Mob FilesPublic-domain archive of American organized crime
Typed letter from the Kansas City office dated June 27, 1933, requesting a slug and a shell for ballistic comparison.
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Letter from Acting SAC M. C. Spear, Kansas City, 27 June 1933, asking for a slug and shell for ballistic comparison

Kansas City asks Oklahoma City for a slug and shell reportedly fired from the gun of "Pretty Boy" Floyd in a bank robbery, "so that they might be compared by the ballistic expert, here, with shells and slugs on hand here."

Date
1933-06-27
Kind
case-file
Source
FBI Records: The Vault
Retrieved
2026-10-12
Rights
A record of the Federal Bureau of Investigation released under FOIA in the FBI Vault. A work of the United States government, public domain under 17 U.S.C. § 105. The stored image is a grayscale render of the Vault viewer's page scan.

Part 04 of the FBI Vault’s Kansas City Massacre file, page 27 of the viewer; Bureau serial 62-28915-120. The letter is captioned “Unknown Subjects, Obstruction of Justice (Endeavor to Deliver Federal Prisoner Frank Nash).” Acting Special Agent in Charge M. C. Spear reports that “Mr. Gill, ballistic expert,” understood the Oklahoma State Bureau of Identification held shells and slugs reportedly fired from the gun of “Pretty Boy” Floyd in a bank robbery, and asks for a slug and shell “so that they might be compared by the ballistic expert, here, with shells and slugs on hand here.”

This is a request, not a result. The expert’s first name is not given, and the outcome of the comparison was not found in the Vault pages searched for this archive.

Object: Typed letter, one page
Maker: M. C. Spear, Acting Special Agent in Charge, Kansas City
Date: 27 June 1933
Provenance: Bureau serial 62-28915-120, released in the FBI Vault
Appears in: FBI Vault, Kansas City Massacre, Part 04, page 27

itemKansas City Massacre and "Pretty Boy" Floyd (FBI history page)The FBI's history essay on the June 17, 1933 shooting in front of Union Station, Kansas City, Missouri, in which four officers and their prisoner Frank Nash were killed. It places the car directly in front of the station's east entrance.