Although it had been quickly established by the fatally wounded Akron police officer, Harland Manes, before he expired that Floyd was not the man who had shot him, there was always the erroneous belief that Choc was an accomplice. This myth was perpetuated by newspaper and magazine reports as well as by historical crime books that directly tied Choc to Mane’s death. A few even portrayed Choc as the actual triggerman.
The Akron police knew better. They were satisfied that at the precise time Manes was being gunned down, Floyd was with Bill Gannon, owner of the after-hours joint on Kenmore Boulevard. The two men had left Gannon’s residence and were down at the jail house trying to bail out a man and woman Choc knew, friends who had been arrested at Gannon’s earlier that evening. Choc, however, had been positively identified as one of the robbers at the Sylvania bank robbery and he was not happy about being back in jail.
While Choc waited for his trial to begin on the bank-robbery charge, the true killer of Harland Manes was slowly making his way through the judicial system in Akron. James Bradley spent the rest of his days known by his favorite handle, Bert Walker, and it was this identity that was used during court proceedings. As Walker, he pleaded not guilty to the charge of first-degree murder, and with court-appointed counsel, he went to trial in May.
Walker was a forty-two-year-old native of Cairo, Illinois, and had a long and varied criminal record, dating back to grand larceny charges in Oklahoma in 1917. After years in and out of state pens, Walker had first met Choc Floyd in the mid-1920s when they were both doing time at Jeff City. Floyd apparently later helped Walker with his escape from a prison farm on October 2, 1929. All that was in the past, however. There was no way Choc could come to his friend’s rescue this time.
Walker’s trial for the murder of Manes lasted only five days. Defense attorney Robert Azar did his best, but George Hargreaves, the prosecutor, had a solid case, including trump cards such as expert ballistics testimony that pointed straight at the defendant and his .38 pistol. Walker took the stand in his own defense, but his alibi was weak and unconvincing. On May 17, the jury retired to deliberate his fate. Seven ballots were taken. At no time, however, did the question of innocence or guilt enter into the discussions. It was only the defense’s recommendation of mercy that kept the jurors in debate for three hours. The last ballot, however, was unanimous. They would show no mercy. Walker was found guilty of first-degree murder and his punishment would be death.
On May 21, Common Pleas Judge E. D. Fritch sentenced Walker in open court to death by electrocution. Material witness Nellie Maxwell, the forty-four-year-old hellcat, whom Akron authorities now knew had previously served time in five institutions and was one of the most notorious shoplifters in the Southwest, was released. She was paid one dollar a day for every day she had been held, and went on to serve more prison time in Texas for grand larceny.
Further defense motions for Walker were filed and overruled. Finally, a stay of execution was exhausted in October when the court of appeals reviewed the case and refused to grant a new trial. By that time, Walker was on death row at the state prison at Columbus and was prepared to die.
On the evening of November 10, 1930, Walker ate a hearty meal in his death-row cell. Reverend Bill Denton from Akron’s Furnace Street Mission came to the prison to tend to the condemned man’s spiritual needs. Walker’s defense lawyers also showed up to witness their client’s death.
Walker first had to endure some added torture. Just minutes before his scheduled execution, he listened to the drone of dynamos send the death current through his cell mate, Charles Cramer, a twenty-six-year-old who had also been convicted of first-degree murder. Then Walker talked to Denton and some of the guards. He finally admitted that Walker was not his real name, but he chose to use it in death to spare his family any further embarrassment. He also maintained that he had not killed Harland Manes, but he did not appear overly upset and seemed to accept his fate. When the guards came to his holding cell, Walker looked up and said, “Oh, here they come.”
Preacher Denton accompanied Walker down the dimly lit corridor to the death chamber. “He walked to the chair as tough as could be,” Denton later said. Walker even cracked a joke.
“I’m due for a shocking this evening,” he told Denton and the guards.
At 7:45 P.M., Walker was strapped into the electric chair. A rubber mask was slipped down over his head and face. The signal was given to throw the switch and a lethal wave of electricity poured into his stiffened body. At 7:48 P.M. Walker, now forty-three years old, was pronounced dead.
Denton took the dead man’s body back to Akron for burial. A small group, including Walker’s lawyers and some other men from the Furnace Street Mission, gathered at the Prentice Funeral Home and followed the funeral car to the graveyard. In keeping with Walker’s wishes, there was no formal service. Walker practiced no religion in life and wanted no part of religion in death.
Later Denton admitted that before he died, Walker had given him a message to pass on to Choc Floyd. Denton would never reveal the message, nor would he say whether he had delivered it to Floyd in his jail cell in Toledo. Back in Akron, however, Ed McDonnell, the chief of detectives who had arrested Walker and the others at the canary cottage, was not bashful about discussing some advice Walker had given him.
“He said to me one day while I was talking to him in the county jail, ‘You think I’m tough, but you haven’t heard the last of that Mitchell boy yet.’”
On May 29, 1930, just nine days after Choc had been taken from Akron to Toledo, J. Edgar Hoover, director of the Bureau of Investigation, sent the Toledo police chief a complete abstract of the criminal record on file of Charles Arthur Floyd. It spelled out Choc’s much-checkered resume, including all the arrests in Kansas City. Prosecutors knew they were not dealing with a complete novice.
Like the district attorney in St. Louis in 1925, the prosecution team in Toledo had such an airtight case against Choc in the Sylvania bank job that he decided to plead guilty. That did not mean Choc had any notion of going back to the penitentiary without putting up a fight.
“I never will be taken alive if I can help it,” Choc told fellow prisoners at Toledo. “I’d rather be killed than serve a year in prison.”
On November 24, 1930, the day on which he was to be brought before a judge for sentencing, Choc managed to slip away from the barbershop inside the county jail and join some visitors who were exiting the building. He made his way to the front steps. He had almost reached the street when he was nabbed by an officer who recognized him and, by chance, happened to be going to the jail on business. Foiled in his try for freedom, Choc was brought before the judge. He entered his guilty plea, and was sentenced to twelve to fifteen years in the penitentiary. The promise Choc had made to himself when he was released from Jeff City about never going back to a state prison could no longer be kept.
Finally, the date arrived when Choc was to be taken to the Big House at Columbus. It was December 10, 1930, exactly one month to the day since Walker’s execution. Deputy Sheriffs Joe Packo and Joe Danielak rode with Choc, who was handcuffed to another prisoner, from the county jail to the station, where they all boarded a train. Unlike his train ride to the pen at Jeff City, Choc had no candy bars to hand out. He knew all too well what life was like behind the walls of a state prison.
It was a Wednesday, with only about a dozen shopping days left until Christmas. Given the state of the economy, however, Christmas gifts were few and far between that December. In the Bronx that day, it would take twelve mounted police officers to drive a milling throng of angry depositors away from a branch of the Bank of the United States at Freeman Street and Southern Boulevard. The crowd formed and refused to leave the bank when word got out that only a few hundred in line inside the bank would be paid. Finally, order was restored when an official appeared and promised that the bank would remain open until all persons in line received their money. Funds were rushed from another bank to take care of the payments and customer demands.
Choc did not speak much to the other prisoner or the guards. As he sat in handcuffs, he looked out the window at the Ohio countryside after the New York Central train departed Toledo. He must have been thinking about Eddie Adams, the Kansas bandit who had worked for old man Callahan in Wichita. Choc knew the story all too well of how Adams had escaped going to prison by leaping from a moving train. When the journey was a little more than halfway over, Choc decided to make his move.
The train was near the town of Kenton on the Scioto River. Two deputies were either dozing or had forgotten about the convicted men. Handcuffed to the other prisoner, Choc rolled over him until the chains twisted and finally broke. Then Choc bolted from his seat and kicked out a window in the bathroom. In an instant, he plunged through the opening and, quicker than an Oklahoma jackrabbit, he was gone. The other prisoner attempted to follow, but the guards came to their senses. They grabbed him and pulled him back inside the train car before he, too, could make his escape.
Choc hit the ground hard and rolled down a steep embankment covered with rocks and winter stubble. He came to rest in a thicket of tall dried grass. Down the track, he heard the train screeching to a halt. Then he heard men shouting. He knew the search was on. Scratched and bruised, Choc felt his heart beating at a rapid pace. He fought to catch his breath. It was cold that December, but the temperature was the least of his worries. Less than two years later, in his exclusive interview with Oklahoma reporter Vivian Brown, he gave his only public statements about the escape.
“Instead of jumping up and running,” said Charley, “I lay as still as I ever did in my life and tried to keep from breathing. At times they almost walked over me. I could have reached out and grabbed one of them. But luck was with me and it was a dark night. They went up the track a ways and I crawled over into a cane patch and sat there watching them.”
After what seemed an eternity, Choc could no longer see nor hear the deputies and train crewmen poking through the weeds. Even after the train started up again and continued on down the tracks, Choc stayed hidden.
“After daylight, I walked to a farmer’s house,” Choc told Vivian Brown, “got his gun and made him drive me down the highway.”
Charles Arthur Floyd would never be in custody again. For the next three years and ten months, he would remain “on the scout,” as the old Oklahoma bandits always put it when describing their time on the outlaw trail. As quickly as he shed the handcuffs, Choc was raring to get back in business as soon as possible.
He made his way mostly by night, hitching rides with truckers and farmers and, once in a while, with salesmen who stopped at hamburger stands or cafes for coffee and blue plate specials. He did most of his traveling on back roads that took him through small towns in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri. In those places, night drivers would slow down when they motored past the town square, where the constables or deputies dozed in worn-out Fords. Inside the frame houses that dotted the terrain, residents listened to their radios that played “Embraceable You,” the nation’s latest number-one tune. They read, in this harshest of Christmas seasons, from their family Bibles and prayed that the Lord would stave off the bad times that had brought ruin to the fields and factories.
As much as he might have wanted to see the family around the Christmas tree in Oklahoma, Choc went straight back to Kansas City to take stock of his situation and consider his options. They were slim.
His latest partner that winter was Willis Miller. Unlike Bert Walker and some of the others Choc had run with in Toledo and Akron, Miller was slightly younger than Charley. He had spent his youth as a “bad boy” around Ironton, Ohio, just across the Ohio River from Ashland, Kentucky. Although he was young, Miller was every bit as dangerous as the more seasoned bandits.
Known as Billy the Killer, a dark nickname earned six years before he met Choc, he had killed his own brother, Joseph (“Alabama Joe”) Miller, in a gun battle. The brothers had dueled over a woman in one of the joints at Hell’s Half-Acre, a notorious bootlegger hideout on the Ohio and Pennsylvania border near the town of East Liverpool, Ohio.
Miller was tried in Midland, Pennsylvania, for murder, but was acquitted when he successfully pleaded self-defense. Nonetheless, Judge William A. McConnell ordered the defendant held under bond and, because of an old English law that was still in effect, put Miller in prison for more than a year in the Beaver County jail. Since then, Miller had spent his time slipping over penitentiary walls and out of handcuffs. He was wanted by authorities in several Midwestern states who wanted to talk to him about some unsolved murders, robberies, and prison escapes.
There was always loose talk among both criminal and police circles that Choc and Miller had actually hooked up with one another in Toledo soon after Charley Floyd’s sensational escape. Rumor was that they had bumped off a few small banks in Michigan before they had gone to Kansas City.
However, it is unlikely Choc would have immediately returned to Toledo, the city where he had been convicted of the Sylvania bank job. He undoubtedly still would have had a bad taste in his mouth for that particular city. Also, no official records indicated the two bandits worked together until early 1931 when Choc and Miller were seen in each other’s company, both in Kansas City as well as in such oil patch towns as Earlsboro, Seminole, and Shawnee. Bradley Floyd’s oldest sons recalled that their Uncle Charley and his friend Bill Miller visited their home near Earlsboro that winter.
“Miller always had his pistol out and was rubbing it,” said Glendon Floyd. “I remember he had his gun fixed up so it wasn’t like a regular revolver that you just put the bullets in the cylinder and you could hear them rattle around. Miller had these inserts in each chamber so you couldn’t hear a thing.”
Both men spent a great deal of time at Mother Ash’s place on Holmes Street in Kansas City. They liked the Ash residence not just because it provided cover and was the scene of some ripsnorting poker parties but because of the two young women still affiliated with the Ash brothers who resided there. Choc was still drawn to Beulah, while Miller was attracted to her sister, Rose. It quickly became obvious to others who frequented Mother Ash’s that the attractive sisters were also smitten with the two flashy bandits.
Just a couple of minor details—a pair of jealous brothers—stood in the way of Charley and his friend in their pursuit of Beulah and Rose on a more permanent basis. Even after the sisters called a halt to their relationships with Walter and William and moved into their own apartment, there was still a great deal of tension. Choc realized that the sticky situation concerning the Baird sisters was fast coming to an ugly climax.
Then in March of 1931, Choc and Miller began hearing street rumors that the Ash boys had gotten themselves in deep trouble over some narcotics transactions. In order to stay out of the pokey or, worse yet, get themselves in dutch with federal agents, the Ash brothers were trying to cut deals at others’ expense.
Later in the month when police began cracking down on bootleg and gambling operations, there were some folks left scratching their heads, wondering just who was providing location tips and other inside information to the law.
Near the end of that month, on March 22, police swept through several downtown Kansas City gambling halls. They arrested more than one hundred patrons and a score of game keepers. They seized dice, cards, and cash. With five halls already raided, the raiders announced they were seeking “loose ends” to complete their operation.
One of the places that was raided, located at 1117 McGee, was described by visitors as “open to all who entered, without questioning.” Craps, poker, and blackjack games were the most popular. Several patrol wagons were used to transport prisoners to police headquarters. One wagon’s load was so great, it broke down en route.
Choc was almost picked up that night when officers raided a speakeasy on Linwood Boulevard, but he managed, as was becoming his custom, to slip away. It was a close call, too close for a man wanted by the law in Ohio for bank robbery and escape. There had been no love lost between Choc and Miller and the Ash brothers in the first place. However, if the scuttlebutt was true about them going back to their stool-pigeon ways, then the time had come to take action.
Wallace and William Ash left their mother’s residence on Holmes in their blue Chevrolet sedan about 8:00 P.M. on the evening of March 25. It was just three days after the gambling raids. They told relatives that they were going down to a spot on Eighth Street and Grand Avenue to take in the “Amos ’n’ Andy” radio show. Sadie Ash did not believe this. She later told police officers that her sons had been lured away from home. Sadie explained that earlier the same evening, her sons had taken off in their Chevy after William had received a telephone call. It was a feminine voice. Sadie thought it was Rose calling her estranged husband, suggesting that a reconciliation was in the works. Three hours after the Ash boys left, one of their sisters, Freida Ash, recalled seeing their blue auto tearing back up Holmes. Both of her brothers looked grim, she recalled later, and as they passed, she yelled out to them, “You better be careful.”
Babe Walker, another neighborhood resident, was also out on the street at that time. She also saw the Ash brothers as they drove up Holmes. Speeding close behind the Ash automobile was another car, as Babe later told the police, and inside this second vehicle were Charley Floyd and Bill Miller. That was the last time anyone saw either William or Wallace Ash alive.
In a ditch in the rural Rosedale area across the state border in Kansas, their bodies were found March 27. Their snitching days were over. They had been shot execution-style. Each had bullet wounds in the back of the head. The shootings were at close range, and after they were struck, the brothers pitched facedown in a ditch filled with mud and water from late-winter rains. Their blue Chevrolet was parked nearby. The car had been set on fire, and was burned beyond recognition.
Police officers immediately considered Choc Floyd and Bill Miller as the most likely suspects in these ruthless killings. There was a clear motive. Even though the accounts of Freida Ash and Babe Walker were somewhat prejudicial, their statements about seeing the two vehicles racing up Holmes the night of the twin killings provided evidence.
The style of the homicides was out of character for Choc. When it came to Billy the Killer, though, none of the investigating officers hesitated about fingering him as a murderer. Any man who could shoot down his own brother over a woman would have little trouble doing in a resentful husband with a tendency to run his mouth with the cops. It was reasonable to guess that if Miller was involved, so was Choc Floyd. If Choc and Miller were indeed the killers, as most police officials and even some of the Floyd family assumed, then these slayings on a country road marked the first time that Charley Floyd was ever placed at a murder scene.
Police made a feeble stab at finding the men, but given the dubious backgrounds of the brothers, their murders were never a top priority. Mother Ash grieved and screamed for retribution, and furnished authorities with many tips about the whereabouts of Floyd and Miller. She claimed she had received a warning to stop. The anonymous note read, “Quit stooling or we’ll give you what the boys got. We’re watching and we know what you’re doing all the time.” No charges were ever filed, however, and the murder of the Ash brothers remained an unsolved mystery.
There was little mystery, however, about who was now keeping steady company with the “bereaved” women. Rose was on the muscled arm of none other than Billy the Killer, while Beulah was with her own Pretty Boy. The amorous quartet beat a quick retreat out of Kansas City. They spent some time down in Oklahoma, in the Shawnee area, and then, in early April of 1930, they went east through Arkansas and Kentucky to pick up where they had left off in the past. Some authorities in Kentucky theorized that Floyd and Miller financed their spring trek by knocking off the Mount Zion Deposit Bank for two thousand dollars.
The honeymoon proved short and violent. Just a few weeks after the Ash brothers’ bodies were found, Choc and Miller showed up back in northwestern Ohio and southern Michigan with their two lady friends. They were suspected of renting a cottage near Algonac, Michigan, on the Canadian border. A police raid yielded nothing. Officers followed a trail that led them from Toledo all the way to Hanging Rock, a small Ohio town near the Kentucky line. The nomadic bandits were believed to have robbed a bank at Whitehouse, Ohio, of sixteen hundred dollars but, once again, they vanished without a trace.
Then in mid-April, Choc Floyd, Miller, and their lady friends were spotted in Bowling Green, the seat of Wood County and the home of a state university named for the town.
The foursome were driving a sedan with Missouri license plates. They soon aroused suspicion in downtown Bowling Green, where merchants and police officers watched the strangers for a week or so. Some thought at first they might be shoplifters, while other shopkeepers expressed incredulity about all the money the two couples were spending. For a few days, the newcomers vanished; then suddenly they reappeared on Thursday afternoon, April 16, 1931. Alerted police officers figured them to be robbers casing a bank on South Main Street.
Bowling Green Police Chief Carl “Shorty” Galliher and Officer Ralph “Zibe” Castner answered the call. They cruised downtown in a squad car to check out the scene and make an assessment. Galliher had the reputation of “being afraid of nothing,” according to Grant Pansel, a fellow police officer. “He was proud of the fact that no one had robbed a bank in Bowling Green,” Pansel recalled.
The two officers slowly drove down Main Street and spied the two women window-shopping. In a few minutes, Beulah and Rose were joined by Choc Floyd and Bill Miller. They were just about to enter a store and buy some dresses for their ladies.
“Miller and Floyd were all duded up because they had just come out of a barbershop,” said Don Wilcox, another former city policeman. “Zibe [Castner] got out of the car on the driver’s side, and was unprotected. Shorty [Galliher] got out on the passenger side and was protected by the car.”
Tommy Vail, who eventually became chief of police, later reconstructed the confrontation between the bandit suspects and the two officers. Vail had been up in Toledo that morning and returned to Bowling Green on the streetcar just after the lawmen made their move on the outsiders.
“They [Miller and Floyd] cased a bank on South Main Street, and then were walking over to Clough Street when Galliher and Castner pulled up in their car to investigate,” said Vail. “The ‘gangsters’ were accompanied by their girl friends, Rose Ash, 23, and Beulah Baird, 21, sisters from Kansas City. When the police got out of their car, that is when the shooting started. It was quite a thing.”
As soon as he saw the two cops climb out of the squad car with their guns already drawn, Choc yelled, “Bill! Duck!”
Miller whipped out his .45, the “quiet” gun that did not make any rattling noise. He pointed it toward the policemen and fired. Miller managed to get off only a single round. Galliher and Floyd drew their guns and also opened fire. Two of Choc’s bullets found their mark. Castner fell to the pavement, seriously wounded in the abdomen and right thigh, but he continued to fire his service revolver at the suspects. After falling to the pavement, Castner kept firing from a prone position. Bullets ricocheted off buildings and the curbs. Pedestrians ran screaming for cover. Miller was hit once in the stomach and collapsed dead on the street. During the brief gun battle, the two sisters ran screaming. A stray bullet struck Beulah in her skull and she fell, seriously wounded, not far from Miller’s lifeless body. Rose ducked for cover.
When he saw the crumpled bodies of Miller and Beulah lying on the ground, Choc’s survival instincts took over. He kept firing until his pistol was out of ammunition, and then he dashed down a nearby alley and sprinted to East Wooster Street, where their automobile was parked. Galliher saw Choc take off, and he decided to pursue him. The chief grabbed Rose and reportedly shoved her into the arms of a startled city councilman who was at the scene and trying to stay out of the line of fire. “Hold this girl for me,” ordered Galliher. A former star tackle on the high school football team, Galliher ran as hard as he could, but Choc was too speedy. He raced like a broken field runner with the goal post in view. Galliher, panting for breath, pulled up just as Choc drove off. The policeman jotted down the license number but, like a phantom, Choc Floyd was gone.
Police officers, reporters, and curious citizens converged at the scene of the shooting. Chief Galliher was not harmed during the brief gunfight, but Castner, the wounded lawman, was rushed to a hospital and was not expected to live. Lying in a pool of blood—his dead eyes blank and vacant—Miller was covered with a sheet and taken to a local funeral parlor. A large sum of money, presumed loot from a bank robbery, was removed from Miller’s pockets. The two Baird sisters were taken into custody, and Beulah received emergency treatment for her head wound. Physicians said she would recover.
Initial news reports out of Bowling Green that evening were largely unsubstantiated. They were filled with erroneous information about what exactly had transpired. An Associated Press dispatch dated April 16 identified the slain gunman as Charles or Clarence Saunders, a twenty-year-old St. Louisan. Beulah Baird was called Wonetta Ross, a twenty-year-old resident of St. Joseph, Missouri. Beulah’s captured sister, Rose, was named as Ruth Saunders of Kansas City, and Choc Floyd was believed to be Ted Shea of St. Louis. Early reports also contradicted the statements later given by Bowling Green police officers. The first wire story erroneously claimed that the two policemen were in their squad car following the four suspects in their sedan.
“After traveling a block,” stated the Associated Press, “the car stopped and the occupants opened fire on the police car. The policemen returned the fire, killing Saunders and wounding the Ross girl. After Castner fell, seriously wounded, the man said to be Shea jumped into the car and left the Saunders girl standing in the street. She refused to answer any questions at the county jail except give the names of her companions, officials said.”
Authorities in the various Missouri cities given as hometowns for the culprits were busily trying to verify criminal records, but with few results. St. Louis police had no files on the man called Shea, and they discovered the address given for the dead suspect did not exist. E. M. Mathews, chief of police in St. Joseph, investigated the possibility that the foursome from Bowling Green might have been responsible for a series of recent robberies in his city, but Mathews did verify that no one named Wonetta Ross was known to his department.
Later that night, investigators got a break when they found the automobile in which Choc Floyd had escaped. It had been abandoned on the Chicago road near Crissey. The numbers on the Missouri license plates on the sedan were 385 884, and when this information was relayed to the State License Bureau at Kansas City, a check of records showed that the license had been issued to a Ruth Saunders. Police files in Kansas City revealed that a woman using the name Ruth Saunders was twenty-three years old and had been arrested twice in 1929 during raids on beer flats where liquor supplies were seized. Police said that there was no record of any prosecutions.
By the following day, the truth began to surface as persistent questioning of the Baird sisters grew more intense. A fresh wire service dispatch carried by newspapers across the nation told the story of the shootout and gave most of the culprits’ true names.
BOWLING GREEN, O., April 17.—Willis (Billy the Killer) Miller, known to police of several Middle Western cities as a desperado, is dead, two of his girl companions are under arrest and a second gunman is hunted today in the aftermath of a fight with police.
Miller was identified by fingerprints after he lived up to his boast that he would never be captured alive and shot it out with Police Chief Carl Galliher and Patrolman Ralph Castner yesterday. His companion escaped after seriously wounding Castner.
One of the two girls, who gave her name as Beulah Baird, 20 years old, Kansas City, divorced wife of Walter Ash, slain in Kansas City a month ago, was picked up near Miller’s body with a bullet in her skull. She is in serious condition.
The other girl, thought to be her sister, said she was Ruth Saunders, 23, Kansas City, but gave different names for the other and police were uncertain of their identities.
The second gunman, listed here as Clarence Saunders, Kansas City, was suspected by police of that city as being Charles Arthur Floyd, a pal of Miller wanted in connection with the slaying of Wallace and William Ash. The Ash brothers were thought to have been killed because of their rivalry with Floyd over two Baird sisters.
At the time of his death, Miller was a prime suspect in several robberies, including an Oklahoma City bank job as well as the robbery of the National Bank and Trust Company of North Kansas City that past September. He and Choc were also thought to have robbed the bank in Kentucky and at least two other banks in Ohio that spring. Police in the Kansas City area said they had also linked Miller with the murder of the Ash brothers.
Mother Ash was ecstatic when Kansas City reporters showed up at her house on Holmes Street and told her about the wild shootout in Bowling Green involving the Baird girls and the two main suspects in her sons’ murder. The first question out of her mouth was, “Did they get Pretty Boy?” After she heard he was still on the loose, her smile was said to have vanished.
Some of the reporters had never heard the name Pretty Boy used before. They saw to it that the colorful moniker was used in future news stories about Charley Floyd. Several news hounds rushed to telephones and called in their scoops. The next morning, newspaper headlines throughout the nation, especially the big midwestern dailies, for the first time carried the name PRETTY BOY, in bold headline type, and until his death, this nickname contributed as much as any actual feats to Choc’s notoriety.
Castner could not rally from his gunshot wound and died. He was twenty-eight years old. On April 25, as the dead officer’s funeral was held, and the entire city of Bowling Green mourned his loss, Wood County Prosecutor Raymond W. Ladd prepared a charge of first-degree murder against Charles Arthur Floyd, also known as Frank Mitchell or Pretty Boy.
Local police continued to hold and question the two Baird sisters, and they were also interrogated about recent bank robberies believed to have been staged by Miller and Floyd at the small towns of Whitehouse, located northwest of Bowling Green, and at Elliston, northeast of Bowling Green. The young women were then turned over to authorities in Kentucky interested in asking them about a bank robbery at Mount Zion. Eventually, they were released when nothing could be proved against them. Beulah, or Juanita as she was also known by that time, went down to Earlsboro and stayed with Bradley and Bessie Floyd to recover from her head wound.
“We always called her Juanita,” said Glendon Floyd. “She came and stayed at my folks’ house after that big shootout up in Ohio. She had been shot in her head and needed to rest up. She helped my mother some around the place. Juanita was a pretty fair cook and she made Italian food. She’d take hamburger and tomatoes and onions and crackers and mix all sorts of stuff up. We thought it was pretty good, cause we never got much Italian food.
“But I do recall that the wound really messed her up for a time. Her equilibrium was all off, and she was kind of shaky. But she got better and went on back to Kansas City I reckon.”
Glendon’s older brother Bayne also had memories of Choc’s girlfriend recuperating at their home. “We all knew that Juanita was the one who gave Choc his Pretty Boy name,” said Bayne. “She was sure nice, though, and we all loved her.”
In Ohio, a manhunt was under way for Choc Floyd. He was not only charged with the first-degree murder of a police officer; Wood County Sheriff Bruce C. Pratt of Bowling Green also announced that the county commissioners were offering a one-thousand-dollar reward for Floyd’s apprehension. The wanted circular that was sent out contained a menacing footnote:
“Extreme caution should be used when approaching Floyd as he will not hesitate to shoot.”
Some officers believed he would attempt to reach the former hangout of Miller, his slain partner. Prohibition agents and policemen were on the lookout for Pretty Boy in several Ohio cities. In the smaller towns along the Ohio River, from East Liverpool all the way to Ironton, deputy sheriffs checked out numerous leads. The consensus, however, was that Floyd had already found sanctuary for several months with the Licavoli mob in Toledo. A well-known criminal clan, the Licavolis for many years were a major force in bootlegging circles and the rackets in Detroit and several Ohio cities, including Toledo, Akron, and Youngstown. The police conjectured that Pretty Boy had paid the Ohio racketeers for protection with some of the money that he and Miller had gleaned from their past bank robberies at Whitehouse and Elliston.
With the name Pretty Boy emblazoned in newspaper headlines, an intense national search was under way. Sweetened by an offer of a cash reward at a time when money was especially scarce, rumors and alleged sightings of the desperado popped up quicker than sunflowers in a manure pile. On April 18 in Toledo, it was thought Pretty Boy Floyd was the one who had held a pistol to the head of taxi driver Robert Robinson and had stolen his cash and cab. The following day, Robinson’s hack was found abandoned near Monroe, Michigan, where that same afternoon another cab driver was victimized by a lone gunman identified as Floyd. The nervy bandit was seen at restaurants, movie theaters, and even church services. Witnesses swore on a stack of Bibles that it was Pretty Boy himself who had attended a marathon dance contest. He reportedly surfaced here and there throughout the Midwest. All of a sudden, Pretty Boy was everywhere at the same time, a media creation of these bleakest Depression years.
Charley Floyd was definitely back in familiar territory by early summer of 1931. He was seen in Oklahoma and in Kansas City, generating income from bootlegging and tending to the needs of Beulah Baird during her continued convalescence.
On the evening of July 20, Kansas City police officers and federal prohibition agents came close to capturing Choc during a raid on a suspected north-side liquor warehouse. There were a few officers who later stated that the raid was actually a well-laid trap for Floyd, while others felt that he only happened to be there when the raiding party arrived and poured into the two-story brick building at 1039 Independence Avenue. The first level was occupied by the Lusco-Noto Flower Shop, which officers said was a front for the liquor syndicate that operated on the top floor.
Included in the team of law enforcement officers were Lieutenant E. L. Nelson, a police detective, and dry agents Glenn Havens, Joe Anderson, and Curtis Burks. Listed in the 1930 Kansas City directory as a salesman living with his wife, Gladys, on Dunham Avenue, Burks was called a government operative by some of the other officers. Once inside the building, the raiders, led by Havens, quickly made their way to the second floor and paused outside a door at the top of the stairway. They listened for a few seconds and then two agents kicked down the door and Havens yelled, “It’s a raid, boys! Put ’em up!”
There were at least nine men seated around a table in the dimly lighted room. They were taken completely by surprise as the agents barged through the door with their guns drawn. Most of the men at the table raised their arms in surrender. One started to protest the intrusion, but he was struck on the head by an officer and said no more. Among those who were confronted was one who was later identified as Charley Floyd. He remained calm and collected during the first couple of minutes of the melee. The smell of whiskey in the room was overpowering. As the officers started searching through the boxes in hopes of finding contraband and alcohol, Choc slowly rose from the table. An agent watched him get up and peered closer at his face.
“Hey, you fellas know who this is?” shouted the agent. “It’s that Pretty Boy Floyd character.”
Feigning drunkenness, Choc weaved around, mumbling to himself, as if he was about to pass out. What happened next differed from witness to witness. Some said it was a whiskey bottle from the table, while most claimed it was a hat, but no matter what it was, Choc suddenly tossed an object across the room. It landed on a nearby bed and diverted everyone’s attention. In that split second, Choc pulled one of his .45 pistols and made for the door.
“Look out, he’s got a gun!” shouted Havens.
A gun battle instantly commenced while Choc, firing his pistol all the while, grappled with a couple of the agents. Explosions of police revolvers and automatic pistols were deafening and gun smoke clouded the room. Bullets ignited some combustible material and a fire broke out, but it was soon extinguished. The fracas was over in a few minutes. Choc was gone. He had broken away from the officers. He bolted through the splintered doorway and bounded down the stairs. Witnesses from the crowd forming on the street said that he escaped in a Plymouth that was parked nearby.
Five men were shot in the fight. Joe Careo, a twenty-three-year-old suspect who tried to escape, was cut down by a shotgun blast fired by Lieutenant Nelson. He died instantly. Joseph Lusco, thirty-seven, was arrested and taken to a local hospital to see about his fractured skull. Curtis Burks was wounded in the abdomen, causing paralysis from the waist down. He was listed in critical condition. Joe Anderson suffered a less serious wound from a glancing bullet that struck him in the stomach. Clarence Reedy, a detective, was wounded in the neck. M. P. Wilson, a twenty-three-year-old from Bessemer, Alabama, who had nothing at all to do with the raid, was found lying in the street with a wound in his stomach. Officers believed he was struck by one of Floyd’s stray bullets.
Four of the wounded men recovered, but two days after the shootout on Independence Street, Curtis Burks died. Now, besides Ohio authorities, the Kansas City police had a good reason to visit with the elusive Pretty Boy Floyd. Shooting down a couple of snitches like the Ash boys on a muddy Kansas road was frowned upon, but starting a gun battle in Tom’s Town that caused several people to be wounded and left an agent dead was going too far.
Like the old bandits and outlaws of the past who rode out of Missouri and found asylum in the Indian nations, Choc made a run for the Oklahoma hills, where he felt as if he still belonged. He received a warm reception.
That summer no rains fell in Oklahoma; only wind as hot as the devil’s breath came off the prairies. The Southern plains were on fire. Since the Fourth of July, the sun had seared grasses and crops. The blistering heat had dried up everyone’s will to do much more than complain about the weather and being poor. Come nightfall, folks in town had run out of shaved ice and lemonade, and they crept out on their porches to catch a little sleep. Country people, soaked in sweat, lay outside on their quilts and wished that God, who seemed to be in hiding, would send them a cloudburst to break the earth’s fever.
The summer was especially brutal that year. Folks had a name for the hot days and nights. The name came from ancient Roman times, when the people believed that Sirius, the Dog Star, coupled its heat with that of the sun, from July 3 to August 11. The Romans called this period dies caniculares, or “days of the dog.” Down in the country where Choc came from, this time of high temperatures lasted a bit longer, even until September. Most folks just said it was the dog days of summer.
Choc spent those dog days in 1931 laid up in the shade like a smart old hound. He was through with pissing in the wind, and wanted to get back to chasing rainbows. Still, the best rainbows appear only after a storm. Choc knew, sure as shooting, he would have to get through more squalls ahead before he would ever lay his hands on a pot of gold.
But a young man with a bandit’s heart was not too fretful. He figured he had all the time in the world.