Floyd Melvin Alloway
36 YOA
1505 Vermont Street
Des Moines, IA
Polk County
December 18, 1937
Floyd Alloway rarely held a job. So when he was hired by the Works Progress Administration in December 1937 to work on a sewage disposal plant project in Des Moines, he was happy to have employment.
Unfortunately, his first day of work was his last.
That night — December 18 — Alloway answered a knock at the back door of 1505 Vermont Street, where he lived with 55-year-old Estella Hall. A shot rang out and he called for Hall, who said by the time she got to him he was dead. She claimed not to have seen who fired the shot.
Estella Hall summoned her neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Riley Thornton, who notified Des Moines Police. The Thorntons heard the shot but saw no one.
During the autopsy, Polk County Coroner A.E. Shaw recovered a .38 caliber bullet that entered Alloway’s abdomen and then traveled downward through his body, lodging near the base of the spine.
The bullet severed Alloway’s watch chain; three links of it were imbedded in the nose of the slug when it was removed from the body.
Shaw, noting the odd path of the bullet, speculated that Alloway was bending over to identify the person knocking on the door, which was a foot above the level of the back porch.
At first, Estella Hall told Des Moines Police she was Alloway’s foster mother, even claiming that when he was shot, he called out, “Oh, Ma.”
However, Alloway was 36-years-old and his own mother was still living. Hall finally admitted she had lived with Alloway for five years as his common law wife, even though she was 55 and had a son two years older than Alloway.
Police arrested Hall and held her for questioning; officers accompanied her to Alloway’s funeral on December 21. She was released when nothing was found to connect her to the shooting.
After interrogating Hall, Chief of Detectives J.A. Brophy told reporters, “I think she knows more about this than she has told us so far.”
Alloway’s Fellow WPA workers were questioned without results.
Police uncovered evidence that Alloway operated a small bootlegging business, selling alcohol in the river bottom section of Des Moines where he lived.
Officers found two one-gallon cans smelling strongly of alcohol on the porch. Estella Hall claimed Alloway found them at the city dump and planned to sell them to an Ames serum company.
Police speculated the shooting was connected to the bootlegging operation.
Floyd Melvin Alloway was born in 1901 in Jasper County, Iowa, to Lucy A. Woody and William Alloway. He had two brothers — Leonard and Leo Alloway — and six sisters: Nelly Alloway Painter, Lucy Alloway Enyart, Iva Alloway Heavilin Christy, Edna Alloway Swackhamer, Alina Alloway, and Vera E. Alloway.
He spent most of his life in Jasper County and then lived with his brother Leonard on a farm near Redrock in Marion County before moving to Des Moines.
Courtesy photo findagrave.comFloyd Alloway is buried in Glendale Cemetery in Des Moines.
Questions and information about the unsolved 1937 homicide of Floyd Alloway should be directed to the Des Moines Police Department at 515-283-4864 or to Iowa Cold Cases through the Contact form.
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