Honors change manner

Hole of Justice

by Peter G. Jimenea

Dies of Bullets

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) G-man Melvin Purvis also known as “Nervous Purvis” has twice arrested Roger “The Terrible” Touhy, the surviving rival of Al Capone in beer business. Once, he wrongly charged Touhy with a kidnapping perpetrated by the Barker-Karpis Gang and was exonerated.

But on the second arrest Purvis had Touhy convicted of kidnapping Jake “The Barber” Factor, Capone’s underworld business associate. It seems, however, that Purvis was set-up by Capone to ensure Touhy’s long term imprisonment.

The wicked Capone’s notoriety had been emboldened selling of alcohol in defiance of the silly and hated Prohibition Law. Hypocrisy is also noted in him by attending his victims’ funerals, pretending in grief and staying unshaven during the mourning period.

Capone’s war with “Bugs” Moran ended in 1929 when his gang-men 

perpetrated the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Disguised as raiding police officers, five Capone men wiped out five Moran toughies, a motor mechanic and an optometrist who just like to hang out with crooks.

Purvis spying of Capone played a big role in the latter’s downfall. Since 1930, Capone was targeted by Inland Revenue agents who disregarded his claim of no-income and proved he withheld declaration and evaded tax payments totaling millions.

Federal Judge Wilkerson outsmarted Capone’s mob who attempted to pervert the course of justice by substituting a brother Judge’s panel of jurymen for his own at the last minute. It is widely believed the replaced jurymen were bribed to acquit Capone. So, as a result, the new jurymen convicted Capone of tax evasion.

Purvis has also a bad reputation as FBI agent when he wildly injured two civilians and killed one in a gunfight with the John Dillinger’s mob at Little Bohemia, Wisconsin. But the arrest of Dillinger in 1934, reinstated him as the most daring G-man of the bureau.

It was his famous squeaky voice that prompted the gangster, Dillinger, to go for his guns when he called; “Stick ‘em up, Johnny, we’ve got you surrounded.” His personal courage was also demonstrated when he faced the guns of “Pretty Boy” Floyd, “Baby Faced” Nelson, Verne Sankey and Volney Davis.

The popularity of Purvis doesn’t sit well with the Bureau’s deskbound publicity-hungry Director J Edgar Hoover. Besides, Purvis was the only local FBI bureau chief who always started his press releases with; “Melvin Purvis announces…etc,” instead of “J Edgar Hoover announces…”

True, honors change manner. But due to the long-standing rift between him and his director, the FBI G-man resigned in 1935. Mr. Hoover, however, denied publicly that the cause of Purvis resignation was the rift between them. Such rift has certainly existed and the G-man’s memoirs of his time with the bureau never mentioned the name of his director.

The FBI G-man was the only bureau’s field agent to attract as much public attention as Bureau Director J Edgar Hoover. Purvis headed the Chicago Bureau in 1932, a high-profile operation because of Capones’s beer wars and the activities of the mid-western bank robbers like Dillinger and the Barber-Karpis Gang.

In the Second World War, he served with the Army War Crimes Office. Afterwards he practiced privately as a lawyer until the illness that led to his suicide. It was the gun he fired at Dillinger with which Purvis has killed himself at his home in South Carolina rather than endure slow and debilitating illness. As wise men say; “he who lives by the gun..… see the title!