Authors: Joe Urschel
Kelly could never say no to a lady, especially one as persuasive as Kathryn, who quickly fired off a letter to Joseph B. Keenan, the Department of Justice’s Special Agent in Charge of the Criminal Division who was in Oklahoma City to oversee the trial of Bates, Bailey and the Shannons. It was postmarked from Chicago on August 18:
The entire Urschel family and friends, and all of you, will be exterminated soon. There is no way I can prevent it. I will gladly put George Kelly on the spot for you if you will save my mother, who is innocent of any wrongdoing. If you do not comply with this request, there is no way in which I can prevent the most awful tragedy. If you refuse my offer I shall commit some minor offense and be placed in jail so that you will know that I have no connection with the terrible slaughter that will take place in Oklahoma City within the next few days.
Gus Jones had been monitoring the mail going to the Kellys’ house in Fort Worth and to the Shannon farm. In addition to Chicago, Kelly had sent letters from St. Paul and from Madison, Wisconsin. He’d also picked up information indicating that Kelly would be traveling to Indianapolis to pick up a package at the general delivery window of the post office.
Hoover dispatched a team of agents, and with the help of Indianapolis police, they laid a trap to nab him when he did. They would grab Kelly if he showed up to get his package. But if Kathryn or another of Kelly’s associates appeared, they were to drop back and follow the pickup, who they hoped would lead them to Kelly.
But plans went awry. And, worse, the agents’ failure was described to the press. The Bureau’s ineptitude went on display in the headlines of the
Indianapolis Star
on August 17.
“DUMMY” SEIZED AS HE ASKS FOR FUGITIVE’S MAIL
K
ELLY
E
SCAPES
T
RAP
S
ET
H
ERE
George R. Kelly, suspected Kidnaper and one of a gang who is believed to have escaped in a fusillade of bullets from a police dragnet in Chicago Tuesday, yesterday was believed to have eluded Federal agents in Indianapolis.
Anxiety of Department of Justice agents to capture Kelly was said to have resulted in a “tip off” to him and his subsequent flight.
The story later noted that Kelly was wanted for the Urschel kidnapping and for “killing five persons in an attempted delivery of Frank Nash, convict in the Kansas City Union station several weeks ago.” Over a picture of handsome Kelly with his slicked-back dark hair ran the headline:
GETS AWAY AGAIN.
Kelly had hired an itinerant kid who’d been hanging out in a nearby park to go in and pick up his mail. Thinking the kid was actually Kelly, the agent on the scene detained him, and Kelly got spooked and fled.
The agents in the field had a hard time determining whether Hoover was angrier that they had missed Kelly or that their failure had appeared in the press. His agents were under a strict admonition to keep all information about the case confidential.
In their memo back to headquarters they noted that the reporter who filed the story, Robert Early, worked out of police headquarters and not the federal building, which indicated to them that the leak had come from the Indianapolis police. They also suspected that someone on the Indianapolis police force might have tipped Kelly about the trap.
The agents on the scene wrote back to Hoover:
In conformity with your instructions on Aug 17, 1933 I conferred with [the] Chief of Detectives and the Chief of Police and advised them of the fact that the publicity emanated from the Police Headquarters and that same had resulted in possibly frightening Kelly away from Indianapolis. I also advised them that we would not use the Indianapolis Police further in this inquiry and they were relieved from the assignment on the afternoon of this date.
But though they were losing ground in their efforts to control the press and manage the information from the investigation, Hoover’s efforts were receiving a considerable boost from the editorial writers of the nation’s press. Under the headline
U.S. Police Efficiency,
the
Washington Herald
published the following editorial:
This crime-ridden country regards with astonishment and admiration the brilliant exploits of Federal operatives aided by police of three cities in running down and capturing the gang deemed responsible for the $200,000 Urschel kidnaping in Oklahoma and the brutal Kansas City massacre of five men last June.
Climaxing the achievement three hundred Federal State and local officers guided by army airplanes, waylaid and waged a machine gun battle late yesterday afternoon in the outskirts of Chicago against still another group of suspects.
Harvey J. Bailey, ringleader of the Urschel kidnaping outfit
[,]
appears to be as ruthless, daring and resourceful an outlaw as this generation has known.… The police characters of the men implicated, the nature of the crimes under scrutiny, and the dramatic completeness of the law officers’ coup ought to be the final victorious argument in favor of an American “Scotland Yard,” as advocated by the Hearst newspapers and by many eminent penologists.
A grateful Hoover immediately penned the following note to the legendary editor of the
Herald,
Eleanor Patterson:
My dear Mrs. Patterson,
I wanted to write to you to express my sincere appreciation of the commendatory editorial appearing in the Washington Herald of August 17, 1933, entitled “U.S. Police Efficiency.”
It is a source of deep gratification to me that the efforts of the Division of Investigation of the Department of Justice in bringing about the apprehension of Harvey J. Bailey, notorious criminal, were such as to merit the approval of the Editor of the Washington Herald. The editorial in question evidences such a keen understanding of the handling of the cases referred to and the organization of the Division of Investigation that I would appreciate it very much if you would express my thanks to the writer of this editorial. I am highly pleased that the work of the Division of Investigation in dealing with the criminal element, and particularly in recent kidnapping cases, has been such as to warrant this editorial consent. I believe that editorials of this kind serve an extremely helpful purpose in acquainting the reading public with the strength of the Federal Government in dealing with the lawless element.
Sincerely yours,
J. Edgar Hoover
The day after the
Herald
editorial, Hoover and Cummings got a similar boost from
The
Washington Post,
which reprinted an editorial that had earlier appeared in Louisville’s
Courier-Journal
. It ran under the headline:
UNCLE SAM, DETECTIVE.
It must have been a good moment for Attorney General Homer Cummings when he was able to announce the capture of Harvey Bailey one of the king pin criminals of the Nation. Not only is this the man who led the break from the Kansas Penitentiary on Memorial Day, when a warden and two guards were kidnaped; not only is he the man who has been identified as the ring leader in the Kansas City Union Station massacre, when five men were mowed down by machine gun bullets; this Harvey Bailey is the kidnaper of Charles F. Urschel, who was snatched from his home in Oklahoma City and held until his family had paid $200,000 ransom.… The most important feature about the Bailey arrest, however, is the credit which it reflects on the Federal machinery for crime detection. Definite steps have been taken by the Roosevelt administration to strangle the kidnaping racket by means of a central agency in Washington. Nothing feasible offers such promise of relief from this national disease as the establishment of confidence among the people in the ability of the United States Government to crush the kidnapers. When such confidence is achieved, the families of kidnap victims may no longer try to hide their dealings from the proper authorities, as they now do most frequently in the hope of negotiating directly with the criminals. The successful handling of the Urschel case should go far to impress the public with Uncle Sam’s superior ability to deal with kidnapers.
The
Courier-Journal
got a similar note of appreciation from the Bureau’s director.
While Hoover was accepting the praise for his department and ramping up its publicity machine, the hunt for Kelly spread out across the nation. A motorcycle officer in Oklahoma City came forward and revealed that he had formerly had a drinking buddy who was an ex-con. One night, on a drunk, the ex-con told the officer that he had information about “something that may do you some good.”
The con said, “I was a cell mate in the penitentiary with a boy named George Kelly. Two days before those officers and Frank Nash were killed in Kansas City, I met George Kelly and another man in Tulsa. They went to a house where they cleaned and oiled two machine guns and said they were then on their way to Kansas City.”
It was just about all the Bureau had in trying to tie Kelly to the Kansas massacre, but despite their efforts they could not locate the ex-con and were too stretched to chase down the lead.
* * *
On Thursday, August 17, five days after the raid at Paradise, rumors that gangsters were planning to spring Bailey started hitting the papers. The Dallas police boasted that extra patrols were guarding the roads in and out of the city. Even so, Bailey had already bragged to reporters that no cell could hold him.
On August 18,
The
Dallas News
answered these threats and boasts with a proud description of just how tough it would be for Bailey to slip free from the new jail. Under the headline
Seven Barred Doors or Grills Face Gangsters if they try to Spring Bailey from Jail,
the story contained a detailed description of what “a gang of gangsters or a mob of mobsters” would encounter in their attempt to even get to Bailey:
On the first floor they would have to fight their way through the lobby of the Criminal Courts Building to reach the heavy door that gives into the outer lobby of the jail. Similar difficulty would be encountered if they approached from the rear through the alley at the entrance of which is a high, barred gate.
If they succeeded in reaching the door they would have to crash it and then fight their way another fifteen feet to reach the ceiling-to-floor heavy steel grill in the main lobby of the jail. Then they would have to crash that door and fight their way to another door in the elevator corridor.
Should they succeed in riding the elevator to the floor where the prisoner is held, then they would face another ceiling-high grill of heavy steel bars. Still between the raiders and the cell block would be a barred door. Passing this door there would yet be between them and their quarry the heavy bars surrounding the corridor, and the inside corridor, the cell door itself.
Jones wanted to leave Bailey in the Dallas jail until he was ready for trial in Oklahoma City rather than risk losing him in transit or putting him in the far less secure jail in Oklahoma.
* * *
The U.S. Attorney had told Jones that even if the judge ruled speedily on the extradition of the Shannons, they could appeal. The appeal would be scheduled for a later date, and who knew when he’d be able to get them out of Texas. Hoover and the team in Washington were intent on bringing this case to a successful climax fast and decisively. Jones knew all too well how the law worked in Texas. He hatched his own plan for getting his captives out of the state, and fast. It had its own elements of Texas-style law.
On the morning of the hearing, Jones arranged a chartered flight to fly them directly to Oklahoma City immediately afterward. Before the proceedings began, Jones’s men pulled their cars up to the base of the stairs in front of the courthouse, leaving the doors open and the engines running. Timing would be all-important. A speedy departure was critical to the success of his plan.
Jones pulled the court clerk aside for a private conversation. He explained what was about to happen and how the clerk should behave. The Shannons’ attorney would almost certainly be filing an appeal. The clerk would be responsible for making certain all of the documents were properly prepared. Jones did not want the clerk to rush the process. In fact, he made it clear the clerk should delay as long as possible. Stall.
When the judge ruled in the government’s favor, Jones’s men hustled the three Shannons out of the courtroom toward the waiting car.
As they did, the Shannons’ attorney leapt to his feet and told the judge he intended to file an immediate appeal.
Go right ahead, said the judge. “There’s the clerk right over there.”
“But, your honor, those federal agents are rushing my clients out of the courtroom.”
The judge explained that the agents were perfectly within their rights and there was nothing he could do about it until the appeal was filed.
The attorney then hustled across the room with the appeal papers and demanded the clerk hurry up and stamp them for approval.
The clerk, affecting an officious air, explained that he would have to examine them carefully and make sure they were in the proper order. He doddled, while the attorney fumed. When he finally stamped the approval, the attorney grabbed them, raced across the courtroom and handed them to the bemused judge. He leafed through the papers, stalling a little longer then looked down at the lawyer and announced that the appeal was granted.
With that, the attorney grabbed the bailiff and raced from the courtroom to chase down Jones, who was already driving the Shannons to the airport.