Charles Arthur Floyd (February 3, 1904 – October 22, 1934), nicknamed Pretty Boy Floyd, was an American bank robber whose crimes across the Midwestern and South Central United States received widespread press coverage in the 1930s. Floyd developed a positive reputation among some members of the public, in part because he reportedly destroyed mortgage documents during robberies, allegedly relieving debtors of their obligations.
Floyd was ultimately tracked down and killed by officers from the Bureau of Investigation in a raid led by Melvin Purvis. Contemporary accounts also place local officers Robert "Pete" Pyle and George Curran at both the shooting and Floyd's subsequent embalming. Floyd has continued to be a familiar figure in American popular culture, sometimes seen as notorious criminal, a tragic product of the Great Depression, or an antiheroic outlaw figure.
Floyd was born in Adairsville, Georgia, in 1904 to Walter Lee Floyd and Mamie Helene (née Echols). His family moved to Akins, Oklahoma, in 1911, and he grew up there. He was arrested at age 18 after he stole $3.50 (adjusted for inflation it would be $67.32 in 2025) from a local post office. Three years later, he was arrested for a payroll robbery on September 16, 1925, in St. Louis, Missouri, and was sentenced to five years in prison. He served three and a half years before being granted parole.
Floyd entered into partnerships with criminals in the Kansas City underworld after his parole. He committed a series of bank robberies over the next several years, and it was during this period that he acquired the nickname "Pretty Boy", although accounts differ. In one account, Orville Drake gave him the name because he would wear a white button-up dress shirt and slacks to work in the oil fields. The men on the rig began calling him "Pretty Boy" which was later turned into "Pretty Boy Floyd". In another account, the payroll master in the 1925 St. Louis Kroger office holdup described one of the robbers as "a pretty boy with apple cheeks". Floyd despised the nickname.
In 1929, Floyd was wanted in numerous cases. On March 9, he was arrested in Kansas City on investigation, and again on May 7 for vagrancy and suspicion of highway robbery, but he was released the next day. Two days later, he was arrested in Pueblo, Colorado, and charged with vagrancy. He was fined $50.00 ($937.5 in 2025) and sentenced to 60 days in jail.
Floyd was arrested in Akron, Ohio, under the alias Frank Mitchell, on March 8, 1930, and charged with the murder of an Akron police officer who had been killed during a robbery that evening. He was arrested in Toledo, Ohio, for bank robbery and murder on May 20. He was convicted of a Sylvania, Ohio, bank robbery and sentenced on November 24, 1930, to 12 to 15 years in Ohio State penitentiary, but he escaped.
Floyd was a suspect in the deaths of Kansas City brothers Wally and Boll Ash, who were rum-runners found dead in a burning car on March 25, 1931. Members of his gang killed Patrolman R. H. Castner of Bowling Green, Ohio, on April 23. On July 22, Floyd killed federal agent Curtis C. Burke in Kansas City, Missouri.
Former sheriff Erv Kelley of McIntosh County, Oklahoma, was shot by Floyd while trying to arrest him on April 7, 1932. In November, three members of Floyd's gang attempted to rob the Farmers and Merchants Bank in Boley, Oklahoma.
Despite his life of crime, Floyd was viewed positively by the general public. When he robbed banks, he allegedly destroyed mortgage documents, but this has never been confirmed and may be myth. One of four elements of the "outlaw-hero" American folktype is that the person "steals from the rich and gives to the poor"; Floyd is one example of a historical person who has become an outlaw-hero with this element in folklore. Floyd was often protected by locals of Oklahoma who referred to him as "Robin Hood of the Cookson Hills".
Floyd and Adam Richetti became the primary suspects in a gunfight known as the "Kansas City massacre" on June 17, 1933, which resulted in the deaths of four law enforcement officers. J. Edgar Hoover leveraged the incident to seek more authority to pursue Floyd, although historians are divided as to whether Floyd was involved. The gunfight was an attack by Vernon Miller and accomplices on lawmen escorting robber Frank "Jelly" Nash to a car parked at the Union Station in Kansas City, Missouri. Kansas City detectives William Grooms and Frank Hermanson, Oklahoma police chief Otto Reed, and special agent Ray Caffrey were killed. Nash was also killed while sitting in the car, shot in the head by his would-be rescuers. Two other Kansas City police officers survived by slumping forward in the back seat and feigning death. As the gunmen inspected the car, another officer responded from the station and fired at them, forcing them to flee. Miller was found dead on November 27, 1933, outside Detroit, Michigan, having been beaten and strangled.
Floyd and Richetti were allegedly Miller's accomplices. Evidence against them included their presence in Kansas City at the time, eyewitness identifications (although these have been contested), Richetti's fingerprint recovered from a beer bottle at Miller's hideout, an underworld account naming Floyd and Richetti as the gunmen, and Hoover's firm advocacy of their guilt. Fellow bank robber Alvin Karpis claimed that Floyd confessed involvement. However the bandit alleged to have been Floyd was reported to have been wounded by a gunshot to the shoulder in the attack, and Floyd's body showed no sign of this injury when examined later. The underworld account identifying Floyd and Richetti as the killers was offset by equally unreliable underworld accounts proclaiming their innocence. The Floyd family has maintained that Floyd admitted to many other crimes, but vehemently denied involvement in this one, as did Richetti.
Kansas City police received a postcard dated June 30, 1933, from Springfield, Missouri, that 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". The police department believed the note to be genuine. Floyd also reportedly denied involvement in the massacre to the agents who had fatally wounded him. In addition, a 2002 book on the massacre attributes at least some of the killing to friendly fire by a lawman who was unfamiliar with his weapon, based on ballistic tests.
J. Edgar Hoover, director of the BOI, named Floyd "Public Enemy No. 1" following the death of John Dillinger. Local police and F.B.I. agents led by Melvin Purvis under the direct supervision of Inspector Samuel P. Cowley shot Floyd on October 22, 1934, in a corn field in East Liverpool, Ohio. Accounts differ on who shot him and the manner in which he died.
Floyd and Richetti had left Buffalo, New York, on October 18, and their vehicle slid into a telephone pole in heavy fog at 3 am the following morning. No one was injured, but the car was disabled, so they sent two female companions to get a tow truck. They planned to have the women accompany the tow truck driver into town and have the vehicle repaired while they waited by the roadside.
After dawn on October 19, motorist Joe Fryman and his son-in-law David O'Hanlon passed by, observing two men dressed in suits lying by the roadside. They thought it suspicious and informed Wellsville, Ohio, police chief John H. Fultz. Fultz investigated with officers Grover Potts and William Erwin. Richetti saw the lawmen and fled into the woods, pursued by two officers, while Fultz went towards Floyd. Floyd immediately drew his gun and fired. During the ensuing gunfight, Fultz was wounded in the foot and Potts was wounded in the right shoulder. Floyd fled into the forest. After enlisting the help of another local police officer, Chester C. Smith (February 14, 1895 – October 23, 1984), who had served as a sniper during World War I, the group of lawmen resumed the pursuit and successfully apprehended Richetti, but Floyd remained on the run. News of the search quickly spread. Local police in the surrounding areas were mobilized, and a team of BOI agents was quickly dispatched.