There are certain kinds of criminals who can electrify public opinion. To some, they’re just common thugs. To others, they’re heroes. Charles “Pretty Boy” Floyd was exactly this kind of criminal.
Pretty Boy Floyd broke the law, often with extreme violence. But Floyd was also a product of the times he lived in.
At the height of the Great Depression, many viewed him simply as a desperate man who decided to strike back at the banks that had driven so many other desperate men to ruin.
Charles Floyd’s Early Criminal Career
Pretty Boy Floyd was born Charles Arthur Floyd in Georgia on February 3, 1904, but his family, like many others, moved to Oklahoma to start a farm in the early years of the 20th century. And like many Oklahoma farmers, they were desperately poor. Floyd, tired of living in poverty, turned to crime. He was first arrested for petty theft at age 18.
Three years later, he graduated to more serious theft and was sentenced to five years in prison for holding up a vehicle delivering money in St. Louis. Upon being released, Floyd drifted toward Kansas City, where he seems to have quickly gotten himself involved with the city’s criminal underworld.
Floyd’s specialty remained highway robbery. He and his accomplices would stop cars carrying money at gunpoint and demand all the valuables on board. Between 1929 and 1930, Floyd was arrested multiple times on suspicion of armed robbery, but the police could never prove anything conclusively.
