Pretty Boy Floyd: The Notorious Life and Death of the Depression Era Outlaw cover art

Pretty Boy Floyd: The Notorious Life and Death of the Depression Era Outlaw

Preview

£0.00 for first 30 days

Try for £0.00
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Pretty Boy Floyd: The Notorious Life and Death of the Depression Era Outlaw

By: Charles River Editors
Narrated by: Scott Clem
Try for £0.00

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £6.99

Buy Now for £6.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

"If you'll gather 'round me, children, a story I will tell
'Bout Pretty Boy Floyd, an Outlaw, Oklahoma knew him well." [Woody Guthrie, “The Ballad of Pretty Boy Floyd” (1939)]

November 1, 1932 was a fine autumn day in the sleepy, cotton-farming city of Sallisaw, Oklahoma, the heart of Sequoyah County. The blinding rays of the midday sun were shining their brightest, but the otherwise blistering heat was offset by a brisk breeze. These were ideal conditions for a Tuesday, a seemingly pedestrian day of the week, but what was unfolding in the Sallisaw State Bank was anything but ordinary.

At first glance, it would seem as if a traveling carnival or a homegrown celebrity had come to town. The sidewalks of the city bank and its surrounding establishments were teeming with locals, generations of families, young lovebirds, and clusters of friends. Indeed, they had convened to witness a spectacle, albeit one of an entirely different sort.

The doors of the Sallisaw State Bank swung open with a resounding bang, signaling the start of the show. Out staggered a pair of thieves, each toting bulging sacks of bills and coins and glinting Colt .45s. The hogtied tellers inside the bank desperately wriggled across the floor to voice their distress, craning their necks and directing their muffled screams toward the open door. One had even managed to squirm out of his gag and was calling out to the crowd across the street for help. Unfortunately, his cries were negated, not by the spectators' own cries of alarm but by thunderous applause, supplemented by whoops, whistles, and a constellation of waving handkerchiefs. Some of those who cleared the path for the robbers' getaway car were supposedly patrons present in the establishment during the stick-up itself.

The ringleader, a striking young gentleman with a square jaw, a smoldering squint, and dark hair slicked back with scented pomade, acknowledged his admirers with a quick nod before ducking into the running vehicle. According to local lore, quite a few of the spectators had been briefed on the robbery beforehand by none other than the ringleader himself. So bold was he in his endeavors that he strolled into the bank's neighboring establishments in the days prior and simply asked its proprietors to refrain from ringing the cops, to which they gladly agreed. He even left those complicit with enough time to extract their savings from the bank.

The dashing ringleader, hailed by many as the “Robin Hood of Cookson Hills”, was none other than Pretty Boy Floyd, a perplexing character as abhorred as he was revered. To the feds, Pretty Boy Floyd was a venomous, manipulative scoundrel who was egregiously lionized as an antihero with a heart of gold. A career bank robber supposedly associated with up to 40 bank robberies, his face would soon be plastered on the 1934 poster of the FBI's Most Wanted alongside John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, and Alvin Karper.

©2019 Charles River Editors (P)2019 Charles River Editors
True Crime United States Funny Oklahoma City
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

Listeners also enjoyed...

Jimmy Hoffa cover art
Arnold Rothstein cover art
Victor Lustig: The Life and Legacy of the 20th Century’s Most Notorious Con Artist cover art
Gentlemen Bootleggers cover art
Breaking Blue cover art
Eliot Ness cover art
The Lost Detective cover art
Killing the Dream cover art
There Are No Children Here cover art
Mickey Cohen cover art
In Deadly Company: Fifty Murderous Men and Women cover art
The Casanova Killer cover art
Handsome Devil cover art
Girl in the Grave and Other True Crime Stories cover art
The Whisky King cover art
Rampage cover art

What listeners say about Pretty Boy Floyd: The Notorious Life and Death of the Depression Era Outlaw

Average customer ratings

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.