Read Public Enemies for Free Online Page B

officers in a shoot-out near Springfield, Missouri, in what remains the largest such massacre in American history. An Associated Press dispatch carried speculation that Floyd was involved, and Oklahoma newspapers leaned heavily on the local angle.
    It was the spark that fired the Floyd legend. Floyd, wrote the Muskogee Daily Phoenix, now “steps into the rank of real ‘bad hombres’ with the questionable honor of [killing] 11 men, all officers, to his credit. The exploits of Billy the Kid . . . pale before the cool, monotonous killings of the fair haired ‘Pretty Boy’ Floyd, who has introduced the submachine gun and the armored vest to the Oklahoma bad men.” The notion of a modern-day Billy the Kid was too appealing for the newspapers to ignore. In January 1932 alone Floyd was identified as robbing banks in three separate towns, only one of which he probably robbed. It didn’t matter. The Daily Oklahoman called for mobilization of the National Guard; on January 14 insurance rates on rural Oklahoma banks were doubled, a move blamed directly on Floyd. Governor William “Alfalfa Bill” Murray announced a $1,000 reward for his capture.
    It was a classic case of media hysteria, of hype that would shape reality that would in turn create a legend. Every morning that winter brought a story of Floyd’s exploits, a bank robbed, a supposed sighting, speculation where he might strike next. Lawmen combed eastern Oklahoma in a futile manhunt. Floyd understood the situation and made a crude bid for public support. In a letter to the governor, he demanded that the reward be withdrawn. “I have robbed no one but the monied men,” Floyd wrote, a claim guaranteed to find favor in rural Oklahoma. Floyd thus cannily positioned himself as an attacker of only “monied” interests, making the governor their defender. In doing so he created a socioeconomic debate he was guaranteed to win.
    Floyd’s fame grew after he survived a pair of wild shoot-outs with police in the streets of Tulsa. When Governor Murray appointed a special investigator named Erv Kelley to track him down, Floyd shot Kelley dead in a midnight firefight. But by late 1932, Floyd was growing weary of life on the run. Hiding with relatives, he attempted to “retire” by supervising a ragtag group of bank robbers led by a grimy alcoholic named Adam Richetti. But Richetti’s gang proved hapless, and by the spring of 1933, Floyd had withdrawn from bank robbing altogether, preferring to spend his days baking pies in his cousins’ kitchens. Only when several of his relatives were arrested did Floyd decide to leave Oklahoma for a time. He had arrived at Joe Hudiberg’s farmhouse that Thursday night looking for a car.
    As Hudiberg walked toward his house after locking the garage, he heard a noise behind him. Something was bumping against the garage doors. As Hudiberg turned to investigate, his black Pontiac came crashing through the wooden doors. Dumbfounded, he watched as the car roared through his yard and shot onto the road. Hudiberg’s friends ran to their cars and mounted a fruitless pursuit. Far ahead of them, Pretty Boy Floyd turned north, toward Kansas City.
     
     
    Two mornings after Floyd burst out of an Oklahoma schoolteacher’s garage, a man named Horace Grisso walked through the streets of New Carlisle, Ohio, north of Dayton. Grisso, the bookkeeper at the New Carlisle National Bank, stopped when he got to the bank’s front door and took out his keys and opened it. His footsteps echoed on the marble floor as he crossed to the teller cages. The moment he stepped behind the cages, three men wearing handkerchiefs across their faces rose before him. “All right, buddy, open the safe,” ordered the trio’s twenty-nine-year-old leader, who that morning was robbing his first bank.
    His name was John Dillinger, and he had been released from the Indiana State Pen barely three weeks before. Like Floyd, Dillinger was a nobody from nowhere, one more ex-con tossed