Walter Walsh

Walter Rudolph Walsh (May 4, 1907 – April 29, 2014) was an FBI agent, USMC shooting instructor and Olympic shooter.

Walsh was born on May 4, 1907, to Dolinda (nee Invernizzi) and Walter Brooks Walsh in West Hoboken, New Jersey (later merged to form Union City).

Walsh’s father was a firefighter and for a period operated a saloon.

Walsh attended Emerson High School.

When he was 16 years old he lied about his age in order to join the Civilian Military Training Corps.

In one incident, he and his comrades were pinned down by a sniper on Okinawa, whom Walsh was able to kill from 90 yards away with a single shot to the torso from a M1911 pistol.

He subsequently joined the New Jersey Army National Guard in 1928.

After graduating from Rutgers Law School in 1931, Walsh joined the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1934, becoming a member of the first cohort of agents permitted to carry firearms.

His first assignment was to the Bureau’s office in St. Paul, Minnesota, covering four states.

Walsh joined the FBI in 1934, serving during the Public enemy era, and was involved in several high-profile FBI cases, including the capture of Arthur Barker and the killing of Al Brady.

Later that year, he discovered the body of gangster Baby Face Nelson, who died of injuries sustained in a gun battle with the police in Barrington, Illinois, on November 27, 1934.

Nelson had killed two FBI agents prior to fleeing the scene, wounded, and later died at his wife's side.

The FBI, unaware of Nelson's death, continued a broad search for him, which included several home raids, through the night and into the following day.

The search was not called off until a tip led them to Nelson's body, which was lying in a ditch in what is now Skokie, Illinois.

Walsh was on the team that tracked criminal Arthur Barker, son of gangster Ma Barker, to Chicago in 1935.

A subsequent search of Arthur's apartment revealed information that eventually led to locating other members of the Barker family.

Later that same day Walsh became involved in an attempt to arrest bank robber Russell “Slim Gray” Gibson.

Putting on a bulletproof vest and armed with a Browning automatic rifle and a .32 calibre pistol Gibson attempted to escape out the back, where he encountered Walsh, armed with a .351 Winchester Self-Loading rifle.

Walsh was later involved in the tracking down of Public Enemy Number One Al Brady in 1937.

On October 12 of that year, he was with a group of FBI agents who ambushed Brady’s gang at Dakin’s, a Bangor, Maine sporting goods store.

Warned by the store owner that some men was wanting to purchase some Thompson submachine guns and would be returning in a few days to collect them, the FBI believing them to be Brady and his gang decided to set a trap.

The gang’s car drew up at 8:30 a.m. and when Brady Gang member James Dalhover entered the store he was apprehended by Walsh and taken to the back by other agents.

As Dalhover was being interrogated, Brady and another gang member, Clarence Lee Shaffer, Jr., emerged from their parked car with guns in their hands.

Walsh was approaching the front of the store with a gun in each hand.

Upon reaching the glass front door he saw Shaffer looking though it at him.

Both men fired simultaneously through the glass.

Mortally wounded Shaffer collapsed to the sidewalk, while Walsh had been shot in his right hand and into his lung chest.

Despite this he stepped outside firing with the gun in his left hand at Brady, who was still moving after having already been hit by the other law enforcement officers.

Brady was killed.

Despite being shot multiple times Walsh quickly returned to work.

At the urging of friends on the Marine Corps Reserve Team, he applied to join the Marine Corps in 1938 and was given a reserve lieutenant commission.

Walsh remained in the FBI until 1942, when he took a leave to serve with the United States Marine Corps during World War II.

After he left, Hoover refused to allow any more active agents to be members of any military reserve.

Commissioned as a lieutenant, Walsh spent his first two years of service training snipers at New River, North Carolina.)

After requesting combat duty in 1944, Walsh was sent to the Pacific Theater, specifically with 1st Marine Division on Okinawa.

A high-profile shooter, Walsh won numerous tournaments within the FBI and the Marine Corps, as well as nationally, and participated in the 1948 Summer Olympics.

He served in the Pacific theatre during World War II with the Marine Corps and, after a brief return to the FBI, served as a shooting instructor with the Marine Corps until his retirement in the 1970s.

He received awards for his marksmanship until the age of 90 and served as the coach of the Olympic shooting team until 2000.

At the FBI's 100th anniversary celebration he was recognized as the oldest living former agent and noted as being a year older than the organization itself.

Aside from some hearing and memory loss, he remained physically fit at his 103rd birthday and, in March 2013, became the longest-lived Olympic competitor.