelson, the Barkers—he was still subject to petty politics. He got on the phone with Earl Connelley. His message to Connelley was clear: he wanted Alvin Karpis arrested, he wanted it done immediately, and he wanted to do it himself.

By the time FBI agents realized Grace Goldstein was missing she was already in New Orleans, strolling through Audubon Park at Karpis’s side; he had slipped into Hot Springs unnoticed and picked her up himself. After reuniting with Freddie Hunter and Connie Morris, they took a vacation, stopping in Biloxi before heading to Florida. Along the way Morris got sick; she had a bad case of syphilis. The couples returned to New Orleans and Morris began treatments. Karpis ferried Goldstein back to Hot Springs. The FBI was waiting for her.

By now the town was teeming with both postal inspectors and FBI men, each group determined to reap the credit for capturing Public Enemy #1. Hoover’s desire to personally arrest Karpis only increased the pressure on his agents. Agent John Madala kept out of sight, babysitting Clayton Hall at a tourist camp. The moment Goldstein returned, Hall was certain he could get her to divulge Karpis’s whereabouts. The FBI men spent as much time watching the inspectors as they did the Hatterie. Connelley had assigned Frank Smith, the old Cowboy who had survived the Kansas City Massacre, to work alongside the inspectors and their point man, Joe Anderson; Agent Smith’s sole duty, an aide wrote Hoover, was “to keep an eye on [Anderson] and find out what he is doing and why at all times.”13

Finally, on Friday, April 24, one of the Hatterie whores told an agent that Goldstein was expected back any day. Hoover’s men were beside themselves. Somehow they had to eject the inspectors from Hot Springs. That day the Little Rock SAC, Chapmon Fletcher, “instructed Agent Smith to use his best efforts to get [the inspectors] out of Hot Springs using any excuse that he might think best in order.”14 Somehow Smith pulled it off. That afternoon, via a ruse undisclosed in FBI files, all the inspectors were pulled out of Hot Springs.

And just in time. The next day, Saturday, April 25, Goldstein returned to the Hatterie. But before FBI agents could move in, she was picked up by Detective Dutch Akers and the Hot Springs police chief Joe Wakelin, who spent three hours haranguing her to turn over Karpis; the two corrupt cops promised Goldstein she could split the $12,000 reward with them if she did. That night, after Goldstein returned to the Hatterie, John Madala sent in Clayton Hall. For once an informant was as good as his word; Hall and the unsuspecting Goldstein talked for hours. At 4:00 A.M. agents saw Hall emerge from the brothel and walk to the Southern Grill restaurant. Hall was jubilant: Goldstein had told him everything. She said Karpis and Hunter were now renting apartments in New Orleans, where Connie Morris was taking syphilis treatments. The only thing she failed to mention was Karpis’s address.

Connelley needed that address. He left Ohio that afternoon, after telling John Madala to send Hall back to the Hatterie that night. Hall talked with Goldstein again that evening, but was unable