George W Birdwell

Hugo, Ok, Sept 6 – Harmon Bohanon,   50 years old.  Choctaw   Indian, is dead and Geroge Birdwell, 30 years old, farmer is the county jail here as the result of an alleged fight Tuesday night at the home of Birdwell, four miles east of here.

Birdwell came to Hugo and surrendered to officers shortly after the shooting.

Posse Surrounds Him and His Lieutenant, but They Escape.

ADA, OK, June 7 (AP) –Ripping their way with machine gun fire through a posse that had surrounded them at a farmhouse near Stonewall, two men identified by officers as Charles (Pretty Boy) Floyd, much sought Oklahoma outlaw, and his lieutenant, George Birdwell, escaped Tuesday night in an automobile.  No one was wounded.

The pair fled amid a shower of bullets from the posse.  Officers expressed the belief the two men wore bulletproof waistcoats and other armor.

The officers, led by O.P. Ray, superintendent of the State Bureau of Criminal Investigation, and Sheriff L. E. Franklin of Pontotoc County, were reported in close pursuit of the fleeing car.

Hearing that Floyd planned to hide in the farmhouse preparatory to robbing the Stonewall bank Wednesday, Sheriff Franklin notified State operatives and the quickly formed posse surrounded the house.

Franklin said the two men rushed from the house with machine guns and mowed their way to freedom.  The officers took refuge behind trees and returned the fire.

Floyd and Birdwell reached their automobile and sped away to the northeast, holding pursuers off with a fusillade of machine gun bullets.

Officers believed they punctured a rear tire on the machine and that the car could be trailed easily.

The Stonewall bank was robbed April 21 and an Ada boy was  taken captive by the robbers in their flight.  Officers said Floyd was one of the robbers.  The boy was released the next day after being forced to camp overnight with the bandits.

November 23, 1932, George Birdwell, Charles Glass, and C.C. Patterson entered the all Black town of Boley, Oklahoma.  They were going against Floyd's advice, having told them that it was an all black town and bank with very little money.  The citizens were also all armed and not afaird to use their guns.

They herded bank employees into the vault, then approached D.J. Turner, the bank president.  Turner calmly pressed the alarm button.  When Birdwell went to shoot Turner, he was shot by H.C. McCormick from the vault.  The shot was to kill Birdwell, but not before he got off several shots into Turner.

His two companions took out running from the bank only to be surrounded by the citizens of Boley and their marshal.  Both were shot down.

Floyd’s  Wife Attends Birdwell Funeral

Seminole, OK., Nov 25 (AP)

Mrs. Charles Arthur Floyd, wife of the bandit leader whose activities have baffled Oklahoma officers for two years appeared at the funeral of George Birdwell late Friday.

Mrs. Floyd, who was mysteriously removed from a Tulsa Hospital Thanksgiving Eve, on the day Birdwell was killed while attempting to rob a Negro bank at Boley, was stylishly dressed.

Her husband, for whom officers have kept a constant watch in expectation he might attempt to view his pal’s body as it lay in a morgue here, was reported by officers as having been seen near Seminole shortly before the burial.

Flora May was a tough lady.  She did not approve of what her husband was doing.  He once brought Bonnie and Clyde to visit and she would not come out to meet them.  After George's death, she remarried and moved her family to California.  She and her second husband had some success and led a good life.   She never spoke about that time in her life or of George again.