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a NI ae yee CO | Malone Man Who Hated Viotence | — -° W “ Sollivan ‘Bagged - Big Gangsters, _ wa-easIn Roger Touhy Case. Purvis was painstaking in his pursuit of the lawless. He was credited with rounding up most of the hoodlums who fol- lowed the late Roger (the Ter- rible) Touhy and with sending ; Touhy himself and his three lieutenants to prison for the || kidnaping of John (the Bar- By Ray Morgan. ta Member of The Bppr's Stat) ELVIN H.: PURVIS, & M soft-spoken Southern lawyer who tracked down such gangsters as John Dillinger and Charles (Pretty Boy) Floyd and made te Cae a new phrase in the Americ n language, died Monday in his | ber) Factor. home at Florence, s. C. He He engineered the raid on a was 56 years old. Chicago North Side barber- . . . Mention of Purvis recalls a shop which resulted in the . afi capture of Vern Sankey, then “public enemy No. 1,” who later committed suicide rather v than face trial for the abduc- tion of Charles Boettcher II, colorful but unmourned era in America. It was the era of swaggering hoodiums who in the 1930s cowed local law en- forcement officials with ma- chine-gun bullets and bombs. Gangland wars raged un- |.checked, particularly in the Chicago area, until a small That story reached its cli- max on the electric night of July 22, 1934,.when Purvis sprang the trap on John Dil- (linger outside the tiny Bio- graph theater in East Chicago, Ind. The roar of gunfire that dropped Dillinger to the steam- ing pavement rocketed Purvis and the more than 20 federal agents who were working un- Ger his direction into nationai prominence and made the fed- Be eral police agency feared by eae underworld figures every- a where. Three months later, almost 40 the hour, Purvis ‘led the ‘charge of officers that brought Floyd to a bloody death, gun ‘in band, beside a corncrib on farm near East Liverpool, . The showdown came on the — ae, : —— ‘band of federal agents, with | ‘Purvis in The fore, set about - tracking the gangsters down. | | Denver. Three agents under Purvis lost their lives bringing the: gun-happy hoodlums to justice.: Samuel P. Cowley and Herman, E. Hollis, federal agents, were jlled in a gun battle in led pene eeeinet tT pctta! urvis-led move against Le in. . (Baby Face Nelson) Gilli suburban Chicago on Novem ber 27, 1934, Gillis, or Nelson as he was better known, also lwas killed. Another agent, W. C. Baum, was shot to death when Purvis and other federal agents sought unsuccessfully to take ‘members of the Dillinger gang et Pe ere inte custody in a tavern known! as Little Bohemia lodge near Rhinelander, Wis, on April 3, 1934. . Witness Acsiast Richetti. Purvis became known ‘in Kansgs City when he played part{m the conviction of Adam Richetti, gangster here, nection with the Union Station incon- +: [\7q The Kansas City Times Date: "'? 3 1962 ‘Kansas City, Missouri Editor: Roy A. Roberts Publisher Kansas City Division Title: KC File #