George “Machine Gun” Kelly: The Most Wanted Man in America

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We’re back in the Prohibition era, a time of gangsters, bootleggers, and notorious criminals such as Bonnie and Clyde, John Dillinger, and of course, today’s subject, Machine Gun Kelly. Despite his strong association with bank robberies, they were not what brought Kelly everlasting infamy and turned him into a household name. No, it was in fact the kidnapping of a wealthy magnate. It wasn’t just the act itself that mattered, but also the circumstances. America was still reeling from the kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh’s baby boy. All eyes were on this case as everyone feared that another high-profile kidnapping would have the same tragic end. And that’s how George “Machine Gun” Kelly became the most wanted man in America.

Right off the bat, we have some conflicting information, as sources seem uncertain about where and when Machine Gun Kelly was born. We’re going to use his Alcatraz rap sheet since that is an official record, and according to it, George Kelly Barnes was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1895. He came from a well-off family and was the son of George Senior and Elizabeth Kelly Barnes. His father was a successful insurance company executive, but he and George never really got along. According to one story, when he was a teenager, George found out that his father was having an affair. He then proceeded to blackmail his father for keeping his secret in exchange for a larger allowance and the use of the family car.

When Kelly was two years old, the family relocated to Memphis, Tennessee. There, he attended Idlewild Elementary School and then Central High School, where he was a mediocre student. His mother died while he was still in high school, which devastated George, as he was very close to her. This also further widened the rift between him and his father, as George blamed his father’s affairs for his mother’s passing.

After graduating, George Kelly briefly enrolled in college, studying agriculture at Mississippi A&M, today known as Mississippi State University, because he knew this is what his mother wanted for him. However, he was clearly not made for college life; he racked up dozens of demerits in his first few months and was expelled at the beginning of his second semester.

While in high school, Kelly had already started his life of crime. At that point, national Prohibition was still a few years away, but it was already active in Tennessee, which had the dubious honor of passing the first Prohibition law in the nation. Therefore, Kelly had been using his car to do a little bootlegging. He thought about going back to it once he was out of college, but he met someone who set him straight, at least for the time being. Her name was Geneva Ramsey, and the two of them fell in love and eloped in 1919. She brought Kelly to her home, where her father, George Ramsey, had a positive influence on him. Ramsey was a successful levy contractor and gave his new son-in-law a job as a clerk in his company. The two got along well, and it seemed like George Kelly might live a respectable life after all.

However, a tragic accident a few years later changed everything when George Ramsey killed himself with a stick of dynamite. Things went downhill fast for the family after that. Without Ramsey in charge, his company struggled, and his wife eventually sold it. George and Geneva had a few business ventures, such as running a goat farm and selling used cars, but they all quickly went under. In a few years, George Kelly was driving a cab to make ends meet. His family life also got significantly worse; Kelly became a heavy drinker and abused his wife both mentally and physically. They had two sons together, but for some reason, Kelly always resented his first child and showed favoritism towards the second. His wife left him several times but kept returning after George convinced her to give him another chance. However, as she saw him turn to a life of crime, she finally left him for good. Geneva divorced Kelly in 1926 and had to post the divorce notice in the paper because by that point, she no longer had any idea where he was.

That’s because Kelly went back to something more lucrative: bootlegging moonshine. By now, Prohibition was in full effect, so Kelly knew there was a lot of money to be made, but he also had to stay on the move to evade the authorities. He didn’t do a very good job at it, though, and several arrests came in the years that followed in Tennessee, New Mexico, and Oklahoma. His bootlegging career came to a temporary end in 1928 after his last arrest in Tulsa, which earned Kelly a three-year stint at Leavenworth Penitentiary.

Despite the fearsome reputation he would later develop, Kelly was usually a model prisoner while incarcerated. In fact, years later, while at Alcatraz, some of the other inmates mockingly referred to him as “Pop Gun Kelly” instead of “Machine Gun Kelly” because he was far less brutal and violent than one would expect. This behavior did have its benefits; during his first incarceration at Leavenworth, Kelly was released early in 1930 after serving less than two years. He was ready to resume his life of crime, but this time he didn’t do it alone. Soon after Kelly entered the bootlegging business again, he met Catherine Thorne. The two of them quickly fell in love, and by the end of 1930, they were married. The new Mrs. Kelly was the antithesis of the first one; she was a tough and hardened woman who had already been married three times and was a lifelong criminal.

Most people credit Catherine Kelly with creating her husband’s cold-blooded image, even gifting him his first Tommy gun and coming up with the “Machine Gun Kelly” nickname. She also started a lot of rumors about her husband’s prowess with the Tommy gun and even gave out spent cartridges to friends and acquaintances as a way of increasing the legend of Machine Gun Kelly.

Despite his continued association with bootlegging after his release from Leavenworth, Machine Gun Kelly turned primarily to robbery, especially as Prohibition was winding down. He committed his first robbery in 1930 with some friends he made in prison, including other notorious criminals of that era. These four would continue to pull off robberies together, but on this particular job, they were also joined by infamous prohibition-era gunman Vernon Miller and a few others.

Kelly’s last known bank robbery took place in November 1932 when he, Bates, and a third man stole $38,000 from Citizen State Bank in Tupelo, Mississippi. It was somewhat notable because, for whatever reason, on that particular occasion, Kelly decided to forego his signature Tommy gun and instead committed the robbery armed with a revolver.

Despite his success as a bank robber, George Kelly also tried his hand at kidnapping, where he proved himself to be considerably less adept. According to some sources, his first kidnapping occurred in 1930 when Kelly and a former cop named Bernard Phillips abducted a pair of victims, only to have one of them get killed in an accident. Then, in January 1932, Kelly and a man called Eddie Doll kidnapped a banker from South Bend, Indiana, named Howard Wolverton.

First, while the banker and his wife were driving around, Kelly forced himself inside the car at gunpoint and made Wolverton drive a few miles out of town. The pair then got into a waiting getaway vehicle, leaving Mrs. Wolverton with a $50,000 ransom note. Kelly and Doll drove their captive around Indiana for a couple of days before Wolverton persuaded them that he simply did not have the money they wanted, so they released him on the promise that he would raise the funds later.

For a third attempt, Kelly got his wife involved. The couple wanted to kidnap the son of a wealthy tycoon from Fort Worth, Texas. To accomplish this, Catherine Kelly approached two Fort Worth detectives she believed were corrupt to see if they wanted in on the score. Unfortunately for her, the cops were honest and only played along because they thought they could turn Catherine into an informant. When they realized that this was not the case, they turned down the offer and placed the intended target under surveillance, forcing the Kellys to abandon their plan.

Kidnappings were growing in popularity among outlaws of the time because they were considered to be lower risk than bank robberies and only involved local or state law enforcement. However, that soon changed following the notorious Lindbergh baby case when the infant son of aviator Charles Lindbergh was kidnapped from his home only to be found dead a few days later. The case, which was on the front page of every newspaper in America, shocked and outraged the public. After the boy’s death, the Federal Kidnapping Act, also known as the Lindbergh Law, was passed. Now kidnappings became a federal matter, as FBI agents and U.S. Marshals could easily pursue kidnappers who crossed state lines. The punishments also became much harsher, often resulting in a life sentence in some states. Kidnapping even qualified for the death penalty if the victim had been physically harmed.

In early summer 1933, the Barker and Carpus gang successfully executed the high-profile kidnapping of brewery tycoon William Hamm and received $100,000 for their troubles. With money like that on the line, it’s no wonder criminals were willing to take a chance. Inspired by the Hamm kidnappings, the Kellys decided to target their own rich businessman, an oil tycoon from Oklahoma City named Charles Urschel.

On the night of July 22, 1933, Urschel and his wife were playing bridge with Mr. and Mrs. Walter Jarrett on the porch of their home when two armed men walked up to them. One of them was George Kelly, waving around his signature Tommy gun, while the other, armed with only a pistol, was his frequent partner Albert Bates. The two criminals demanded to know which one of the men was Charles Urschel. Since no response was forthcoming, they decided to kidnap both men.

As soon as they were gone, the wives went inside and called the police. They were put straight through to J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI, and both local police officers and FBI agents were on the scene within the hour. Meanwhile, the kidnappers drove for about 12 miles outside of the city limits, at which point they stopped to ascertain which one of the two men was their intended target. They went through their wallets and released Walter Jarrett, who then began his long walk back home.

Afterwards, Charles Urschel was taken to a ranch in Paradise, Texas, owned by Catherine Kelly’s stepfather, Robert Shannon. That night, the businessman was kept inside the garage until bedtime, at which point he was blindfolded and taken inside the house, where he was chained to an iron bed. The following days, Urschel was moved to a shack where he was kept handcuffed to a high chair and slept on a quilt. By Monday, Urschel’s kidnapping was headline news across the country. Hoover took an active role in the investigation as he was eager to avoid another scandal like the Lindbergh case. His agents were busy running leads all over the United States.

When the kidnappers finally made contact on July 22, they reached out to another oil magnate and close friend of Urschel’s named J.G. Kepler, who received a package through Western Union. It contained a letter for him asking him to act as an intermediary in the kidnapping, a personal letter for Urschel’s wife, and a third letter with instructions addressed to Mr. E. Kirkpatrick of Oklahoma City. The ransom demands were nothing out of the ordinary; the kidnappers wanted $200,000 in used twenty-dollar bills. They also warned against using sequential serial numbers, dummy packages, and any other kind of shenanigans that would have resulted in Urschel suffering consequences.

To show that they agreed to the terms, Urschel’s camp was supposed to place an ad in the Daily Oklahoman, which read: “For Sale: 160 acres land, good five-room house, deep well, also cows, tools, tractor, corn, and hay, $3,750 for quick sale.” Kirkpatrick did as he was told and received another letter two days later, postmarked Joplin, Missouri. This time, it contained more specific instructions. He was supposed to put the money in a light-colored leather bag and board a certain train to Kansas City, Missouri, throwing the bag off the observation platform after receiving a signal.

Because the FBI’s main concern was to bring Urschel home alive, they did not get involved with the handoff. They did take some precautions, though, sending Catlett along with Kirkpatrick, carrying two identical briefcases—one filled with money, the other with old newspapers. Other than that, Kirkpatrick followed the instructions to a tee, but no signal to throw the briefcase ever came. He arrived in Kansas City still holding the money. Fortunately for everyone involved, there was a contingency plan in case something like this happened. Kirkpatrick was to check in at the Mullibark Hotel in Kansas City under the name Kincaid. There, he received a message from the kidnappers telling him to take the money and travel alone west of the LaSalle Hotel for a few blocks. There, one of the kidnappers simply approached him and took the bag.

On July 31, after nine days of captivity, Charles Urschel returned home safely. As this was the first high-profile kidnapping after the passing of the Lindbergh Law, the FBI was all hands on deck with the investigation, determined to make an example out of the culprits. They were chasing down leads all over the country, but in the end, it was Urschel himself who served as their greatest asset and proved instrumental in identifying his kidnappers.

The businessman had a great memory and tried to remember as many details as possible about his time in captivity. He had heard oil pumps and barnyard animals outside, noted that the water had a mineral taste and also came from a pump outside. He intentionally left his fingerprints on as many objects as possible to prove he had been in that location. But the biggest clue of all were the airplanes. Every day, Urschel heard two airplanes flying over him, every day except for one when there had been heavy rain and presumably the flights had been canceled. But Urschel got even more information by waiting for a few minutes after a flyover and then casually asking his captors what time it was. They did not make the connection and answered him. It seemed that the planes flew over Urschel’s location around 9:45 a.m. and 5:45 p.m. every day except for one rainy day.

With this information, FBI agents looked over flight schedules within a 600-mile radius of Oklahoma City and cross-referenced them with meteorological data, discovering that Paradise, Texas, fit the bill. When they found out that Catherine Kelly’s parents had a ranch in that area, it immediately raised a giant red flag. An FBI agent first visited the ranch undercover and found enough circumstantial evidence to justify a raid, which was conducted about a week after Urschel’s release. Lastly, the victim was brought in to confirm that the ranch was indeed the place where he had been held captive. The Shannons were arrested, as was Harvey Bailey, a bank robber and friend of Kelly’s who was at the ranch nursing an injury following a job. It seems like the Shannon ranch was often used by criminals as a hideout, but neither George Kelly nor his wife would confess during interrogation. The Shannons confessed their role in the kidnapping, revealing that it was Kelly and Albert Bates who were behind it.

Now the manhunt began, and with his face plastered on every newspaper in the county, Machine Gun Kelly was now the most wanted man in America. Albert Bates was the first to get caught; he was arrested in Denver on August 12, two weeks after the kidnapping, with some of the ransom money and a Tommy gun in his possession. The Shannons, as well as other associates of the Kellys, were also taken into custody. In all, 21 people would be convicted for their role in the kidnapping, with another three charged but found innocent. But for now, George and Catherine Kelly were still on the run.

They had disguised themselves in an attempt to fly under the radar; George had dyed his hair blonde while his wife wore a red wig. They even traveled with 12-year-old Geraldine Arnold, the daughter of an acquaintance, to make themselves appear like a nice happy family just exploring the country. By September, after going from city to city, the outlaws were hiding out in Memphis at the home of a man named John Tichenor. But they needed money because they didn’t have their share of the ransom on them. Instead, they buried most of it in caches throughout Texas prior to the raid and didn’t have time to retrieve it before going on the run. Kelly convinced his brother-in-law from his first marriage, Langford Ramsey, to travel to Texas and dig up the cash, but he was unable to do so, and the FBI intercepted their wire messages. The authorities also talked to Geraldine, who was sent on a train ride back to her parents. The Kellys weren’t aware that the Arnolds had already gone to the police. By that point, Geraldine told them just where to find the fugitives.

On the morning of September 26, 1933, the FBI and Memphis police raided John Tichenor’s home and arrested George and Catherine Kelly. There are multiple versions of how this went down, with the most dramatic involving the authorities bursting into the house guns blazing and Kelly putting his hands up and shouting, “Don’t shoot, G-men! Don’t shoot!” Right off the bat, Catherine Kelly distanced herself from her husband and claimed that both she and her family were innocent and had been coerced into kidnapping Urschel by Machine Gun Kelly and his gangster pals. Nobody bought it, though.

In October 1933, George Kelly, Catherine Kelly, Albert Bates, Harvey Bailey, Robert Shannon, and his wife Aura Shannon were all sentenced to life imprisonment, with lesser sentences given to other co-conspirators who either played a role in the kidnapping or helped the Kellys evade justice. At the time of his conviction, Machine Gun Kelly was suspected in the shooting of several policemen, but he was never charged with any of those crimes. Albert Bates died in prison, Harvey Bailey served 30 years before being released, and Catherine Kelly and her mother each served 25 years before release, changing their names and starting a new life in Oklahoma City.

As far as Machine Gun Kelly was concerned, he began the last chapter of his life as prisoner number 117 in Alcatraz. By most accounts, he was a model prisoner, perhaps in the hopes of an early release. This never came, but he was granted a small concession. After 17 years