CHICAGO, Nov. 7 (UPI) -- The son of legendary FBI agent Melvin Purvis says J. Edgar Hoover ruined his father's career because he was getting too much publicity.
Purvis resigned from the FBI in 1935, only a year after the shooting of John Dillinger made him a national celebrity. He went on to operate a newspaper and radio station in Florence, S.C.
His son, Alston, who teaches graphic design at Boston University, has written a book, "The Vendetta," the Chicago Tribune reports.
"My father was a hero who died believing he was something less," Alston Purvis said in the book. "(FBI Director) Hoover's efforts to diminish my father in the public eye had, to a large extent, laid waste to my father's belief in himself."
Alston Purvis said that Chicago was "ground zero" of the crime wars in the early 1930s. In addition to Dillinger, Purvis was involved in the fatal shootings of "Pretty Boy" Floyd and "Baby Face" Nelson.
