Floyd, Pretty Boy (1904-1934), was a notorious American gangster . He was famous for his violent bank robberies , shootouts, and escapes during the 1920’s and 1930‘s. Floyd’s practice of destroying poor people’s mortgage records during bank robberies earned him the nickname “the Robin Hood of the Cookson Hills,” the area in Oklahoma where he grew up.
Charles Arthur Floyd was born into a poor family in Adairsville, Georgia, on Feb. 3, 1904. He grew up on a small farm in Oklahoma. By the time he was in his mid-teens, Floyd, also known as Choc Floyd, had had several encounters with the authorities. He soon traded his life as a farmer for a life of crime , including armed robbery and bootlegging. Bootlegging involves the manufacture, sale, or transportation of illegal alcoholic beverages . In 1925, Floyd participated in a payroll robbery in St. Louis, Missouri, for which he received a five-year prison sentence.
In the late 1920‘s and early 1930‘s, Floyd committed many bank robberies across the Midwestern United States. These crimes included a robbery of his hometown bank in broad daylight. During this time, a woman whom Floyd had met at a boarding house began calling him Pretty Boy.
Authorities connected Floyd to several murders , including that of an Oklahoma lawman, in 1932. Floyd also was a chief suspect in a mass killing that became known as the Kansas City Massacre. On June 17, 1933, gunmen ambushed a group of law enforcement officers at the Union Railway Station in Kansas City , Missouri. The officers were returning escaped convict Frank Nash to Leavenworth Prison in Leavenworth, Kansas. The ambush was believed to be an attempt to free Nash, who was Floyd’s friend, from federal custody. Nash and four officers were killed in the shootout that occurred.
Following the Kansas City Massacre, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) designated Floyd “Public Enemy No. 1” and launched a nationwide manhunt for him. However, most scholars believe Floyd had no involvement in the Union Railway Station killings, and his guilt was never proven. On Oct. 22, 1934, Floyd was shot to death by FBI agents in a cornfield in East Liverpool, Ohio.
