It’s September 16, 1925, and a handsome-looking
fella walks into the Tower Grove Bank in St. Louis with two other men. The man suddenly whips back his suit jacket
and produces his beloved Thompson sub-machine gun. “Everyone get down on the floor, this is
a bank robbery,” the man shouts, just as his two accomplices brandish their pistols. “No one’s gonna get hurt, just do as we
tell you,” says the man as he sticks that gun in front of a teller’s face. That teller has no idea that she is standing
in front of a man who will become known as possibly America’s most infamous bank robber,
the bane of the FBI and without doubt an exemplary “Enemy Number One.” Welcome to the life and crimes of Pretty Boy
Floyd. The scene we just described could have been
Pretty Boy Floyd’s biggest ever haul. That day he and his crew walked out of that
bank with $11,929, which in today’s money is something like $174,000. Not bad for a day’s work, eh. The reason so much was taken that day is because
the bank had the entire payroll for the Kroger Grocery & Baking Company. We guess some staff at their outlets were
a bit displeased that September. This guy would rob a lot more banks and he
was behind one of the worst events in the USA’s criminal history, but before we talk
about carnage and blood-splattered streets, let’s have a look at this man nicknamed
Pretty Boy Floyd. First of all, his parents didn’t name their
child, first name Pretty, middle name Boy. His real name was Charles Arthur Floyd and
he was born in a place called Adairsville, Georgia, on February 3rd, 1904. One thing we know is that Charles had a lot
of siblings and the family was dirt poor. When he was seven years old the parents took
the family to live in a place called Akins, Oklahoma, which to say the least is about
as small as small towns get in the U.S. Even today that town has a population of only
about 500. So Charles lived in what you might call the
American Outback, and there his family tried to eke out a living as farmers. The poverty and boredom must have been oppressive
for the young boy and perhaps that’s why he got into crime early, with his first arrest
at age 18. The young boy, nicknamed “Choc” because
of his fondness for Choctaw beer, was about to embark on a career that would eventually
lead to movies being made about him. You could say this career of his didn’t
get off to a good start, and that’s because his first bank robbery ended with him behind
bars. That robbery was the one we’ve already mentioned,
and Choc and his accomplices were all caught after spending like they’d won the lottery. For his crime he served just three and half
years, which is surprising given that such a robbery these days could see a man growing
old in prison. He was married at the time of the robbery
and even had a son, but that relationship fell apart while he was doing his time. When Charles got out of prison, life in America’s
“Dust Bowl” wasn’t exactly a walk in the park. It was the early 1930s and the U.S. was experiencing
something called The Great Depression, and perhaps those who got most depressed about
those economic downtimes were those stuck out in the rural hinterlands. How’s a man to make a bit of money when
milking cows doesn’t pay the bills? The answer to that question is a five-letter
word: CRIME. About this time he got the name Pretty Boy
Floyd and that name stuck. There are mixed opinions as to how he got
that moniker, but word on the street is it either came from his workmates in the oil
fields who thought Charles was a snazzy dresser, or he got the name from a girlfriend. Whatever was the case, Mr. Floyd was indeed
a good-looking fella. The thing was, though, he really detested
that name. What kind of criminal tough guy gets called
“Pretty Boy?” This handsome man was as fearless as he was
easy on the eyes, and he soon fell in love with his favorite toy. That was a Thompson submachine gun, loaded
with one of those Type L 50-round drum magazines. You all know what those things look like because
you’ve all seen the gangster movies. Floyd was a bit reckless with that thing and
you could say that he got his money’s worth out of it. He soon became an associate of bootleggers,
the men who were battling to become top dog in the illegal alcohol trade in the Prohibition
years between 1920 and 1933. Because of his fearlessness and mounting number
of crimes, Floyd got quite the name for himself with the Kansas City underworld. We’re not going to go into detail about
every bank robbery Floyd and his various crews committed, because if we did you’d be watching
this show for hours, Instead we’ll give you a quick rundown of his robberies and then
later get to the crime that made Floyd the poster boy of badness. We said Floyd got off to a bad start as a
bank robber and you could say his second attempt didn’t exactly go smoothly. That was the robbery of the Farmers & Merchants
Bank in Sylvania, Oklahoma, on February 5th, 1930. He actually made a successful getaway but
was arrested three days later for the crime of shooting down a cop…we told you he was
reckless with that gun. Once he was in jail for that murder the cops
also put the bank robbery on him, and this time Floyd was told he was going to spend
12 to 14 years behind bars. That’s also a pretty soft sentence compared
to what you’d get for killing a cop and robbing a bank these days. Do that today and the outcome would be a gurney
and a cocktail of killer drugs pumped into your veins. Anyway, Floyd didn’t much feel like doing
those years in prison and so while on a tram on his way to prison he got out of his handcuffs
somehow and jumped to his freedom. This guy was now really starting to get on
the nerves of law enforcement, but it would be a while until they would catch up with
him again. Floyd embarked on a spree of robberies that
would run from 1931 to 1934. In total he and his accomplices would rob
another 15 banks, which isn’t bad going by any criminal’s standards. It’s a rough estimate, but in today’s
cash Floyd and his colleagues could have taken as much as half a million bucks from banks. His last robbery might have been his least
successful and that’s because at a very small bank in Tiltonsville, Oklahoma, he only
got away with a paltry $500, or just short of $10,000 in today’s money. Still, it was better than milking cows. There just wasn’t much moo-ney around for
farmers back then. We should tell you now that while the American
authorities painted Pretty Boy Floyd as the worst kind of specimen known to man, a lot
of local folks in Oklahoma thought he was just great. That’s because sometimes when he robbed
bank he didn’t just ask for cash but he destroyed all the mortgage papers. What that meant for a bunch of local people
of course was their debts were destroyed. On top of that, he also shared some of the
robbery spoils with poor farmers. That’s why some people called Floyd the
“Robin Hood of the Cookson Hills." We should also fill you in on another matter
and that’s the fact that Pretty Boy Floyd did not go into banks with guns blazing. Sure, he shot cops and other robbers that
kinda got in the way of his criminal activity, but some of his biographers say he never drew
first and he never hurt customers in banks. This little snippet actually appeared in the
newspaper, The Oklahoma Times: “Like the famed marauder of the English
forests, he took money from those who had it—the banks—and divided the proceeds
with the poor. The penniless tenant farmers kept their mouths
shut; they had no scruples about taking contraband wrested from bankers.” A guy that actually grew up around Floyd said
no one was really afraid of him and he wasn’t the monster the cops tried to make out. In fact, he was well-liked and far from the
portrayal of the crazed gangster that the authorities said he was. Just about every crime in that part of America
was being pinned on Floyd, so much so that his mother once came out and told the press
that he hadn’t done one thousandth of the crimes that the cops said he had done. If you were alive back then you’d have seen
lurid articles in the news daily about this insane, heartless, merciless outlaw. Floyd himself once joked, “I guess I've
been accused of everything that has happened, except the kidnapping of the Lindbergh child
last spring.” You could say the media and law enforcement
made sure everyone feared this man, and so in today’s terms you might say Floyd was
the criminal alternative of the coronavirus. And this brings us to the crime of the century,
one which the FBI still blames Pretty Boy Floyd for. This crime would become known as The Kansas
City Massacre. As the name suggests, it was a bloody affair
and one which really got into the hearts and minds of the American public. This is how it went down. A criminal named Frank Nash had escaped prison
but the cops had caught back up with him. Nash was also considered at the time to be
one of America’s most successful bank robbers, but that’s a story for another day. The cops’ plan was to take Nash by train
to the U.S. Penitentiary at Leavenworth in Kansas. They were to take Nash to Union Railway Station
in Kansas City where he would be picked up and taken directly to jail. Pretty Boy Floyd and two associates weren’t
keen on that idea and they planned to bust into that station and get Nash. Armed with a machine gun and two .45 caliber
automatic pistols, the crew set off to the station in a Chevrolet sedan on June 17th,
1933. At that station a bunch of cops and FBI agents
were waiting for their man, not knowing that three criminals were there, too. Of course those guys were heavily armed, so
you could say the fight would be two pistols and a machine gun versus lots of pistols and
a couple of shotguns. When Nash got off the train he was taken by
all those guys to the entrance of the station where a car was waiting for him. At the time he was handcuffed and surrounded
by men, so trying to free him wasn’t exactly going to be easy. Nash was pushed into the car and one agent
sat on each side of him in the back seat, while two other agents were about to get into
the front seats. That’s when one of them noticed armed men,
one armed with a machine gun, running behind a parked green Plymouth. The words that the agents then heard was,
“Let ‘em have it!” What happened next was just that, the armed
men let them have and proceeded to open fire on the cops and the FBI agents. In total four law enforcement officers were
killed, but Nash had also been killed since one of the bullets went right into the back
of his head. One of the surviving officers would later
go on record and say that he heard one of the gangsters mutter, “They’re all dead. Let’s get out of here.” So, those guys got away, but in the melee
how could the FBI be so sure it was Pretty Boy Floyd along with two other men they identified. The evidence was shaky and to this day some
historians doubt that Floyd was involved in this crime, just as he said he hadn’t been
involved in other crimes that had been pinned on him. The guy that was supposed to be Floyd was
said to have been shot in the shoulder, but as you’ll soon find out, Floyd was NOT shot
in the shoulder. The police also got a letter a few days later,
and that letter is said to have been the real thing. It read, “Dear Sirs - I - Charles Floyd
- want it made known that I did not participate in the massacre of officers at Kansas City. Charles Floyd.” Some accounts say he was there, others say
he wasn’t. Some of the underworld at the time said Floyd
was involved, and other gangsters said he wasn’t. Even ballistic tests point to cops shooting
their own by accident, gunshots that were supposed to have come from Floyd. We may never know if he did it, but the FBI
is still certain that Floyd was there. Pretty Boy Floyd then took the spot of America’s
Enemy Number One, which was some feat in those days. The whole country was now looking for this
crazed killer with good looks and a penchant for killing cops. On October, 1934, two guys driving a car were
sure they saw a smartly dressed man that looked just like that guy whose face had been painted
across every newspaper in the country. They told the cops what they’d seen and
two policemen went to where they’d seen the man. That ended badly, with both cops getting shot,
but Floyd took a shot, too, before he got away. What happened next is contested, but the fact
is the cops were on to Floyd and he was eventually chased down. All this happened in rural eastern Ohio and
so the cops pretty much targeted any place where Floyd could be hiding. One version of events tells us that some cops
driving around noticed a suspicious car driving to the back of a corn crib, so they went to
check it out. When they got there a good-looking man jumped
out of the car brandishing a pistol. But this time he was in no state to fight. Floyd was already wounded, and he said to
those cops, “I’m done for; you’ve hit me twice.” The cops on the scene claimed that when they
checked Floyd they found a watch and a chain with ten notches on it- one for each slain
cop. While we may never know if the official story
is true or not, the FBI claimed there were witnesses to the shoot-out, and Floyd wasn’t
just killed in cold blood. But let’s be honest, the FBI at the time
told quite a lot of tall stories and the department was notorious for corruption, so the watch
story and the way he died and possibly Floyd’s involvement in the massacre could all have
been a big lie pie. We at the Infographics Show don’t say that
easily, but if you look at all the different accounts as to how Floyd died, accounts from
various cops and FBI agents, they all tell a different story as to who shot him, where
he was shot and how he eventually died. In 1979, one of the cops that was there said
Floyd was indeed injured and by his very own gun. He said he didn’t want to kill the man,
but only disable him. The FBI field agent in charge however ordered
Floyd executed, and riddled his body with bullets. Yet another cop said that wasn’t true either
and Floyd died another way and there were no last words. The truth is out there, but we’re afraid
to say we don’t know exactly what it is. One thing we can tell you is that Floyd was
never shot in the shoulder during the massacre, as had been made out. When he was finally laid to rest something
like 20 to 40 thousand people attended the funeral. Do you have a taste for crime now and do you
want to hear more? Well, if you do, we have for you one of the
greatest tales ever told about an American criminal. Take a look at this, “The White American
Who Climbed the Ranks of the Chinese Mafia - The White Devil.”
