Public Enemies_ America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI - Bryan Burrough [31]
In front of the car, Ray Caffrey was blown against the hood and crumpled to the pavement in a heap. A bullet grazed Reed Vetterli’s right arm, and he fell beside the car. An instant later he sprang to his feet and ran back toward the station, a spray of bullets kicking up dust behind him. In the backseat Lackey raised his shotgun, but three bullets hit him and he dropped it; still alive, he fell forward and played dead, as did Frank Smith beside him. Both men had their heads between their knees when the shooting stopped. They heard the sound of footsteps approaching.
“Everyone’s dead in here,” a voice outside the car said.
It would be called the Kansas City Massacre. At the time, it was the second-deadliest murder of law-enforcement officers in American history, and it shocked the nation. Coming less than forty-eight hours after the kidnapping of William Hamm, it generated a shock wave felt all the way to Franklin Roosevelt’s desk in the Oval Office.
The War on Crime had begun.
3
THE COLLEGE BOYS TAKE THE FIELD
June 17 to July 22, 1933
[Whoever did this] must be exterminated, and they must be exterminated by us.
—J . EDGAR HOOVER ON THE KANSAS CITY MASSACRE
We were a bunch of greenhorns who had no idea what we were doing.
—FORMER SPECIAL AGENT KENNETH McINTIRE, 1983
Kansas City Saturday, June 17 7:20 A.M.
“That one’s alive! He’s alive!”
The haze of gunsmoke still hung over the Union Station parking lot as the first bystanders ran up to the FBI car. Ray Caffrey’s fallen body lay sprawled on the pavement next to the front fender, his eyes still open, his jaw working silently; he would be dead within minutes. Six feet away the two Kansas City detectives lay dead in a spreading pool of blood, Red Grooms’s head nestled against Frank Hermanson’s chest. Inside the car, Frank Nash was slumped in the driver’s seat, mouth open, head back, rivulets of blood running down his neck and reddening his chest. In the backseat Otto Reed’s body looked worse.
First to reach the car after the gunmen fled was Mike Fanning, a policeman who had been on duty at the station and had fired shots at the fleeing sedan. He had no idea what was going on. He yanked open a car door, trained his pistol on the men inside, and yelled for them to get out.
“Don’t shoot, I’m a federal officer,” said Frank Smith, raising his hands. There were tears in his eyes as he glanced at his old friend Otto Reed. To his left Joe Lackey moaned in pain. He’d been hit three times in the back. “Steady now, steady,” Smith said, turning to Lackey. “You’ll make it all right.” The Kansas City SAC, Reed Vetterli, ran up, helped pull Lackey from the seat, and laid him on the pavement. Smith cradled the wounded agent’s head in his arms. “I’ll be all right,” Lackey whispered. “Look after the others.”
A crowd was gathering—businessmen in straw boaters, taxi drivers in flat caps, a farmer or two in denim overalls. Several slipped in the spreading pool of blood. A woman screamed. A wire-service reporter tiptoed through the scene, staining her white shoes red. Ambulances were on the scene within minutes, and Lackey was taken to Research Hospital; he would recover and return to duty within weeks. Vetterli, bleeding lightly from his arm wound, rushed to the FBI offices in the Federal Reserve Bank Building. He picked up the phone, called Washington, and was put through to the director.
“It was a massacre, Mr. Hoover,” Vetterli said. “Ray Caffrey is dead. Joe Lackey may not pull through. Two Kansas City detectives and the chief of police from McAlester, Oklahoma, were killed. So was Frank Nash.” Vetterli listened a moment. “Well, I lost a good summer coat and a shirt . . . No, I didn’t go to the hospital . . . Yes, sir, I’ll go to a doctor at once.” An agent was dispatched to Ray Caffrey’s apartment to break the news to his wife.
The remaining agents descended on the Union