On June 17, 1933, Kansas City Missouri Police Detectives William J. Grooms and Frank E. Hermanson were sent to meet other officers arriving at Union Station with federal prison escapee, Frank Nash. Apparently an informant had relayed all the information regarding the arrival of Nash and his law enforcement escorts to various gangsters through out the metropolitan area. The officers were not prepared for the ambush at the Union Station in Kansas City Missouri. It was believed that both Detectives William J. Grooms and Frank E. Hermanson, an F.B.I. agent Raymond J. Caffrey, Oklahoma Police Chief Otto Reed , and the prisoner Frank Nash were all killed by the mobsters, who were said to have been Charles Arthur “Pretty Boy Floyd”, Adam Richetti and Vernon C. Miller. On November 29, 1933, during the FBI’s search for Miller, his mutilated body was found in a ditch on the outskirts of Detroit, Michigan. Charles Floyd was shot to death in a shootout with a group of law enforcement officers headed by Melvin Purvis, near Clarkson Ohio, on October 22, 1934. Adam Richetti (Ricchetti) was executed in the Missouri State Penitentiary gas chamber October 7, 1938 for the murder of Detective Frank Hermanson of the Kansas City Missouri Police Department. This incident “The Kansas City Massacre”, a.k.a. The Union Station Massacre, happened at a time when the FBI did not carry firearms and did not have the power of arrest. Because of this incident, President Franklin Roosevelt enacted legislation to give the FBI the right to carry firearms and to make arrests. Up until this time, the FBI had been strictly an investigative agency.  Research in later years tends to support that all the deaths of the incident were caused by shots fired from shotguns by officers themselves, as opposed to machine guns and .45 caliber pistols of the gangsters.  The body of Detective Frank Hermanson remained at his home at 6123 Olive Street, Kansas City, Missouri, until Noon June 19 when it was transferred to the O.V. Mast Chapel at 3146 Main Street, Kansas City, Missouri, for funeral services at 2:00pm that same day.  The funeral procession of Detective Hermanson was given an escort by Kansas City, Missouri Police Officers to the state line, where officers of the Kansas City, Kansas Police Department were waiting to escort the procession from there to the cemetery.  Detective William Grooms was also buried on June 19 at Mount St. Mary’s Cemetery in Kansas City, Missouri.  Today Woodlawn Cemetery in Kansas City, Kansas has been abandoned by it’s owners/operators.  In some cases, information pertaining to persons buried there may be obtained by calling the Kansas City, Kansas City Hall. (bio by: Bill Walker) Cause of death: Gunshot in the line of duty