George Kelly’s wife Kathryn loved luxury – top hotels, swanky restaurants, nice clothes, expensive furs and jewellery – so it was she who bought him a useful machine gun. For while her man was doing well enough as a bootlegger, they both were ambitious and she especially planned a career trajectory into bank robbing then kidnapping. One wild ride lay ahead.
Kelly was born into an upper-middle-class family in Chicago on July 17, 1900, and author Enss portrays a polished, attractive, smartly attired Irishman. But George had an abusive father and an ailing mother, and at age 15 he started making money selling whisky to neighbours. It was the United States Prohibition era when it was illegal to produce, import, transport and sell alcoholic drinks, and he was jailed more than once for smuggling and selling booze.
Advancement came when he caught his father with another woman, and boy George pledged to keep the secret from his mother in exchange for use of the family car. This extended his ability to traffic alcohol, and it helped that he became known as a skilled driver.
Despite the extracurricular activities, his grades at school remained good and the 17-year-old graduated in 1918. He was accepted at Mississippi State University and met and married Geneva Ramsay, whose father was a reputable contractor overseeing the building of railways and levees statewide. Kelly tried going straight, running a warehouse for his father-in-law.
When Ramsey died and his business was sold, Kelly moved on to owning a used-car dealership, which failed, then farming goats and selling insurance. But none paid like selling liquor and he returned to the trade. Geneva filed for divorce on October 28, 1926, saying he had deserted her and their two sons, was cruel, drank to excess and stayed out all night.
Kelly had brushes with the law for violating the National Prohibition Act, and he landed three years in Leavenworth, the largest maximum-security prison in the United States. As Enss recounts, it was here on February 11, 1928 that he first made acquaintance with Kathryn Thorne, who was visiting a family member. They began writing to each other and after Kelly’s release on July 3, 1930 they married in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the following September 24.
Even by the time they met, Kathryn was an experienced criminal. Her stepfather and mother bootlegged, an aunt was a prostitute and uncles stole cars and counterfeited. She liked reckless living and defying authority, accompanying her bootlegging boyfriend. She had married thrice, divorced twice and was ready to marry a man who could give her the posh life of her dreams – shopping sprees and acting like a starlet. Kathryn and Kelly relished shortcuts in life, robbing instead of working and stealing what they wanted instead of buying.
It was the Great Depression and on his release Kelly picked up bootlegging where he had left off, but his interest waned because the risk versus reward was too high. He set his sights on robbing banks instead and was believed to be one of five armed men who held up the Bank of Willmar in Willmar, Minnesota, on July 15, 1930, escaping with USD 100,000 in cash and bonds in a hail of bullets. Others included the Ottumwa Savings Bank in Ottumwa, Iowa, the Central State Bank in Sherman, Texas, and the Citizens State Bank in Tupelo, Mississippi.
Kathryn was as good with a gun as Kelly and, disguised as a man, she drove the getaway car at times. But bank robbing told on the nerves and so it was decided that kidnapping would be safer and easier in the long run. The couple’s goal for 1933 was to select a rich target, and “In celebration and preparation for their plan, Kathryn decided to purchase her husband a special gift from the Wolf & Klar Pawn Shop. She bought Machine Gun Kelly a model 1921 tommy gun,” Enss writes. It was part of her shaping of Kelly’s criminal image, spreading stories to inflate his notoriety and ensure he was feared in the underworld.
This formidable woman was born Lera Cleo Brooks on March 18, 1904 in Tupelo, and was a school dropout. She had married 17-year-old Lonnie Fry in 1918 and they had a daughter Pauline before divorcing two and a half years later. Sixteen months on, husband number two was Lennie Elbert Brewer, 27. They divorced in 1924. At age 23 she wed Charles Thorne in March 1927 and accompanied him on his bootlegging runs. She liked the risky lifestyle.
More than once Kathryn was heard to say she would kill Charles if he cheated on her. After a day drinking he apparently shot himself in the head, leaving a suicide note. Some residents believed she was involved but the police found nothing suspicious. Later she and a man drove to a remote lake for a romantic tryst where two thugs set upon her companion and robbed him. Had she enticed him there? She was released for lack of evidence.
The Kellys and partner Albert Bates had tried a “test” kidnapping on January 26, 1932, but received less than a fifth of the USD 50,000 demanded. So Kathryn scoured the social pages for a richer victim. They chose prominent oil tycoon Charles Urschel, and Kelly and Bates took him from his home in Oklahoma City in July 1933, Kelly armed with his machine gun.
They locked him in a one-room windowless shack near the home of Kathryn’s family, the Shannons, outside the small town of Paradise in Wise County, Texas. In eight days captivity, Urschel carefully noted that two airplanes were flying over daily, so he began casually asking the time. One day the weather halted the planes and he again committed this to memory.
After collecting the full USD 200,000 ransom (almost USD 5 million today) in a Kansas City street, the Kellys decided not to kill him and bury him in the desert, but let him go, a decision they were to regret. Urschel’s memory allowed agents to study flight and weather records and find the hideout. Kathryn’s family were arrested as accomplices and the hunt was on for the Kellys. It lasted weeks and spanned from Chicago to the Rio Grande, making headlines.
The fugitives gave a ride to a family, Luther and Flossie Arnold and their daughter Geralene, a precocious 12-year-old, near Waco, Texas, then persuaded the parents to allow Geralene to travel with them to fool the various law enforcement agencies on their trail who were seeking a couple rather than a couple and child. But the Kellys broke their promise to return the girl that day and kept her for two weeks. When she was eventually sent home she told agents where the pair was hiding in Memphis, Tennessee. She had to fight to receive part of the reward and went on tour telling of her abduction to fascinated audiences in theatres.
Kidnapping was an epidemic in the United States between 1925 and 1934, and as well as Urschel, federal resources were strained dealing with the abduction of two other millionaires and the killing of aviator Charles Lindbergh’s baby. The Urschel crime is the bulk of Enss’ book, with the author drawing from scores of newspaper reports, US Department of Justice Federal Bueau of Investigation (FBI) files, historical archives, court transcripts and a handful of original letters by the Kellys. They were sentenced to life under the newly strengthened Federal Kidnapping Act of 1932, known as the Lindbergh Law, which made the crime across state lines a federal law. J. Edgar Hoover’s Bureau of Investigation now became the FBI.
“Machine Gun” Kelly (did he ever actually fire it on a job? – editor) and his wife were caught without a fight in Memphis on September 26, 1933. Kelly spent much of his prison time at Alcatraz then Leavenworth until dying of a heart attack aged 53 in 1954. Kathryn Thorne Kelly, who claimed in court that her husband coerced her, was released in 1958 aged 54 after serving nearly 25 years. She mostly dropped out of public life, dying quietly aged 81 in 1985.
Chris Enss has dug in and put it all down on paper for we lovers of true crime to soak up.
