Criminal Masterminds

by Anne Williams

  Sheppard was finally arrested again November 1, 1724. He was apprehended while he was drunk and dragged once again, back to prison. Once there the guards placed him in the highest security cell they had in the middle of the prison, where he could be watched at all times. He became something of a celebrity and admission was charged for people to come and view him. Sheppard’s exploits had reached such acclaim, that wealthy people wrote to the Royal Family to have charges against him reduced to exile. A famous artist of the time was even commissioned to come and paint Jack Sheppard. On November 16, 1724, Jack Sheppard was executed by way of hanging. Those noose was placed round his neck, but after the usual fifteen minutes he was still alive. The execution crew cut him down and the crowd that had gathered around to watch, fell upon Sheppard. That evening Sheppard’s badly mutilated remains were taken and buried.

  Jack Sheppard became a legend in his own time but it wasn’t until after his death that public interest in his exploits exploded. Many plays, books, operas and short stories were written, produced and performed with rave reviews. People delighted in his crime adventures well over a hundred years after his death. After some controversy and claims that the plays and books telling of Sheppard’s life caused people to misbehave and, in some cases, commit murder, in 1840, any publication with the name ‘Jack Sheppard’ was banned. This ban was to last for a period of forty years. Jack is still referenced today almost three-hundred years after he committed his crimes and baffled the police.

  Machine Gun Kelly

  George Kelly Barnes, the man remembered by most as ‘Machine Gun’ Kelly was one of the few non-murderous gangster figures in the American Prohibition era. His misguided exploits took him through one robbery after another and it wasn’t until he came into contact with the big boys of crime at the time that he truly developed a talent for robbery. Kelly was constantly trying to aspire to the image that the media and his associates painted of him.

  George Kelly Barnes was born on July 18, 1896, in Memphis, Tennessee. Unlike most of his soon to be gangster brethren George was born into a wealthy, respected family. He enjoyed a model childhood and started life out on a track that could not have been further from organised crime. His school life was somewhat troubled and he spent a lot of time in detention. Although he tried hard he would only earn mediocre grades. During his final year of high school George met Geneva Ramsay and fell head over heels in love with her. He decided to leave High School early to marry her and started looking for work to support his now growing family. George, who was tired of working for little pay decided that he would use less conventional means to make ends meet. It was around this time when George was nineteen, that he began socialising with bootlegging gangsters.

  It was not long before George’s activities got him into trouble and he was arrested for illegal trafficking. He decided that preserving the good name of his family was important to him, so he took his own family and headed west. It was around that time that George adopted an alias, also in an effort to protect his family’s good name. He took the name George R. Kelly and by 1927 was known by law enforcement and in the criminal underworld as a seasoned gangster. He ran into trouble with the law a few more times and was jailed for a short time. Kelly did not, however, learn his lesson as he committed just one offence too many, until he was caught for his most serious crime yet.

  In 1928, George was arrested after he was apprehended smuggling alcohol onto an Indian Reservation. His latest offence was a more serious crime and carried a much more severe punishment that would make his previous incarcerations seem like a slap on the wrist. Kelly was jailed for a three-year sentence at the Kansas State High Security Prison, the world renowned, Leavenworth. Some of America’s worst criminals were his prison mates there. They took the troubled, minor offender and turned him into a hardened professional. While Kelly was incarcerated Geneva left him and took their new child with her. Kelly had the benefit of leaving prison with more friends in the criminal underworld than when he had entered.

  Upon his release from another stint in prison, while living in Oklahoma, George met Kathryn Thorne. Thorne was a hardened criminal in her own right. She was the attractive mistress of Kelly’s newest crime contact, Steve Anderson. Kelly fell for Thorne, possibly attracted to her family’s long association with burglaries and prostitution. Rumour at the time held that Kathryn had killed her previous husband who had also been a boot­legging gangster, but the official investigation maintains he took his own life. Kelly married Kathryn after several months of courting each other’s affections in Minneapolis in September 1930.

  So far the criminal life of George Kelly had been relatively unremarkable and unimpressive. The latest edition to his family in the form of Kathryn was to change his entire image, both to the criminal underworld and to media. It would be under her guidance that his crimes would escalate him to the most wanted list and quickly rise to ‘Public Enemy Number One’. Kathryn was anything but an ordinary housewife to Kelly as she pumped up his image to other members of organised crime and to the media. Kathryn bought George a Thompson machine gun and encouraged him to hone his skills with the menacing weapon, a favourite of gangsters. It is said that she distributed shell casings from his practise sessions as mementos to other gangsters and anyone else who would listen. She coined George Kelly’s third and final name, ‘Machine Gun’ Kelly. It was because of this relentless and shameless promotion of her husband that, when the police issued wanted posters in August 1933, the poster listed Kelly as ‘an excellent machine gunner’.

  In July 1933 Machine Gun Kelly and his wife masterminded the kidnapping of a wealthy oil tycoon, Charles Urchil. Kelly and two accomplices broke into Urchil’s Oklahoma home and found him playing Bridge with a companion. Kelly shouted his threats to kill both men and took them hostage, as he was not sure which one of them was Charles Urchil. Kelly and his team loaded the two men into their waiting car and searched them for identification. The man with Urchil was Walter Jarrett. They robbed him of the $51 that was in his wallet and abandoned him on the roadside. Kelly wanted Urchil and took him to a ranch in Texas where they held him for a ransom of $200,000.

  A family friend of the Urchil’s agreed to pay the ransom and make the drop at the place that George and his accomplices had demanded. That place was near the La Salle Hotel in Kansas City. The terrible ordeal ended on July 30, 1933, just eight days after it had began. Kelly held true to his word and released Urchil in Oklahoma where he is reported to have casually walked into a restaurant and telephoned for a taxi. Urchil was the wrong man for Kelly to capture as he had the connections and the intelligence to lead the police right back to him. Urchil had no intention of allowing Kelly to just get away with what he did, so he left his fingerprints on everything he could and remained vigilant of his surroundings during his capture. This careful planning on Urchil’s part proved invaluable during the FBI investigation.

  Kelly’s gang split up and went their separate ways. George Kelly and his wife had to keep on the move and stay ahead of the law enforcement that was now motivated for more reasons than one to capture them. It was only a short time later that part of the gang was apprehended at the ranch where Urchil had been held. The police used the serial numbers on the ransom money to track Kelly’s purchases. Kelly earned his reputation and his rank on the most wanted men list as the gang continued to elude police by changing their appearance and dying their hair. They hid for several weeks but decided to head back to Kelly’s hometown of Memphis to stay with a long-time friend, John Tichenor.

  On the morning of September 26, 1933, FBI and police, in a combined effort, surrounded the Tichenor property. When they forced their way in, they found Kelly and his wife in a state which rendered them unable to resist the lawmen. Kelly had passed out in a drunken state from the previous evenings drinking, and Kathryn was still asleep. Kelly is said to have shouted, ‘Don’t shooot, G-men!’ referring to the Federal agents on the scene. It has since been accepted that it was Kelly that coined the phrase G
-men that is still in use to this day. The couple were arrested and taken to trial in Oklahoma where they each received life sentences for kidnapping Urchil. George R. Kelly was sent back to the first prison he had ever been held at, Leavenworth in Kansas. His wife, Kathryn, was sent to a high security facility in Cincinnati, Ohio. Not long after Kelly was jailed he bragged to the media that he would escape from Leavenworth, break his wife out of prison and they would spend Christmas together. The authorities did not take the threats lightly and decided that they should send him to the new, high security prison off the San Francisco coast, Alcatraz.

  During Kelly’s stay at the dreaded prison island Alcatraz he was under the strict rules of the new facility. There was to be no talking between inmates and they were on the tightest schedule and discipline of any prison in the United States, ever. Because of the position of Alcatraz, an imprisoned island in the middle of freezing water in direct view of San Francisco the prospect of escape was practically non-existent. Instead of trying to flee, Kelly became a model inmate and was said to keep mostly to himself except for one rather humorous detail. Kelly repeatedly bragged to other inmates such as the 1930’s bank robber, Alvin Karpis, about crimes that he had never been involved with. Karpis said, ‘he never tired of telling of his escapades’. Kelly remained at Alcatraz for many years until he was transferred back to Leavenworth.

  George ‘Machine Gun’ Kelly died at Leavenworth prison on his fifty-ninth birthday. It was not the prison or the inmates that killed him but rather the natural cause that claims so many lives, a heart attack. His wife was released from prison in 1958 and went on to live a normal life in Oklahoma. Machine Gun Kelly’s name is remembered with the hardened gangsters like Karpis and Capone but the one major factor that separated him from the likes of them is he never killed anybody. Kelly was a misguided man who died serving his time, his name continues to echo through pop culture almost seventy-five years since he held the rank of Public Enemy Number One.

  Bonnie and Clyde

  Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were the all-American romantic legends of the depression era and beyond. They are probably best remembered as the bank robbers and outlaws ‘Bonnie and Clyde’. These two notorious outlaws led law enforcement on a two-year manhunt that spanned across seven states. On the numerous occasions that the police closed in on them, they would shoot their way to safety. In their acts of theft, combined with violence, they killed nine police officers and several civilians.

  Bonnie Elizabeth Parker was born on October 1, 1910, in Rowena, Texas. Despite the troubled future that awaited her, Bonnie started out life on the right track. Her father died when she was very young and as a result her mother took their family to live in Cement City. Bonnie was below average height and tiny at around 41 kg (18H lb), and an attractive child with her red hair and light freckles. She liked to follow fashion and favoured the colour red. She worked hard in school and achieved high grades. She was a prolific young writer and showed promise when she won the county literary contest. In her mid-teens, Bonnie married Roy Thornton and despite common belief, remained married to him for the rest of her life. Their marriage was troubled and they became estranged after just three years. Thornton went to prison shortly after on a charge of theft. Bonnie started working as a waitress to make the money she needed to survive. One day, while caring for a friend who had been injured in a fall, she met her future lover and cohort, Clyde Barrow, who was also visiting their mutual friend.

  Clyde Chestnut ‘Champion’ Barrow was born on March 24, 1909, in Teleco, Texas, just south of Dallas in Ellis County. He was born into a very poor farming family. When Clyde was a child his family operated a petrol station and they lived in a small one-bedroom home. Clyde grew up to be a good looking, lovable rogue at 170 cm (5ft 7in), with slicked back hair and dark eyes and was described as irresistible by many. Clyde and his brother Ivan ‘Buck’ Barrow were at odds with the law from very early in life, working as a team and commiting minor offenses. One noted crime was the theft and attempted sale of a series of turkeys. Because of their growing reputation, when a crime was committed in their home town, it was usually suspected that the Barrow Boys had something to do with it. However, Clyde seemed to have a deep, unrelenting, unquenchable anger. These strong emotions were possibly due to his family and their financial situation, or possibly the state of his country which was deep in an economic depression of its own. His anger fuelled his excellent trigger finger and many said if you made Clyde Barrow draw, you were a dead man.

  While Clyde was serving time at Eastham Prison for one of his crimes, he became acquainted with two men, Ray Hamilton and Ralph Fults, who would later join him as members of the infamous Barrow Gang. After Clyde was released he returned to break Hamilton and Fults from jail. It was also around this time that Clyde shot a police officer who was apprehending him for being drunk in public.

  The first robbery that his now lover, Bonnie, was involved in was that of a hardware shop in Kauffman, Texas. During their high-speed getaway from the shop Clyde slammed on the breaks and ordered Bonnie to get out of the car. He gave her a wad of the stolen cash and drove away. Although she had been ejected from the car and had the embarrassment of walking back to the town they had just plundered, she knew that Clyde’s reasons were honourable and it just made her desire to be with him more intense. Shortly after this incident, which netted little profit, Clyde and his friend and cohort Hamilton decided to plan another robbery. It was also during this time that Ralph Fults, who had been involved in the raid on the hardware shop, was arrested. Spooked, but still determined, Clyde and Hamilton decided to enter the home of the Buchers, owners of a Hillsboro, Texas, grocery shop and hold them at gunpoint while they opened the safe for them. While the safe was being opened, Hamilton, who was holding the gun to the store owner’s head, was surprised and he accidentally fired the trigger. Mr Bucher, the store owner, was suddenly dead before them and Clyde and Hamilton were fugitives. They made their escape, but Clyde asked Bonnie to join them on what would be a continuous run from the law. She eagerly accepted and it was at this moment that the partnership of Bonnie and Clyde as outlaws was really born.

  In the following weeks and months, Bonnie, Clyde and Hamilton would commit more crimes, many of which ended in murder. The gang brought another newcomer aboard, W. D. Jones, a thief of only seventeen years old. The media portrayed the dangerous gang as Robin Hood-like characters and Americans everywhere delighted in the exploits of the soap opera gang. Bonnie and Clyde became aware of this new-found status and began to carry a camera and photograph each other in various ‘gangster’ poses. This just fuelled an already growing public interest in their adventures. It was around this time that Clyde’s brother and his wife Blanche joined the gang. The Barrow Gang was now five-strong and continued to lead the police on a deadly chase, leaving nothing but havoc in the shops, petrol stations and banks they entered.

  During one of the many getaways in a stolen car driven at excess speed, the car flew off a bridge that was still under construction, and Bonnie became pinned beneath the wrecked machine. Despite the best efforts of Clyde and Jones to free her, she remained stuck. The car became engulfed in flames and before they were able to work Bonnie loose from the wreckage, she sustained severe burns to all parts of her body, including her legs and face. After this tragic incident, Bonnie’s left leg was seriously deformed, and subsequently Clyde always carried Bonnie in the copious photographs taken during their violent exploits.

  The gang did not go long before crashing another vehicle, this time while the police were pursuing them, Clyde ploughed the car into a tree stump. The car subsequently lurched into a ditch at the side of the road, and the police riddled the car with bullets. Bonnie, Clyde and the gang escaped with minor injuries. To many it seemed that the gang had more than one life each.

  In July of 1933, the gang was in Dexfield Park and found themselves surrounded by police. A gun battle ensued and the police were partially victorious. Ivan ‘Buck’ Barrow was hit in
the back, captured and a few days later died in hospital after the onset of pneumonia. His wife, Blanche, who had only sustained minor injuries in previous engagements, was hit by flying glass. Blanche was arrested and sent to Missouri State Penitentiary. She was charged with assault with intent to kill and sentenced to ten years.

  In November 1933, Bonnie and Clyde were visiting their families when they were caught once again in the crossfire of the Texas Department of Public Safety. Bonnie and Clyde were hit in the legs. Bonnie’s condition and her deformed leg only worsened from this most recent assault.

  In January of 1934, Clyde masterminded yet another prison break. This time it was his goal to spring ex-Barrow Gang member, Ray Hamilton, Henry Methvin and other prisoners from the Eastham Prison. It was during this prison break that the Barrow gang shot yet another series of police officers and prison guards.

  In April of that year, Clyde and Methvin killed two Texas Highway Patrol officers and shortly after that the gang was responsible for another officer’s death. This latest batch of killing sullied the public’s interest in the adventures of the Barrow Gang and gave the police a serious incentive to end the Barrow Gang reign of terror. Law enforcement officials decided that they needed to bring out the big guns to stop what seemed like, until that time, a set of unstoppable criminals.