Authors: Joe Urschel
Harvey Bailey, an escaped federal prisoner with a murder warrant hanging over his head in the Kansas City Massacre case, could not fight his extradition back to Oklahoma City. What Jones worried about with Bailey was that he’d escape, or that a collection of his criminal buddies would bust him out somehow. Dallas boasted an “escape-proof” new jail, and Jones moved Bailey there until the kidnapping trial could get under way in Oklahoma.
Jones had just made the biggest arrests in the new attorney general’s War on Crime, but he wasn’t doing any victory laps. He knew there would be hell to pay if he allowed his captives to escape or avoid trial on some shady legal maneuver. He still had doubts about Bailey’s involvement in the Kansas City Massacre, but tying him to the kidnapping was fortuitous indeed. Plus, the Kellys and Bates were still on the lam. Soon, their names and descriptions would be blaring on every police radio in the nation and carried in newspapers from New York to Los Angeles. Once that happened, he feared they’d disappear into the protection of some criminal mob, or flee the country altogether.
On Hoover’s instructions, Jones asked the local press to hold news of the raid for 48 hours to give his men a chance to nab the Kellys and Bates before they went into hiding. It was a big ask, but after some forceful negotiation, they agreed. Hoover also made it clear that Jones should release only the bare facts about the raid and how they found the farm. Specifically, he did not want any of Urschel’s statements from his interview about the plane flights over the farm or the hidden fingerprints or the fact that Urschel had been with the agents during the raid released. Hoover was trying to build a case and he wanted to keep as much information under wraps as he could before the trial began. He also wanted to protect his star witness.
The raid on the Shannon farm had turned up a receipt from Kelly’s friendly Cleveland Cadillac dealership. Colvin had called Washington immediately after the raid to report that “Kelly, with two other men and a woman, was traveling in a sixteen-cylinder blue-black Cadillac, a 1932 model, motor number 1400263, a nine-passenger, specially constructed, very large car, which was purchased by Mrs. Kelly under the name of Mrs. Ora L. Shannon.” He said he had intercepted a letter that indicated the Kellys planned to return there on August 10 or August 11 to purchase a twelve-cylinder convertible coupe on which they’d already made a $500 deposit. He had alerted the Cincinnati office and they had dispatched agents to “cover the Cleveland angle.”
Hoover was orchestrating the hunt from his desk in Washington, showering his field offices with telegrams and memos. He sent copies of the massive list of the ten thousand serial numbers on the $20 bills used in the ransom to dozens of Bureau offices, and the staff from those offices got the serial numbers to hundreds of federal and local banks, advising them to be on the lookout for the bills and to notify the Bureau immediately if any were discovered. “Wanted” posters, descriptions and photographs of the Kellys and Bates also went out. Hoover alerted the Bureau offices in New York, Detroit and Portland, instructing them to cover the ports in case Kelly and company attempted to flee to Canada.
When agents got to the Cleveland dealership, they learned they had just missed the Kellys. The dealership’s owner told them that Kelly had come in on August 10 to pay off the balance on the sixteen-cylinder Caddy. Kelly was considering the twelve-cylinder coupe, but ultimately decided against it. He also revealed that when the Kellys purchased the car on June 3, they invited the salesman to a party back at their hotel. The salesman returned with wild stories about the party, including the fact that Kelly had $36,000 in cash in his pocket and that his wife had “a large number of Persian gowns designed by Chanel.” He said when Kelly left the dealership on August 11 he was wearing “octagonal shaped rimless glasses” and that his wife was sporting a “beautiful Martin diamond dinner ring which was quite noticeable.” He said they were planning to drive to Chicago.
The night before, the Kellys had received a telegram from Bates in Minneapolis. It read: “Deal has fell through. Jack and Tom have left. Communicate with me at box 631.” It was code for “trouble.”
* * *
After releasing Urschel, the Kellys had gone to George’s old base of operations in St. Paul, where he went to work getting his money laundered at 20 cents on the dollar and Kathryn went on a shopping spree, adding another fur coat to her wardrobe, along with about $2,000 worth of diamond rings and bracelets. Kelly took his cash to the Green Lantern tavern to get Dutch Sawyer’s help getting it cleaned. Sawyer sent Kelly to one of his confederates, casino owner Jack Peifer, who took $7,000 of the Kelly loot. He then pedaled it to a group of his minions, who went to work exchanging it through a half-dozen friendly banks.
Bates alerted the Kellys to the fact that several people in Minnesota had been arrested while trying to pass the ransom money. They were being held by police and it was unknown what—if anything—they’d said about the money.
The Kellys then headed to Des Moines, Iowa, to lie low and try to figure out what was going on. They were staying at a motor lodge outside the city when news of the raid on Paradise finally hit the papers on August 14.
The Dallas papers applauded the daring capture and news accounts throughout the region were crowing that Hoover’s men had not only nabbed the Urschel kidnappers, but one of the men responsible for the Kansas City Massacre, as well, the infamous Harvey Bailey, who was also being portrayed as the brains behind the kidnapping. The
Dallas Morning News
had the biggest story in the nation breaking in its own backyard and they played it to the fullest. The headlines screamed across their front page:
FIVE HELD FOR URSCHEL CASE AND KANSAS CITY MASSACRE
GANG CAUGHT AT POINT OF MACHINE GUN
HARVEY BAILEY AND FOUR MEMBERS OF SHANNON FAMILY SURPRISED IN WISE COUNTY
DENVER LANDS ONE
ONE MORE MEMBER OF GANG,
GEORGE KELLY, SOUGHT IN BIG CAR
The severe penalties of the new Federal Lindberg
[sic]
kidnapping law Monday afternoon hung over Harvey Bailey, notorious outlaw and escaped convict, whose capture by Federal Agents here caused them to claim solution to the Urschel kidnapping case and capture of the principals in the outrageous Union Terminal Massacre at Kansas City.
Bailey was lodged in the Dallas County Jail as “Jones, hold for Federal authorities” Saturday along with four others taken in a surprise sunrise raid on the little cottage they occupied in Paradise, Wise County.
The others in jail R. G. Shannon, on whose place the raid was made; Ora L. Shannon, his wife; Armon Shannon, this son and Oleta Shannon, Armon’s wife.
Late Monday afternoon, Albert Bates alias George Bates, was reported captured at Denver. He was one of the gang wanted with Bailey in the Urschel kidnapping. Federal agents continued their search of George Kelly, another of the gang who was known to be traveling over the Middle West in a sixteen-cylinder Cadillac sedan, 1932 model with a large black trunk.
All law enforcement agencies in the country were warned to apprehend Kelly on sight and police radios in cities over the Nation Monday afternoon carried descriptions of him and warnings to notify authorities if he is seen.
A second front-page story focused on Bailey.
BAILEY CAPTURE SEEN AS TEN-STRIKE IN WAR ON CRIME
ATTORNEY GENERAL SAYS PRISONER IS LEADER OF DANGEROUS GANG
The arrest of Harvey Bailey in Texas was regarded Monday night by Federal officials as a ten-strike in the Government’s war against gangsters and racketeers.
Details of Bailey’s capture in a before-dawn raid on a remote farmhouse near Paradise, Texas, were announced Monday by Attorney General Cummings who paid highest praise to the Department of Justice agents responsible.
Bailey, in Cumming’s
[sic]
opinion, is the leader of one of the most dangerous criminal gangs in the country. The arrest was made only a few days after President Roosevelt had taken personal direction of the Government’s anticrime campaign in conference at Hyde Park.
Cummings said Bailey had been identified as the operator of a machine gun which killed five men in Kansas City June 17, and disclosed also that marked ransom money paid in the kidnapping of Charles F. Urschel at Oklahoma City July 22 had been found on the fugitive.
In a paragraph that could have been crafted by Hoover himself, the paper applauded the work of the Bureau:
Incensed over the killing of one of their own Federal agents and three peace officers at the Kansas City Union Station on June 17, all of the energies of the Bureau of Investigation have been centered on solving that crime since then. Officers here early suspected that the Urschel kidnaping tied in with the same group of outlaws, and for the last six weeks Agents Frank J. Blake of Dallas, R. H. Colvin of Oklahoma City and Gus T. Jones of San Antonio have gone without sleep in their efforts to apprehend members of the suspected gang.
From Washington, Attorney General Cummings applauded his team and the Urschel family, noting that the Urschel family did not hesitate to call in the government and local authorities, and that this should be the reaction in all kidnapping cases. Unlike so many in the past, Urschel had stood up to the kidnappers’ threats of retribution and had not only called in the feds, but helped them find his captors and build the legal case for prosecution.
Listening to the radio and reading the papers, Kelly learned just how dangerous a criminal he really was. The headlines screamed and the radio waves blasted. The nation’s new Public Enemy Number One was a man known as Machine Gun Kelly.
The august
New York Times
claimed, “Kelly and his gang of Southwestern desperados are regarded as the most dangerous ever encountered.”
The Bureau released a wanted poster of Kelly describing him as thirty-five years old, 5′9,″ 177 pounds and “muscular,” a ruddy-complected “expert machine gunner.” Kathryn’s publicity efforts had found a remarkably accepting audience.
A similar poster was issued for Kathryn using stats acquired from her arrest in 1929—which she must have hated—describing her as twenty-eight (though looking much older), at 5'9'' and “weighing 140 (though probably heavier) with a ruddy complexion and a proclivity for expensive jewelry.”
Meanwhile, while on the run, George and Kathryn were incredulous that they had been identified as Urschel’s kidnappers. Urschel had double-crossed them. He’d gone straight to the authorities. The threats of retribution had been ignored.
Kathryn was especially furious. She ranted at Kelly. If they’d killed Urschel, they wouldn’t have any of this trouble. A dead man could not have gone to the authorities. A dead man could not have led the feds back to the farm in Paradise. How had that happened? Somebody had screwed up big time, and it hadn’t been her. What had her loudmouthed husband let slip? What about Bates? Had he screwed up? Maybe it was Armon, that dim-witted fool. What had he said to Urschel that made it possible for that ungrateful bastard to lead the feds back to her father-in-law’s farm?
Now Kathryn’s mother was in jail. She was apoplectic. She had to do something. Her mother must be cleared. What had she done? She wasn’t guilty of anything. All she’d done was cook a decent meal for that ungrateful captive and make sure his stay at her farm wasn’t life-threatening. She pleaded with Kelly to do something. Her mother was being held on $50,000 bond. They needed a lawyer. Somebody connected. Somebody fast. Kathryn would not let her dear mother sit in some loathsome jail cell.
Despite their threats of retribution, Urschel had not only gone to the feds, he had written a story about his ordeal that moved on the wires and appeared in numerous papers around the country. This incensed the Kellys. They had made it plain what would happen to him if he went to the police, if he helped others pursue them. George was beginning to rethink his decision to let the fool live, and Kathryn was berating him for it.
In his account, Urschel had written that “everything the federal government can do to put an end to kidnappings in the United States is an imperative necessity.”
But the most galling account came a day later, on August 15, when the
Oklahoma News
broke the story of Urschel’s involvement in leading the agents to the Shannon farm in a front-page, double-deck, boldfaced headline:
DEPUTY TELLS HOW URSCHEL MOVED
ON SHACK WITH SAWED-OFF SHOTGUN
The reporters at the
News
had tricked the sheriff into confirming the story by telling him that the Associated Press was moving the details.
With his name in headlines in every paper on the street, and radio newsmen declaring his Public Enemy status nationwide, Kelly could not stay in one place for too long. He’d already been tagged in the Union Station shootout and that was bringing heat, but now he’d pulled off a record-setting snatch job and the feds were crawling all over the usual safe houses and hideouts and making things miserable for anyone with known connections to criminal activity.
So the Kellys packed up their clothes, their liquor and their hot money and took to the road, hoping to disappear in the backcountry George knew so well. They hid out in tourist motels in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa and Missouri—all over the Midwest—and fought bitterly. Kelly blamed Kathryn for talking him into the kidnapping and she blamed him for getting her mother thrown in jail. The smoldering Kathryn hatched a plan to save her skin. She told George that if they were to get caught, he should take the blame and say she had nothing to do with it. She hadn’t been seen or heard at any time during the job. There were no eyewitnesses to her involvement. Why should the two of them go to prison? She would need to stay on the loose so she could get help for her mother. She couldn’t bear to see her locked up.