On October 22, 1934 Charles “Pretty Boy” Floyd was shot and killed by FBI agents in a cornfield in East Liverpool, Ohio. After giving up on trying to farm in a drought, Floyd left Oklahoma and became a bank robber. His first conquest was a St.Louis payroll delivery in Missouri, where he spent time in prison until he got out on parole in 1929. Shortly after, Floyd learned that Jim Mills had shot his father to death and was never charged- Mills was never heard from again.
Moving on to a bigger game, in Kansas City, Floyd became friendly with the criminal community. There, a local prostitute nicknamed him, “Pretty Boy”, and with a few prison friends he robbed a handful of banks in Missouri and Ohio. But this pretty boy got caught for that one too, as he was sentenced to 12-15 years. However he never did pay his time for the crime. On the way, he kicked out a window and jumped out of a speeding train. Eventually he made it to Toledo and met up with Bill “The Killer” Miller and went on a nation wide crime spree until Miller was killed in a crossfire in 1931.
Floyd went back to Kansas City and became a nationally known criminal figure, after he killed a federal agent during a raid. He fled to his home state of Oklahoma, where everyone was poor and suffering from the Great Depression. Naturally, no one was going to turn in a fellow native for robbing banks. After all they all needed money too. Charles Floyd became a form of Robin Hood in the eyes of many natives to Oklahoma. At least, most natives. The governor of Oklahoma issued a $6,000 bounty for Charles “Pretty Boy” Floyd dead or alive.
June 17, 1933 the urgency to capture Floyd grew, as authorities grew even more impatient, after law officials were ambushed by a machine-gun attack in a Kansas City train station while transporting, Frank Nash, to prison. Whether Floyd was responsible or not was unclear, but either way the FBI and news media blamed him. As a result, surveillance was stepped up and the fugitive was finally caught on October 22, 1934.
All of my info was taken from this site.
Check out this site for more info from the FBI on Pretty Boy’s Kansas City Massacre: Famous Cases & Criminals