On June 17, 1933, Kansas City Missouri Police Detectives William J. Grooms and Frank E. Hermanson were sent to meet other officers arriving at Union Station with federal prison escapee, Frank Nash. Apparently an informant had relayed all the information regarding the arrival of Nash and his law enforcement escorts to various gangsters through out the metropolitan area. The officers were not prepared for the ambush at the Union Station in Kansas City Missouri. It was believed that both Detectives William J. Grooms and Frank E. Hermanson, an F.B.I. agent Raymond J. Caffrey, Oklahoma Police Chief Otto Reed , and the prisoner Frank Nash were all killed by the mobsters, who were said to have been Charles Arthur "Pretty Boy Floyd", Adam Richetti and Vernon C. Miller. On November 29, 1933, during the FBI's search for Miller, his mutilated body was found in a ditch on the outskirts of Detroit, Michigan. Charles Floyd was shot to death in a shootout with a group of law enforcement officers headed by Melvin Purvis, near Clarkson Ohio, on October 22, 1934. Adam Richetti (Ricchetti) was executed in the Missouri State Penitentiary gas chamber October 7, 1938 for the murder of Detective Frank Hermanson of the Kansas City Missouri Police Department. This incident "The Kansas City Massacre", a.k.a. The Union Station Massacre, happened at a time when the FBI did not carry firearms and did not have the power of arrest. Because of this incident, President Franklin Roosevelt enacted legislation to give the FBI the right to carry firearms and to make arrests. Up until this time, the FBI had been strictly an investigative agency. Research in later years tends to support that all the deaths of the incident were caused by shots fired from shotguns by officers themselves, as opposed to machine guns and .45 caliber pistols of the gangsters.
On June 17, 1933, Kansas City Missouri Police Detectives William J. Grooms and Frank E. Hermanson were sent to meet other officers arriving at Union Station with federal prison escapee, Frank Nash. Apparently an informant had relayed all the information regarding the arrival of Nash and his law enforcement escorts to various gangsters through out the metropolitan area. The officers were not prepared for the ambush at the Union Station in Kansas City Missouri. It was believed that both Detectives William J. Grooms and Frank E. Hermanson, an F.B.I. agent Raymond J. Caffrey, Oklahoma Police Chief Otto Reed , and the prisoner Frank Nash were all killed by the mobsters, who were said to have been Charles Arthur "Pretty Boy Floyd", Adam Richetti and Vernon C. Miller. On November 29, 1933, during the FBI's search for Miller, his mutilated body was found in a ditch on the outskirts of Detroit, Michigan. Charles Floyd was shot to death in a shootout with a group of law enforcement officers headed by Melvin Purvis, near Clarkson Ohio, on October 22, 1934. Adam Richetti (Ricchetti) was executed in the Missouri State Penitentiary gas chamber October 7, 1938 for the murder of Detective Frank Hermanson of the Kansas City Missouri Police Department. This incident "The Kansas City Massacre", a.k.a. The Union Station Massacre, happened at a time when the FBI did not carry firearms and did not have the power of arrest. Because of this incident, President Franklin Roosevelt enacted legislation to give the FBI the right to carry firearms and to make arrests. Up until this time, the FBI had been strictly an investigative agency. Research in later years tends to support that all the deaths of the incident were caused by shots fired from shotguns by officers themselves, as opposed to machine guns and .45 caliber pistols of the gangsters.
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