Retired FBI Agent, Murry C. Falkner was actually the only FBI Agent during the ‘30s who was an "authorized pilot." Falkner became an FBI Agent in 1925. He obtained his pilot's license in 1936 at the Albuquerque Airport while assigned to the El Paso FBI office. Most of his official flying duties were in the West Texas and New Mexico areas. Falkner recounted some of his career in a 1967 interview for the FBI’s internal magazine, “The Grapevine.”
Among other high profile cases, Falkner was involved in the Dillinger and Bremer kidnapping investigations, among others, and received a raise in salary along with others for their work. He used his raise to learn how to fly. In 1939, he was on special assignment in Seattle and bought his first plane. Before delivery, he was transferred to San Francisco, FBI and then had to travel to Detroit to arrange delivery. After a short sprint in San Francisco, FBI he was transferred to Alaska but found problems financially in taking the plane with him.
Falkner retired from the FBI in the '60s and maintained a residence in Mobile, Alabama. At the time of his retirement, he had a new career in mind – writing. In a recently found July, 1965 news interview with Falkner, it’s revealed “Writing is not new in the Falkner family. He (Murry) is a brother of the late William Faulkner and John Faulkner, also a novelist. William Faulkner was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1949 and the Pulitzer prizes for fiction in 1955 and 1963.”
Said Falkner in the same interview, “I’m going to try to do some writing. I have no illusions that I have the talent my brothers had but I am going to try my hand at it.” At the time, Falkner was 66 years old.
Falkner retained the revised spelling of the family name when his brothers, on the other hand, restored the “u” dropped by their great-grandfather.