IN AT THE KILL: THE SHOOTINGS OF MELVIN PURVIS
Situation: A diligent lawman racks up an impressive list of master criminals killed or captured.
Lesson: You can get a rep as a bad-ass gunfighter without ever shooting anyone.
The employee whose candle shines brighter than the boss’s can get his flame snuffed. When you know you’re going into deadly danger, plan and prepare.
You’ve read or seen in movies that Melvin Purvis was the Federal agent who killed John Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd. In the 1973 movie Dillinger, actor Warren Oates, in the title role, is gunned down mano a mano by a Purvis played by the hulking Ben Johnson. That’s BS. A major newspaper at the time of Purvis’ death described him as Dillinger’s slayer. Also BS. And he didn’t kill Pretty Boy either, as falsely depicted in the 2009 movie Public Enemies.
A jealous J. Edgar Hoover ruined his career, and some of his minions even called Purvis a coward. That, I think we can show here was BS too. Melvin Purvis was the Bureau’s youngest Special Agent in Charge (SAC) ever, and Chicago was the epicenter of violent crime at the time; Hoover’s placement of him in charge there demonstrated enormous confidence in Purvis. History shows that this confidence was justified. He was a man who won a reputation as a gunfighter without ever shooting anyone. Let’s look at the shootings he did take an active part in.
Little Bohemia
The office had received a tip that John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson and more gang members were holed up at the Little Bohemia Lodge at Spider Lake, Wis. They were about to leave, and time was of the essence. Purvis had to put together an ad hoc raid team with poor input from informants, little equipment and nothing resembling the training SWAT teams have today.
In his 1936 book American Agent, Purvis wrote: “Gunfire had begun from the upper stories on the left side of the lodge. For a moment, I did not notice the flash of fire from another sector. Then a bullet hit the ground a yard from my right foot, and two other bullets struck trees behind me. I suddenly realized that I was being shot at, and I didn’t like it. The shots were coming from the vicinity of a small cabin on the right side of the lodge. I whirled about; my machine gun jammed; I threw it on the ground and with an automatic pistol returned the fire at a short, slender figure fleeing toward the woods. I was trading fire with Baby-Face Nelson. Nelson, quartered in the cabin, had, with astonishing folly, delayed his departure to swing his gun through a sweeping arc and into the red-spitting darkness. That this was actually Nelson was verified after we traced the movements of the hoodlums who escaped from Little Bohemia.” (1)
Purvis would say two years later, “It is a curious experience to be shot at. I had been frightened and probably still was, but now I was angry. I matched his bullets with my own, and until he vanished in the woods, he got back as good as he sent.” (2)
Second Shooting Of The Night
Purvis would pull a trigger again before he left Little Bohemia. He wrote: “During the night, while we were covering the place, a car approached and turned into the lane. There it stopped, its driver apparently suspecting that something was wrong. We approached the car and commanded the occupants to get out with their hands up. The car immediately began backing out; we tried to disable it by machine-gun fire into the radiator. The car sped on.
Some months later, we learned that its driver was Pat Reilly, a former mascot of the Minneapolis baseball team, who had joined up with this gang to take a minor part. His girl companion was Pat Cherrington, a former night-club dancer and entertainer.”
Purvis continued, “The two had gone to St. Paul, Minn., for the purpose of obtaining more ammunition. Pat Cherrington, upon apprehension, had a slight scratch between her eyes caused by flying glass as a result of the firing upon the car in which she and Reilly were riding that night. They escaped, and as the story later came to me, Pat Reilly hid out in the icy fields all night and finally made his way back to St. Paul.”
Purvis’ son Alston, in his biography of his father, confirms, “Outside, headlights lit Purvis’ back. He turned to see a car he did not recognize — it was Reilly, finally returning to the lodge. Danger, it seemed, came from every direction. Purvis ran toward the car with his pistol drawn, but Reilly quickly sped away. Purvis and Baum fired, taking out the radiator.” (4)
Bottom line: They’d been given poor intelligence and almost no time to plan, and a botched raid left the bad guys in the wind, innocent parties wounded, with one killed by agents in a mistaken identity situation, one of Purvis’ men murdered, and a local constable severely wounded by Nelson. It was a major blot on the escutcheon of J. Edgar Hoover’s organization, and a lot of blame fell on Purvis, much of it unwarranted.
In At The Kill: Dillinger
July 22, 1934, Chicago. Zarkovich and O’Neill of the East Chicago Police have introduced Purvis to Anna Sage, the “lady in red” who has agreed to betray John Dillinger in return for the large reward offered, and a promise that they’ll stay an order to deport her to her native Rumania. Purvis has assembled his Dillinger Squad and arrayed them outside the Biograph Theater. J. Edgar Hoover, realizing that his initial vision of a white-collar bureau of lawyers and accountants was not ideal for coping with the most vicious and heavily armed criminals, recruited some veteran gunfighters. They include the already legendary Jelly Bryce from Oklahoma City, Clarence Hurt and Jerry Campbell from the same department, and Charles Winstead from Texas. Bryce is not in Chicago, but Campbell is one of the agents Purvis stationed across the street. In the spot Purvis thinks the takedown is most likely to occur, he places Winstead and Hurt along with Special Agent Herman Hollis.
Purvis himself identifies Dillinger as he enters the theater with his girlfriend, Polly Hamilton, on one arm and Sage on the other. Purvis discreetly follows them in and spots them in the third row of the crowded theater. He realizes his initial plan of three agents jumping Dillinger before he can reach for a gun simply won’t work. They will have to accost him outside. Purvis is the point man: Stationed near the exit, he will light a cigar when he spots the quarry leaving the theater.
The time comes. Dillinger’s eyes lock with Purvis’ as Public Enemy Number One passes the G-man, but he shows no sign of recognition. Purvis shakily lights his cigar and moves behind Dillinger as the other special agents close in. Purvis would recall, “I was very nervous; it must have been a squeaky voice that called out, ‘Stick ’em up, Johnny, we have you surrounded.’” Simultaneously, Polly tugs at Dillinger’s shirtsleeve. He bends forward in a crouch, reaches for the pistol in his pocket, and starts to run for the alley.
He makes one long stride, Purvis remembers, before the gunfire erupts.
Clarence Hurt, who is said to have killed six criminals in gunfights before joining the Bureau, fires one shot. So does Winstead. So does Herman Hollis. Winstead fires twice more, and Dillinger falls face down at the mouth of the alley. Purvis is close enough to snatch the Colt Pocket Model auto from Dillinger’s hand. It is fully loaded with UMC .380 ACP ammo, cocked and locked with a round in the chamber, and a spare magazine of the same ammunition in another pocket. He has been shot down before he could thumb off the safety. His corpse will show a graze wound and another wound in the chest. The fatal shot, from Winstead’s government-issue 1911 .45 auto, has entered the back of his neck and coursed through the right hemisphere of Dillinger’s brain before exiting under his right eye.
After Dillinger
It’s front-page news across the nation and makes newspapers around the world: The Feds Got Public Enemy Number One. The horrid debacle of Little Bohemia seemed to have been erased from public memory, replaced by cheers and huzzahs. It was only parenthetically noted that two bystanders were hit by FBI bullets. Purvis wrote, “We were pleased to discover later that neither of these women had been seriously injured. They had been hit by spent bullets. The bullets had lodged in the fleshy part of their bodies, which indicated that the speed of the bullets had been retarded by something before hitting them. The most correct theory seemed to be that these bullets had gone through the body of Dillinger, striking those women by accident. They later recovered completely.” (5)
The press wanted to meet the heroes. Purvis’ policy was the same as J. Edgar Hoover’s: The names of “who shot who” were not to be released. This was partly to spare innocent agents from being targeted by the criminal cronies of bad men they’d shot, but also in keeping with the Hoover philosophy that the Bureau was about teamwork, and only the Bureau would get credit. (And, of course, Hoover.) However, reporters naturally flocked to Chicago’s Special Agent in Charge, and it was thus that they gave Purvis most of the credit and publicity. The general public came away thinking that it was Melvin Purvis who’d shot John Dillinger, when in fact he never fired a shot that night.
The limelight focused on Purvis by the media didn’t burn as hot as Hoover’s anger. He insistently instructed Purvis to avoid the reporters. That would prove to be difficult, and indeed, impossible.
Firing On Pretty Boy
The Chicago office that Purvis commanded was after many high-profile kidnappers, robbers, and murderers. High on that list were the perpetrators of the Kansas City Massacre of June 17, 1933. A trio of thugs attempting to “rescue” fellow criminal Frank “Jelly” Nash opened fire on the group of officers transporting him from a train station. In a hail of Thompson submachinegun fire, they killed not only their compatriot in custody but multiple lawmen, including a Federal agent. The killers were believed to be Vern Miller, Adam Richetti and their leader, Charles “Pretty Boy” Floyd. Floyd denied it, but the accumulated evidence, both then and since, implicated him strongly.
Floyd and Richetti seemed to have disappeared, but they in fact had been hiding out for many months in Buffalo, NY, with their girlfriends. In October of 1934, homesickness brought them back to the Midwest. They were driving through Ohio with Floyd at the wheel when he lost control and crashed the car into a tree. Floyd and Richetti took a Thompson submachine gun in addition to their carry pistols and a blanket to wait in the woods while the women walked to town to get a tow truck. However, two men in suits in the woods looked suspicious, and the local Chief of Police of the small town of Wellsville, with two unarmed officers, went to investigate. A comedy of errors ensued. Floyd pulled a gun on Chief John Fultz; Richetti tried to shoot Fultz with his .45, but it misfired; Fultz shot at both men with his service revolver and missed, though he thought he’d hit Floyd in the stomach. Floyd ran and grabbed the Thompson he’d hidden under a blanket, but it was his turn to have a malfunctioning Tommy gun: He got off one shot before it choked. He ditched the SMG and ran; Richetti ran too, with Fultz in pursuit, shooting. Richetti finally surrendered as Floyd made off into the woods.
Purvis and his men raced to the scene, joining what ultimately became 200 cops searching the woods for Floyd. Fultz refused to turn Richetti over to Purvis to face Federal charges for the Kansas City Massacre, and in return, Purvis froze him and his Wellsville officers out of the search, which lasted for two days.
Luck was with Purvis. On October 22, he was with a group comprised of Bureau agents and East Liverpool, Ohio cops when they came upon a farmhouse and saw a man in a blue suit in a car with two other people about to drive away. It was Floyd who had convinced a local widow to feed him and have her brother drive him out of there. Floyd took to his heels, sprinting to a corncrib and then, as the lawmen approached, to a field 200 yards wide. Purvis ordered his men to open fire.
Purvis wrote in his memoirs, “We approached gradually and then saw Floyd running toward the woods; he tried to run a zigzag path across the open field, and he held his .45 automatic pistol in his hand. We commanded him to halt; he failed to do so. One of the special agents had a machine gun; two of us carried revolvers and, knowing that the machine gun would be the most effective weapon with which to stop him, I commanded the other agent with the pistol to drop on the ground in order to get out of the way of the machine gun. He dropped immediately and fired from the ground. The rataplan of machine-gun fire rang out and crackled against the wooded background. Punctuating these crepitating noises were bursts from the shotguns and the pings of the rifles. Floyd was running over a meadowed incline; he dropped. Floyd was lying on the grass, and as we approached him, he struggled in a futile effort to fire his automatic.… I kicked the gun out of his hand and picked it up…. I said to him, ‘You’re Pretty Boy Floyd.’ He replied, ‘I am Charles Arthur Floyd.’” (6)
Pretty Boy refused to answer further questions and soon died on the scene. He had been armed with two 1911 .45s, one modified to fire full auto. It was the latter he had wielded, but not fired, in his final confrontation. It is believed that an arm wound prevented him from doing so.
The newspaper and radio reporters went nuts over it, hailing Purvis as a super-hero who had bagged another big-time bad guy. (Floyd had reportedly murdered some 10 people.) One researcher, Dave Tabler at AppalachianHistory.net, determined that 93 shots had been fired at Floyd. Three had struck home: arm, chest and abdomen. Six shots had been fired by Purvis from his snub-nosed .38 Colt Detective Special. In his report to Hoover, he stated he didn’t think he had hit with any of them. Hoover was furious, not because Purvis had missed, but because he was in the limelight again and Hoover, in the shade. He became more insistent that Purvis stay away from reporters. Unfortunately, while Purvis didn’t go to the press, the press went to Purvis like ants hungry for a picnic.
Near Miss: Baby-Face
The psychopathic killer Baby-Face Nelson was still on the loose, having replaced Dillinger as Public Enemy Number One, and was spotted in the Chicago area by an observer who got the license tag of his new Ford. When the report came into the Bureau’s Chicago office, Sam Cowley and Herman Hollis saddled up. Purvis jumped to his feet and said, “Let’s go!” but Cowley, who had been sent to Chicago by Hoover largely to keep Purvis out of the spotlight, persuaded him to remain in the office. Soon, the Nelson vehicle was spotted on the outskirts of town by veteran agent Bill Ryan, who had been at both Little Bohemia and the Biograph theater, and rookie Special Agent Tom McDade, who was driving the Bureau car. There followed a running gunfight that turned into a deadly dance of U-turns and who-chased-who. Nelson and his companion John Paul Chase put bullets into the G-car, and Ryan’s return fire with his Colt .38 Super pierced Nelson’s radiator. Hollis and Cowley joined the pursuit; the McDade/Ryan vehicle went off the road and out of the fight; and when the overheated Ford lost power, Nelson made a sudden 90º turn and screeched to a halt. The FBI Hudson overshot them and came to a stop at a right angle, 40 to 50 yards away. Nelson and Chase opened fire first with automatic weapons. Hollis returned fire with a Remington Model 11 short-barrel auto shotgun, and Cowley with a Thompson. Nelson was seen to double over, grabbing at his belly, then stand back up and return fire. His weapon jammed — by one account, another Thompson — and he grabbed another, perhaps a Winchester .351 semiauto. He advanced on the FBI men, firing rapidly.
Both agents’ long guns had run dry. Hollis drew his Colt .38 Super but was shot in the head and killed instantly before he could re-engage, and Cowley went down with chest and abdomen hits before he could deploy his .38 Special. Nelson, his wife, and Chase stole the agents’ Hudson and drove away.
Purvis was able to make it to the hospital in time to talk with Cowley, who told him, “I emptied my gun.” He went into surgery but died within hours. The grieving Purvis had been told strictly by Hoover not to speak with the press, but when reporters buttonholed him, he blurted emotionally, “If it’s the last thing I do, I’ll get Baby Face Nelson, dead or alive!” It was a promise he couldn’t carry out: Nelson, who had taken a .45 slug in the belly from Cowley and buckshot in the legs from Hollis, died that night. His widow and Chase dumped his corpse at a cemetery.
An infuriated Hoover responded savagely. He couldn’t outright fire his most famous subordinate, but he subjected him to demotions and humiliations until he resigned. There followed decades of denigration and blackballing, detailed in his son Alston Purvis’ book The Vendetta, which I think is the best biography of his famous father.
The Final Shot
On February 29, 1960, a gunshot rang out at the Florence, SC, home of Melvin Purvis. His wife rushed to the scene to find her husband dead in the hallway, a nickel-plated Colt .45 auto by his hand and blood pouring from a gunshot wound that entered his jaw and exited the top of his head. The gun, once the weapon of a Chicago gangster, was a keepsake that had reportedly been gifted to him by appreciative fellow agents when he resigned from the Bureau. He had been physically ill and psychologically depressed. The official line was suicide, his son thought it was an accident, and that debate continues to the present day.
Lessons
In any organization, achieving superstar status will get you accolades from a good boss and earn the enmity of an egotistical one. No one ever accused J. Edgar Hoover of having a small ego.
Planning is critical. Neither Purvis, Hugh Clegg, who was nominally in charge of the Little Bohemia raid, nor anyone else had been given sufficient field intelligence or planning time when exigent circumstances forced them to do it on the fly.
Nor can we criticize his marksmanship under stress. He was very much a gun guy — he left a collection of 300 firearms, some of which the family donated to the South Carolina Law Enforcement Hall of Fame in Columbia, run by one of us, High Master shooter and retired lawman Jim McCrary. If Purvis missed Nelson running in the dark, note that Nelson, one of the few criminals who really was a skilled gunman, missed him with a machine gun when Purvis was standing still. Floyd, an athletic 30-year-old deliberately zigzagging at perhaps 60 yards was a tough target for anyone with a snub .38, and men with rifles and submachine guns missed as many as 90 out of 93 shots at the same running target.
No one can call Melvin Purvis a coward after he shot it out with Baby Face and sent lead toward Pretty Boy. He confessed to fear — his hands were shaking so much at the Biograph that he told his sons he needed two matches to light the signal cigar, and he tore two buttons off his coat, drawing his revolver. But the man stayed in the game. He understood that without fear, there is no courage. It’s said best in the inscription on his tombstone: Saepe timui sed numquam cucurri. “Often I was afraid, but never I run.”
Footnotes: 1: Purvis, Melvin: American Agent, 1936, Page 11; 2: Ibid., Page 264; 3: Ibid., Pages 15-16; 4: Purvis, Alston: Vendetta, 2005, Page 113; 5: Purvis, Melvin, op. cit.; 6: Ibid., Pages 241-242.
