The Kansas City Massacre and the Birth of the FBI

Hey, there, American Criminal listeners, welcome to a special bonus episode we cooked up for you. Now, in the past, I've told you that there isn't always room for every piece of a story to fit into a series.

Well, this is one of those times, because although we got most of what we wanted in our four episodes about George Machine Gun Kelly, there was a parallel story playing out alongside the kidnapping of Charles Urschel.

And it's such a fascinating piece of history that we couldn't bear to leave it behind. This is one of two pivotal cases that helped shape federal law in the early 1930s and also influenced the direction of the nascent FBI.

Earlier in the series, we briefly covered the first of these, the kidnapping of Charles Lindberg Jr. Okay, so as a quick reminder, baby Charles was abducted from his crib in the middle of the night on March 1st, 1932.

His very wealthy parents paid a $50,000 ransom to the kidnappers, but never found their son, not alive at least. In early May, the little boy's body was found in a wooded area around four and a half miles from his home.

It seemed as abductors had accidentally killed Charles Jr. during their escape, but carried on with the rest of the ransom plot anyway.

That high-profile crime and shocking death spurred Congress into action, reigniting a debate about the need for harsher laws applying to kidnappings.

This had been a recurring subject for lawmakers, who'd most recently visited the subject following George Kelly's botched kidnapping of businessman Howard Wolverton. So you know, it's all connected.

Anyway, after Charles Jr.'s body was found, the nation was outraged. The Lindberghs were beloved from coast to coast, so everyone was demanding action. And remember, this was in the middle of a kind of kidnapping epidemic.

So it's no surprise that just over a month later, Congress passed the Federal Kidnapping Act, the Lindbergh law. This gave judges the power to give kidnappers the death sentence and broaden the scope of federal agents' authority in those cases.

After that, agents from the United States Bureau of Investigation were allowed to pursue kidnappers across state lines, something that had been much more difficult for them to do earlier. But this new law wasn't really a magic wand.

It didn't end kidnappings, it didn't diminish the general public's anger at violent criminals, and it didn't make federal agents all powerful. Quite the contrary.

There was still a long way to go before the agency would resemble the institution as we know it today. But in the summer of 1933, a case came along that would bring about yet more advancements of the Bureau's authority.

And it all went down on June 17th. This is the story of the Kansas City Massacre.

3:47

The Criminal Frank Nash

There are a few players in the story of the Kansas City Massacre, but the most important one to know right away is Frank Nash. Born in February 1887, Frank had an unremarkable childhood, as far as we know.

His father moved around a fair bit, he opened a bunch of small hotels in Arkansas and Oklahoma. Some of Frank's first work experience as a teenager was in those hotels.

From there, he served in the US Army for a few years, starting around his 17th birthday. But he left that life behind by the time he was 20, and within a few years, his life as a criminal had begun.

His earliest crimes were burglaries, the most consequential of which went down in 1911. He and two accomplices tried to break into safes and cash registers at a number of stores in Gotebo, Oklahoma.

Initially, Frank and one of his buddies, Guy Huber, thought they got away with it, leaving the third guy, Nolly Wortman, to take the fall. Obviously, Nolly was pissed, and he ratted his partners out.

He testified against them in exchange for an acquittal. He thought he just exchanged his freedom for his friends. But, because of a technicality, Frank and Guy were also acquitted.

So Nolly got the hell out of Dodge. Two years later, Frank and Guy tracked him down and shot him in the head at point-blank range. And yet, somehow, he survived long enough to once again rat out his two former friends.

Both of them were given life sentences. You'd think that'd be where the story ends. But no, no, we're just getting started.

Five years later, in 1918, Frank's sentence was reduced because he wanted to enroll to fight in World War I. So, off he went to Europe for a couple of months, right as the fighting was winding down. He soon returned home a free man.

But Frank didn't care about his clean slate. He went right back to what he knew and loved best, which was stealing things that didn't belong to him.

In 1920, he was convicted of using explosives to commit burglary and sentenced to 25 years in the Oklahoma pen. Inside, he earned himself a solid reputation, was given the privilege role of trustee, and had his sentence reduced to just five years.

But he didn't even serve that long. In 1922, he was set free again, at which point he joined a gang of bank robbers to burglarize a postal train. And again, he got caught.

So in 1924, he was dragged back to prison for another 25 year sentence, this time at Leavenworth. You might remember that that's where George Kelly served some of his early sentences, too.

Well, despite his extensive record showing his habitual law breaking, Frank was given another position of privilege at Leavenworth. It might have been his natural charm and friendly nature that did it.

But somehow, he was allowed to work as the Deputy Warden's chef and handyman. In October 1930, he was sent out of the grounds on an errand and just never came back. Easiest prison break in the world.

From there, Frank fled to Chicago, which plenty of criminals saw as something as a haven back in the day. There, he fell in love, got married, and carried on with his life of crime.

Just over a year later, in December 1931, he helped orchestrate the escape of seven other Leavenworth inmates. In other words, Frank Nash was a serial criminal with a record as long as his arm and a history of evading justice.

I mean, he was making a mockery of America's law enforcement, and someone had to put a stop to it.

8:02

The Early Bureau

Enter J. Edgar Hoover and the United States Bureau of Investigation. Some 20 years before Frank Nash walked out of Leavenworth, there was no Bureau of Investigation.

Most cities and towns had their own local police squads, whose job it was to enforce state-level laws. But many of the men occupying those roles were politically appointed, poorly paid, and were given limited, inadequate training.

And with the advent of the Model T Ford, criminals were becoming increasingly mobile, and therefore increasingly difficult to catch.

Then, in 1908, the Attorney General assembled a team of agents he hired away from the Secret Service to act as the official investigators for the Department of Justice.

For the first few years of its existence, this team stuck mostly to white collar and civil rights crimes, copyright violations, banking and land fraud, that sort of thing.

Eventually, though, their scope was expanded along with their size, and the agents were tasked with combatting things like human trafficking, communism and violent radicals.

By 1924, a young Justice Department attorney had risen to become the head of the Bureau of Investigation.

He insisted on rigorous hiring standards for his agents, preferring men who had some kind of accounting or law background, and who then went through two months of formal training.

But even with these new requirements, the Bureau was still playing catch-up to the criminals it was hunting. After all, the 1920s was the age of the gangster, and they weren't burdened with a need to follow laws when carrying out their business.

They used whatever weapons they had access to and went where they pleased. In contrast, Bureau agents had strict rules to follow about what weapons they could carry and procedures they needed to follow as they moved from state to state.

Still, they did what they could to make up for the shortcomings of local police forces, who were hobbled by their lackluster training and whose jurisdiction ended at state borders.

Hoover's men made enough progress that by the end of the decade, they were the face of the federal government's efforts to combat crime rates that felt like they were spiraling out of control.

So when notorious repeat offender Frank Nash, Safecracker, escape artist, killer, disappeared from Leavenworth in 1930, it was the United States Bureau of Investigation who were called in to track them down.

And their search would end in a shocking, bloody tragedy. All right, we're done with the holidays. You might feel like you got a big spending hangover.

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17:38

The Hot Springs Capture

It's the morning of June 16th, 1933 in the resort city of Hot Springs, Arkansas. On a street just off the main drag, agents Frank Smith and F. Joseph Lackey of the Bureau of Investigation sit in a car.

In the back seat is Otto Reed, police chief of McAllister, Oklahoma. None of them are speaking. They've got all their eyes trained on the sidewalk in front of a menswear store just down the block.

They're here to snatch one of the most wanted men in America. Famous for the waters it's named after, Hot Springs is also known as a haven for mobsters.

Baseball teams might come here for spring training, but even ball players don't have it as good here as some of the criminals.

There are casinos, brothels, pool halls, racetracks, and more, all industries tightly controlled by figures in the underworld. Those people have long sent money into the pockets of corrupt local police in exchange for protection.

But a few days ago, one of those officers called the Bureau to offer them a tip. Frank Nash is living here in Hot Springs.

It's been two and a half years since Frank escaped Leavenworth Prison in Northeast Kansas, and the Bureau has been searching for him ever since. Now, they're closer than they've ever been, but there's a slight problem.

Neither Agent Smith or Agent Lackey is technically authorized to make arrests. That's why they've enlisted the help of Police Chief Reed, who's been wanting to capture Frank just as long as the feds have.

Now, this being Arkansas and not Reed's home state of Oklahoma, the Chief doesn't really have the authority to make an arrest here either, but all three of them are counting on no one figuring that out in time to stop them.

So, when they see a man with prominent ears, watery eyes, and a bald head walking into the menswear store, they move quickly. The trio of lawmen get out of the car and move towards the store.

Smith and Lackey hang back, letting Reed enter the store first. Inside, they surround Frank Nash in seconds, Reed putting a vicelike grip on the 46-year-old's arm to stop him from getting away or reaching for a gun.

As the store's proprietor watches on in shock, the agents drag Nash onto the sidewalk and towards their car. It's over in seconds. Frank Nash has been captured at last.

20:15

A Hasty Rescue Plan

The apprehension of Frank Nash in Hot Springs was more of an abduction than it was an arrest, but word spread through the criminal community all the same.

Frank's buddies and wife started calling around trying to find out where he'd been taken to, and later that night they got the city's chief of detectives on the phone. He told them what he'd heard.

The feds were taking Frank right back to Leavenworth. By that stage, agent Smith, agent Lackey and police chief Reed were already on board a Missouri Pacific train headed to Kansas City.

They were going to stop there the next morning and make the rest of the journey by car.

What Frank's friends didn't know was that Reed Viterli, the agent in charge of the Bureau's Kansas City office, was meeting his colleagues at the station to accompany them on that trip to Leavenworth. And he was bringing a car full of backup.

No one wanted to risk Frank Nash escaping again. Well, no one on their side wanted that. Frank's friends, however, very much wanted that, and they started making a plan to rescue him.

Only they didn't have much time to pull it off. So, a group of Frank's associates put out the word to their network with a very simple request. Save Frank.

And they didn't care how it got done. The man who answered the call was 37-year-old Vernon Miller, a bootlegger and former sheriff from South Dakota. He knew Frank personally and was happy to help, but he couldn't do it alone.

So, with only hours until the Missouri police train was due to arrive, he headed to a Kansas City brothel to find some much-needed assistance.

He found that assistance in the form of two fellow criminals, bank robbers Adam Ricchetti and Charles Pretty Boy Floyd, who, by the way, had just arrived in town completely coincidentally.

Now what's kind of funny about this is that 29-year-old Floyd is the guy who George Kelly is sometimes mistaken for on his jobs, and in about a month, George is going to kidnap Charles Urschel and try and trick him into thinking he's Floyd.

But that comes later. For now, Vernon, Adam, and Floyd got ready to execute their plan. And I'm not going to lie, it was not a particularly well thought out scheme.

So basically, they were going to go to the train station, armed to the teeth, and just grab their buddy. In their heads, it was as simple as that. But if the best laid plans often go awry, then you can imagine what happens to plans like this one.

22:57

The Kansas City Massacre

It's just before 7 a.m. on June 17th, 1933, a Saturday, so Kansas City's Union Station is relatively quiet. In the parking lot out front, Vernon, Adam, and Floyd parked their Chevy sedan and checked their weapons.

They know that Frank's train is due to arrive at a quarter after, so they chat a little, compare war stories, and keep one eye on the entrance. Inside the station, special agent in charge Reed Viterli is also waiting. With him are fellow agent RJ.

Caffrey and Kansas City PD officers WJ. Grooms and Frank Hermanson. When the Missouri Pacific rolls in, Frank Nash is led off by Agents Lackey and Smith plus Chief Reed.

Lackey explains to his colleagues that he has two cars parked by the east entrance. So Frank and his now seven-man escort make their way through the station and out into the early summer sun.

The group pauses in the shadow of the building to scan the area, but they don't see anything to make them turn back, so they keep walking, completely unaware they're being watched.

Once they get to the cars, Frank's ordered to get in the front seat, so that his three original escorts, Lackey, Smith, and Reed, can sit behind him. It'll be easier to keep an eye on him that way.

But just as Agent Caffrey is about to climb in behind the wheel, there's a noise. Someone outside the car yells something. In the back seat, Agent Lackey can see at least two men running towards the car, and one of them has a machine gun.

Before he can warn his colleagues, the car is sprayed with bullets. Standing outside the car, officers Grooms and Hermanson are the first to fall. Caffrey is shot in the head and dies beside the driver's side door.

Viterli is hit in the arm and hits the ground out of the line of fire. But the men inside the car have nowhere to go. Frank Nash, sitting in the front seat, is struck by several bullets.

He and Chief Reed both die where they sit. Beside Reed, Lackey and Smith duck down as best they can. Lackey cops a few strays, but Smith manages to avoid getting hit at all.

The attack lasts less than 30 seconds, leaves four lawmen dead plus Frank Nash.

When Frank's would-be rescuers get close enough to see that they've accidentally killed the man they were supposed to be saving, they turn tail and run, leaving a mess of broken glass and blood in their wake.

25:39

Hunting the Perpetrators

The recapture of Frank Nash was supposed to be a victory for the United States Bureau of Investigation. Instead, it became one of the young agencies' worst tragedies. And obviously, they weren't going to wait for answers to come to them.

They established a team to investigate led by Gus T. Jones. But a month later, he was asked to head up the hunt for the men who kidnapped Charles Urschel.

In Agent Jones' absence, investigators concluded that Vernon Miller, Adam Ricchetti, and Pretty Boy Floyd were the culprits. They just didn't know where any of them were. Not just yet anyway.

But I can tell you where they went. Vernon split from his accomplices pretty soon after the shooting, making his way 500 miles northeast to Chicago. He lay low in the city for a while until the feds finally tracked him there in October.

He managed to escape a trap they set for him and headed for Newark, New Jersey. There, he fell in with some low lives from the local mob and apparently got into it with one of the head honchos' best men.

And you know how these career criminals can get. Words were exchanged, and Vernon decided that the next logical step was to shoot the other guy. That was not a smart move.

On November 29th, five months after the Kansas City Massacre, Vernon Miller's mutilated body was found in a ditch outside Detroit. He'd been beaten and strangled to death. That left two men on the Bureau's list.

Like Vernon, pretty boy Floyd and 23-year-old Adam Ricchetti headed east after the massacre landing in Toledo, Ohio, for a spell.

There, they took up with a pair of sisters, and in September, all four of them traveled to Buffalo, New York, where they posed as married couples and rented an apartment.

The foursome managed to keep their heads down for the next year, until they decided that things had cooled down enough for them to head back out to their home turf. In October 1934, they bought a Ford and headed for Ohio.

But after only driving about 85 miles, Floyd lost control of the car and skidded into a lamppost near Wellsville.

Now, Floyd and Adam didn't want to draw unnecessary attention to themselves, so they sent the sisters in the car to find a mechanic to make the repairs while they waited on the outskirts of town. They kept their guns with them, though, just in case.

But Wellsville was a small village, and people noticed these two unfamiliar men just loitering. Word eventually got to the local police chief who went to investigate with some of his men.

Floyd and Adam weren't the kinds of guys who just cooperate with the cops, so when they spotted three of them, they just started shooting. Adam emptied his gun at the chief, but still managed to get captured.

Floyd got away, though, escaping into the nearby woods. Agents from the Bureau were summoned to the area, and they conducted a massive manhunt for two days, eventually cornering Floyd behind a corn crib on a farm.

Desperately, he fired at the agents, but he was outnumbered and, for once, outgunned. He was hit four times, at which point he surrendered. Not that it did him any good, he died about 15 minutes later.

That left just Adam Ricchetti to answer for the Kansas City Massacre. In June 1935, he was convicted of murder and sentenced to death.

Over the next few years, his lawyers launched several unsuccessful appeals, and he was finally executed by the state of Missouri in October 1938. That meant that after five years, the story of the Kansas City Massacre was finally at an end.

Its legacy, though, would live on.

29:40

The FBIʼs Rise

About a week after federal agents and police officers were ambushed outside of Union Station, the special agent in charge of Kansas City's Bureau Office wrote to Director Hoover.

He requested that his men be allowed access to an improved arsenal of weapons. Until that point, Bureau agents were mostly restricted to carrying small pistols.

If they needed anything larger than that, they had to apply for new permits in every single jurisdiction they entered. It was cumbersome and impractical. Hoover didn't need the letter to know that things had to change, though.

By the time the request arrived, he'd already had two submachine guns sent to the Kansas City Field Office. After that, Hoover assembled a committee to decide what firearms would be best to send to offices around the country.

The final list eventually included 38-caliber revolvers, rifles, automatic shotguns, and submachine guns, the same kind of weapons that gangsters had been using for years. It leveled the playing field, to an extent.

A year later, in 1934, Congress expanded the Bureau's authority to carry firearms and make arrests as they move from state to state. That same year, the Marines invited the Bureau to use their firing range to properly train agents.

With their improving arsenal of weapons and an expanding jurisdiction, federal agents helped local cops reel in dangerous and persistent outlaws around the country. And in 1935, the Bureau was officially renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

It was first created almost 20 years earlier, and there was still a long way to go before it became the agency Americans know today. But the FBI had finally been born.

This episode may contain reenactments or dramatized details, and while in some cases we can't know exactly what happened, all our dramatizations are based on historical research. American Criminal is a co-production of Airship and Evergreen podcasts.

It's hosted, edited, and produced by me, Jeremy Schwartz. Audio editing and sound design by Sean Ruhl-Hoffman. Music by Thrum.

This episode is written and researched by Joel Callan, managing producer Emily Burke. Executive producers are Joel Callan, William Simpson, and Lindsey Graham.