The Family Connection to “Pretty Boy” Floyd

I was in East Liverpool, Ohio, recently for the launch of the inaugural “On the Same Page” community read. The Last Hitman was selected as this year’s book. It was quite an honor.

While there, I stayed in the beautiful Sturgis House Bed & Breakfast on W. Fifth Street. It’s a three-story, converted funeral home. It has great amenities and a wonderful staff. But it also has something else going for it: History.

When it was Sturgis Funeral Home in the 1930s, it gained notoriety for hosting one of America’s most notorious gangsters, Public Enemy No. 1 Charles Arthur “Pretty Boy” Floyd.

And by “hosting,” I mean that they embalmed Floyd in the basement and displayed him in the main parlor after he was gunned down by lawmen just outside of East Liverpool, Ohio, on Oct. 22, 1934.

The day after Floyd was killed, the front-page headlines of the East Liverpool Review read:

BODY VIEWED BY THOUSANDS

Morbid Crowd Sees Slain Desperado At Morgue

I loved this little piece of history, in part because my family has a connection to Pretty Boy Floyd.

Let me preface this by saying that most of this story is documented history. The rest is oral history passed down to me by my Grandmother Yocum. Could it be more urban legend than fact? Maybe. But some of the best stories start with rumors.

In the days following his death, it was widely rumored throughout eastern Ohio that Floyd had buried a stash of stolen loot on the farm owned by my great-grandparents, Joe and Annie Barto, in the coal mining community of Rush Run.

It was well known that Floyd had been hiding out in eastern Ohio. According to one newspaper account, “On two previous occasions, Floyd’s gang is known to have slinked through this territory.” One of Floyd’s gang members, Adam Richetti, had family living about ten miles from Rush Run in Dillonvale, Ohio, where his brother, David, was employed at the Hanna Coal Company’s No. 1 Mine. Federal authorities suspected the Richetti family may have been harboring the gang.

Floyd and Richetti were suspected of being involved in the Kansas City massacre in June 1933, in which four law enforcement officers were killed. Floyd had been named public enemy No. 1 after federal agents killed John Dillinger in June 1934.

At 11 a.m. on Friday, Oct. 19, 1934, Floyd and his gang were suspected of robbing the People’s Bank in Tiltonsville, Ohio, of $425.15. At 4 p.m. that afternoon, kids on their way home from school found the getaway car, a Ford V-8 sedan, near the Barto’sfarm on upper Rush Run Road, about five miles from Tiltonsville. Inside the car, authorities found a blood-stained rear seat, a blood-stained glove, four boxes of shotgun shells, a hacksaw and a crowbar.  

Two days later, on Sunday, Oct. 21, Floyd and Richetti wrecked another car near Wellsville, Ohio, a community that sits on the Ohio River about thirty-one miles north of Rush Run. Richetti was recognized and arrested. Floyd was injured in a shootout and ran into the hills of Columbiana County. The following day – Monday, Oct. 22 – Floyd was gunned down in a corn field. (There have been varying accounts of how Floyd’s life ended and who fired the fatal volleys. FBI agents and local law enforcement were both on the scene.)

Once the stories hit the papers that the original getaway car had been found in Rush Run, rumors began circulating that the gang had buried their stash on a hillside farm. For the next several years, two things occurred. One, Great-Grandpa Barto spent half his waking hours chasing would-be treasure hunters out of his corn fields. And two, my Great-Grandma Barto spent every spare minute combing the entire ninety acres in search of the stash. Did she find anything? I don’t know. If she did, she was smart enough to keep it to herself because the legend lived on.

While the legend lived, Richetti did not. He was executed in the Missouri State Penitentiary gas chamber on Oct. 7, 1938, for his involvement in the Kansas City massacre.

Do I think they buried their loot? Not a chance. These guys were living out of a suitcase and always on the run. Why try to hide money you’ve stolen when you’re already Public Enemy No. 1? You can’t move any higher up the ladder.

It was most likely an urban legend that got started and managed to gain steam after Floyd’s death.

I have another connection to Floyd with the release of The Last Hitman. In the novel, Floyd makes a cameo.

Here’s the passage:

Aldo Fortunato was a revered player in organized crime and a personal friend of Al Capone and Public Enemy Number 1, Charles Arthur “Pretty Boy” Floyd. In fact, Floyd and his wingman, Adam Richetti, spent the night of October 19, 1934, at one of Aldo’s Water Street brothels in Steubenville. Floyd and Richetti were on the run following the Kansas City Massacre the previous year. Floyd needed a place to hide out for a while, so Aldo gave them the keys to a hunting lodge he had deep in the Allegheny National Forest of Pennsylvania, just south of the New York state line. En route to the lodge, Floyd and Richetti got into a shootout with cops in Wellsville, Ohio. Richetti was captured and later went to the gas chamber, but Floyd escaped. He hid out in the hills until he was shot and killed by FBI agents in an East Liverpool cornfield on October 22. When he died, he still had the keys to Aldo’s hunting lodge in his pocket.

Of course, it’s total fiction. With that said, I wonder how many people went to Google to see if the lodge keys were actually inhis pocket.