When Charles Lindbergh’s 20-month-old son was kidnapped in 1932 and his body was found two months later, it was considered the crime of the century. It took nearly three years before the boy’s kidnapper was arrested, but the Federal Bureau of Investigation had nothing to do with the investigation or arrest, for two reasons.

First, kidnapping was not a federal crime at the time and so the organization had no jurisdiction.

Second, at that time the FBI was so little known or so little regarded that the Lindberghs weren’t even interested in talking to its chief.

“Charles and Ann Morrow Lindbergh, the baby’s parents, even declined (FBI Director J. Edgar) Hoover’s offer to meet,” writes John Oller in “Gangster Hunters: How Hoover’s G-men Defeated America’s Deadliest Public Enemies” (Dutton, November 26).

Founded in 1908, the FBI’s initial mission was to investigate corporate wrongdoing and fraudulent government land deals.

He was not involved in pursuing bootleggers during Prohibition (the bailiwick of the Treasury Department) nor in pursuing tax evaders (the Internal Revenue Service, which arrested Al Capone).

The FBI “just wasn’t a very dangerous job,” Oller writes of the agents’ workload. “Not the kind of activity that requires wielding a deadly weapon.”

After the 29-year-old Hoover became director in 1924, he insisted that the FBI recruit only certain types of agents.

He wanted men who were loyal and morally upright, all-American, at least 5 feet 7 inches tall, athletic or slim, elegant, and behaved like gentlemen. Ideally, they would have gone to college and also be members of the fraternity.

The job paid extremely well during the Depression, so Hoover had his pick of candidates. Most, however, expected an easy office job pushing papers, having no “idea of ​​the future of shooting to kill that awaited them.”

“They were not tough men with years of experience fighting crime. They were almost boys,” said Doris Rogers, office assistant.

In the 1930s, the FBI was changing – and Hoover was its chief agent of change. After the “Lindbergh Act” made kidnapping a federal crime, the FBI became more actively involved in combating violent crime. His first high-profile target was notorious bank robber Charles “Pretty Boy” Floyd.

In 1924, Floyd stole $12,000 from couriers, with one of his victims describing his attacker as “having a pretty face.”

Eventually arrested and imprisoned for bank robbery, Floyd escaped during transfer to a Kansas prison by jumping from a moving train.

Shortly thereafter, “Pretty Boy” and an accomplice murdered two men whose wives the criminals wanted to “date.”

In 1931, Floyd shot and killed an American Prohibition agent, then shot a sheriff who tried to arrest him. Remorse did not enter his mind. “It was either him or me, so I left the case to him,” “Pretty Boy” said of the murdered sheriff.

Hoover desperately wanted his FBI to apprehend Floyd, but he remained on the run for years.

These were not, however, the best of times for “Pretty Boy,” who was said to have been exhausted by life on the run.

Apparently the only way Floyd could relax was to bake pies.

One of the FBI’s first crime-fighting successes came in 1933 when an informant blamed the kidnapping of oil tycoon (and friend of FDR) Charles Urschel on a certain George Kelly.

Kelly was reportedly able to write his own name “with bullets fired from a gun.”

Quickly, the man was apprehended by FBI agents one morning in Memphis, where “Machine Gun” Kelly was caught half asleep in his underwear, compliant after a night of heavy drinking.

During his arrest, Kelly may also have uttered the phrase that would epitomize Hoover’s FBI. “Don’t shoot, G-men!” Kelly reportedly screamed.

“It was the greatest triumph of J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI to date,” Oller writes of the “Machine Gun” arrest.

But the FBI’s early days were also filled with memorable snafus, most notably during its pursuit of “Public Enemy No. 1,” John Dillinger. Dillinger was almost 30 years old in 1933, but had not yet robbed a bank. He had just been released from prison for “hitting an old grocer over the head.”

Following his father’s advice, John pleaded guilty to this crime, but was later sentenced to a shocking 10 to 20 years. Dillinger always said that injustice sealed his fate. “I went in a carefree boy, but came out bitter towards everything…”

In 1933, Dillinger began a bank robbery spree unprecedented in American history. His signature move was jumping meters and making light-hearted jokes, endearing him to an American public that hated banks during the Great Depression.

Dillinger was so romanticized that movie audiences erupted in joy when his face appeared in the newsreels.

Hoover made the arrest of Dillinger the FBI’s top priority, but the pursuit of the popular thief did not go well.

John was apprehended in Tucson by local cops using FBI information and FBI fingerprinting techniques, but after being extradited to East Chicago, he escaped from prison either by brandishing a wooden pistol, or by paying his captors.

His myth was polished when it was said that during this escape, Dillinger sang the chorus of a popular song, “Git along, small doggie, git along…”.

The FBI’s pursuit of Dillinger was hampered by countless leads about John’s whereabouts.

One said he walked the streets of Chicago dressed as a nun, another said he was a law student at Hoover’s alma mater, George Washington University, while a tramp in the streets of Washington, D.C., insisted that America’s “Public Enemy No. 1” was America’s “Public Enemy No. 1.” hidden in Minnesota.

Not finding it on the SS Duchess of York bound for Glasgow, Scotland, FBI agents have arrested at least one international conman wanted in London. Hoover touted the arrest as a way to distract from his organization’s failed prosecution of Dillinger.

In three weeks, John Dillinger escaped capture by the FBI four times. He watched as federal agents invaded a Chicago tavern to arrest his girlfriend, with John casually walking away from the scene after dropping off his lover.

He was surrounded at a St. Paul, Minnesota, safe house before fighting his way out and escaping out the back door, blood seeping into the snow from a gunshot wound to the calf.

Worst of all, after the press reported that FBI agents had holed up Dillinger and his gang in a Wisconsin lodge called Little Bohemia, the federal agents ended up killing only one innocent bystander as John and his accomplices jumped through. the back window to escape them.

Carter Baum, the FBI man who killed the bystander, was so traumatized that he vowed never to fire his gun again, which later gave him pause when he had Dillinger’s accomplice, Baby Face Nelson, in his line of sight. Nelson’s murderous conscience did not slow him down, however, immediately taking down Baum.

“Little Bohemia was a debacle for the FBI like no other before or since,” Oller writes. “But from the ashes of the gunfights in this isolated snowy Wisconsin refuge, the modern FBI was born.”

Soon the FBI would be known for always finding their man. Federal agents eventually shot and killed Dillinger in the street outside Chicago’s Biograph Theater. Baby Face Nelson killed 2 FBI agents in a shootout in Barrington, Illinois, but the gangster shot himself in the stomach that day and was “done.” Even Pretty Boy Floyd couldn’t escape forever, being shot by Hoover’s G-men as he tried to flee across an Ohio cornfield.

Each of these criminals had at one point been labeled America’s “Public Enemy No. 1,” and their disappearance ultimately enhanced the reputation of the FBI to such an extent that its agents began to be viewed more heroically. than gangsters once were.

“For Depression-era Americans, violent criminals had finally lost their romantic appeal, replaced by the image of the incorruptible G-man.”