Public Enemies_ America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI - Bryan Burrough [301]
At 4:30, as Connelley finalized his plans, Connie Morris asked Karpis and Hunter to run to the grocery to buy strawberries for dinner. Karpis and Hunter exchanged glances. As Karpis stood by the window cradling a submachine gun, Hunter stepped onto the sidewalk, testing the air. He walked to the car; everything seemed fine. Karpis put the gun down and followed. At the grocery Karpis remained in the car. He watched as a DeSoto sedan pulled behind him. Hunter came out a minute later and said he had seen the DeSoto the day before. Karpis said they were imagining things. They had to calm down.
They returned to the apartment. It was a muggy day; the temperature had risen to eighty-seven degrees. In the kitchen Morris had changed into a white halter top and shorts. Karpis tried to relax but couldn’t. He walked to a drugstore—the same one the FBI agents were using—and bought a pack of Chesterfields and a Reader’s Digest. He walked back to the apartment, studying every man on the street. Karpis willed himself to relax, and in time he did. His car was to be ready at 5:00, and a few minutes after that he stood, announcing it was time to pick it up. He put on his straw boater. It was too hot to wear his suit jacket, so he slid his pistol beneath a sofa cushion.
As Karpis rose to leave, the five-man raiding party was sitting in two parked cars across the intersection of Canal and Jefferson Davis. Connelley and Clarence Hurt were in the lead car, Hoover and the others behind them.16 A few minutes after five, word was relayed that the other groups were in position. The two cars slid away from the curb and began to cross the intersection. Their plan was to park beyond the building and return on foot. Just then, Karpis and Hunter emerged onto the sidewalk and stepped toward their waiting Plymouth. Karpis slid behind the wheel, rolled down the window, and popped the lock for Hunter. Connelley saw them and reacted immediately; he swerved his car in front of the Plymouth and jammed on the brakes to block it. In the second car Hoover saw a boy on a bicycle veer between him and Karpis.17 The boy was just moving past when Connelley and Hurt leaped from the car, guns drawn.
What happened next is in dispute. According to Hoover’s version of events, recounted in dozens of articles and books in subsequent years, he jumped from the second car and rushed to the driver’s-side door while Connelley took the passenger door. Before Karpis could reach for a rifle on the backseat, Hoover said he grabbed Karpis by the collar.
“Stammering, stuttering, shaking as though he had palsy,” a reporter briefed by Hoover wrote the next day, “the man upon whom was bestowed the title of public enemy number one folded up like the yellow rat he is.” Karpis offered no resistance, raising his hands as he stepped from the car. “Put the cuffs on him, boys,” Hoover said.18
Hoover’s story of the arrest, as told to reporters the next day, was flat wrong in several details. He said, for instance, that Connie Morris had been in the car when Karpis was arrested. “We nabbed the three after they had entered their car,” Hoover told the Associated Press. “Hunter and the woman stepped from the car with their hands over their heads.”19
One possible explanation for Hoover’s confusion was raised in 1971, when Karpis published his autobiography. According to Karpis, at the moment he was arrested, Hoover was nowhere to be seen. He didn’t reach for a rifle on the backseat, he claimed, because the coupe had no backseat. An agent from the blocking car, apparently Connelley, jumped out and aimed a gun at him. “All right, Karpis,” Connelley barked, “just keep your hands on that steering wheel.”20 It was only after he surrendered, Karpis claimed, that