Purvis' performance reviews always rated his appearance and loyalty to the Bureau at 100%. He rated lowest for his understanding of the Manual of Instruction and the Manual of Rules and Regulations, which stayed at about 80% and for which Bureau of Investigation Director
J. Edgar Hoover once chided him as being unacceptable. Just before becoming
Special Agent in Charge of Chicago, his score on the rules and instruction rose to 100% and stayed there. In 1932, Hoover placed him in charge of the Chicago office. He led an investigation into the crash of
United Airlines Trip 23, which uncovered foul play as the cause of the crash.
The Factor case As Special Agent in Charge at the Chicago office, Purvis investigated
John Factor's kidnapping. It happened July 1, 1933, as Factor was returning home from an evening of gambling with friends near
Elkhorn, Wisconsin. The man convicted of kidnapping him, Roger Touhy, claimed Factor faked his own kidnapping to avoid
extradition to the United Kingdom for fraud. The FBI believed Touhy chose Factor as a victim, because extradition would make Factor avoid help from the authorities. This is what he had done when his son had been previously kidnapped. Factor's own kidnapping was reported, however; thus, the FBI was required to investigate. He was released after 11 days of captivity, burned and beaten. He remembered the face of his abductor, the voices of his captors and environmental details. The house where he was held was found, and from there, investigators tracked back to the Touhy gang. The gang had been arrested the day of Factor's release, their car filled with guns and the equipment used to tie kidnap victims in that era: linen strips and tough
window sash cord. With the permission of Elkhorn's law enforcement, agents brought the gang to Purvis in Chicago without an extradition order. Roger Touhy was convicted of the kidnapping and lost on
appeal before the
Supreme Court of Illinois.
John Dillinger John Dilllinger was already a convicted
felon, paroled on May 22, 1933, when he robbed a bank in
New Carlisle, Ohio, on June 10 that year. By March 3, 1934, he formed a gang and robbed ten banks. None of these were federal crimes; it was not until Dillinger drove a car across a state boundary that the FBI could get involved in the hunt for him.
The Little Bohemia Lodge Dillinger and his gang had been on the run ever since his March 3 escape. They wanted to rest somewhere remote; the
Little Bohemia Lodge in remote northern
Wisconsin, came up in conversation in on April 19. The gang decided to hide there for a few days, and they arrived the afternoon of April 20. The next day, the owner, Emil Wanatka, and his wife had figured out who they were. Early the next morning Mrs. Wanatka got word out to her brother-in-law, Lloyd Voss, to call a federal authority they knew in
Chicago. Purvis was contacted that morning but the lodge was in the
jurisdiction of the
St. Paul office, not Chicago. So he called that office and passed the tip to FBI Assistant Director Hugh Clegg, assigned by Hoover to oversee the pursuit of Dillinger, as well as FBI Inspector William Rorer and Special Agent in Charge at St. Paul, Werner Hanni. Clegg chartered a plane to carry him and other agents from St. Paul, Minnesota to
Rhinelander, Wisconsin. Fifty miles from the lodge, this was the closest they could get by air. Hanni, afraid of flying, travelled with his agents by car and brought the
tear gas equipment that the airlines refused to carry for safety reasons. Purvis and his Chicago agents flew in two other planes he chartered to Rhinelander to assist the Minnesota agents. Clegg arrived first, and scoured the town for cars he could rent. Mr. Voss told him the gangsters had changed their plans and decided to leave that evening after dinner. Clegg sent Purvis and other agents out to pick up the cars he had earlier found at a Ford
dealership. Purvis also commandeered the car belonging to the airport bystander who had given them a ride to the dealership. The only guide the agents had was a diagram drawn by Voss, but they set out at dusk over the slushy, muddy, potholed roads. It took them two hours to reach the lodge, and two cars broke down on the way. The agents rode on the
running boards of the remaining cars, clutching their machine guns as best they could. Clegg and Purvis approached the house together. There were no outdoor lights. The Wanatkas' dogs began barking. No one had told them about the dogs, nor about the three innocent diners inside. These three left the lodge and started up their car. Its radio blared loudly. The agents identified themselves, but the customers could not hear them over the radio. Clegg and Purvis simultaneously gave the order to shoot, but instead of gangsters, agents killed Eugene Boiseneau, a 33-year-old
Civilian Conservation Corps worker, and wounded Tom Morris, a 59-year-old cook at the CCC camp, and gas station attendant John Hoffman. Purvis tried to return fire on a fleeing figure that fired on them in the dark, but his machine gun jammed. This was
Babyface Nelson, who would later kill Special Agent W. Carter Baum, wound Special Agent Jay C. Newman, and wound Sheriff's Deputy Carl C. Christiansen. The car Newman was driving, which Nelson stole, was the one Purvis had commandeered. Agents sent to surround the lodge fell into a ditch in the dark while, unbeknownst to them, Dillinger's gang escaped through rear windows on the second story. Hanni arrived with the tear gas and agents fired the canisters into the house at daybreak, but the only people left were lodge employees and the gangsters' girlfriends. By May 8, Hoover was told that a former FBI agent, Thomas F. Cullen, was claiming to have heard that the agents that night had locked Clegg, Rorer, and Purvis in a shed, because of how badly the situation was being handled. He asked Assistant Director Harold Nathan to interview all the agents involved. On June 1 Nathan reported that every agent involved positively denied all the rumors. All the Chicago agents denied talking to Cullen. Special Agent in Charge John Mclaughlin said he did not think Clegg, Rorer, Purvis, or Hanni were open enough to the observations and suggestions of agents under them.
Mock trial in pursuit of Dillinger The false lead that sent federal agents to Pennsylvania in pursuit of Dillinger came from a Black man named John Kelly. They brought Kelly to FBI district offices and led Kelly to believe he was on trial in order to scare the truth out of him. Kelly eventually told his story to a Chicago newspaper and by early November someone had inquired about it of Director Hoover. Hoover immediately denied it, but on November 3 he sent a memo to Tamm stating that he had telephoned Purvis to ask him about it. Purvis told him that he had only witnessed Nathan giving Kelly a stern lecture to scare the truth out of him. Purvis said he saw nothing to indicate it was anything more than an interrogation and a lecture. Hoover told Tamm that he informed Purvis that agents are only allowed to interrogate subjects and have no right to make them believe they are on trial. Four days later, Hoover wrote to Purvis that Nathan admitted to the FBI that a mock trial had been held and that Purvis was present. Hoover told Purvis that he was disturbed by the differences in their stories and that activities like that cannot be tolerated under any circumstances in FBI offices.
Catching Dillinger Anna Sage, a native of
Romania, immigrated to Chicago with her first husband and had a son, but her marriage ended when she began an affair with
East Chicago, Indiana police officer Martin Zarkovich. She worked as a prostitute and took over the
brothel when the owner died. Because of this, she was being
deported as an
undesirable alien. When she found out her fellow prostitute Polly Hamilton was dating Dillinger, she called her old boyfriend Zarkovich. Cowley was in Purvis's office when a call came in from East Chicago Police Captain Timothy O'Neill and Zarkovich on July 21, 1934. The officers met Purvis and Cowley in Cowley's hotel room that night and later continued on to meet Sage. She offered to help catch Dillinger in exchange for being allowed to stay in the country with her son. Purvis told her he had no control over her fate, but he, as Special Agent in Charge of the Chicago office of the Department of Investigation, would recommend she not be deported. He said she could get a financial reward, but he had no control over that either. With faith in the promise of his recommendation, Sage agreed to help and he accepted her offer. She told them that Dillinger liked to go to movies—usually at the Marbro Theater—and she, Hamilton and Dillinger had plans to go the next night. Cowley ordered all agents to deploy on a moment's notice. He was stationed with a team of agents at the Marbro, when Sage called Purvis in the office and told him Dillinger would be leaving for either the Marbro or the
Biograph Theater. Purvis rushed agents there to survey it. Zarkovich
Charles B. Winstead joined Cowley at the Marbro, while Purvis took agent Brown to the Biograph. Dillinger arrived at the Biograph with Sage and Hamilton 40 minutes after Purvis did. Brown immediately called Cowley who instructed that the agents there take positions.'' In the heat, Dillinger was wearing a straw
boater and grey trousers. Purvis thought of arresting him at the ticket window, but decided the risk to the crowd there was too great. Instead he bought a ticket, went into the theater and looked for Dillinger, hoping to arrest him within, but the theater was too crowded. He came back out and chatted with the ticket seller, finding out how long the movie lasted. Purvis went to each agent and relayed that information to them. He also told them to watch for his signals: lighting his cigar on recognizing Dillinger, and waving his hand to indicate the moment to arrest him. Then he stood closest to the theater exit. All the agents waited for two hours. Noticing men loitering in doorways that long, the theater employees thought they were about to be robbed. They phoned the police but a federal agent quietly identified himself to the officers in the arriving
squad car and they withdrew. Moviegoers started flowing out of the theater shortly after. Dillinger appeared, flanked by Hamilton and Sage, in a crowd of women and children. Purvis and his agents had been canvassing the area in search of any trace of Floyd when they came upon the car behind the
corn crib. As they pulled up on the other side of the crib, Floyd began to run, zig-zagging across an open field, pistol in hand. When he refused to stop, they opened fire and he dropped dead. In a 2005 book co-written by Purvis's son
Alston, Hoover is portrayed as jealous of the attention given to Purvis after Dillinger was killed. == Career after the FBI ==