June 25, 2025 • 41 mins
Chris Enss is a New York Times bestselling author, historian, and private investigator known for her extensive work chronicling the lives of women in the American West. With more than 20 books to her name, she specializes in uncovering the truth behind legends—whether lawmen, gunslingers, or the women often written out of the narrative.
Her latest book, Meet the Kellys: The True Story of Machine Gun Kelly and His Moll Kathryn Thorne, is available now at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, KensingtonBooks.com, and bookstores everywhere.
In this episode of Zone 7, Crime Scene Investigator Sheryl McCollum sits down with bestselling author and private investigator Chris Enss to dig into the real story of Kathryn Thorne—the woman who didn’t just stand beside Machine Gun Kelly but helped build his legend. They discuss Kathryn’s sharp mind, bold choices, how she planned a headline-making kidnapping, and even called J. Edgar Hoover herself. Sheryl and Chris also explore the early days of the FBI, the origin of the term “G-Man,” and how the courtroom became Kathryn’s stage.
Learn more about Chris Enss at chrisenss.com or follow her on Instagram @chrisenssauthor.
Show Notes:
- (0:00) Welcome to Zone 7 with guest Chris Enss
- (1:30) The Kellys vs. Bonnie and Clyde
- (3:00) Ground-level research and historical truth
- (6:05) According to Kate and the untold story of Doc Holliday
- (10:50) Kathryn Thorne was all about what she wanted
- (14:30) Turning Machine Gun Kelly into a myth
- (16:45) Charm, privilege, and the making of an outlaw
- (22:00) The kidnapping of Charles Urschel
- (25:30) Lindbergh Law and the FBI’s rise to power
- (29:30) The double kidnapping and the G-Man legend
- (33:00) Kathryn Thorne plays the victim
- (36:00) Silk in the courtroom and a spotlight on the stand
- (38:30) Getting what she wanted, even as questions remain
- (40:30) “I wish he had left the dog” – Little Steve Stevens
Thanks for listening to another episode! If you're enjoying Zone 7, head over to Apple Podcasts and leave a quick rating and review—it’s one of the best ways to support the show and help others find it.
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Sheryl “Mac” McCollum is an Emmy Award winning CSI, a writer for CrimeOnLine, Forensic and Crime Scene Expert for Crime Stories with Nancy Grace, and a CSI for a metro Atlanta Police Department. She is the co-author of the textbook Cold Case: Pathways to Justice. Sheryl is also the founder and director of the Cold Case Investigative Research Institute, a collaboration between universities and colleges that brings researchers, practitioners, students and the criminal justice community together to advance techniques in solving cold cases and assist families and law enforcement with solvability factors for unsolved homicides, missing persons, and kidnapping cases.
Social Links:
- Email: coldcase2004@gmail.com
- Twitter: @ColdCaseTips
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Today we have with us Chris Entz. Now, let me
tell you something. We have a friend in common, Mayor Lansky, too,
the grandson of the famous mobster Mayor Lansky. But I'm
going to tell you she is a New York Times
selling author. She has written dozens of books. One of
(00:30):
her concentration is Women of the West. She has cataloged
and researched and written about the amazing things that women
did back in the day now in the true wild West.
I cannot wait to talk to her because she has
(00:51):
written a book on machine gun Kelly. I'm just gonna
let her come on in here and talk to us
and tell us how she did her research and why
she landed on the Kellys in the first place. So
y'all please help me welcome his own seven Chris ents Chris,
how are you? Honey?
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Hi? And fine? Oh, thank you so much for having
me be a part of this broadcast. Certainly it's a
pleasure and always excited to talk about the amazing things
that women did, not only on the legal side of things,
but on the illegal side of things, because women made
great strides there too, and that cannot be ignored.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
They cannot. And let me tell you, I talk a
lot about Bonnie and Clyde. I've had, you know, the
niece of Bonnie own, I've had experts on. That's probably
the couple that got me into this whole gig in
the first place. But the way you talk about the Kellys, Honey,
they were chasing Bondy and Clyde, Now absolutely so.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
I mean that's what made their story so significant for
me because there were so many firsts with machine gun
Kelly and his wife Katherine Thorn, and you know, it
was they were perpetrating crimes right there in the heart
where everybody was perpetrating those kinds of crimes at the time.
You had Dyllinger, you had the Barker Boys, you had
(02:19):
you did have Bonnie and Clyde. And through all of
this you had the Bureau of Investigation that's trying to
find their footing in this world. And it just so
happened that they used a lot of these early gangsters
to be able to make their case as to why
(02:41):
they need to really advance what's going on with federal
Bureau of Investigations, which it eventually became, but it didn't
come without some bumps and bruises along the Way and
machine Gun. Kelly and Catherine Thorn were two that gave
those bumps and bruises to mister Hoover.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Now, I want people to know one thing about you.
You and I have a mantra in common, and that
is go to the scene. You've got to walk it,
You've got to hear it. In some instances, you've just
got to be able to taste it to truly understand
those crime scenes. So you've been to Dodge City, you've
(03:20):
been to Tombstone, You've been to Deadwood. So if somebody
were to ask you about some of these places, you've
got it from ground level, which I think is imperative.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Well, I don't know how you write about those aspects
of history, those amazing things that happened beyond the Mississippi,
without actually stepping in those places and getting a taste
for it and being so overwhelmed by history that it's
almost like cobwebs that you have to brush away. And
(03:54):
I don't know, you know, I'm you and I also
have this in common too, because I know you do
some investigation work as well, but you know I'm a
private investigator and there is nothing like actually getting into
that particular source and trying to make sense of what
happened and to reason through it.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Mm hm. And you and I talked a little while ago.
We want to get it right and how important that is.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Absolutely so. And you know, one of my favorite authors
is a woman by the name of Dorothy Johnson. And
Dorothy Johnson was a teacher, a professor out of Montana,
and she wrote this great book called a great short
story excuse me, called The manushat Liberty Valance, which eventually
became a film with John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart. But
(04:44):
there's a great line in that movie, and the line
is when fact is absent, print the legend. People love
the legend, but there's nothing like the fact.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Oh my gosh. You know, let me tell you it's
really wicked. I just came home from visiting the ambush
site of Sheriff Buford Pusser, and there is some conflict
between fact and legend. So that quote just hit me
a little different. So thank you for that.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Well, you know, there's money to be made in the legend.
I wrote a book called According to Kate, The Life
and Times of Big Nose Kate Elder, Doc Holliday's Love
and Boy I'll tell you she had a different take
on the IRPs than most people did because she didn't
really like the IRPs. But when just before that book
(05:38):
came out, I got a lot of emails from people saying,
don't you don't you really print anything that's going to
be disparaging to the IRPs, because we're not going to
like that, because there's money to be made with the legend,
and you have anybody poke and pull at that string
you've got. You upset a lot of people when you
do that.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Absolutely. And you know Doc Colladay, he's a Georgia boy,
and there's a lot of just these tales about him.
And sometimes people will say, well, they never talked about it,
this isn't in print, but as though it's now going
to be fact because you've told it right.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
You say a thing, and you say a thing enough
and it becomes truth in some respects, but in particular
with Kate, which is what I love doing research about
Kate and ended up with all of Kate's things, which
is why I was able to write the book. The
book is called According to Kate because it's what Kate
says happened, not what I said happened, but you know,
(06:37):
Kate was a working gal. She was a prosecutor, and
she was either working one or two houses the whole
time that she was with Doc. Now motion pictures and
the legend would lead you to believe that Doc was
such an amazing gambler and had all of this money
that he supported Kate. But nothing could be further from
the truth. Doc was a failed because he had tuberculosis
(07:02):
and he wasn't that great of a gambler. And so
if anybody was supporting anybody, it was Kate's supporting Doc.
But see that just doesn't that doesn't sit well with
a lot of people. They like to think that she
was just this tiny little model and you know, just
needed him to take care of her, and that was
(07:23):
not true at all. She was a beefy hungarian gal,
sustained on a potato the potato based diet, and could
hold her own with Doc and always always was a
working woman.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
And you know, you're a private investigator. Facts matter. Getting
it right matters. You double check, you triple check, you
cut druble check before you put them in print. You
have written dozens of books where the same thing is true.
And I got to tell you, Chris, I didn't know
whether to have a complete laugh attack or throw my
(08:01):
phone when I saw one of the critic that did
a little highlight on your book the Kelly's and called
you Christopher. Not only did they take Chris and make
(08:21):
it absolutely a man like, they made it more formal
so that nobody could miss it.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
They're just wrong, absolutely wrong. And you knows, and I
don't even know that because they referred to Katherine Thorn
as Catherine Male and that I know whether or not
they were actually reading the Kellys. So but you know,
(08:51):
that's that's okay as as as long as as long
as this person read the Kelly story, even if they
got some some mixed up, as long as they read
the story and they appreciated this version of what happened
with these people and how wicked she was. I'm happy
(09:14):
that they just picked it up and cracked the cover.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
Got cha, well, stated, I just thought, this is the
funniest thing I've ever seen in my life. Yeah, I know,
all right, So what drew you to machine Gun Kelly?
Speaker 2 (09:28):
I wasn't necessarily drawn to Kelly. I was drawn to
Catherine because I write primarily about women of the American frontier,
and even though the Kelly's were in the thirties, their
behavior was just like it would have been in the
Wild West. All you have to do is erase six
shooter and put in Tommy gunn They were scoundrels and
(09:54):
and I've written a lot about women criminals of the
American West, and Catherine was right up there. And what
struck me about her was how slick she was, because
she was a beauty and pretty people can get away
with an awful lot, and she really her set her
(10:16):
mind to get away with some big things, and she
needed somebody who was willing to help her along that path.
And poor George was just a willing party. Now he
was not without his own flaws, but I don't know
that he would have made that leap from being a
(10:38):
low rent bank robber and bootlegger to kidnapp her had
it not been for Catherine.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Absolutely, Can I read from your book for a second?
Sure thing, y'all listen to this talking about George Kelly
machine gun Kelly. He was leaning against a small, swanky
bar when a server placed a drink next to him
and then hurried off to wait on others. Kelly lifted
the beverage to have a sip and stared across the
(11:06):
glass at Katherine thorn in Little Steve Steven's arms. As
Little Steve led her across the dance floor, he pressed
her close to him. Catherine didn't resist. She caught Kelly
watching her and smiled behind her slinky purse lips. She
(11:26):
offered a look that was a lavishing and inviting challenge.
Kelly lit up with the sort of grin she knew
men wore when they were up to something mischievous. He
had made bad choices in his thirty two years, but
falling for Catherine would have fatal consequences. Now I'm going
(11:47):
to tell you something, Chris. I'm hooked, I'm drawn in.
I'm all about it because I know a ton about
machine Gun Kelly. I can talk about the time he's
spent at levenworth of time he was in Alcatraz, some
of his antics, the kidnap, and all of it. I
don't know a lot about her. That one section makes
(12:10):
me want to focus on her entirely. So I get
while you were drawn in?
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Oh yes, I mean I think I think history wants
to downplay women's influence in the world of crime because
it doesn't seem like that's something that women would want
to aspire to be or be involved in. But you know,
certainly that's not the case when you meet people like
(12:38):
like Catherine. She had an agenda. She lived by her
looks and certainly took advantage of anybody who licked their
chops in her direction. And she was smart. She was smart.
She knew exactly what to do to get in there.
(13:00):
I mean she was you know, she had prior to
even being involved with with George, she'd been arrested for
shoplifting and also involved a number of grifts with various salesmen.
She would see these particular salesmen out and about whether
(13:21):
she would be shopping at a department store, and she
would bat her eyes at them, and and they would
take her out to dinner, and then after dinner, they
would take her to the secluded spot that she would
direct them to to, you know, for for some for
some heavy petting, let's say. And during those particular times,
(13:45):
then the the gentleman that they that she was working
with would step into the vehicle and drag her out
and the salesman out, and then rob the salesman and
you know, take pictures of what was going on, so
then they could blackmail him later on. So she knew
(14:06):
exactly what she did. I mean, she was a grifter.
Sometimes her crimes like shoplifting was very overt, but then
she had that covert side of her that could get
in and get exactly what she wanted. And make no mistake,
Katherine was all about what she wanted.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Well, they married in nineteen twenty seven. Is it true
she bought him the machine gun, and that's when machine
Gun Kelly was born.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
She did indeed buy him a machine gun as a gift,
but it is not true that he was so proficient
with the particular machine gun that he could write his
name and his initials in concrete with the bullets from
the gun. That was not true. But see, Catherine is
so smart. She was a great PR person and she
(14:59):
was his best PR person ever because she would have
parties when he was off doing doing his robbery and
doing his bootlegging. She would have parties there in Fort
Worth and invite just some of the worst of the
worst people and even corrupt law enforcement agents, and then
(15:22):
hand each one of them spent shellcasing from a Tommy
gun with machine Gun Kelly's initials scratched into them. And
that was that was the calling card that she would
give everyone. Now, that always sparked interest.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
That was brilliant. That was absolutely brilliant.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
It was brilliant. You know, you need somebody like that
to help peddle your books and such.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
She was on a dummy. She knew what she was doing,
and she wanted to make him, make him be a
ruthless guy, not only in the general public's eyes, but
also in his peers' eyes. So whenever there was a
bank to be robbed that had some substantial money in them,
(16:11):
and you know, please keep in mind, this was in
the thirties, this was on the heels of the depression,
so and he had a lot of competition for robbing
these banks. So the banks that had any money in
them were far and few between, and so she figured,
you know, if she made sure that he had a
(16:31):
reputation for being a really bad individual, that they would
hire him on as part of their team to rob
banks and then also frighten off any competitors who thought
that they might encroach on their jobs.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
And you know, it's funny when you're talking about the
Great Depression, because that is something I was going to mention,
you know, machine gun Kelly was not like the other
depression outlaws. He actually came for money. He went to
mythic Phibbey State University. I mean, he was not somebody
that was in some poor shack and had a third
grade education.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
Absolutely not. He certainly was the upper middle class. But
as as usual with people who just take this particular
path in their life, something triggers them to go into
that particular field. And his relationship with his father was
not good. His mother always enjoyed poor health, and his
(17:33):
father was fooling around with another woman who the other
woman didn't have good health. So it wasn't it wasn't
as though. It wasn't as though in George's eyes that
his father was even seeking refuge in a woman who
was totally healthy, because that wasn't the case. He made
(17:56):
a linear swamp, and that in fear and infuriated George
that his father would be having an affair. And it
infuriated him because his mother was so fragile in health
and knew that if this information got to her, it
would be it would be her end. And really, you know,
he wanted to respect his father, but he couldn't respect
(18:18):
him after he saw him doing what he did, He's angry.
And so now he tells his father, listen, okay, I'm
not going to say anything. I'm not going to I'm
not going to make sure that this goes public. But
the reason, the way you're going to keep my silence
is you're going to let me use your car, so
why I can do some bootlegging. Now, keep in mind,
(18:39):
he's a teenager, he's just fifteen. He's just fifteen when
this is.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Going on, and by the time he's nineteen, he's out.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
He's left, absolutely so, but a smart man broken. I
think because what he saw happened in his family. That's
not an excuse, but certainly I think that was the
catalyst that pushed him over the edge. Yeah, when by
the time by the time he's nineteen, he's gone, and
you know, he's very close with his father in law
(19:07):
from his first wife. He's very close to him, and
his father in law really when he was alive, helped
him be on the straight and narrow and really saw
promise in George that his father never founded him. And
so when his father in law passes away through some
pretty suspicious circumstances there that again emboldens him to walk
(19:33):
on the dark side, to be able to act out
his frustration with the way that particular relationship ended. Again,
not an excuse, but it's amazing the things that push
people over over the edge.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
Well, not only was his home life internmol his inner
circle was, and the country was. I mean, it was
kind of easy to lose Hope there.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
There's no question about that, no question about it. But
I always thought it was sad because he was so
smart and because he was incredibly charming. He could have
finished his degree and gone on to be anything, but
he chose. He chose the easy He took the easy
way because he had an opportunity to be educated and
(20:23):
to rise above what the average person was doing. But
he decided against that. And as I said, he was charming,
and he was also I think he was quite good looking.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
Oh me too, no doubt about it.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
I like it. I like a guy with meat on
his bones.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
Let me tell you those ass hand.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
He had a real cal ripken thing going for him.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
So let me tell you, as we say in the South,
those ass can get you pregnant.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
There you go, absolutely so absolutely you'd be lost in
those for a while, so I can see why it
wasn't just purely on Catherine's part, just another drift. I
think she was as attracted to him as he was
to her.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Good dresser, good looking, smart and brave.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
You know, that's the thing about if you look at
any of these gangsters in that time period, you didn't
find any of them. I mean, who robs a bank
and a fedora? You know, these guys robbed banks like
they were going to the office to do a day's work.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
And Chris, I don't want to jump ahead, but even
looking at the two of them when they're in court,
they look like movie stars.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
You're absolutely right. But yeah, Mack, we won't drop ahead.
But you're absolutely right. But they played that too.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
They knew they did. They did one hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Yeah. She was very good at being able to say, here,
here's what we're gonna do. Here's here's how we're going
to beat this in the court of public opinion.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
Okay, So they meet, they fall in love, they get married.
She does have a hand in some direct and of
what he's going to do in his criminal life. So
let's talk about the kidnapping of the old attack.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
I thought What was amazing about her was she was
slick enough to well, let me back up and say
that kidnapping was a new crime, and it was becoming very,
very popular, and it started with the high profile kidnapping
(22:38):
of the Limberg baby, which, by the way, the Hoover
and his men were involved in trying to get at
the bottom of that case. And we're really under a
great deal of pressure to get at the bottom of it.
And the Kelly's were the first to be one of
the first to be accused of kidnapping the Limberg baby.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Now I didn't know that, that's I wrong.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Yeah, they were one of the first to be kitten
to be accused of that because they still by the
time they kidnapped Urschel, they still hadn't come to come
to the end of what happened with Charles Limberg junior.
They were still looking into that, and so they were
right up there with being suspected of having a hand
(23:25):
in that. But as I say, you know, kidnapping then
became the thing to do, and you looked for you
had to vet your kidnapping victim, which is where Catherine
comes in. Catherine loved to just go over newspapers and
the society pages in magazines and finding local celebrities from
(23:49):
Texas to Oklahoma. And she really made sure that she
investigated their mark, and they find Charles. She finds Charles
in a magazine about their incredible home there in Oklahoma
City and reads about his background and his wife's background,
because his wife is the one that you know, he
(24:12):
he ran a bank, but his wife was the one
that had all the money. She inherited lots and lots
of money. And because Charles was a very good, very
good at his job at the bank, was a great financier,
he was the one that was in charge of her fortune.
And so this article was about was about the Ursule's,
(24:35):
was about their life, was about their their opulent lifestyle,
which you know, given today's terms, that wouldn't necessarily be opulent,
but you know, they had parties and it was just
a big house, and they wanted what the Urschels had
and knew and this is gosh, they knew how much money.
(24:57):
Catherine knew how much money the family had in magazine.
The magazine article wasn't necessarily to make this public information
that would draw kidnappers to them. This was a time
when journalism was just nothing more than in some cases,
(25:20):
to be able to highlight magnanimous individuals like the Urshuls
who gave these great parties and who were very generous
to local Red Cross and that kind of thing. They
really wanted to celebrate them. But people, they had no
idea that they were putting a mark out on these people.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
You know, Oh, it certainly made them a target. But
you know, there's two things that are knocking me out
right now. I had no idea they were ever suspects,
but al Capone offered to help locate the baby and
return him safely, even though he was in prison at
the time. Now you have gangsters on both sides involved
(26:02):
with the Limburg kidnapping.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
Right, absolutely so. But yeah, and you know that was
of course, you know, all of the story of the
Kellys as well as so many of the gangsters at
the time, particularly the Barkers and the Barker Boys, all
helped to make the FBI what it eventually became, because
(26:28):
you know, there was a lot of pressure under Hoover
at that time to get a job done. What are
you doing now, we don't see any The people are
outraged that all these kidnappings are happening because you have
Charles Erschel being kidnapped, and then on the other hand,
we have maub Barker and her boys kidnapping, kidnapping the
(26:48):
hands out of the Milwaukee area.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
And you know, to your point, there's not money in
the banks anymore. After the depression, people were freaked out
to leave their money to bank. A lot of people
kept at home. That's where the whole thing, you know,
in your mattress and hiding it and jars and bearing
it in the yard. They trusted that more than a bank.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
And that's the reason why Catherine said, listen, the risk
to reward really isn't worth it when you're going to
rob these banks, because you're walking away with maybe five grand,
and that's not going to cut it for me. George,
I'm going to need much more than that. You know,
I have become accustomed to this grand lifestyle and that
(27:31):
just isn't going to work for me. So and I
don't want to run the risk of you being hit
by a bullet for just a little bit of cash.
So let's try and figure out a way. As many
of these gangsters were and being able to pick a target,
which is what they did you know, let me go
(27:52):
back home for a minute. Compone was just outraged that
a child was involved. I don't think Compone cared two
cents about whether or not who was kidnapp as long
as it was a grown up. But when it came
to a child. Plus, at that time, Lindberg was such
a hero. No one knew about his relationship to Nazi
Germany at that point, but he was such a hero.
(28:14):
You know, everybody wanted a piece of that pie, and
Capone was going to do anything to get himself out
of Dutch. But the Kellys, you know, they kidnaped Urschel,
and that's the first after they're kidnapping a Verschel. That's
when Hoover says, all right, these people are seasoned at
what they do. They picked out a wealthy individual. They
(28:35):
fit the same mo of somebody that would have targeted
the Limbergs. So we're going to look to them. But
I mean, what was so interesting about that particular time
period in history. There was no law against kidnapping somebody
in Maryland and then taking them into Tennessee. It was
not a federal law. So you know, the Maryland police
(28:58):
could not go into Tennessee and look for this kidnapper.
Thank goodness, the Lindbergh Law was put. It was put
into a fact. Not only are the Kellys the first
to be suspected of kidnapping the Limberg baby, but they're
the first to be tried under the new Lindbergh Law,
(29:20):
which makes it a federal crime to transport a kidnap
victim across stant lines.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
And listen, y'all, they didn't just take mister Erschel. They
took two people at once because neither man would admit
who was mister Rshel. So they took mister Rshchel and
his friend off the front porch while they were playing cards.
And then of course, you know, they dropped his friend
later and he had to walk I don't know, twelve
miles or something back. His last name was Jarrett. You know,
(29:53):
that's what kind of set this tone that when he
mister Jarrett started to identify and the lab the wives,
they were like, yeah, one of them had a machine gun.
So again that started what Chris was talking about earlier,
that legend.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
He did carry it around, but he was not proficient
with a tommy gun. I mean tommy gun. And I
don't know whether you've ever fired one, but they they
there who I mean, there's a lot of power in
a Tommy gun being able just to you got to
really have a strong grip with two hands on that
it jumps and kicks, and you know, you hit somebody
(30:32):
only because of the blunderbuss, not necessarily because not necessarily
because you're aiming and so and so. You know, taking
a Tommy gun into a home where the Ershuls were
playing cards with the Jarrett on their back porch would
have been overkilled, literally because everybody would have gone in
that spray and that that was just for show. He
(30:57):
had no intention of firing it off. But you walk
and with tommy gunn I'm gonna I'm going to listen
to what you have to say, Roger.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
That is it true that machine gun Kelly, you know,
coined the term g man.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
Not in the context in which Hoover and his men
relayed to the relayed to the press in terms of
what happened. You know, the the Kelly's were in Tennessee
when they get caught, and it was there that was
this little girl that they kidnapped and help help lead
the Feds to where they are or where they were.
(31:32):
But Kelly had gotten up in the middle of the
night to go to the bathroom and he's just as
just in his underwear, and that's when he sees some
of the federal agents and he says, where have you been.
I've been waiting for you, That's all he says. But
what gets flipped around is the the the Feds tell
(31:55):
the press some outrageous story about how frightened he was saying,
don't kill me, g Man, don't kill me, and you
know that was didn't happen at all. But of course
talk about Catherine being a good PR person. No one
knew PR better than Hoover, and that was one of
the big things that Hoover was doing at the time,
(32:16):
using the press to be able to put in position
how great his organization was. So he was going to
perpetrate that particular nonsense, you know. And Kelly was the
first one to say, you know, why are you telling
people that I never said that. I never said that.
How do you guys feel about walking around saying that,
(32:36):
g Man? So it was the context in which that
particular story was relayed to the press, and gosshould talk
about people loving the legend. People love that legend. Not true,
but they like it. They like it and it makes
for good press.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
Well, getting back to Catherine, is it true she called
Jaeger who herself?
Speaker 2 (33:01):
Oh my gosh, of course she did.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
She did, she did, because it's just so fantastic. Oh
my gosh, of course she did. But again, this is
the reason we love her.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
Yeah, she was a scoundrel. I mean, she certainly knew
how to play the system both ways, and she was
going to make sure that when she did when they
did get caught. Oh, now suddenly she's the victim. She's
the She is the quintessential narcissist. You're either the hero
or the victim, and she just happened to be the
(33:35):
victim in the story when she's talking with Hoover, because
now she says to Hoover, I let me help you,
because she was so abusive. I had no idea what
he was up to. I'm just this frail being at
home waiting for my husband. I didn't even know he
was a bootlegger. And you know, you bat the eyes
to a lot of men and they're going to fall
(33:55):
for that, but you're not gonna Hoover's not going to
fall for it because Hoover doesn't play for that team.
The only woman that Hoover ever fell for that was
a gangster type was Ma Barker. He was infatuated with Ma.
She reminded him an awful lot of his own mother,
and he was just he was infatuated with her. That
(34:16):
was another one of the women, gangster women that he
communicated with. But she wasn't going to give up her
book voice. But Catherine was just happy enough to give
up George if it meant to reduce sentence.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
I've heard that Catherine manipulated the system to get a
lighter sentence. What do you know about that.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
Catherine was all about trying to get herself out of
this mess that she was in, and really that her
idea of how to get herself out of that situation
was ramped up when her mother was arrested. Because it
wasn't just Katherine that was involved in this crime. Catherine
just pulled in her entire family. That wasn't as though
(34:56):
her family were without their own faults. And we walked
and on the illegal side because they certainly were bootleggers
and they took money to be able to hide out criminals.
So they were innocence, But the moment that Catherine's mother
and father and brother were arrested, she definitely was going
to flip on Kelly, and George was happy to let
(35:20):
her do that, and so her being able to get
in and manipulate the prosecuting attorney, the judge, being able
to manipulate the jailers to give her an opportunity to
see her mother, to communicate with her parents. She thought
all of this was going to lead to a lighter sentence.
(35:42):
It did lead to a lighter sentence, even though it
was quite substantial, and we think she got over. She
got over a dozen years. She didn't serve a dozen years.
And you see these great pictures of her when she
arrives in court, which, by the way, Kelly's trial was
the first one to be filmed, and you can see
(36:05):
just what she comes to court wearing. Who comes to
court wearing silk? She comes to court wearing a tight,
tight fitting silk outfit. Now tight fitting. You know, she
was a tiny lady anyway, and very curvy, but she
knew what she was doing. I mean, this is how
you sway an all male jury.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
I'm telling you, she looked like a movie star.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
And they love that. Don't think they didn't play to that.
They were the first criminals to be transported from where
they arrest where they were arrested, to where they were
going to be tried by plane, and they played that
like they were Princess Diana and the King Charles landing
at an airport, waving at the crowd. They were Clark
(36:46):
Gable and Vivian Lee, happy to welcome the public and
answer questions and to give a grin to the cameras.
They weren't. They weren't ashamed or shy at all.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
And they even played off each other in cold He
has his jacket off, his sleeves are rolled up, he's
leaned back with his arm around her. They look like
they don't have a care in the world.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
Yeah, that's amazing, because I think that they didn't. They
didn't believe that they were going to receive the heavy
penalty that they received. They thought that it was going
to swing a different way. And he had, you know,
poor George. When they were walking into court together, someone
makes an offhanded comment about his wife, and of course
(37:31):
it was all it was all planned by her. She
battered her eyes at some of those guards who you know,
made a disparaging remark about her, and Kelly was outraged
and came at them, and they bashed him in the
head with a six shooter. So, in one of those
amazing stills from there from their courtroom appearance, he's got
(37:54):
a goose egg on his forehead and she's sitting right
there beside him, not acting like he'd been hit and
had it all. But you know, very pleased that there
was this last minute, magnanimous fight over her. She loved it.
She was just soaking it in.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
And when she went to prison, was it in West Virginia.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
That's absolutely correct. She did get moved because she wanted
to be with her mother. So yeah, eventually she does
get moved to West Virginia with her mom.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
You know, what is the deal with Catherine and Steve Stevenson.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
First of all, who names their kid Steve Stephenson. I mean,
you don't think right off that there's going to be
some teasing in school.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
But.
Speaker 2 (38:40):
You know, she she is enamored with the bootlegging lifestyle.
She rides along with Steve Stevenson on some of his
jobs when she meets him, and he too, is a
guy who likes to flaunt money. He was a little
bit more overt than George was, but you know, he
(39:01):
was like a diamond Jim Brady with a pinky ring
that had a diamond in it, and was really very
vocal about how much money he had, how much money
he could get. But you know, he and George had
worked together in previous jobs and were involved in and
we're involved in a murder situation even before George actually
(39:22):
takes takes his Steve's girl. The two of them had
a background, and you know that's that's one of the
things that Catherine takes advantage of there as well. She
was going to go with anybody that had money.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
Well, you said it, I mean she had an agenda.
Speaker 2 (39:41):
She did. She she wants what she wants and there's
a way to get it. And even though it's the
nineteen thirties, don't tell me I can't get it. I'm
either gonna You know, you can get what you want
in life three ways. You can either work hard for it,
you can inherit it, or you can steal it. She
wasn't a hard worker. She had nothing to inherit, and
(40:02):
so she was going to steal it. And that's exactly
what she did, I mean her second husband. There's some
question about whether or not she murdered that poor guy.
They said he committed suicide and left a suicide note.
But her second husband was illiterate, couldn't read or write,
So who wrote that note. I don't know that we'll
ever get to the bottom of that, but that's the
(40:22):
kind of caliber of person Catherine was.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
Well, Chris, I cannot thank you enough for sharing all
of your work and your research and your knowledge with
us today. I'm enthralled. I've got to go back and
do some more research on kidnapping. I thought I knew,
but I didn't know. So I just appreciate it and
look forward to talking to you again.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
Well I look forward to it too. Thank you so
much for your time and the opportunity, and I sure
hope the listeners to Z seven really enjoy this talk
and want to go out and buy Meet the Kellys, y'all.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
I'm going to end Zone seven the way that I
all always due with a quote. I don't mind George
taking my girl, but they took my dog. I wish
he had left the dog. Little Steve Stevens in the
book Meet the Kellys. I'm Cheryl McCollum, and this is
Zone seven.
Today we have with us Chris Entz. Now, let me
tell you something. We have a friend in common, Mayor Lansky, too,
the grandson of the famous mobster Mayor Lansky. But I'm
going to tell you she is a New York Times
selling author. She has written dozens of books. One of
(00:30):
her concentration is Women of the West. She has cataloged
and researched and written about the amazing things that women
did back in the day now in the true wild West.
I cannot wait to talk to her because she has
(00:51):
written a book on machine gun Kelly. I'm just gonna
let her come on in here and talk to us
and tell us how she did her research and why
she landed on the Kellys in the first place. So
y'all please help me welcome his own seven Chris ents Chris,
how are you? Honey?
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Hi? And fine? Oh, thank you so much for having
me be a part of this broadcast. Certainly it's a
pleasure and always excited to talk about the amazing things
that women did, not only on the legal side of things,
but on the illegal side of things, because women made
great strides there too, and that cannot be ignored.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
They cannot. And let me tell you, I talk a
lot about Bonnie and Clyde. I've had, you know, the
niece of Bonnie own, I've had experts on. That's probably
the couple that got me into this whole gig in
the first place. But the way you talk about the Kellys, Honey,
they were chasing Bondy and Clyde, Now absolutely so.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
I mean that's what made their story so significant for
me because there were so many firsts with machine gun
Kelly and his wife Katherine Thorn, and you know, it
was they were perpetrating crimes right there in the heart
where everybody was perpetrating those kinds of crimes at the time.
You had Dyllinger, you had the Barker Boys, you had
(02:19):
you did have Bonnie and Clyde. And through all of
this you had the Bureau of Investigation that's trying to
find their footing in this world. And it just so
happened that they used a lot of these early gangsters
to be able to make their case as to why
(02:41):
they need to really advance what's going on with federal
Bureau of Investigations, which it eventually became, but it didn't
come without some bumps and bruises along the Way and
machine Gun. Kelly and Catherine Thorn were two that gave
those bumps and bruises to mister Hoover.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Now, I want people to know one thing about you.
You and I have a mantra in common, and that
is go to the scene. You've got to walk it,
You've got to hear it. In some instances, you've just
got to be able to taste it to truly understand
those crime scenes. So you've been to Dodge City, you've
(03:20):
been to Tombstone, You've been to Deadwood. So if somebody
were to ask you about some of these places, you've
got it from ground level, which I think is imperative.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Well, I don't know how you write about those aspects
of history, those amazing things that happened beyond the Mississippi,
without actually stepping in those places and getting a taste
for it and being so overwhelmed by history that it's
almost like cobwebs that you have to brush away. And
(03:54):
I don't know, you know, I'm you and I also
have this in common too, because I know you do
some investigation work as well, but you know I'm a
private investigator and there is nothing like actually getting into
that particular source and trying to make sense of what
happened and to reason through it.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Mm hm. And you and I talked a little while ago.
We want to get it right and how important that is.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Absolutely so. And you know, one of my favorite authors
is a woman by the name of Dorothy Johnson. And
Dorothy Johnson was a teacher, a professor out of Montana,
and she wrote this great book called a great short
story excuse me, called The manushat Liberty Valance, which eventually
became a film with John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart. But
(04:44):
there's a great line in that movie, and the line
is when fact is absent, print the legend. People love
the legend, but there's nothing like the fact.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Oh my gosh. You know, let me tell you it's
really wicked. I just came home from visiting the ambush
site of Sheriff Buford Pusser, and there is some conflict
between fact and legend. So that quote just hit me
a little different. So thank you for that.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Well, you know, there's money to be made in the legend.
I wrote a book called According to Kate, The Life
and Times of Big Nose Kate Elder, Doc Holliday's Love
and Boy I'll tell you she had a different take
on the IRPs than most people did because she didn't
really like the IRPs. But when just before that book
(05:38):
came out, I got a lot of emails from people saying,
don't you don't you really print anything that's going to
be disparaging to the IRPs, because we're not going to
like that, because there's money to be made with the legend,
and you have anybody poke and pull at that string
you've got. You upset a lot of people when you
do that.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Absolutely. And you know Doc Colladay, he's a Georgia boy,
and there's a lot of just these tales about him.
And sometimes people will say, well, they never talked about it,
this isn't in print, but as though it's now going
to be fact because you've told it right.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
You say a thing, and you say a thing enough
and it becomes truth in some respects, but in particular
with Kate, which is what I love doing research about
Kate and ended up with all of Kate's things, which
is why I was able to write the book. The
book is called According to Kate because it's what Kate
says happened, not what I said happened, but you know,
(06:37):
Kate was a working gal. She was a prosecutor, and
she was either working one or two houses the whole
time that she was with Doc. Now motion pictures and
the legend would lead you to believe that Doc was
such an amazing gambler and had all of this money
that he supported Kate. But nothing could be further from
the truth. Doc was a failed because he had tuberculosis
(07:02):
and he wasn't that great of a gambler. And so
if anybody was supporting anybody, it was Kate's supporting Doc.
But see that just doesn't that doesn't sit well with
a lot of people. They like to think that she
was just this tiny little model and you know, just
needed him to take care of her, and that was
(07:23):
not true at all. She was a beefy hungarian gal,
sustained on a potato the potato based diet, and could
hold her own with Doc and always always was a
working woman.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
And you know, you're a private investigator. Facts matter. Getting
it right matters. You double check, you triple check, you
cut druble check before you put them in print. You
have written dozens of books where the same thing is true.
And I got to tell you, Chris, I didn't know
whether to have a complete laugh attack or throw my
(08:01):
phone when I saw one of the critic that did
a little highlight on your book the Kelly's and called
you Christopher. Not only did they take Chris and make
(08:21):
it absolutely a man like, they made it more formal
so that nobody could miss it.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
They're just wrong, absolutely wrong. And you knows, and I
don't even know that because they referred to Katherine Thorn
as Catherine Male and that I know whether or not
they were actually reading the Kellys. So but you know,
(08:51):
that's that's okay as as as long as as long
as this person read the Kelly story, even if they
got some some mixed up, as long as they read
the story and they appreciated this version of what happened
with these people and how wicked she was. I'm happy
(09:14):
that they just picked it up and cracked the cover.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
Got cha, well, stated, I just thought, this is the
funniest thing I've ever seen in my life. Yeah, I know,
all right, So what drew you to machine Gun Kelly?
Speaker 2 (09:28):
I wasn't necessarily drawn to Kelly. I was drawn to
Catherine because I write primarily about women of the American frontier,
and even though the Kelly's were in the thirties, their
behavior was just like it would have been in the
Wild West. All you have to do is erase six
shooter and put in Tommy gunn They were scoundrels and
(09:54):
and I've written a lot about women criminals of the
American West, and Catherine was right up there. And what
struck me about her was how slick she was, because
she was a beauty and pretty people can get away
with an awful lot, and she really her set her
(10:16):
mind to get away with some big things, and she
needed somebody who was willing to help her along that path.
And poor George was just a willing party. Now he
was not without his own flaws, but I don't know
that he would have made that leap from being a
(10:38):
low rent bank robber and bootlegger to kidnapp her had
it not been for Catherine.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Absolutely, Can I read from your book for a second?
Sure thing, y'all listen to this talking about George Kelly
machine gun Kelly. He was leaning against a small, swanky
bar when a server placed a drink next to him
and then hurried off to wait on others. Kelly lifted
the beverage to have a sip and stared across the
(11:06):
glass at Katherine thorn in Little Steve Steven's arms. As
Little Steve led her across the dance floor, he pressed
her close to him. Catherine didn't resist. She caught Kelly
watching her and smiled behind her slinky purse lips. She
(11:26):
offered a look that was a lavishing and inviting challenge.
Kelly lit up with the sort of grin she knew
men wore when they were up to something mischievous. He
had made bad choices in his thirty two years, but
falling for Catherine would have fatal consequences. Now I'm going
(11:47):
to tell you something, Chris. I'm hooked, I'm drawn in.
I'm all about it because I know a ton about
machine Gun Kelly. I can talk about the time he's
spent at levenworth of time he was in Alcatraz, some
of his antics, the kidnap, and all of it. I
don't know a lot about her. That one section makes
(12:10):
me want to focus on her entirely. So I get
while you were drawn in?
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Oh yes, I mean I think I think history wants
to downplay women's influence in the world of crime because
it doesn't seem like that's something that women would want
to aspire to be or be involved in. But you know,
certainly that's not the case when you meet people like
(12:38):
like Catherine. She had an agenda. She lived by her
looks and certainly took advantage of anybody who licked their
chops in her direction. And she was smart. She was smart.
She knew exactly what to do to get in there.
(13:00):
I mean she was you know, she had prior to
even being involved with with George, she'd been arrested for
shoplifting and also involved a number of grifts with various salesmen.
She would see these particular salesmen out and about whether
(13:21):
she would be shopping at a department store, and she
would bat her eyes at them, and and they would
take her out to dinner, and then after dinner, they
would take her to the secluded spot that she would
direct them to to, you know, for for some for
some heavy petting, let's say. And during those particular times,
(13:45):
then the the gentleman that they that she was working
with would step into the vehicle and drag her out
and the salesman out, and then rob the salesman and
you know, take pictures of what was going on, so
then they could blackmail him later on. So she knew
(14:06):
exactly what she did. I mean, she was a grifter.
Sometimes her crimes like shoplifting was very overt, but then
she had that covert side of her that could get
in and get exactly what she wanted. And make no mistake,
Katherine was all about what she wanted.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Well, they married in nineteen twenty seven. Is it true
she bought him the machine gun, and that's when machine
Gun Kelly was born.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
She did indeed buy him a machine gun as a gift,
but it is not true that he was so proficient
with the particular machine gun that he could write his
name and his initials in concrete with the bullets from
the gun. That was not true. But see, Catherine is
so smart. She was a great PR person and she
(14:59):
was his best PR person ever because she would have
parties when he was off doing doing his robbery and
doing his bootlegging. She would have parties there in Fort
Worth and invite just some of the worst of the
worst people and even corrupt law enforcement agents, and then
(15:22):
hand each one of them spent shellcasing from a Tommy
gun with machine Gun Kelly's initials scratched into them. And
that was that was the calling card that she would
give everyone. Now, that always sparked interest.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
That was brilliant. That was absolutely brilliant.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
It was brilliant. You know, you need somebody like that
to help peddle your books and such.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
She was on a dummy. She knew what she was doing,
and she wanted to make him, make him be a
ruthless guy, not only in the general public's eyes, but
also in his peers' eyes. So whenever there was a
bank to be robbed that had some substantial money in them,
(16:11):
and you know, please keep in mind, this was in
the thirties, this was on the heels of the depression,
so and he had a lot of competition for robbing
these banks. So the banks that had any money in
them were far and few between, and so she figured,
you know, if she made sure that he had a
(16:31):
reputation for being a really bad individual, that they would
hire him on as part of their team to rob
banks and then also frighten off any competitors who thought
that they might encroach on their jobs.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
And you know, it's funny when you're talking about the
Great Depression, because that is something I was going to mention,
you know, machine gun Kelly was not like the other
depression outlaws. He actually came for money. He went to
mythic Phibbey State University. I mean, he was not somebody
that was in some poor shack and had a third
grade education.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
Absolutely not. He certainly was the upper middle class. But
as as usual with people who just take this particular
path in their life, something triggers them to go into
that particular field. And his relationship with his father was
not good. His mother always enjoyed poor health, and his
(17:33):
father was fooling around with another woman who the other
woman didn't have good health. So it wasn't it wasn't
as though. It wasn't as though in George's eyes that
his father was even seeking refuge in a woman who
was totally healthy, because that wasn't the case. He made
(17:56):
a linear swamp, and that in fear and infuriated George
that his father would be having an affair. And it
infuriated him because his mother was so fragile in health
and knew that if this information got to her, it
would be it would be her end. And really, you know,
he wanted to respect his father, but he couldn't respect
(18:18):
him after he saw him doing what he did, He's angry.
And so now he tells his father, listen, okay, I'm
not going to say anything. I'm not going to I'm
not going to make sure that this goes public. But
the reason, the way you're going to keep my silence
is you're going to let me use your car, so
why I can do some bootlegging. Now, keep in mind,
(18:39):
he's a teenager, he's just fifteen. He's just fifteen when
this is.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Going on, and by the time he's nineteen, he's out.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
He's left, absolutely so, but a smart man broken. I
think because what he saw happened in his family. That's
not an excuse, but certainly I think that was the
catalyst that pushed him over the edge. Yeah, when by
the time by the time he's nineteen, he's gone, and
you know, he's very close with his father in law
(19:07):
from his first wife. He's very close to him, and
his father in law really when he was alive, helped
him be on the straight and narrow and really saw
promise in George that his father never founded him. And
so when his father in law passes away through some
pretty suspicious circumstances there that again emboldens him to walk
(19:33):
on the dark side, to be able to act out
his frustration with the way that particular relationship ended. Again,
not an excuse, but it's amazing the things that push
people over over the edge.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
Well, not only was his home life internmol his inner
circle was, and the country was. I mean, it was
kind of easy to lose Hope there.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
There's no question about that, no question about it. But
I always thought it was sad because he was so
smart and because he was incredibly charming. He could have
finished his degree and gone on to be anything, but
he chose. He chose the easy He took the easy
way because he had an opportunity to be educated and
(20:23):
to rise above what the average person was doing. But
he decided against that. And as I said, he was charming,
and he was also I think he was quite good looking.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
Oh me too, no doubt about it.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
I like it. I like a guy with meat on
his bones.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
Let me tell you those ass hand.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
He had a real cal ripken thing going for him.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
So let me tell you, as we say in the South,
those ass can get you pregnant.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
There you go, absolutely so absolutely you'd be lost in
those for a while, so I can see why it
wasn't just purely on Catherine's part, just another drift. I
think she was as attracted to him as he was
to her.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Good dresser, good looking, smart and brave.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
You know, that's the thing about if you look at
any of these gangsters in that time period, you didn't
find any of them. I mean, who robs a bank
and a fedora? You know, these guys robbed banks like
they were going to the office to do a day's work.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
And Chris, I don't want to jump ahead, but even
looking at the two of them when they're in court,
they look like movie stars.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
You're absolutely right. But yeah, Mack, we won't drop ahead.
But you're absolutely right. But they played that too.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
They knew they did. They did one hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Yeah. She was very good at being able to say, here,
here's what we're gonna do. Here's here's how we're going
to beat this in the court of public opinion.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
Okay, So they meet, they fall in love, they get married.
She does have a hand in some direct and of
what he's going to do in his criminal life. So
let's talk about the kidnapping of the old attack.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
I thought What was amazing about her was she was
slick enough to well, let me back up and say
that kidnapping was a new crime, and it was becoming very,
very popular, and it started with the high profile kidnapping
(22:38):
of the Limberg baby, which, by the way, the Hoover
and his men were involved in trying to get at
the bottom of that case. And we're really under a
great deal of pressure to get at the bottom of it.
And the Kelly's were the first to be one of
the first to be accused of kidnapping the Limberg baby.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Now I didn't know that, that's I wrong.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Yeah, they were one of the first to be kitten
to be accused of that because they still by the
time they kidnapped Urschel, they still hadn't come to come
to the end of what happened with Charles Limberg junior.
They were still looking into that, and so they were
right up there with being suspected of having a hand
(23:25):
in that. But as I say, you know, kidnapping then
became the thing to do, and you looked for you
had to vet your kidnapping victim, which is where Catherine
comes in. Catherine loved to just go over newspapers and
the society pages in magazines and finding local celebrities from
(23:49):
Texas to Oklahoma. And she really made sure that she
investigated their mark, and they find Charles. She finds Charles
in a magazine about their incredible home there in Oklahoma
City and reads about his background and his wife's background,
because his wife is the one that you know, he
(24:12):
he ran a bank, but his wife was the one
that had all the money. She inherited lots and lots
of money. And because Charles was a very good, very
good at his job at the bank, was a great financier,
he was the one that was in charge of her fortune.
And so this article was about was about the Ursule's,
(24:35):
was about their life, was about their their opulent lifestyle,
which you know, given today's terms, that wouldn't necessarily be opulent,
but you know, they had parties and it was just
a big house, and they wanted what the Urschels had
and knew and this is gosh, they knew how much money.
(24:57):
Catherine knew how much money the family had in magazine.
The magazine article wasn't necessarily to make this public information
that would draw kidnappers to them. This was a time
when journalism was just nothing more than in some cases,
(25:20):
to be able to highlight magnanimous individuals like the Urshuls
who gave these great parties and who were very generous
to local Red Cross and that kind of thing. They
really wanted to celebrate them. But people, they had no
idea that they were putting a mark out on these people.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
You know, Oh, it certainly made them a target. But
you know, there's two things that are knocking me out
right now. I had no idea they were ever suspects,
but al Capone offered to help locate the baby and
return him safely, even though he was in prison at
the time. Now you have gangsters on both sides involved
(26:02):
with the Limburg kidnapping.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
Right, absolutely so. But yeah, and you know that was
of course, you know, all of the story of the
Kellys as well as so many of the gangsters at
the time, particularly the Barkers and the Barker Boys, all
helped to make the FBI what it eventually became, because
(26:28):
you know, there was a lot of pressure under Hoover
at that time to get a job done. What are
you doing now, we don't see any The people are
outraged that all these kidnappings are happening because you have
Charles Erschel being kidnapped, and then on the other hand,
we have maub Barker and her boys kidnapping, kidnapping the
(26:48):
hands out of the Milwaukee area.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
And you know, to your point, there's not money in
the banks anymore. After the depression, people were freaked out
to leave their money to bank. A lot of people
kept at home. That's where the whole thing, you know,
in your mattress and hiding it and jars and bearing
it in the yard. They trusted that more than a bank.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
And that's the reason why Catherine said, listen, the risk
to reward really isn't worth it when you're going to
rob these banks, because you're walking away with maybe five grand,
and that's not going to cut it for me. George,
I'm going to need much more than that. You know,
I have become accustomed to this grand lifestyle and that
(27:31):
just isn't going to work for me. So and I
don't want to run the risk of you being hit
by a bullet for just a little bit of cash.
So let's try and figure out a way. As many
of these gangsters were and being able to pick a target,
which is what they did you know, let me go
(27:52):
back home for a minute. Compone was just outraged that
a child was involved. I don't think Compone cared two
cents about whether or not who was kidnapp as long
as it was a grown up. But when it came
to a child. Plus, at that time, Lindberg was such
a hero. No one knew about his relationship to Nazi
Germany at that point, but he was such a hero.
(28:14):
You know, everybody wanted a piece of that pie, and
Capone was going to do anything to get himself out
of Dutch. But the Kellys, you know, they kidnaped Urschel,
and that's the first after they're kidnapping a Verschel. That's
when Hoover says, all right, these people are seasoned at
what they do. They picked out a wealthy individual. They
(28:35):
fit the same mo of somebody that would have targeted
the Limbergs. So we're going to look to them. But
I mean, what was so interesting about that particular time
period in history. There was no law against kidnapping somebody
in Maryland and then taking them into Tennessee. It was
not a federal law. So you know, the Maryland police
(28:58):
could not go into Tennessee and look for this kidnapper.
Thank goodness, the Lindbergh Law was put. It was put
into a fact. Not only are the Kellys the first
to be suspected of kidnapping the Limberg baby, but they're
the first to be tried under the new Lindbergh Law,
(29:20):
which makes it a federal crime to transport a kidnap
victim across stant lines.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
And listen, y'all, they didn't just take mister Erschel. They
took two people at once because neither man would admit
who was mister Rshel. So they took mister Rshchel and
his friend off the front porch while they were playing cards.
And then of course, you know, they dropped his friend
later and he had to walk I don't know, twelve
miles or something back. His last name was Jarrett. You know,
(29:53):
that's what kind of set this tone that when he
mister Jarrett started to identify and the lab the wives,
they were like, yeah, one of them had a machine gun.
So again that started what Chris was talking about earlier,
that legend.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
He did carry it around, but he was not proficient
with a tommy gun. I mean tommy gun. And I
don't know whether you've ever fired one, but they they
there who I mean, there's a lot of power in
a Tommy gun being able just to you got to
really have a strong grip with two hands on that
it jumps and kicks, and you know, you hit somebody
(30:32):
only because of the blunderbuss, not necessarily because not necessarily
because you're aiming and so and so. You know, taking
a Tommy gun into a home where the Ershuls were
playing cards with the Jarrett on their back porch would
have been overkilled, literally because everybody would have gone in
that spray and that that was just for show. He
(30:57):
had no intention of firing it off. But you walk
and with tommy gunn I'm gonna I'm going to listen
to what you have to say, Roger.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
That is it true that machine gun Kelly, you know,
coined the term g man.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
Not in the context in which Hoover and his men
relayed to the relayed to the press in terms of
what happened. You know, the the Kelly's were in Tennessee
when they get caught, and it was there that was
this little girl that they kidnapped and help help lead
the Feds to where they are or where they were.
(31:32):
But Kelly had gotten up in the middle of the
night to go to the bathroom and he's just as
just in his underwear, and that's when he sees some
of the federal agents and he says, where have you been.
I've been waiting for you, That's all he says. But
what gets flipped around is the the the Feds tell
(31:55):
the press some outrageous story about how frightened he was saying,
don't kill me, g Man, don't kill me, and you
know that was didn't happen at all. But of course
talk about Catherine being a good PR person. No one
knew PR better than Hoover, and that was one of
the big things that Hoover was doing at the time,
(32:16):
using the press to be able to put in position
how great his organization was. So he was going to
perpetrate that particular nonsense, you know. And Kelly was the
first one to say, you know, why are you telling
people that I never said that. I never said that.
How do you guys feel about walking around saying that,
(32:36):
g Man? So it was the context in which that
particular story was relayed to the press, and gosshould talk
about people loving the legend. People love that legend. Not true,
but they like it. They like it and it makes
for good press.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
Well, getting back to Catherine, is it true she called
Jaeger who herself?
Speaker 2 (33:01):
Oh my gosh, of course she did.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
She did, she did, because it's just so fantastic. Oh
my gosh, of course she did. But again, this is
the reason we love her.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
Yeah, she was a scoundrel. I mean, she certainly knew
how to play the system both ways, and she was
going to make sure that when she did when they
did get caught. Oh, now suddenly she's the victim. She's
the She is the quintessential narcissist. You're either the hero
or the victim, and she just happened to be the
(33:35):
victim in the story when she's talking with Hoover, because
now she says to Hoover, I let me help you,
because she was so abusive. I had no idea what
he was up to. I'm just this frail being at
home waiting for my husband. I didn't even know he
was a bootlegger. And you know, you bat the eyes
to a lot of men and they're going to fall
(33:55):
for that, but you're not gonna Hoover's not going to
fall for it because Hoover doesn't play for that team.
The only woman that Hoover ever fell for that was
a gangster type was Ma Barker. He was infatuated with Ma.
She reminded him an awful lot of his own mother,
and he was just he was infatuated with her. That
(34:16):
was another one of the women, gangster women that he
communicated with. But she wasn't going to give up her
book voice. But Catherine was just happy enough to give
up George if it meant to reduce sentence.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
I've heard that Catherine manipulated the system to get a
lighter sentence. What do you know about that.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
Catherine was all about trying to get herself out of
this mess that she was in, and really that her
idea of how to get herself out of that situation
was ramped up when her mother was arrested. Because it
wasn't just Katherine that was involved in this crime. Catherine
just pulled in her entire family. That wasn't as though
(34:56):
her family were without their own faults. And we walked
and on the illegal side because they certainly were bootleggers
and they took money to be able to hide out criminals.
So they were innocence, But the moment that Catherine's mother
and father and brother were arrested, she definitely was going
to flip on Kelly, and George was happy to let
(35:20):
her do that, and so her being able to get
in and manipulate the prosecuting attorney, the judge, being able
to manipulate the jailers to give her an opportunity to
see her mother, to communicate with her parents. She thought
all of this was going to lead to a lighter sentence.
(35:42):
It did lead to a lighter sentence, even though it
was quite substantial, and we think she got over. She
got over a dozen years. She didn't serve a dozen years.
And you see these great pictures of her when she
arrives in court, which, by the way, Kelly's trial was
the first one to be filmed, and you can see
(36:05):
just what she comes to court wearing. Who comes to
court wearing silk? She comes to court wearing a tight,
tight fitting silk outfit. Now tight fitting. You know, she
was a tiny lady anyway, and very curvy, but she
knew what she was doing. I mean, this is how
you sway an all male jury.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
I'm telling you, she looked like a movie star.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
And they love that. Don't think they didn't play to that.
They were the first criminals to be transported from where
they arrest where they were arrested, to where they were
going to be tried by plane, and they played that
like they were Princess Diana and the King Charles landing
at an airport, waving at the crowd. They were Clark
(36:46):
Gable and Vivian Lee, happy to welcome the public and
answer questions and to give a grin to the cameras.
They weren't. They weren't ashamed or shy at all.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
And they even played off each other in cold He
has his jacket off, his sleeves are rolled up, he's
leaned back with his arm around her. They look like
they don't have a care in the world.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
Yeah, that's amazing, because I think that they didn't. They
didn't believe that they were going to receive the heavy
penalty that they received. They thought that it was going
to swing a different way. And he had, you know,
poor George. When they were walking into court together, someone
makes an offhanded comment about his wife, and of course
(37:31):
it was all it was all planned by her. She
battered her eyes at some of those guards who you know,
made a disparaging remark about her, and Kelly was outraged
and came at them, and they bashed him in the
head with a six shooter. So, in one of those
amazing stills from there from their courtroom appearance, he's got
(37:54):
a goose egg on his forehead and she's sitting right
there beside him, not acting like he'd been hit and
had it all. But you know, very pleased that there
was this last minute, magnanimous fight over her. She loved it.
She was just soaking it in.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
And when she went to prison, was it in West Virginia.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
That's absolutely correct. She did get moved because she wanted
to be with her mother. So yeah, eventually she does
get moved to West Virginia with her mom.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
You know, what is the deal with Catherine and Steve Stevenson.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
First of all, who names their kid Steve Stephenson. I mean,
you don't think right off that there's going to be
some teasing in school.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
But.
Speaker 2 (38:40):
You know, she she is enamored with the bootlegging lifestyle.
She rides along with Steve Stevenson on some of his
jobs when she meets him, and he too, is a
guy who likes to flaunt money. He was a little
bit more overt than George was, but you know, he
(39:01):
was like a diamond Jim Brady with a pinky ring
that had a diamond in it, and was really very
vocal about how much money he had, how much money
he could get. But you know, he and George had
worked together in previous jobs and were involved in and
we're involved in a murder situation even before George actually
(39:22):
takes takes his Steve's girl. The two of them had
a background, and you know that's that's one of the
things that Catherine takes advantage of there as well. She
was going to go with anybody that had money.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
Well, you said it, I mean she had an agenda.
Speaker 2 (39:41):
She did. She she wants what she wants and there's
a way to get it. And even though it's the
nineteen thirties, don't tell me I can't get it. I'm
either gonna You know, you can get what you want
in life three ways. You can either work hard for it,
you can inherit it, or you can steal it. She
wasn't a hard worker. She had nothing to inherit, and
(40:02):
so she was going to steal it. And that's exactly
what she did, I mean her second husband. There's some
question about whether or not she murdered that poor guy.
They said he committed suicide and left a suicide note.
But her second husband was illiterate, couldn't read or write,
So who wrote that note. I don't know that we'll
ever get to the bottom of that, but that's the
(40:22):
kind of caliber of person Catherine was.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
Well, Chris, I cannot thank you enough for sharing all
of your work and your research and your knowledge with
us today. I'm enthralled. I've got to go back and
do some more research on kidnapping. I thought I knew,
but I didn't know. So I just appreciate it and
look forward to talking to you again.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
Well I look forward to it too. Thank you so
much for your time and the opportunity, and I sure
hope the listeners to Z seven really enjoy this talk
and want to go out and buy Meet the Kellys, y'all.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
I'm going to end Zone seven the way that I
all always due with a quote. I don't mind George
taking my girl, but they took my dog. I wish
he had left the dog. Little Steve Stevens in the
book Meet the Kellys. I'm Cheryl McCollum, and this is
Zone seven.
Host
Sheryl McCollum
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