"Dirty Yellow Rat"

Late one drowsy afternoon last week a pretty, red-haired girl and two men strolled out of an ornate apartment house on New Orleans' Canal Street and climbed into a waiting automobile. Passersby gaped as a score of purposeful men suddenly vaulted from behind bushes and parked cars, surrounded the machine in which the girl and her friends sat. Under the muzzles of sawed-off shotguns and revolvers the men were trussed up like hogs ready for butchering, all three dumped into waiting automobiles, whirled away.

Hour later, mystified newshawks were called into an office in New Orleans' Post Office building, recognized instantly a blackhaired, stoutish figure sitting behind a flat-topped desk. "I've got something interesting to tell you,* snapped John Edgar Hoover, director of the Department of Justice's Bureau of Investigation.

"We've captured Alvin Karpis, generally known as Public Enemy No. i--but not to us." It was the first time that J. Edgar Hoover had personally made a catch since he joined the Department of Justice 19 years ago.

Under reporters' excited queries Director Hoover declared the Department of Justice had for two months been hot on the trail of Alvin ("Old Creepy") Karpis, wanted for robbery, kidnapping and murder. Few days before the Karpis capture Director Hoover chartered a twin-motored Douglas transport plane in New York, flew to New Orleans, told his pilots to be on instant call at an inconspicuous hotel.

Caught with unarmed Killer Karpis were the woman, named Ruth, and 37-year-old Fred Hunter, sought with Karpis for a $34,000 mail-train robbery last November at Garrettsville, Ohio.

Shunted back into the hall after the Hoover announcement, newshawks waited an hour. Out the door suddenly burst a wedge of Federal agents, who clattered down the corridor with Director Hoover shouting angrily at photographers, "No pictures, no pictures!" Outside, agents threw manacled, coatless Alvin Karpis into a huge red automobile, went roaring off for Shushan airport. Next morning in St.

Paul, Minn., skinny, shivering Public Enemy No. 1, still wearing the stiff straw hat in which he was captured, was dragged from the airplane's cabin, rushed to the Federal building.

There Director Hoover, whose sense of showmanship is fullgrown, announced that the $5,000 price he had resoundingly placed on Karpis' head week before (TIME, May 4) would be paid no one, since he and his G-Men had traced and captured the killer without assistance. It was indicated that Karpis, born Raymond Karpavicz 26 years ago in Canada, would be tried for the $100,000 snatching of St.

Paul's Brewer William Hamm, one crime of the three kidnappings. 15 bank robberies and at least three murders of which he is suspected.

Ready to fly back to New York, Director Hoover was in a more garrulous mood.

He revealed Alvin Karpis had been fishing and hunting on the Gulf and in Florida for several months, had moved to New Orleans several weeks ago. His face had been lifted, his fingertips mutilated. The G-Men said that Karpis had paid a Chicago gang doctor $350 for the face-lifting operation, that the job was not worth 50-c-.

In Karpis' wallet at the time of his arrest was $80, in the Karpis car a rifle, in the apartment, three .45 calibre revolvers.

"Karpis said he'd never be taken alive," observed John Edgar Hoover, "but we took him without firing a shot. That marked him as a dirty, yellow rat. He was scared to death." This week the House voted to raise Director Hoover's pay from $9,000 to $10,000 per year.

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