Product Description

Charles Arthur Floyd, aka Pretty Boy Floyd (1904-1934), was one of the last so-called Robin Hood outlaws. He engaged in numerous bank-robbing exploits across the Midwest until federal agents and local police shot him down near East Liverpool, Ohio, on October 22, 1934. This detailed account of his life, crimes and death makes extensive use of FBI reports, government records, local newspapers and contemporary journalistic accounts. In this biography, Jeffery S. King addresses many of the questions still surrounding Floyd, such as whether he had contact with other notorious outlaws of the period, including Dillinger, Alvin Karpis, and Bonnie and Clyde, and whether he was executed by the FBI. He also links Floyd to the infamous Kansas City Massacre. Notable are King's assessments of the effectiveness of the FBI and of J. Edgar Hoover's talent for self-promotion.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #793190 in Books
• Published on: 1999-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

From Booklist
When Pretty Boy Floyd died in a hail of gunfire in 1934, he was a media star whose funeral "was a circus with the mob eating peanuts, drinking corn liquor, spreading picnic lunches, carrying pistols, upsetting gravestones, trampling graves, and ripping down fences as they tried to hear the sermon and catch a glimpse of the notorious outlaw." King's biography is curiously wide-ranging and tightly focused. He trots out much dazzling detail, then doesn't pursue it; for instance, he makes much of Kenny Barker as Floyd's accomplice but fails to discuss Barker's other affiliations or even that he is the famous Ma Barker's son. King allows many other 1930s miscreants to take a bow, but Floyd is in the crosshairs, after all. King's close documentation of Floyd's life and career provides true-crime fans with a gritty portrait of a notorious American and his times that especially attends to the mythologizing effects of the popular media of the day. Thoroughly enjoyable, informative, and suitably bloody. Mike Tribby

Customer Reviews

A bit dated.
This book reads as if it were written in the 1930's not the late 1990's. It relies heavily on press clippings of the time and FBI accounts that have since been shown to shed a favorable light on the new FBI and not the pure truth. Mr. King's story of the Kansas City Massacre is very wrong and he relies on stories told to the FBI by Jim "needles" LaCapra who was a punk underworld figure in K.C. at the time. I just felt a bit let down by this lazy attempt at Floyd's story.

A Short and Violent Life
Author Jeffery King has provided us with an interesting account of the short and violent life of Charles Arthur Floyd. Floyd was one of many depression-era desperadoes who focused on bank-robbing as a way of life. One of the things that struck me was the relative ease of breaking out of jail or prison during this time. Another was the putting on display of the dead bodies of gangsters during this time period for the curious public. Floyd was defended by his mother who claimed he didn't do as many things as he was accused of. He apparently agreed to surrender to authorities if he could be assured of life in prison and not get the death penalty. When no such deal was forthcoming, Floyd realized that his time was short and he would be shot to death. Also of interest in this story is the jealously of F.B.I. Director John Edgar Hoover towards officer Melvin Purvis. Hoover had Purvis leave the scene of the shooting of Floyd immediately to minimize the credit given to him. Maybe Hoover should have been focusing on big time mobsters instead of small time hoodlums like Floyd. There also is controversy regarding the death of Floyd and if it was, indeed, necessary to kill him after he had been wounded in an Ohio field. The author has done an excellent job researching this book, and it is worth your time to read it if you are interested in depression era gangsters.

The Truth About Pretty Boy
At last an author has examined the documentary evidence of Charles "Pretty Boy" Floyd's extensive criminal career, rather than simply relating family and "good ole boy" fables of Floyd's Robin Hood qualities. Or relying on the fantasies of "Blackie" Audett, a minor bank burglar and later Justice Department stool pigeon at Alcatraz who invented tall tales of having known or worked with Pretty Boy, Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, the Barker-Karpis gang and just about every other major criminal of the '30's. Audett claimed to have witnessed the crowning achievement of Floyd's career, the Kansas City Union Station massacre--except that by his account Floyd wasn't there and someone else did the shooting. Various other authors--Lou Louderback, Michael Wallis, and Jay Robert Nash (who also bought Audett's tale of having helped Dillinger make a permanent escape by having a double slain in his place!)--have accepted Audett's story of Floyd's innocence. Many of us who have researched the massacre with more care have long been skeptical of Audett's claim but only Jeffery King has bothered to ascertain just where Audett was at the time of the massacre. He was in Leavenworth until July 1933, a whole month after the Union Station killings! King makes a good case for the complicity of Floyd in the massacre and does an equally admirable job of tracking down the elusive details of Floyd's early career in crime, including the fabled Akins post office burglary, which did not involve the theft of $350 in pennies, the probable true origin of the famous nickname, and the many bank robberies. He also nails down the often-doubted but very probable (and brief) association of Floyd with Dillinger and "Baby Face" Nelson and gets us as close as we'll probably ever be to the real story of Pretty Boy's death at the hands of the FBI. This is investigative journalism at its finest and also displays an objectivity sadly lacking in the thicker sweeping bio offered earlier by Michael Wallis.