 During the summer of 1942, Lafayette, Indiana, residents experienced a six-week reign of terror in which 50 serious and misdemeanor crimes were committed by one or more individuals. Beginning on June 2, the crime wave included 20 counts of breaking into automobiles, three counts of motor vehicle theft, approximately 20 misdemeanor counts of shoplifting and petty theft, six home and business burglaries, and two counts of aggravated assault occurred during two of those burglaries. This list does not include any affiliated counts of selling stolen property. Around 2.30 in the morning on June 20, Mrs. Mary Soller, 72, and her sister-in-law, Emma Soller, were asleep in separate rooms when they were both awakened by someone turning on the lights in each room. Thinking Emma was awake and needed assistance, 72-year-old Mary had just stood up when a man wearing a mask threw a one-quart glass milk bottle that struck her on the left side of her head, which then corrained off to hit a doorframe where it shattered to pieces. She then collected two $20 bills and headed them over, satisfying the burglar, who then made his escape. Suffering from a head injury and shock, the frail woman spent several days at a local hospital. Lafayette detectives investigating the case concluded her attacker used a common-style skeleton key to enter the home. The next aggravated assault came on June 30, while Mrs. Frances North was ironing clothes in her kitchen as her two young children slept. Since her husband worked the night shift at an industrial plant, she was startled by a noise in the front room. When one of the children made the noise, she left to check on them. As she stepped into the front room, a masked burglar accosted her, screaming. The young man threatened to kill her with a .38 caliber revolver he had found while searching an adjacent closet. He then pushed her into another room and beat her. The intruder then ran out the front door, taking the revolver and a Waltham brand watch. Also suffering from shock, Mrs. North sat on the floor for several hours before she summoned the strength to scream for help. Eventually, neighbors arrived and the police were called at 12.50 am. Her attacker's description matched the description the Solar Sisters had given. Local detectives were already piecing together all the separate crimes and looking for connections. Knowing North's attacker would likely try to sell the Waltham watch, they were keen to find where it would show up. Their strategy worked and six days later, they found a man who purchased the watch in good faith for three dollars. From him, they traced the purchase back to the seller. On June 7th, the front page of the Lafayette Journal and Courier announced the crime wave was over with the arrest of Floyd Burton Loveless, 15, and his brother, Robert K. Loveless, 17. When Floyd was just three, his mother Hazel, 29, stepped in front of a train on June 15, 1930. It was written up in the newspaper like it was an accident. Their father worked for the railroad and was often gone. Their grandmother raised the boys in Clarks Hill, a village 15 miles south of Lafayette. On June 2nd, the boys left home for Lafayette and went on a crime spree. No stranger to the law, both boys were already on probation for prior offenses. Seven months earlier, Floyd was placed on probation after serving nine days in jail for the burglary of a rural home near Lafayette. Robert's probation stemmed from a 1939 conviction for motor vehicle theft. He first served time at White's Indiana Manual Labor Institute for that crime, a punitive juvenile facility with a school and working farm. Memories of that institution may have tapered Robert's tolerance for crime to only 15 misdemeanor counts of shoplifting. It was young Floyd who was Lafayette's John Dillinger for June of 1942. Behind bars, Floyd's confessions trickled out of him over the next five to six days. Eventually, a polygraph examination in which he flunked horribly encouraged him to get it all off his chest. This included the two assaults, the burglaries, the motor vehicle thefts, and 20 counts of breaking into a parked automobile. Tried in juvenile court first degree burglary, Floyd Burton Loveless was given the maximum sentence allowed, commitment to the Indiana Boys School until he reached the age of 21. Sooner, if the school trustees believed he had reformed, like most juvenile institutions in other states, IBS was a tough place. Teen boys were subjected to widespread theft, staff violence, violence by older boys including sexual assault. However, since it was classed as a school and not a penal institution, the 1300 acre facility did not have an impassable fence or guard towers. The only measure to prevent any boy from escaping was a locked door for their barracks like quarters and a guard or two wandering the grounds. Floyd entered the institution on July 15. 30 days later, he and another boy, David Klein, 15, escaped, and it took six hours before someone noticed they were gone. Situated 30 miles northeast of Indianapolis, the boys stole a car and drove west, most likely taking the US 40, the fastest and easiest road to get there. They financed their trip by burglarizing homes. Floyd found a revolver in one of them and kept it for himself. He should have left it there. Shortly, it would change his life forever. By August 20, the two boys were near Elco, Nevada, where they quarreled and decided it was best to split up. Floyd let Klein keep the Indiana car, but Klein stayed with Floyd until he had commandeered one for himself. It didn't take long before Floyd found a truck with a key still in it. Klein drove behind him as they got back on the Victoria Highway, aka US Highway 40, to continue their journey to California. Stealing the truck was Floyd's second biggest mistake that day. It belonged to Elmer Hill, the popular manager of the horseshoe ranch at nearby Dunphy. Everyone knew Elmer's truck, and when Carlin Constable ate off burning, learned the stolen truck was coming his way, he parked his vehicle along the highway and waited. With Elco 23 miles east of him, burning didn't have long to wait. He had served as the town's constable for 26 years, re-elected by the people each time since 1915. Throughout the county, he was known as a reliable lawman. But on that day, August 20th, shortly before noon, the odds were against him. He spotted Elmer's truck, noticed someone else was driving it, and stood there until it stopped. And about that same time, the stolen car driven by Klein was also preparing to stop, but drove away when the constable waived him off. Burning walked over, opened the door, and told Floyd, he would have to take me in for being in a car I didn't belong in. Loveless, later testified. Not sensing the danger he was in, burning got behind the wheel, forcing Floyd to slide over to the passenger seat. He would later tell officials, I pulled out a gun and said I wouldn't go back with him. He grabbed the gun and I shot him. The gun got jammed and we started finding, and then I pulled the trigger again, and it worked, and I drove off down the road. Burning collapsed on the driver's seat, and Floyd pulled him the rest of the way into the truck. Then, with Burning slumped over on the passenger side, Floyd got behind the wheel and continued driving west. Over the next few miles, Burning moaned in agony. Loveless replied that he was taking him to a hospital. Instead, he caught up with Klein a little further down the highway at Primo Station, a middle of nowhere gas station, and rest stop within natural spring. Loveless abandoned the truck and jumped in the Buick, and the two drove off. Klein later testified that when Loveless got into the car, he asked him what happened, and Floyd said he had shot the officer and left him in the truck. Klein said nothing, drove a little further, and then exclaimed that he saw a pistol lying in the sagebrush by the side of the road. When Floyd went to look for the weapon, he drove off and left him there. The end for Klein came about 90 miles further down the highway, near Winimuka, where a roadblock was waiting for him. Klein took the shoulder and drove around it, forcing him to take a 7-mile dirt road that was a dead end. He was trapped. A cruiser belonging to deputy sheriff George Armstead pursued Klein. Writing shotgun with him was Wallace Van Reed and Arthur C. Sebbis, who were running against each other to be the next sheriff of Humboldt County, trailing behind him a thick cloud of dust. The two opposing candidates put nine bullets in Klein's car, hoping to stop him. None of them did. At the end of the road, they watched as Klein discovered the dead end, turned the car around, and sped towards them. Setting up another roadblock at a narrow point in the road, all three got out and readied themselves. As he had done before, Klein steered for the shoulder in hopes of driving around them. Both candidates saw this and opened up with two shotguns, shredding the windshield. Two of the 12 gauge pellets hit Klein in the cheek, and that was it for him. He was taken into custody and driven back to Elko County. Meanwhile, an Elko County deputy sheriff found loveless walking along the highway a few miles west of here, where he had abandoned the stolen truck and a gravely wounded constable burning, paralyzed from the neck down. On the drive to Elko County jail, loveless confessed to stealing a truck and shooting burning, but when he met up again with Klein behind bars, he recanted his confession and refused to say anything more. Burning died from his wounds 36 hours later. Elko County's case against loveless began in juvenile court, but was soon bumped up to district court, a move that would have him tried as an adult. He was formally charged with murder on September 12th, pleaded innocent on September 22nd, and his trial began on September 28, 39 days after he mortally wounded burning. Jury selection lasted most of the first and second day, and by the end of business on the third day, September 30th, the trial itself was over, and loveless was found, guilty as charged in the information. His defense attorney had, but just one strategy, avoid the death penalty. The high point of the trial was when loveless took the stand and wept as he described shooting constable burning. Explaining himself as best he could, loveless told the jury he didn't know burning was a law enforcement officer, since he was wearing plain clothes. Dale Klein's actions to rid himself of loveless and his willingness to testify against him saved him from being charged as an accomplice. He would later be taken into federal custody for interstate motor vehicle theft, and held until the age of maturity. According to Nevada State law, District Judge James Dysart, who oversaw the case, had no choice but to sentence loveless to death, which he did on October 5th. His execution date was scheduled for December 13th. One Nevada newspaper pointed out that his sentence could later be commuted to life in prison by the State Board of Parton and Perot, or the governor. But it was clear from almost the beginning that was never going to happen. From the time he was bumped from juvenile to district court, to the judge sentencing him to death, Nevada newspapers, including the Reno Gazette and the Nevada State Journal, systematically lied about Floyd being 16 years old. He wasn't. He was 15. He would turn 16 on November 2nd. They had his files. The FBI had his files. They didn't get it wrong on accident. They never got Klein's age wrong. He was always 15. 16 made Floyd loveless more of a man and less of a boy if his true age were published. Several days after his sentencing, loveless was transferred to the Nevada State Prison Carson City, where he resided on death row. On November 30th, two weeks before his execution date, his defense attorney, Taylor Wines, filed an appeal, something he didn't have to do. In his oral argument before the State Supreme Court, Wines rightly pointed out that his client was found guilty of murder, but the kind of murder was left out. According to section 10068 of Nevada Compat Laws 1929, murder is not just murder. First degree or second degree murder must be clearly spelled out in the charges and instructions to the jury. All murder which shall be perpetrated by means of poison or lying in wait, torture or by any other kind of willful, deliberate and premeditated killing or what shall be committed in the perpetration or attempt to perpetrate any arson, rape, robbery or burglary shall be deemed murder of the first degree. And all other kinds of murder shall be deemed murder of the second degree and the jury before whom any person indicted for murder shall be tried shall, if they find such person guilty thereof, designate by their verdict whether it be murder of the first or second degree. On April 21, 1943, the Nevada State Supreme Court ordered the verdict set aside and Floyd Lovelace to receive a new trial. Returning to Alco County District Court, his second trial began on November 15, 1943 and like the first one, he was over on the third day, November 17th. This time the language was clear, guilty of murder in the first degree. Lovelace, now 17, was again sentenced to die in the Nevada Gas Chamber. But fortunately, a second trial also gave him the right to an appeal which his defense filed on February 29, 1944. As he waited for oral arguments and the court's decision, Floyd Lovelace lost his bitterness and became a proper young man. He kept time for prison boxing matches, read books in his cell, wrote letters, embraced the Catholic faith, and played on the prison softball team. His skills as a second baseman even got his name in the sports section of the Nevada State Journal when NSP trounced the 947th Guard Squadron 6-2. Oral arguments were heard on July 10 and the Nevada State Supreme Court published its opinion on August 6. Judgment was affirmed. Execution was scheduled for September 29, 1944. During his last 44 days, the State Board of Partons and Paroles refused to commute his sentence and the governor declined to intervene. His attorney filed a writ of habeas corpus claiming Lovelace was insane. But this only postponed his execution from 5 a.m. to 6 o'clock that evening. At that time, the warden read the death warrant to him and a physician attached a stethoscope to his chest. Lovelace's last request to the warden was for roses to be sent to his grandmother back in Indiana. This was granted. At 6.24 p.m., he was led from his cell and walked his last 13 steps with father Buell by his side. Although no last words were recorded, it is customary for prisoners about to be executed to ask forgiveness from all those in life they had hurt and to forgive all who sinned against them. Lovelace was then strapped into a steel chair and the doctor connected the stethoscope to monitor just outside the small cinder block building. At 6.27 p.m., sodium cyanide pellets were dropped into a pot of sulfuric acid and within 60 seconds, the room filled with white poisonous smoke. Floyd took a deep breath as he had been advised to do and by 6.29 p.m., he was pronounced dead.