Authors: Joe Urschel
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Voices from Alcatraz—the Authentic Inside Story of the Urschel Kidnapping
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I am indebted to an army of friends and associates who helped make this book possible. Notably, my publisher, Andrew Martin, at Minotaur, whose enthusiasm for the project was both infectious and inspiring. Kathy Huck and Marc Resnick, my editors, who shepherded this book through the process and who taught me so much about the nonfiction narrative form. Hector DeJean was masterful in getting the word out and getting the book noticed, no small task these days.
My agent, Wayne Kabak, believed heartily in the story and provided many brilliant insights and suggestions as it was shaped into a book.
Several of the descendants of the main characters in the story were most helpful, guiding me to sources and sharing their own collected resources and knowledge of the events. Kent Frates, a lawyer in Oklahoma City and occasional golf partner of Charles Urschel, has spent a lifetime collecting material related to the case and has written extensively about it himself. He was generous with his time and resources and toured me through the stately federal courtroom in Oklahoma City, where the principals in the case were tried. Valerie Urschel Guenther, the granddaughter of “Big Charles,” was kind enough to share her materials and recollections.
Research librarians at the Library of Congress and the Oklahoma Historical Society were enormously helpful and patient, as was Linda Lynn at the Oklahoma Publishing Company.
Several colleagues from my days in the news business provided valuable editing advice and encouragement, particularly Cathy Trost, Susan Bennett and Sharon Shahid.
I never could have written this book without the loving support of my wife, Donna, my daughter, Liz, and my son, Eric. Their wise counsel, editing and constant cheerleading were invaluable. I love them immeasurably.
Newspapers of the 1930s were coming of age during the Gangster Era, and their emerging professionalism and competitive zeal left us with a treasure trove of material on events and personalities that, if it wasn’t for the reporters’ and editors’ fascination—and the fact that crime sells newspapers—might have been lost to history. E. E. Kirkpatrick, a principal in the Urschel kidnapping, was a former newsman, and if it hadn’t been for his efforts to get the Urschel story down in print with his two books on the subject, many of the great details of this seminal crime would have been lost. Popular historians and journalists drew heavily on his accounts as they pursued the story in later years, adding great detail and context with their reporting and research. Among their writings, the work of Stanley Hamilton, Robert Unger, Bryan Burrough, Rick Mattix and Paul Maccabee were immensely informative—and great reads.
The FBI files on the era are informative and fascinating, and now, for the most part, readily accessible. Ironically, it would be those extensive files of the FBI’s later years, kept so meticulously and obsessively by J. Edgar Hoover, that would ruin his reputation after a band of antiwar protesters broke into an FBI field office in Media, Pennsylvania, stole voluminous amounts of the agency’s files and released them to the press in 1971. That event and its consequences are marvelously recounted in Sue Medsger’s book,
The Burglary,
published in 2014.
The index that appeared in the print version of this title does not match the pages in your e-book. Please use the search function on your e-reading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.
Akers, Dutch
Al Spencer gang
Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary
Alcatraz Express
as bad for prisoner health
creation of
draconian rules of
dungeon in
notorious inmates of
Alcorn, Gordon
Alderson Reformatory for Women
Allegretti, Mike (“Bon Bon”)
Alterie, Louis (“Diamond Jack”)
Anderson, Jack
Anderson, “Little Steve”
Arlen, Richard
Arnold, Flossie Marie
Arnold, Geraldine
Kelly enslavement of
Kelly Memphis hideout located through
as named in press
testimony of
Arnold, Luther
assassination
Associated Press
automobiles.
See
getaway car
aviation
Bailey, Harvey
as Alcatraz inmate
as arrested for Memorial Day escape
bank robbery success of
Brennan alias of
as captured by Jones
as contemptuous of Floyd
death of
escapes of
Jones focus on
as Kelly mentor
as Leavenworth inmate
life sentence of
Mathers attorney for
Oklahoma City transfer of