The Year of Fear

by Joe Urschel

  If Arnold had any second thoughts about leaving his wife and daughter in the care of one of the most notorious women in America, he didn’t let on. When he got back to Fort Worth, Sayers wasn’t available. So with time on his hands and $300 of Kathryn’s expense money in his pocket, Arnold decided to blow off some steam. He found a local speakeasy and picked up two women, and partied long into the night.

  In the morning he called Sayers and got the car, explaining that he was going to Oklahoma to see if attorney John Roberts could help with the plea deal and the case.

  “That’s fine,” said Sayers. “I believe he can do us some good in Oklahoma.” Luther told Sayers that Kathryn wanted him and the rest of the legal team to meet the next Sunday, September 10, at the Skirvin Hotel in Oklahoma City.

  Arnold wanted to know if the car was “all right.” He didn’t want to be driving something that Kathryn’s husband had used in a robbery that would draw “the laws.”

  “Yes, it’s all right,” said Sayers. “It’s paid for and here are the title papers for it.”

  Arnold then drove his two new lady friends to Enid and hired Roberts to represent the Shannons. He then proceeded to Oklahoma City and checked into the city’s premier hotel, the Skirvin, and continued to romance his two new friends in grand style.

  Unbeknownst to the clueless Arnold, the Skirvin was also the residence of choice for the Bureau’s agents and the prosecutors who would be trying the case against Bailey, Bates and the Shannons.

  Agents were watching the defense team closely and tracking anyone that made contact with them. Word had gotten to Jones about Arnold, whose drunken claims in Fort Worth had been picked up by the local agents there. So Jones put agents in rooms adjacent to Arnold’s, but all they picked up from their eavesdropping were the sounds of the drunken orgy inside. Two days later, when Arnold had had enough of his two expensive escorts, he slipped out of the Skirvin, leaving them behind, along with the Bureau’s agents who’d been assigned to watch him.

  When Jones learned what his rookie agents had allowed to happen he was livid. He’d just blown his best chance to find the Kellys.

  Oblivious to the trouble he’d unconsciously managed to elude, Arnold drove off in Kathryn’s Chevy to San Antonio, where she’d rented a furnished bungalow and was living with Flossie Mae and Geraldine. When he arrived, Kathryn staked him with another wad of cash and sent him back to Oklahoma to pay the lawyers for her mama’s defense. Newly flush, the naïve Arnold headed back to the Skirvin, but not before stopping off in Fort Worth for another night of bacchanalia.

  He was still nursing a hangover the next day when he showed up at the hotel, where Jones’s men grabbed him and carted him off to jail.

  Kathryn had told Cass Coleman to get in touch with her in San Antonio if her husband showed up looking for her. On September 11, she picked up a telegram from Coleman with the cryptic message: “MOTHER BETTER.”

  Kathryn grabbed Geraldine and headed off to Coleman’s ranch, leaving Flossie Mae at the house, telling her she would be back the next day.

  Reunited with George at the Coleman ranch, she greeted him defiantly: “I don’t know whether to kiss you or kill you!”

  The couple immediately launched into a marital spat that quickly degenerated into mutual accusations and death threats. She accused him of whoring around in Mississippi, he called her a damned liar. She blamed him for getting her mother arrested. He blamed her for dreaming up the vile scheme in the first place.

  Kathryn demanded proof of George’s repentance. She wanted George to turn himself in to the prosecutors in exchange for their dropping of the charges against her mother. The exasperated George agreed to take the rap for the kidnapping, but told her she’d have to make the deal first, because once he turned himself in, they’d have no leverage.

  While the Kellys were bickering at the Coleman ranch, Gus Jones’s agents were busy beating information out of the hapless Arnold in Oklahoma. After about six hours of forceful conversation, he’d given up just about everything he knew about the Kellys and their hideouts.

  At the end of his statement, Luther wrote, “I realize that I have been very foolish in engaging in this proposition of being a contact man for Kathryn Kelly and I am willing to tell the Government representatives anything else that I can think of concerning this matter and it is my desire to wash my hands of the entire proposition, and I hope any leniency possible will be shown me in connections with my actions.”

  The agents in Oklahoma dispatched a team in San Antonio to raid the Kellys’ rented house. They descended in force, but all they found was the distraught Flossie Mae, who told them the Kellys had taken her daughter and left for Cass Coleman’s ranch.

  Once again, Hoover’s men had missed their prey by a matter of hours.

  Cass Coleman’s neighbor, Clarence Durham, had been getting nervous about his proximity to the hot Coleman farm. He also didn’t like the fact that Kelly seemed to think he could use his house to stay out of the glare that was focused on Coleman. Durham wanted to stay out of trouble, and he wanted Kelly to stay away from him. The day that the agents had crashed the Kelly pad in San Antonio and found the tearful Flossie Mae, Durham had pulled up to his place to find the Kellys lounging on a mattress he kept on the front porch for sleeping in summer heat. In a rage, he booted them out and immediately after they left he headed for the county sheriff’s office and unloaded everything he knew about Machine Gun Kelly and his comings and goings around his house and the Coleman farm. As he was giving up all that he could, the Kellys had loaded their car and headed off to Chicago with Geraldine in tow.

  The sheriff put out an all-points bulletin, dispatched his men and set roadblocks. Soon, reports were pouring in from all over the county and beyond. From the reports, it appeared as if they were headed back to Oklahoma City and right into the trap laid by the combined law enforcement teams. But, once again, the Kellys had slipped right through it. They sped past Oklahoma City, with their twelve-year-old hostage, and were heading straight for Chicago. George had finally gotten his way with his headstrong wife. They arrived there on Sunday, September 17, and rented an apartment on the city’s near North Side. They told the landlord they’d come to the city to visit the World’s Fair.

  George knew a mechanic and garage operator named Joe Bergl in the southwest suburb of Cicero, in the heart of Capone’s turf. Bergl did much of his underworld business through the Michigan Tavern at 1150 South Michigan Avenue. The tavern was run by Abe and Morris Caplan, and Kelly had used the bar as a meeting place when he was in Chicago, and also as a mailing address and a friendly phone. This time he asked Caplan to flip his car for something newer and faster. Caplan explained that Bergl was up to his neck in work (he was outfitting an armor-plated car for Alvin Karpis and the Barkers for a raid on the Federal Reserve Bank), but that he would arrange something if Kelly could wait a few days.

  The Kellys tried to blend into their new neighborhood, living as a happy couple with their charming preteen daughter, but Kelly was wound too tight to relax. Everywhere they went, he thought he saw suspicious people watching him. He’d get up and leave dinners prematurely, throwing money on the table as he left. He continued to berate Kathryn for her harebrained kidnapping venture. All of this in front of the absorptive Geraldine.

  8

  CATCHING KELLY

  On September 16, John Roberts appeared in Oklahoma City and made his offer to the prosecution. Acting on behalf of his clients, George and Kathryn Kelly, Roberts announced that George Kelly, the man whom federal agents had chased over fully one-third of the nation, was willing to turn himself in if the government would drop charges against R. G. Shannon, his wife, Ora, and their son, Armon.

  The Shannons, he claimed, were mere victims of circumstance, unwilling hosts who were forced under threat of death by Machine Gun Kelly to guard and house his kidnapped victim.

  “The Kellys,” he said, “were willing to go to any expense, to go to any extreme, to see that the Shannons, th
eir relatives, do not suffer.”

  Keenan thought this deal sounded good. The Kellys were proving to be extremely elusive, and getting them in custody and bringing all the ringleaders down in one quick, dramatic trial would prove how serious and how effective the new administration would be in prosecuting its War on Crime. The Shannons were really small timers. Even Bates with his pages-long rap sheet was a relatively unknown thug. The now infamous Machine Gun Kelly was the marquee character they needed to convict in a most decisive fashion. Kelly and his colorful moniker had been blaring from the national news radio reports. His menacing nature, enhanced in no small part by the Bureau’s descriptions and publicity, was on display in the press as his story unfolded in serial fashion as the weeks dragged on. Keenan felt the time was right to bring him in, and if no one got killed in the process, so much the better.

  He wrote to U.S. Attorney Herbert Hyde in favor of the deal: “If we could obtain the return of Kelly and the ransom money without any commitment as to what shall happen to Kelly, I am hoping that Judge Vaught could see his way clear to being very lenient to Mrs. Shannon and Mrs. Kelly, even to the point of absolute release if Kelly and the money could be obtained and if we had a free hand to deal with Kelly, Bates and Bailey as the facts justify.”

  But Keenan had failed to check the strategy with Hoover, who was orchestrating the manhunt and the prosecution from Washington. He wanted a string of convictions. He would pursue them all, no quarter given. When he heard the mere suggestion that Kathryn Kelly should be dealt with leniently, it made him apoplectic. He believed Kathryn was the criminal mastermind behind the kidnapping who manipulated her husband into carrying it out. He described her as a “cunning, cruel, criminal actress … who could conceive a kidnapping, and force it through to a conclusion largely through her domination of her husband … who could only bow before her tirades and do as she bade him.”

  Hyde was quick to dismiss the offer:

  “As attorney for the government, I am interested in only three things as far as the Shannons and Kellys are concerned. First, the arrest and conviction of George and Kathryn Kelly; second, the conviction of the Shannons; and third, the return of every cent of the $200,000 ransom money lost by one of Oklahoma’s leading citizens.

  “If they expect any recommendation of leniency from the government as to the Shannons, we will expect the Kellys’ unconditional surrender and return of the ransom.”

  Roberts, who actually had no idea where his clients could be found, scoffed at the government’s demands.

  Bailey’s attorney, James Mathers, whose client was absolutely innocent of any charges associated with the kidnapping—but in fact guilty of so much more—had very little he could do on behalf of his unlucky client, who just happened to be sleeping at the hostage holding pen with $700 of ransom money in his pocket when the feds arrived looking for Kelly.

  He petitioned the court for a change of venue. “The newspapers have published inflammatory, untrue, false, highly colored, and exaggerated articles, making it impossible for Mr. Bailey to get a fair trial in the western federal district of Oklahoma.”

  Judge Vaught was unmoved and not willing to entertain any motion that might delay his proceedings, noting that the national press had made the story front-page news in nearly every state in the country. “I was in another state (New Mexico) in August. There was just about as much in the newspapers there as anywhere else. It is a matter of such great public interest and importance that the press of the United States has carried a great deal on the case. Newspapers have speculated on the case and the witnesses. I can see no advantage to the defendant in a change of venue.”

  The press with its wire services and the radio with its instant national voice had made the case something that the entire nation was aware of. There were few places in the country with a federal court where you could go to find an uninformed, unprejudiced jury. The nation had shrunk. On matters of national import, everyone knew everyone else’s business. Harvey Bailey had achieved the level of national fame and recognition he had spent his life trying to avoid. There were few, if any, places in the country where he could get a fair trial—certainly not Oklahoma City. But that mattered little. The Bureau’s agents assigned to guard the affable Bailey admitted to him that there were few who believed he was involved in the kidnapping. But that didn’t matter. He had gotten away with so much in his lifetime that no one could build a case on. If, ironically, a good case could be made for something he didn’t do, so what? Tables turned. Guilty or not, they told him, you are going down for this one.

  The grand jury would convene in two days.

  While Keenan was rejecting the plea deal, Urschel received a death threat in the form of a letter from Kelly:

  Ignorant Charles:

  Just a few lines to let you know that I am getting my plans made to destroy your so-called mansion, and you and your family immediately after this trial. And young fellow, I guess you’ve begun to realize your serious mistake. Are you ignorant enough to think the Government can guard you forever? I gave you credit for more sense than that, and figured you thought too much of your family to jeopardize them as you have, but if you don’t look out for them, why should we? I dislike hurting the innocent, but I told you exactly what would happen and you can bet $200,000 more everything I said will be true. You are living on borrowed time now. You know that the Shannon family are victims of circumstances the same as you was. You don’t seem to mind prosecuting the innocent; neither will I have any conscious qualms over brutally murdering your family. The Shannons have put the heat on, but I don’t desire to see them prosecuted as they are innocent and I have a much better method of settling with them. As far as the guilty being punished, you would probably have lived the rest of your life in peace had you tried only the guilty, but if the Shannons are convicted, look out, and God help you for he is the only one that will be able to do you any good. In the event of my arrest, I’ve already formed an outfit to take care of and destroy you and yours the same as if I was there. I am spending your money to have you and your family killed—nice, eh? You are bucking people who have cash, planes, bombs and unlimited connection both here and abroad. I have friends in Oklahoma City that know every move and every plan you make, and you are still too dumb to figure out the finger man there.

  If my brain was no larger than yours, the Government would have had me long ago, as it is I am drinking good beer and will yet see you and your family like I should have left you in the first place—stone dead.

  I don’t worry about Bates and Bailey. They will be out for the ceremonies—your slaughter.

  Now say—it is up to you; if the Shannons are convicted, you can get another rich wife in hell, because that will be the only place you can use one.

  Adious, smart one.

  Your worst enemy,

  GEO. R. KELLY

  I will put my fingerprints below so you can’t say some crank wrote this.

  Give Keenan my regards and tell him maybe he would like to meet the owner of the above.

  See you in hell.

  Kelly’s letter landed in Oklahoma City as jury selection for the trial of Bailey, Bates and the Shannons was about to start. In response, security precautions were ratcheted up even higher.

  Hoover had sent his number-two agent, Assistant Director Harold “Pop” Nathan to Oklahoma, to oversee the operations on the ground. Nathan called a meeting with Keenan, the Urschels and Kirkpatrick. Nathan wanted the contents of the letters withheld until after the trial. But Urschel wanted them published immediately. He believed if they were not published, the gangsters would feel that law enforcement officials, as well as the Urschels, were intimidated. Urschel wanted there to be no doubt that he had thrown his lot in with the feds. He responded with a statement to the press:

  We are eager for this letter to be published so the people of the United States will know it is no fabrication from the air and will know the sort of people we have defied and are opposed to. We still have faith in th
e ultimate success of the federal government in its struggle with crime, and are gambling the safety of every member of our group on that success. We have thrown our lot with Law and the Government and are in this fight to the finish. The Urschel family does not waste one moment in giving gangland its answer.

  The next day, Urschel carried Kelly’s threatening letter folded in his suit coat pocket and calmly watched the jury proceedings from his front-row seat in the courtroom. Unbeknownst to Kelly, his loving wife, Kathryn, had penned her own communication to Urschel proclaiming her innocence and that of the Shannons, noting that the “blame for this entire mess is squarely on the shoulders of Machine Gun Kelly.”

  George had followed up his letter to Urschel with one to The Daily Oklahoman coauthored by Kathryn. He prefaced it with a perfectly genteel request couched in nonthreatening, respectful language, as if he were writing a letter to the editor with a counterpoint to one of their editorials:

  Dear Sirs—

  You will please publish the enclosed in your paper as I want the Shannons to be sure to read it. Yours truly, G. Kelly

  Gentleman:

  I desire the public to know that the Shannon family are innocent victims in the Charles F. Urschel case the same as Urschel was.

  I understand that they are now government witnesses also defendants, and I don’t want them convicted, for I desire to settle with them in my own way and with no assistance from the government.

  Mr. Urschel and the government prosecution know that the Shannons had no part or no intentions of aiding in the matter and were forced to do so the same as Urschel was forced to leave his home.

  Why didn’t Urschel call the law to Norman when he was released, instead of riding a cab peacefully into the city and waiting a given time to call them? Fear, gentleman, fear, the same fear that dominated the Shannons.