Agent Lanza's badge, which he had the honor of carrying throughout his career, is pictured here. It was once carried by agent Frank Smith who was involved in the Kansas City Massacre . On June 17, 1933, the Massacre resulted in the deaths of FBI Special Agent Raymond Caffrey and three police officers. It was a watershed event which gave rise to the modern FBI.
The Kansas City Massacre
by Jeff Lanza
As printed in a guest column in the Kansas City Star on the 60th anniversary of the Massacre
A few years ago, I walked across the sidewalk of Kansas City’s Union Station and searched for evidence of a tragic crime. However, I wasn’t there to lift fingerprints and take photographs. It was not necessary because an investigation into the crime had already taken place…six decades ago.
I was there on an historical mission, to look for something that memorialized an event that shocked a nation and changed the Federal Bureau of Investigation forever.
I stood on the spot of the Kansas City Massacre, which occurred over 60 years before. I carry a somewhat obscure connection to the notorious crime because I am assigned FBI badge number 4920, the same badge that was once carried by FBI Agent Frank Smith.
Smith had survived the barrage of bullets that killed four lawmen, a prisoner, and wounded tow others. The carnage happened at the hands of “Pretty Boy” Floyd and two other hoodlums.
The attack changed American attitudes about crime and law enforcement. It also had a dramatic influence on the evolution of the FBI as an organization and on its sphere of power and jurisdiction.
On June 17, 1933, Union Station was an active, thriving landmark and centerpiece. It was a hub of transportation in middle America. However, at about 7:20 AM, the station became an “arena of horror”, according to an account in Kansas City’s newspaper, The Star.
Events leading to the massacre began the day before, when escaped convict Frank Nash was taken into custody in Hot Springs, Arkansas, by Smith and Joe Lackey, both agents of the Bureau of Investigation, which later became the FBI. They were assisted by Otto Reed, Police Chief in McAlister, Oklahoma.
They escorted Nash to Kansas City by train, where he was to be transported in the care of agent Raymond Caffrey to Leavenworth Penitentiary. With Caffrey were Bureau agent Reed Vetterli and two Kansas City detectives, W.J. Grooms and Frank Hermanson.
While the lawmen waited, Charles “Pretty Boy” Floyd, Vernon Miller and Adam Richetti stood by, armed with machine guns and ready to free Nash.
The train arrived on schedule at 7:15 AM and Nash was immediately taken to Caffrey’s car. As the party was getting into the car, Floyd, Miller, and Richetti rushed forward. One shouted, “Up, up!” There was no time for the lawmen to reach for their weapons. The next order came quickly, “Let ‘em have it!”
The group fired relentlessly with machine guns from all sides of Caffrey’s car. The result was truly a massacre.
Grooms, Hermanson, Reed, and Caffrey were killed. Lackey and Vetterli were injured. Only Smith was unharmed. Ironically, Nash also was killed.
The roar of gunfire on that Saturday morning at Union Station sent a shockwave across the country. The massacre caused an uproar in the political and law enforcement communities. It was a watershed in the public’s opinion of crime and gangsterism, and served as a catalyst for law and order.
The massacre triggered dramatic changes in the Bureau, a relatively small agency composed of investigators without the authority to carry firearms or make arrests. A young J. Edgar Hoover did not miss the opportunity created by public outrage and the demand for more effective law enforcement.
The evolution was rapid. On May 18, 1934, less than a year later, President Franklin Roosevelt signed into law several statutes increasing the Bureau’s jurisdiction. A month later, agents were given power of arrest and authority to carry firearms at all times. The agency, renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on July 1, 1935 was given the mandate, power, and tools to fight gangster crime.
Six months after the massacre, Vernon Miller was murdered by fellow mobsters in Detroit. In October of 1934 “Pretty Boy” Floyd was killed in a shoot-out with FBI Agents on a farm in Ohio. Adam Richetti was arrested in 1934 and, after a trial and conviction for murder, he was executed in the gas chamber at the Missouri State Penitentiary.
Richetti’s execution closed the case on the Kansas City Massacre. But 60 years later, carrying the badge once assigned to Frank Smith, I viewed the physical evidence of one of the country’s most notorious crimes.
Smith came away from the attack unscathed. But some of the bullets that were meant for him and other lawmen made their mark on an outside wall of Union Station. The holes are still visible near the station’s east entrance.
The bullet holes will remain as an obscure, but enduring, memorial to the legacy and tragedy of the Kansas City Massacre.