Kansas City Massacre and "Pretty Boy" Floyd (FBI history page)

This is the FBI’s history page on the Kansas City Massacre, an agency narrative written long after the event. It is cited here as the Bureau’s own account. It is not a case file, and the FBI Vault file on the shooting was not read for this archive.

The essay states that on the morning of June 17, 1933, officers were escorting Frank Nash, a federal prisoner who had escaped from the U.S. Penitentiary at Leavenworth on October 19, 1930, from a train to a car. “Frank Nash was handcuffed throughout the trip from the train to the Chevrolet, which was parked directly in front of the east entrance of Union Station.” Gunmen opened fire. The page names the dead as Kansas City police officers W. J. Grooms and Frank Hermanson, FBI Agent R. J. Caffrey, McAlester, Oklahoma Police Chief Otto Reed, and Nash. Agent Lackey was wounded, Special Agent in Charge Vetterli was shot in the arm, and Agent Smith was unhurt.

The FBI attributes the attack to Vernon C. Miller, Adam C. Richetti, and Charles Arthur “Pretty Boy” Floyd, and the plan to free Nash to Richard Galatas, Herbert Farmer, “Doc” Louis Stacci, and Frank Mulloy. It states that Richetti was convicted in Jackson County of the murder of Officer Hermanson and executed on October 7, 1938, and that the four planners were indicted by a federal grand jury at Kansas City on October 24, 1934 and found guilty on January 4, 1935 of conspiracy to cause the escape of a federal prisoner.

The essay calls the attackers “gunmen” and Nash’s “outlaw friends.” It does not tie the shooting to a crime family, and this page does not either.