 |
| Pretty Boy Floyd Mug Shot |
Above is the front page of the October 23, 1934 Lorain Journal with the story, and the inside page with the continuation.
And it all went down in Ohio near East Liverpool.
"Charles Arthur "Pretty Boy" Floyd, the terror of the Oklahoma badlands, lay on an undertaker's slab here today in expiation of his ten years of crime," the story notes.
"Meanwhile, it was assured that Floyd's pal, Adam Richetti, would be retuned to Kansas City on murder charges in connection with the Union station massacre there.
"His black, patent-leather hair slicked down meticulously even in death, to accentuate the palor of his face, the braggart sought for the infamous Kansas City union station massacre a year ago last June bore the marks of four bullets, fired at his back.
"For the law finally caught up with the desperado, listed as public enemy no. 1, since John Dillinger fell under a rain of lead in Chicago three months ago, on an isolated farm, seven miles north of here, late yesterday.
"For Floyd, who, like his kind, boasted he never would be taken alive, it was an ignominious end.
"An autopsy revealed only four bullets had found their mark. Two tore thru him, back to front, sapping the desperado's life within 15 minutes after he was struck down.
"So lacking in drama, so quick, was the death of the desperado that it shocked the peaceful countryside only after the full import of the slaying became known."
An article on that same page reveals that Pretty Boy Floyd's mother had expected her son to come to a bad end. "For more than a year Mrs. W. F. Floyd has tended a vacant plot in the little Akins graveyard near here, seemingly sure that she would live to bury there her errant son, Charles Arthur Floyd, known to the nation as "Pretty Boy."
""My boy was not bad at heart," Mrs. Floyd sighed yesterday when informed the southwestern desperado had been slain in Ohio.
""He has reaped his reward."
The second headline of the newspaper reported the sighting in Ohio of the stratosphere balloon of the Jean Piccards, which had just passed over Lorain County towards Cleveland. You can read more about this historic aviation event here on the University of Chicago Magazine website.
What a passel of news in just two pages! What a seamy country we had then, between the Wars! Criminals gunned down, bank presidents on the run from the law, and boobs checking gas tanks to see if they're empty with a lighted match! Kaboom! Kind of a Yosemite Sam move.
ReplyDeleteLove these old papers.Wonder how much was fake news in those days..thanks again Dan.
ReplyDeleteThe AP story about Pretty Boy's death is lively, but later accounts differ about the circumstances. There is a good summary on Wikipedia:
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Boy_Floyd
Florence Lee, the killer described on the front page, was eventually found guilty of manslaughter. She was sentence to "two to twenty years" per "new sentencing laws" and released on probation a day shy of the fourth anniversary of the shooting.
ReplyDeleteThe jurors said they never considered first degree murder, or acquittal, but there was some argument between second degree murder or manslaughter.
Don - What's your view of the verdict? From the story it sure sounds like she intended to kill him.
ReplyDeletehttps://danielebrady.blogspot.com/2012/05/400-bridge-club.html
ReplyDelete