Public Enemies_ America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI - Bryan Burrough [337]
dz
The list was the gang’s git from the South St. Paul payroll robbery. It showed detailed driving instructions from St. Paul to Davenport, Iowa.
ea
On Thursday afternoon, twenty-four hours after the women’s arrest, Captain Story did telephone the resident agent in Cleveland. He described the arrest and speculated that it might be linked to the “kidnappings in St. Paul.” But according to an FBI report, Captain Story did not mention the possibility that Karpis or the Barkers were hiding in Cleveland. The FBI did nothing until seeing newspaper stories the next morning.
eb
There is no indication Cowley even assigned agents to observe Ferguson at the Sears store, a decision that would at least allow agents to note the license plate number of any car that picked her up. It’s unclear whether his failure to do so was a lack of confidence in Ferguson or a fear for her safety.
ec
New Orleans newspapers would later identify the informant as a job-seeker who had answered a help-wanted ad “Lee” placed in the New Orleans Times-Picayune.
ed
The informant who turned in Frank Nash is identified in FBI files as “Informant A.” Several memos carry indications that Informant A was a policeman. In all likelihood, the informant was Akers.
ee
An agent actually walked into the hospital and saw Chuck Fitzgerald, the Barker Gang member who was recovering from a gunshot wound, on October 11. He failed to recognize him.
ef
Her ad was to read, Mother received radio. Communicate with me.
eg
On October 2 Hoover sent Purvis a telegram berating him for failing to report a man who had visited the Chicago office with a tip on the Lindbergh kidnapping. “I am instructing Mr. Cowley to take personal charge of this matter,” Hoover wrote, “so that it will be given the proper attention.”
eh
Purvis would later claim to have kicked the pistol out of Floyd’s hand. He may have kicked it to one side after it was removed.
ei
Pretty Boy Floyd’s death was the most controversial of all the public enemies the FBI hunted down in 1934. Forty-five years later, in 1979, one of the East Liverpool policemen, Chester Smith, made international headlines with the charge that the FBI had murdered Floyd as he lay helpless in Mrs. Conkle’s field. According to Smith, who first told this story to the Akron Beacon-Journal in 1974, Purvis had briefly questioned Floyd about the massacre. When Floyd refused to answer his questions, Smith claimed, Purvis ordered Agent Ed Hollis to “Fire into him,” at which point Hollis fired a single shot into Floyd’s chest, killing him.
It is a story that achieved wide currency; one otherwise credible author entitles his chapter on Floyd’s death “The Assassination.” This is entirely unfounded. Agent Hollis was not even at the Conkle farm that afternoon. According to the local coroner’s report, there was no gunshot wound to the chest. Floyd had been hit twice, as he admitted to lawmen; neither bullet entered through his chest. No one present that day even hinted such a thing might have occurred.
So why, a number of writers have asked, would Chester Smith make up such a story? Smith’s old friends sigh when the question is put to them. “I knew Chester; we were close,” says Bob “Brassy” Beresford, a former Columbiana County sheriff. “We called him ‘Cap.’ Cap would tell different stories at different times. I heard a couple of different versions. That version [involving Agent Hollis] was a new version. I don’t much think anyone around here took it seriously.”
For all the stories Cap Smith told over the years, the one constant was his own crucial role in Floyd’s death. He told the East Liverpool Review in 1969 that it was he, not Glenn Montgomery, who first spotted Floyd, he, not Montgomery, who was the first man out of the car that day. These assertions are contradicted by testimony given by other officers two days after the killing. Further, Smith claimed, it was his own shots that killed Floyd. This was demonstrably