Copyright 2007/8,  Larry E. Wack, Retired Special Agent, FBI 1968-2003.

All rights reserved 

A very small piece of information predicated this website.  Months back, an online Dallas newspaper report revealed that the memoirs of former FBI Special Agent, Charles Winstead, were in a museum in Sherman, Texas.  Having known the Winstead name and his role in the Dillinger shooting and many other high profile cases of the '30s, one could only wonder why a document of this value to FBI and police history had never made it out of the city of Sherman where Winstead was born. Or at least copies of it.  It was important that others read it.

It wasn't just the importance and significance of the "memoirs" themselves that would cause anyone to stop and think. It was rather a follow-up comment from the reporter. "FBI Agent Winstead, who died in bed at 82 in 1973, is today widely disremembered." 

It's one of those statements you need to read twice.
   
How could a man like Winstead and the role he played in Texas law enforcement and FBI history not be remembered? There was something that just wasn't right with this.  How many others are "disremembered?"  Men who were so important to the pioneering of law enforcement and the beginnings of the FBI as we know it.


Who were they?  Where did they come from?  Can we put a name to a face or vice versa?

 

Under perhaps the worst of conditions, FBI men and many local law enforcement officers of the time pioneered a new era complete with gangland Chicago, dusty Midwest roads, wooden shacks, rented rooms, running boards, snap brim and  straw hats.

 

By the 1950's, many of these men were gone from the FBI, having resigned shortly after the Gangster Era, or  retired after 20 or so years.  Many entered in 1934 or just before.  Entering new jobs, some had founded the Society Of Former FBI Agents before leaving and continued to attend the Society functions for many years.  But the identities began to fade as newer generations of FBI men came into the ranks. 


An entire generation of FBI Agents is gone.  So is the evil they pursued.  Their biographies are diverse.  From Immigrants to those born here; many were lawyers and accountants; sports legends, boxers, war veterans and more.  
  

To the generations of today and tomorrow, most won't even know the gangsters, bank robbers, killers and others of those days.  Even fewer will know the names of the men who pursued them.  For most, they'll be only distant drums.  No doubt as time progresses,  distorted tales of two types of men; the hunters and the hunted. 

For the early G-Men, perhaps former FBI Agent James J. Metcalfe of the 30's said it all in his writings called "Portraits; We Were The G-Men."  He writes "......We helped the Bureau grow, we suffered heartaches and we lost the lives of several men.  But surely every one of us would do that job again.  Because today the FBI is worthy of its name and we are proud and happy that we helped create its fame."
 

I hope to preserve something here about those Agents of the 30's Era; the pioneers of the FBI as we've come to know it.  Much has been glamorized about the men and women who wreaked havoc on American Society.  But over the years, very little has been written about the dusty roads traveled by the men who tried to bring peace to it all.