CHAPTER ONE

MAY 26, 1934

ASPIN HILL MEMORIAL PARK

SILVER SPRING, MARYLAND

MORNING

Violence is plaguing America.

Throughout 1933 and the first half of 1934, dozens of vicious and heavily armed gangsters are creating carnage in rural parts of the United States. It is the middle of the Great Depression. The average national individual income has been cut in half. The nationwide unemployment rate is 21.7 percent. The homicide tally is the highest of the century due to rampant poverty and the clash of immigrant and traditional cultures as America becomes increasingly urban.

In addition, half of all home mortgages are delinquent, and more than one thousand home loans are foreclosed every day. As more and more American families are evicted, the banks are viewed as predatory villains—more intent on making a dollar than helping poor people survive.

So it is no surprise that some criminals in the United States are actually becoming popular public figures, especially the handful of men and women who rob banks for a living. The Division of Investigation calls these people “Public Enemies,” but to many they are Robin Hoods, exacting revenge on bankers and fat cats from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon.

On this warm Saturday morning, the man who has just been handed the enormous responsibility of stopping the Robin Hoods is momentarily unconcerned about fighting crime. John Edgar Hoover is in a state of deep mourning as he watches his beloved dog lowered into a grave in this Washington suburb.

Hoover has lived in the District of Columbia his whole life. He began his career of public service at eighteen, a high school class valedictorian who landed work as a clerk at the Library of Congress while attending college and then law school. Hoover’s employment ended when he passed the bar in 1917. He took a job with the Justice Department the very next morning. Within two years, the young lawyer’s work ethic saw him promoted rapidly. By 1924, at the behest of President Calvin Coolidge, twenty-nine-year-old J. Edgar Hoover was placed in charge of a corrupt federal agency known as the Bureau of Investigation.¹

The promotion appears to be a career dead end for the hard-charging young lawyer with the receding hairline, permanent scowl, and the habit of talking too fast in order to hide a stutter. Founded in 1908, the Bureau of Investigation is America’s first national law enforcement agency. However, there is widespread fear in Congress that the BOI might become a secret police—“spying upon … the people, such as has prevailed in Russia.”

So Congress has intentionally limited the BOI’s power. The original thirty-four agents are forbidden to carry a weapon—and even prevented from making arrests. When it comes time to take a suspect into custody, the agents have a choice: either call in U.S. Marshals or the local police.

Hoover devotes himself to his new job, eschewing any semblance of a personal life in favor of complete commitment to law enforcement. Immediately, the new director cleans house, firing any agent accused of taking bribes. He sets up a rigorous training program to ensure that his agents are mentally and physically fit. Also, his investigators are expected to be of high moral character, with training in accounting or law. There is no such thing as paid overtime. Hoover raises the BOI’s profile by establishing the first nationwide database for fingerprints.

And yet, the BOI is powerless to prosecute the bank robberies and the random murders plaguing America during the Great Depression. State and local police have complete authority in such cases, despite the frustrating reality that these agencies do not communicate with one another, nor can they chase criminals across state lines. John Dillinger has made an art of escaping this way.

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There is no question that J. Edgar Hoover is a strange man. He has few friends and lives at home with his seventy-five-year-old mother, Anna Marie.

The director’s most trusted confidante is his Airedale terrier, Spee De Bozo. It is Spee who fetches the paper each morning and eats the soft-boiled egg that Hoover gives him for breakfast. J. Edgar loves Spee so much that he not only keeps the animal’s framed photo on his office desk but also hangs a painting of the Airedale on a wall at home. Hoover may be a tough boss with his agents, but he never disciplines his dog.

Spee De Bozo passes away on May 24 at the age of eleven, and now his shroud-covered body is being lowered into the grave at this pet cemetery. “This is one of the saddest days of my life,” the grief-stricken Hoover explains to a groundskeeper. His display of emotion is unnerving to the three DOI agents who have been asked to accompany him to the burial, for Hoover is normally a closed vault of privacy.

At the same time, the director is actually becoming one of the most powerful men in the country. On May 18, Congress recognizes that state and local law enforcement agencies are powerless to stop the bank-robbing epidemic. This is a reaction to the 1933 Kansas City Massacre, where criminals led by a robber known as “Pretty Boy” Floyd shot and killed four federal agents in cold blood. Thus, the Crime Control Acts of 1934 were passed—now if a person kills or assaults a federal officer, transports kidnapped persons, or robs a bank, they are subject to federal law. They will be charged with federal crimes.

From left, Charles Arthur “Pretty Boy” Floyd; his son, Charles Dempsey Floyd; and his wife, Ruby Floyd, circa 1930.

State troopers and local sheriffs will no longer have jurisdiction in these matters. That power now goes to the newly renamed Division of Investigation. Just as important, Congress is about to pass another important piece of legislation allowing DOI agents to bear arms and make arrests.

As Spee De Bozo’s burial comes to an end, J. Edgar Hoover promises himself that he will soon buy another dog.²

The time for mourning quickly passes.

The time for catching violent bank robbers is about to begin.

And there will be blood.