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St.
Louis Field Office
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From its earliest days, the Bureau has had
a presence in St. Louis, Missouri. Reminiscing about
the Bureau many years later, Special Agent James Findlay
remembered that E. J. Brennan, who later founded the
FBI’s special agent training program, was the
Special Agent in Charge in St. Louis from at least
1911 to 1914.
In its formative years, the Bureau had a small range
of investigative responsibilities, including interstate
prostitution investigations arising from the Mann
Act. During World War I, St. Louis Division investigations
increased greatly. The cases ranged from serious
offenses to those that today would be considered
more specious. For example, during the war St. Louis
agents seized more than 16 million eggs as a result
of concerns that some companies were hoarding large
amounts of food to manipulate market prices.
1920s and 1930s
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Special Agent in Charge James McLaughlin, 1924-1925
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Due to a major reorganization of FBI field offices,
the St. Louis Division was shut down in August 1920
and its operations assigned to the Kansas City Division.
Within three months, though, an office had been reopened
in St. Louis and appears to have remained in operation
since then.
During the Hoover reforms of 1924, the St. Louis
Division started undergoing regular review. Although
there was some turnover in Special Agents in Charge
at this time, Bureau Headquarters clearly thought
the office was on the right path. In an incident
that indicated the Bureau’s priorities of the
day, Director Hoover squared off against Congressman
J. Dyer of Missouri over the management of the office.
Dyer had complained that a recent change in the Special
Agent in Charge and in other personnel had made the
office less effective, more costly, and less responsive
(politically) to his concerns. Hoover argued that
the Special Agent in Charge favored by Dyer had been
fired because he refused to act in accord with the
best interests of the Bureau, that the efficiency
and workload of the office had greatly increased
(and he had the statistics to prove it), and that
the Director would be happy to take up this defense
before the Appropriations Committee or other appropriate
venue. Hoover’s arguments carried the day.
Such changes—removing personnel who did not
or would not perform, tightening standards, and defending
the Bureau from political attacks—were true
across the organization and helped prepare offices
like St. Louis for the more difficult crime problems
of the 1930s.
And St. Louis often proved itself in the new Bureau.
Its most significant case at that time was the capture
of a fugitive wanted for the murder of Special Agent
Edwin Shanahan. On October 11, 1925, Agent Shanahan
confronted known car thief Martin Durkin in a Chicago
parking garage. Durkin shot and killed Shanahan and
fled across the country. Agents tracked him to California,
across the West, and back to Missouri. On January
20, 1926, agents of the St. Louis Division and officers
of the St. Louis Police Department captured Durkin.
Tried under Illinois state law, Durkin received the
death penalty for Shanahan’s murder.
With the onset of the Great Depression, an organized
criminal class known as gangsters began to emerge.
Thriving in the criminal anarchy around Prohibition,
a loose support structure developed for a diverse
group of bootleggers, kidnappers, bank robbers, and
assorted hoodlums. Missouri became a key part of
the network that catered to this violent criminal
activity.
From the Kansas City Massacre in 1933 through the
1934 demise of “Baby Face” Nelson in
a shootout that left two FBI agents dead, the agents
of the St. Louis Division contributed considerable
work and talent to the Bureau’s efforts in
the war on crime waged to end the gangster era. Many
St. Louis agents were veterans of these battles,
including Special Agent in Charge Reed Vetterli (August
1934 to January 1936), who confronted Nelson in a
shootout in Illinois, and Jay C. Newman (January
1936 to February 1937), who had been involved in
a raid on a Dillinger hideout and survived a gunshot
to the head from Nelson before being assigned to
lead the St. Louis office.
1940s and 1950s
With the onset of World War II, the office began
to grow substantially as it addressed numerous war-related
matters, including conducting security checks for
plants manufacturing war goods and investigating
multiple allegations of sabotage. National security
cases remained a priority of the Division as the
conflict ended and the Cold War began.
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Photos
of the station wagon/crime scene (top left),
burial site (top right), murder weapon (center),
ransom money bag (bottom left), and suitcases
full of money (bottom right).
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Carl Austin
Hall (left) and Bonnie Brown Heady.
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Major criminal investigations continued as well.
In September 1953, St. Louis agents became involved
in one of the Bureau’s most famous kidnapping
cases. When a six-year-old boy named Bobby Greenlease,
Jr. was kidnapped, a massive effort to find the child
was launched. Tragically, it was discovered that
the boy had been killed soon after he had been abducted.
The work of the St. Louis Division, though, did lead
to justice. Greenlease’s kidnappers—Carl
Austin Hall and Bonnie Brown Heady—were ultimately
found and arrested on October 6, 1953. Both were
convicted and received the death penalty.
1960s and 1970s
In the Bureau overall, the late 1950s and early
1960s saw a distinct shift in investigative work
as organized crime and civil rights cases became
more important.
Many other interesting cases also came across St.
Louis desks. In 1964, for instance, St. Louis agents
proved that two local union officials had perjured
themselves before the National Labor Relations Board
regarding their role in some violence at a work site.
This was the first perjury conviction obtained as
a result of testimony before the Board.
In the 1970s, St. Louis agents continued to pursue
a wide variety of cases. In January 1973, they solved
the kidnapping and murder of a local Grandin, Missouri
bank president and his family. The bank president
had been forced to steal in order to protect his
wife and daughter, but all three were ultimately
killed by the robbers. An extensive investigation
pointed to Dallas Ray Delay, Jerry Wayne Rector,
and Lloyd Dewaine Cowin as the prime suspects. Agents
conducted separate interviews of Rector and Cowin,
and each confessed and admitted the involvement of
the other; both also implicated Delay.
Another important and successful case—launched
in late 1973—involved kickbacks given to St.
Louis officials involved in making decisions on the
construction of a local hospital. Politicians in
other nearby areas were also arrested and convicted
in the investigation.
In 1972, the St. Louis Division became one of the
first two offices in the modern-day FBI with a female
special agent when Joanne Pierce was assigned there
following her graduation from the FBI Academy.
In January 1977, the St. Louis Division, the St.
Louis Police Department, and local representatives
of ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms) initiated "Operation
Score." This was the first joint undercover
operation conducted by St. Louis agents and their
law enforcement partners. Agents selected a high-crime
area as the site to launch a covert fencing operation.
Agents "spread the word" of the operation,
and over an eight-month period, crooks brought in
stolen property valued at over $822,000. Seventy-three
individuals were eventually charged with violations
such as murder, robbery, burglary, and automobile
theft.
1980s and 1990s
In the 1980s, financial crimes and white-collar
frauds began to grow and become more of a priority
for the FBI and the St. Louis Division. In January
1983, for example, a joint FBI/IRS investigation
targeted Stix & Company, a 69-year-old brokerage
firm. St. Louis agents and IRS investigators executed
a search warrant on the company and seized its books
and records, enough to fill a large van. Just days
later the company closed and filed for bankruptcy.
An audit of the records seized showed that the company
had a deficit of $36 million, largely because a senior
vice president and five other employees had looted
the company over a five-year period.
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Special Agent
L. Douglas Abram
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Major violent crime was also a significant priority
and a great danger to all who sought to stem its
tide. On the evening of January 19, 1990, the St.
Louis SWAT team executed a search warrant in South
St. Louis County in a bank robbery investigation.
Announcing their presence, the agents entered the
residence to search for drugs and illegal weapons.
The suspect, James Price, immediately opened fire,
striking
Special
Agent L. Douglas Abram in the forehead. Two other agents—Carl A. Schultz
and Terrence M. McGinnis—were wounded in the
leg and arm. The suspect was killed in the ensuing
gun battle. Agent Abram died at a nearby hospital
about two hours later. He was the first agent in
the St. Louis office to be killed in the line of
duty.
To better tackle the rise of violent crime, the
St. Louis Division helped form two St. Louis Safe
Streets Task Forces in 1991. One task force targeted
violent fugitives in the region; the other focused
on street gangs. The Safe Streets program addressed
major violent crime in specific areas by bringing
together federal, state, and local law enforcement
and prosecutors. The joint effort has been quite
successful over the last two decades.
Post 9/11
The terrorist attacks of 9/11 led to major changes
within the FBI, including the St. Louis Division,
as preventing future strikes became the Bureau’s
overriding priority.
The St. Louis Joint Terrorism Task Force, officially
formed in January 2002, has successfully brought
together state, local, and federal partners to protect
the residents of St. Louis from terrorism by running
down leads, vetting threats, and developing intelligence.
In 2003, a Field Intelligence Group was also created
to better collect and utilize intelligence in the
office’s jurisdiction and to share it nationwide.
Meanwhile, the St. Louis office has continued to
tackle a wide range of other criminal and national
security responsibilities—from espionage to
cyber crimes, from hate crimes aimed at Muslims and
other minorities in the St. Louis community to child
pornography and white-collar frauds.
Among the significant investigations St. Louis has
handled in recent years:
