Volume 18 , Issue 18

1934 - Premonition Comes True For Floyd's Mother

In The Evening Review, East Liverpool, Ohio, dated 23 October 1934, Tuesday, page 1, with these headlines: "Premonition Comes True," as Floyd's mother expected his death, prepared for it.

Found on Newspapers.com

Salsaw, Okla., Oct 23 (1934) -- A mother's premonition has come true. For more than a year Mrs. W. F. Floyd had tended a vacant plot in the little Akins graveyard near Sallisaw, Oklahoma, seemingly sure that she would live to bury her errant son, Charles Arthur Floyd, known to the nation as "Pretty Boy."

"My boy was not bad at heart," Mrs. Floyd sighed when informed the southwestern desperado had been slain in Ohio. "He warned all boys to steer clear of crime." But later she added, "He has reaped his reward." The mother appeared determined to keep her sorrow to herself. The funeral, was made known, would be a private one.

Ruby Floyd, divorced wife of the outlaw, and mother of his 9 year old son, Jack Dempsey Floyd, hurried to her parents' home at Bixby, Oklahoma, after having learned of her former husband's death.

"I have nothing to say," she exclaimed, dry-eyed. "He's dead and I loved him."

Mrs. Ruby Floyd was with Jack on a vaudeville tour the past summer, telling the audiences that crime doesn't pay." A brother of the outlaw, Bradley Floyd, an Oklahoma oil field worker, said, "I guess it's better as it is."

Floyd's family included four sisters and two brothers.

1934 - Floyd's Body Viewed By Thousands
A morbid crowd saw slain desperado at morgue. A grave near Akins, a tiny Oklahoma village awaited Charles (Pretty Boy) Floyd, 26 year old outlaw. He picked the plot himself, and his mother, Mrs. Walter Floyd, believing she would never see him alive again, had tended ti carefully for more than a year.

This is where Pretty Boy Floyd told his mother in May, 1933, that he wanted to be buried. He expected to go down soon with lead in him. And he did go down with lead in him, felled by a hail of bullets attempting to escape into the woods. He died as he lived, fearlessly, recklessly, with a .45 automatic in his hand and another one in his belt.

Floyd was the victim of the small town "jinx" in which history repeated itself and fate reached out to trip him up after he had eluded secret service operatives since his first arrest in St. Louis, Missouri, September 16, 1925, on a charge of highway robbery.

Contrary to earlier indications that Mrs. Floyd, the mother, was speeding north to receive the body, she determined not to make the trip. She instructed the Sturgis funeral home to prepare the body for burial and ship it to her home at Sallisaw, Oklahoma.

In a telegram to Chief of Police H. J. McDermott, filed at Sallisaw, Monday at 8:05p.m. the said, "I am the mother of Charles Floyd. If he has been killed, turn body over to reliable undertaker and forbid any pictures being taken of him and bar the public. Pass this request tot he United States department of justice. Hold body until I arrive. signed Mrs. Walter Floyd."

But the message arrived too late. Already the country's ace newspaper photographers had taken their shots of the dead outlaw. Already the curious crowds of people were jamming the Sturgis funeral home to look at the man who had brought sensation to East Liverpool.

For hours after the body had been clean-shaved, dressed and placed on a cot int he front room of the chapel, thousands of morbid thrill seekers filed through the house in double line.
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