Description:

Purvis Melvin

Melvin Purvis, "the man who got Dillinger," Signed PSA/DNA slabbed check

 

PSA/DNA slabbed check No. 116 inscribed overall and signed by famous former FBI bureau chief Melvin Purvis (1903-1960) as “Melvin H. Purvis.” Issued from the First National Bank and Trust Co. of Kalamazoo, Michigan on April 15, 1943 in the amount of $14.00 payable to “Phillip A. Willcox.” The check has a gray woven background over which an image of a bank is superimposed, bears several stamped and perforated cancellation marks, and was signed by the payee verso. Graded by PSA/DNA as NM-MT 8. Check measures 8.375" x 3" and is enclosed in a PSA/DNA certified slab measuring 12.375” x 5.5.”

 

Melvin Purvis made out this check to his brother-in-law Phillip Alston Willcox, Jr. (1906-1957). Purvis's wife, Marie Roseanne Willcox Purvis, was the daughter of his former law partner in Florence, South Carolina, Phillip Alston, Sr. (1866-1922). The younger Willcox's marriage announcement listed his profession as Maintenance Superintendent for the State Highway Department at Florence, South Carolina in November 1948.

 

Melvin Purvis had been a practicing South Carolina attorney when he joined the FBI as a field agent in 1927, and was appointed head of Chicago FBI offices in 1932. Under Purvis's leadership, the FBI captured three of the city's most notorious gangsters: Baby Face Nelson, John Dillinger, and Pretty Boy Floyd. Purvis resigned from the bureau in 1935, possibly because of a conflict with its jealous director J. Edgar Hoover. Purvis served as an intelligence officer during World War II, eventually reaching the rank of lieutenant colonel, and later practiced law in northeastern South Carolina until his possibly accidental death in 1960.

 

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