Pretty Boy Floyd

Charles Arthur Floyd (February 3, 1904 – October 22, 1934), nicknamed Pretty Boy Floyd, was an American bank robber. He operated in the West and Central states, and his criminal exploits gained widespread press coverage in the 1930s. He was seen positively by the public because it was believed that during robberies he burned mortgage documents, freeing many people from their debts. He was pursued and killed by a group of Bureau of Investigation (BOI, later renamed to FBI) agents led by Melvin Purvis. Historians have speculated as to which officers were at the event, but accounts document that local officers Robert "Pete" Pyle and George Curran were present at his fatal shooting and also at his embalming. Floyd has continued to be a familiar figure in American popular culture, sometimes seen as notorious, other times portrayed as a tragic figure, even a victim of the hard times of the Great Depression in the United States. Early life Floyd was born in Bartow County, Georgia, in 1904. 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 would be $50 in 2023) 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 and sentenced to 60 days in jail.