Good Morning...Okie Outlaw Assumes Room Temperature

[Okla-homey]

October 22, 1934: Pretty Boy Floyd is killed by the FBI

http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/4995/prettyboyfloyd01.jpg

76 years ago today, Charles "Pretty Boy" Floyd is shot by FBI agents in a cornfield in East Liverpool, Ohio. Floyd, who had been a hotly pursued fugitive for four years, used his last breath to deny his involvement in the infamous Kansas City Massacre, in which four officers were shot to death at a train station. He died shortly thereafter.

Floyd's body was embalmed and briefly viewed at the Sturgis Funeral Home, in East Liverpool, Ohio before being sent on to Oklahoma. Floyd's body was placed on public display in Sallisaw, Oklahoma. His funeral was attended by between 20,000 and 40,000 people and remains the largest funeral in Oklahoma history. He was buried in Akins, Oklahoma.

Charles Floyd grew up near Akins, Oklahoma. When it became impossible to operate a small farm in the drought conditions of the late 1920s, Floyd tried his hand at bank robbery.

He soon found himself in a Missouri prison for robbing a St. Louis payroll delivery. After being paroled in 1929, he learned that Jim Mills had shot his father to death. Since Mills, who had been acquitted of the charges, was never heard from or seen again, Floyd was believed to have killed him.

http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/8717/prettycharlesfloyd.jpg

Moving on to Kansas City, Floyd got mixed up with the city's burgeoning criminal community. A local madam gave Floyd the nickname "Pretty Boy," which he hated. Along with a couple of friends he had met in prison, he robbed several banks in Missouri and Ohio, but was eventually caught in Ohio and sentenced to 12-15 years. On the way to prison, Floyd kicked out a window and jumped from the speeding train. He made it to Toledo, where he hooked up with Bill "The Killer" Miller.

The two went on a crime spree across several states until Miller was killed in a spectacular firefight in Bowling Green, Ohio, in 1931. Once he was back in Kansas City, Floyd killed a federal agent during a raid and became a nationally known criminal figure. This time he escaped to the backwoods of Oklahoma.

http://img28.imageshack.us/img28/3203/pretty513youngstreet.jpg
In January, 1932, Charles Arthur "Pretty Boy" Floyd moved his wife and son into this frame bungalow on Young St. in Tulsa, a few miles north of downtown.

The locals there, reeling from the Depression, were not about to turn in an Oklahoma native for robbing banks. Floyd became a Robin Hood-type figure, staying one step ahead of the law. Even the Joads, characters in John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, spoke well of Floyd.

However, not everyone was so enamored with "Pretty Boy." Oklahoma's governor put out a $6,000 bounty on his head. On June 17, 1933, when law enforcement officials were ambushed by a machine-gun attack in a Kansas City train station while transporting criminal Frank Nash to prison, Floyd's notoriety grew even more. Although it was not clear whether or not Floyd was responsible, both the FBI and the nation's press pegged the crime on him nevertheless. Subsequently, pressure was stepped up to capture the illustrious fugitive, and the FBI finally got their man in October 1934.

http://img196.imageshack.us/img196/5918/prettyfloydc3.jpg
Floyd's grave marker, complete with chips taken by souvenir hunters

[AlbqSooner]

A man named Wheeler Mayo published the local paper in Sallisaw. That paper published an editorial saying that folks should not consider Floyd a folk hero; rather he was a criminal. Shortly thereafter, word got back to Mayo that Floyd was really upset and was going to kill him. Mayo went to Floyd's brother who was a local law enforcement officer and asked if it was true. The brother said that he didn't know, but that he would see Charles in the next few days and ask.

The brother came back and said that Floyd said to tell Mayo that he had no intention to harm him in any way. They had, after all grown up together. However, if Mayo would tell him who wrote that editorial, THAT is who Floyd intended to kill.

[TUSooner]

Popularity is often just evidence that the great mass of people are stupid.

[The]

The grave marker isn't there anymore.

[Chuck Bao]

My grandfather said that one of his best childhood friends was Pretty Boy's brother. My grandfather was a very decent, law-abiding man and he would stand up against anyone when he thought there was some injustice. Still, Pretty Boy Floyd was a Robin Hood-type of hero to him. I suppose that he helped a lot of Okies suffering through very difficult times.

It's not really difficult to imagine when once proud farmers are forced off their land and have to accept any work available, even if it was working for a dollar a day and told to just go out anywhere in the pasture and dig a hole. If the hole was satisfactorily deep enough, they'd get paid another dollar the next day to fill it in. And, they had to be very grateful that the few people with money in the county would give them this opportunity.

My grandfather just had to see the movie "The Story of Pretty Boy Floyd" when it came out in 1974. My grandfather never went out to the theater, to the best of knowledge. I could tell that it made him very sad to relive some of those terrible memories.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072212/

[The]

FYI, rumor rand the campfire is that Tarantino has a PBF movie in the works.

[Okla-homey]

FYI, rumor rand the campfire is that Tarantino has a PBF movie in the works.

I'd rather the Cohen Brothers do it. They would keep it gritty. Tarantino will just glam it up beyond all recognition.

[SunnySooner]

I've been to his grave, it's not far at all from where I grew up, and one of my great-aunts attended his funeral. She said he had holes in his face from the bullets. Guess that wasn't enough for a closed casket back in the day.