The Life and Death of Pretty Boy Floyd

by Jeffery S. King

Book Overview

Charles Arthur Floyd was involved in numerous bank-robbing exploits across the Midwest until federal agents and local police shot him down in Ohio on October 22, 1934. This volume gives a detailed... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0873386507
• ISBN13: 9780873386500
• Release Date: June 1998
• Publisher: Kent State University Press
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

The Life and Death of Pretty Boy Floyd

I was very happy with the book I received, especially for the price. It was a brand new book, but I sure didn't pay the "new" bookstore price. I haven't read the book yet, as I let my mom read it first, but she said it's a really good book.

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.

Compelling Reading!

Jeffrey King has produced a well-researched biography of Pretty Boy Floyd, one of the most infamous bank robbers of the 1930s. Although filled with documentation, this book reads like a novel. I appreciated King's historical analysis of the evidence regarding Floyd's life and death and I had a hard time putting the book down. I found the book to be especially gripping in the section dealing with the final hunt for Floyd by the FBI and Floyd's demise in a rural area of Ohio. The book is reminiscent of John Toland's "The Dillinger Days," which is another fine volume about famous bank robbers of the Depression Era. My only criticism of the book is that King failed to emphasize sufficiently the self-centered, sociopathic character of Floyd. For example, on the last page of the text of the book, King stated that Floyd "had many virtues, such as courage, loyalty to his family and friends, and compassion for those who struggled to survive during the bleak days of the Depression" (p. 210). On the contrary, Floyd cheated on his wife (he often lived with another lover, Beulah Baird, and was known to frequent brothels), and stole from, expoited, threatened, harassed, kidnapped, or killed many innocent victims, including many poor and middle class people. Today, Floyd would be diagnosed as an antisocial personality disorder and he was a sinister man whose criminal deeds, including numourous murders, reaped havoc on dozens, if not hundreds of people. This shortcoming does not overshadow the rest of King's fine work, however. In conclusion, I commend King on completing an excellent book and I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys a compelling read.