Public Enemies_ America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI - Bryan Burrough [300]
Everyone involved realized they were close. In Washington, Hoover was already busy lining up a national audience for his moment on the stage. On Monday, April 27, the morning Connelley arrived in New Orleans, Hoover met with executives from the NBC radio network. NBC was proposing to broadcast two separate programs on Karpis’s capture, both of which would highlight the director’s personal involvement.15 Hoover’s memo to Clyde Tolson afterward was entitled “Proposed broadcast of the capture of Alvin Karpis.”
There was just one hang-up: the FBI still wasn’t sure where in New Orleans Karpis was hiding. Connelley told Hoover he planned to check every doctor in the city until he found the one treating Connie Morris. Their only hope of a faster conclusion was Grace Goldstein. Agents arrested her on the street in Hot Springs Monday afternoon. Whisked away to Little Rock, she was subjected to intense questioning. For the moment, Goldstein refused to reveal Karpis’s address.
The next day, as Connelley’s men began canvassing doctor’s offices in New Orleans, Goldstein continued to hold out. She said she didn’t want to end up a pariah like Ana Sage. The FBI’s leverage was her family. Agents had tracked her siblings to their homes in Texas. They made clear to Goldstein that they could be indicted for harboring Karpis. It worked. The next day, Wednesday, April 29, Goldstein agreed to a deal: If the FBI promised not to prosecute her family, she would hand over Karpis’s address—but only to Connelley himself.
That night agents drove Goldstein to Jackson, Mississippi, and checked her into a motel. Connelley hurried up from New Orleans and debriefed Goldstein for three hours, winding up at 3:00 A.M. As it turned out, she didn’t know Karpis’s address. But she knew Freddie Hunter’s, and she said Karpis ate most of his meals there. By daylight agents in New Orleans had Hunter’s apartment building under surveillance. It was right on Canal Street, on the busy corner with Jefferson Davis Parkway. Two of the Bureau’s most reliable shooters, Clarence Hurt and Jerry Campbell, flew down to join the raiding party.
Now all they needed was Hoover. A charter flight, a DC-3, was arranged via Trans World Airlines; Hoover and Tolson arrived in New Orleans that evening at 9:30, taking rooms at the Roosevelt Hotel. Connelley told Hoover there would probably be no raid until morning. He had two men in a vacant house across from Hunter’s apartment building, but there had been no sign of Hunter or Karpis.
By daylight the next morning, Friday, May 1, the situation remained unchanged. In his hotel room, Hoover paced. Then, at 9:45, from his position in the vacant house, a rookie agent named Raymond Tollett spotted a red Essex Terraplane coast to a stop in front of Hunter’s apartment. A man got out. Tollett lifted his binoculars to study his face. It was Karpis. He entered the building, then emerged with another man. Both got into cars. When they drove off, Tollett trotted to a drugstore to telephone Connelley.
Karpis had been in Mississippi several days, studying a pair of possible jobs, a construction-company payroll and a train score in the town of Iuka. He had returned just that morning, dropping his things in his apartment on St. Charles Avenue before swinging by to pick up Hunter. They headed to a deserted street near Lake Pontchartrain, where Karpis transferred his guns to Hunter’s car. Then they dropped Karpis’s car at a garage to be serviced. While they waited, they drove idly around the city. Hunter was nervous. He had seen strangers around his building. At one point, Hunter thought a maroon coupe was following them. Worried, they drove back to the apartment.
In the vacant house across the street, Connelley watched them pull up. Everything was in place. Leaving two men behind, he headed downtown to the FBI office. Hoover was waiting. Connelley gathered the raiding party and drew a diagram of the neighborhood