August 1, 2025 • 20 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Charles Urschel had money, influence, and a target on his back. When Machine Gun Kelly broke into his home and took him hostage, it seemed like just another high-profile crime in a lawless era. But Urschel didn’t panic. Instead, he took mental notes, tracking every moment, every voice, every clue. His memory became the FBI’s secret weapon and led to one of the first major takedowns of America’s new wave of gangsters. With insight from Joe Urschel and Dr. T. Lindsey Baker, this is the story of how a businessman played a crucial role in bringing down one of the most infamous names in 1930s crime.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we returned to our American stories. Up next, the
story of how one of America's most notorious criminals was
caught because of one savvy oilman from Oklahoma. You to
tell the story of how Machine Gun Kelly was captured
is Joe Erschell, author of the Year of Fear and
Later as you'll hear, Doctor T. Lindsey Baker, author of
(00:33):
A Gangster Tour of Texas and numerous other books. Let's
get into the story. Here's Joe Erschel to start us off.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
The story takes place in nineteen thirty three. The unemployment
rate was up to forty percent, thousands of banks were closed.
Catastrophic dust storms were beginning to kick up across the
Southwest and the Midwest. They'd blow so hard and so strong,
with so much fine silt that the people who lived
in that area would have to do things like drape
(01:05):
their child's beds and carriages with wet sheets just to
prevent the silt from coming in and choking them to death.
It would blow so far that it would turn snow
red into England kill livestock in the fields. While all
this is going on, of course, FDR takes office and
(01:27):
announces that that's the only thing we have to fish.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
No, no, no no.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
At the very same time, an incredible spate of kidnappings
began occurring across the country. With the banks drying up,
the bank rubbing business isn't as good as it used
to be, and an estimated two thousand kidnappings that occurred
between nineteen thirty and nineteen thirty three. Companies were issuing
kidnapping insurance. People in Hollywood were driving around an armor
(01:58):
plated limousine with armed guards in the passenger seat. They
would snatch a wealthy individual, ransom them, and then release
them with the caveat that everything would be fine unless
they go to the authorities. If they do go to
the authorities, we'll return and kill you. Not only you,
but all the members of your family as well. So
(02:20):
these are tough times in the US, with tougher times coming.
In the midst of this, George Kelly and his glamorous
wife decide that they are going to kidnap the richest
oyle man in the Southwest.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
It's hot summertime. Charles F.
Speaker 4 (02:44):
Rschel and his wife were playing bridge with friends Walter
are Jarant and his wife on the screen porch of
the Ershel home in Oklahoma City.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
And with an almost remarkable lack of planning.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
Out of the darkness appeared two armed men. Stick them up.
We won't Erschel.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Kelly, armed with the machine gun, and his partner Albert Bates,
armed with the forty five, burst into the Erschel home,
run up to the bridge game and suddenly discover that
they don't know which of the two guys is Erschel.
So making all kinds of threats, they demand that Erschell
reveal himself, which he doesn't do. He just sits there,
(03:32):
so does Walter. So Kelly says, we'll take you both,
and they speed off into the night. A couple of
miles out of town. They realized that they could probably
identify which one was Erschel by emptying their wallets, so
(03:53):
they stopped the car. They get the wallets, take all
of money. They give him ten bucks to get a
cab back to town, and they take off with Herschel.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Herschel was no ordinary business man.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Farm kid grew up enlisted in the army during the
First World War. When he got out was bound in
the termined that the last thing he was going to
do anymore of was farming, so he strikes out for
Oklahoma and decides to try to make his fortune in
the oil business. He cooks up with the applely named
Tom Slick.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
The King of the Wildcatters.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Unfortunately, right at the peak of their oil business, Tom Slick,
aged forty seven, kind of your classic type a behavior guy,
as a massive heart attack and dies.
Speaker 4 (04:40):
Herschel continued running his empire and in time married Selick's widow, Berenice.
Herschel's own wife was Berenice's sister, so he ended up
being the husband of two sisters.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
And of course that generates a lot of headlines in
the paper about how rich these folks are and in
what their oil holdings entail. All of this was the
interesting reading that got Kelly thinking about kidnapping Charles Ershaw.
Speaker 4 (05:14):
But who hood of Holms were no ordinary thugs either.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Kelly started out in Memphis, Tennessee. He was the child
of upper middle class parents. He was a caddie at
the local country club. Pretty smart kid. In fact, he's
not known to have killed anybody. He didn't like machine guns.
He was kind of afraid of them. He was one
of these charming hail fellow well met irishmen. But he
(05:41):
did not enjoy a very good relationship with his father,
whom he hated, and when he caught his father in
a tryst with another woman, basically blackmailed him and said,
I won't tell mom about this. This is when he's
in high school. If you give me the family car
and increased my allowance by amount of money, which Kelly
(06:02):
then used his new transportation and his money top across
the board at Arkansas, which was a wet state, Tennessee
was dry, and that's when he started his liquor running
business as a young entrepreneur in high school, and things
basically went downhill from there. But that wasn't good enough
for Catherine. Catherine wanted to be married to the most
(06:22):
famous criminal in all of America, so she started working
on his reputation. She buys him a machine gun at
a pawn shop in Fort Worth, then starts spreading stories
about him at speakeasies all over Fort Worth, and she'd
leave spent shells behind and say that, you know, we've
been down to the farm and George has been working
(06:43):
on his skills and he can shoot walnuts off a
fence post or write his name on the side of
a barn. With this gun, and then that got into
the press, and one thing led to another, and suddenly
we have this psychopathic machine gun Kelly.
Speaker 4 (06:57):
Their destination a farm owned by the stepfather of George
Kelly's wife.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
It's a sad, broken down farm with a few animals.
They cover his ears with cotton and tape them shut.
Speaker 4 (07:12):
There they held a Rshel captive for nine days. The
motive lots of money, two hundred thousand dollars and used
twenty dollar bills. Two hundred thousand dollars was a huge
sum of money. You could buy a brand u Ford
(07:32):
Va automobile for five hundred dollars.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
But nevertheless, he's the kind of guy who does not
part with his money very willingly. He is blind in
death and found and determined that if he ever gets out,
he's gonna come back and find these guys and get
his money back.
Speaker 4 (07:51):
Herschel's friend made the money delivery in Kansas City on Sunday,
July thirtieth, nineteen thirty three, eight days after the abduction.
The next evening, a disheveled man approached the back door
of the Rshall mansion. It was the missing Charles F. Rshel,
(08:17):
who had been carried to the outskirts of Norman, just
south of Oklahoma City and was left at the side
of the road. Kelly, Bates and their accomplices congratulated themselves
of what they believed had been.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
A perfect crime.
Speaker 4 (08:39):
What Kelly and the others did not realize was that
Charles F. Rshall was not just a financial genius. He
had what today might be called a photographic memory.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
And you've been listening to doctor T. Lindsey Baker and
joe Urschel tell the story of the kidnapping of one
of the richest oil men in the country, and by
virtue of that tell the story of Machine Gun Kelly.
The story of Machine Gun Kelly and the Southwest Oilman
continues here on.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
Our American stories.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
And we returned to our American stories and the story
of the capture of Machine Gun Kelly. When we last
left off, wealthy oilman Charles F. Rschel had been released
after his ransom was paid. But to the surprise of
the FBI and later his captors, Herschel wasn't just good
at business. Let's return to the story here to start
(10:00):
us off.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
He's doctor T.
Speaker 4 (10:02):
Lindsey Baker Erschall was not just a financial genior, he
had what today might be called a photographic memory.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
He knows how long the car ride took. He also
realizes that they were going in a circituous route designed
to confuse him. But this is a guy who's been
working his whole career for the King of the Wildcatters.
He and Urshall have been finding oil all over Oklahoma
and Texas, and they know just about every inch of
that territory backward and forward. And realizes, of course, that
(10:39):
he's on a farm. He begins counting the number of
different animals.
Speaker 4 (10:42):
A bull, four milk cows, a block of guineas.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
What the postman's name is, who the local prostitute is.
Speaker 4 (10:50):
Most importantly, he noted hearing the regular drone of an airplane.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Is that at nine thirty in the morning and at
five point thirty at night, a plane is passing overhead.
So he puts all that in the data bank while
he's leaving his fingerprints all over anywhere he possibly can.
Speaker 4 (11:11):
The very evening that the fatigued didn't care, Warren Charles
Urshchall stumbled to his own back door. Special agent Gus
Jones plied him with questions. The federal law man must
have smiled to himself when he discovered the remarkable recall
(11:33):
that the oil man offered just Rshall's observation that he
heard the kidnapper's car riding across the bumpy Canadian River bridge,
plus his estimate of the eight hour driving time during
his release, pointed southward toward Texas.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
Gus Jones just listens to this data dump, and having
started out telling him that finding these kidnappers would be
like fine a needle in a haystack, after ninety minutes
of talking to Charles, he said, well, we just got
a really small haystack.
Speaker 4 (12:10):
Jones assigned investigators to find out what localities to the
south experience the same sequence of rain and wind that
Ershall remembered, and to check commercial airlines schedules. They quickly
concluded that the airplane sound likely came from a dayly
(12:34):
American Airlines flight between Meecham Field in Fort Worth and Amarilla.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Urschel borrows a plane from one of his oil friends.
They go up in the air, fly the route. They
look down, using Erschel's sketch of what he thinks to
the farm looks like, identify a farm that looks exactly
like the drawing.
Speaker 4 (12:54):
Jones dispatched agent Edward Dowd. The investigator arrived there only
three days after Urshall's release, visiting in the guise of
a mortgage salesman. Dowd confirmed with the oil man, remembered
(13:15):
the house had a broken window pane patched with cardboard.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
The foreboard ran the right directions. He saw the correct number.
Speaker 4 (13:25):
Of cattle, mules, and even guineas. When the agent asked
for a drink of water on the hot summer day,
the pulley at the well made the right squeak and
the water had the same minrng eyes taste that Erschall describes.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
There was no question in the all man's mind.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Rschall insists that he be in the lead car the
raiding party with a sowd Off shotgun on his lap,
and in the middle of the night they burst in.
They arrest the Shannons and a fellow named Harvey Bailey,
who was staying at the farm kind of hiding out
after his escape from state prison in Kansas. Harvey Bailey
(14:12):
an incredible character. Bailey was considered the most successful bank
robber in American history. He was a guy who basically
invented the modern form of bank robbing, which involves determining
what the best escape routes are, riding the escape routes,
figuring out when there's the most money in the bank
to be robbed, by studying the local economy and the
(14:35):
county tax records, what the police activity is like, how
far away the police station is, what kind of cars
the police have, if they have any. Basically, if Harvey
was planning your bank robbery, it was going to go
well and nobody was going to know who did it.
He robbed the Lincoln National Bank of so much money
that the bank failed the next day. He did so
(14:55):
well in the twenties that by the late twenties he
retired from the bank robbing business and opened a series
of gas stations and car washes in Chicago, but lost
all his money in the market crash and had to
go back to the business that he knew so well.
So he had worked with George, and in fact had
(15:15):
lent George one thousand dollars when George was low on funds.
So after he heard about the kidnapping, he went down
to the farm in Wise County to collect the money
that George odum and to nurse a wound that he
sustained when he was escaping from prison. He just happens
to be sleeping in the backyard on a cot.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
In the semi darkness. Just before down.
Speaker 4 (15:38):
Gus Jones awakened Harvey Baying with the muzzle.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
Of a machine gun.
Speaker 4 (15:47):
Meanwhile, George Kenny and Albert Bates absconded with the ransom money.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
So even though George and Catherine had already fled the
scene along with Albert Bates to launder their the FBI
agents still score an important victory here by pulling in
Harvey Bailey, and it arrives just in time for jaed
Gar Hoover, who was not yet director of the FBI.
In fact, he was barely holding on to his job
(16:18):
when FDR took office. His first choice for Attorney General
was a guy named Thomas Walsh, Senator from Wyoming. Walsh
had a long and bad history with jade Garhover during
the Harding administration. Jaedgar Hoover's job was to well, you know,
he tapped his phone, and he read his mail, and
(16:38):
he tried to entrap him in a hotel room with
a woman to get an incriminating evidence on him, none
of which succeeded, but it did succeed in making a
lifelong enemy of mister Walsh. Walsh vowed to get rid
of that miserable son of him as soon as he
got to town. Now, unfortunately, Walsh was seventy two years old,
and before he got to town, he went down to
(16:59):
Miami and married a Cuban debutante. And on the train
ride back to Washington, when the train stopped in North Carolina,
Walsh's wife woke up, but he did not. Subsequently, you know,
the FDR was prosecuting a war on this, war on that,
it war on everything, and war on crime.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
So Jay Edgar is.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Under a lot of pressure at this time to bring
in some big score, and it looks like the machine
gun Kelly case could be the one. The FBI had
just been given the sole responsibility for chasing kidnappers across
state lines. They were really the only organization that could
bring this to fruition. But there were two problems that
(17:42):
they still had. One was the fact that they were
not an armed police force. They were not trained in weapons.
Most of them were lawyers and accountants who would help
local municipalities prosecute criminal investigations. So Hoover looked around his
agencies to try to find people who would be skilled
(18:03):
enough to go up against machine gunners and shotgun wielders
and whatnot. And he discovers that he's got fewer than twelve,
so he puts those guys together. They find Kelly in Memphis, Tennessee,
successfully arrest him.
Speaker 4 (18:18):
George Kelly, R. G. Shannon, Albert Bates, and Harvey Bailey
all went to the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas, while
Catherine Kelly and her mother, Aora Shannon went to a
penal institution for women, all of them with life sentences.
(18:38):
When the US Department of Justice opened a new maximum
security prison on Alcatranz Island in California, at transferred Kelly,
Bates and Bayn A.
Speaker 3 (18:50):
Shire.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
The Urschels lived happily ever after. But Charles by that
point had softened on the whole affair, and he went
to FDR and Hoover and said, look, Carvey Bailey had
nothing to do with this, you know, we ought to
let him out. He agrees to probation for Harvey and
sets him up in Jobson, Missouri, with a job as
(19:14):
a cabinet maker. He lived out the rest of his
life without committing another crime.
Speaker 4 (19:18):
Two decades later, George Kennay died in federal prison. His
body went uncleaned, so a released RG boss Shannon, agreed
to bury him in a plot that he owned in
Wise County. There beneath a homemade concrete marker lie the
(19:41):
remains of the man who coined the term still used
for the FBI when he declared at his Memphis arrest,
how you ug men would get me?
Speaker 1 (19:57):
And a special thanks to doctor T. Lindsay Baker and
to joe Urschel for sharing this story. A special thanks
also to the Fort Worth Public Library and the Library
of Congress for allowing us to access this audio the
story of the oil man who brought Machine Gun Kelly
to justice. Here on our American Stories
And we returned to our American stories. Up next, the
story of how one of America's most notorious criminals was
caught because of one savvy oilman from Oklahoma. You to
tell the story of how Machine Gun Kelly was captured
is Joe Erschell, author of the Year of Fear and
Later as you'll hear, Doctor T. Lindsey Baker, author of
(00:33):
A Gangster Tour of Texas and numerous other books. Let's
get into the story. Here's Joe Erschel to start us off.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
The story takes place in nineteen thirty three. The unemployment
rate was up to forty percent, thousands of banks were closed.
Catastrophic dust storms were beginning to kick up across the
Southwest and the Midwest. They'd blow so hard and so strong,
with so much fine silt that the people who lived
in that area would have to do things like drape
(01:05):
their child's beds and carriages with wet sheets just to
prevent the silt from coming in and choking them to death.
It would blow so far that it would turn snow
red into England kill livestock in the fields. While all
this is going on, of course, FDR takes office and
(01:27):
announces that that's the only thing we have to fish.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
No, no, no no.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
At the very same time, an incredible spate of kidnappings
began occurring across the country. With the banks drying up,
the bank rubbing business isn't as good as it used
to be, and an estimated two thousand kidnappings that occurred
between nineteen thirty and nineteen thirty three. Companies were issuing
kidnapping insurance. People in Hollywood were driving around an armor
(01:58):
plated limousine with armed guards in the passenger seat. They
would snatch a wealthy individual, ransom them, and then release
them with the caveat that everything would be fine unless
they go to the authorities. If they do go to
the authorities, we'll return and kill you. Not only you,
but all the members of your family as well. So
(02:20):
these are tough times in the US, with tougher times coming.
In the midst of this, George Kelly and his glamorous
wife decide that they are going to kidnap the richest
oyle man in the Southwest.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
It's hot summertime. Charles F.
Speaker 4 (02:44):
Rschel and his wife were playing bridge with friends Walter
are Jarant and his wife on the screen porch of
the Ershel home in Oklahoma City.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
And with an almost remarkable lack of planning.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
Out of the darkness appeared two armed men. Stick them up.
We won't Erschel.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Kelly, armed with the machine gun, and his partner Albert Bates,
armed with the forty five, burst into the Erschel home,
run up to the bridge game and suddenly discover that
they don't know which of the two guys is Erschel.
So making all kinds of threats, they demand that Erschell
reveal himself, which he doesn't do. He just sits there,
(03:32):
so does Walter. So Kelly says, we'll take you both,
and they speed off into the night. A couple of
miles out of town. They realized that they could probably
identify which one was Erschel by emptying their wallets, so
(03:53):
they stopped the car. They get the wallets, take all
of money. They give him ten bucks to get a
cab back to town, and they take off with Herschel.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Herschel was no ordinary business man.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Farm kid grew up enlisted in the army during the
First World War. When he got out was bound in
the termined that the last thing he was going to
do anymore of was farming, so he strikes out for
Oklahoma and decides to try to make his fortune in
the oil business. He cooks up with the applely named
Tom Slick.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
The King of the Wildcatters.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Unfortunately, right at the peak of their oil business, Tom Slick,
aged forty seven, kind of your classic type a behavior guy,
as a massive heart attack and dies.
Speaker 4 (04:40):
Herschel continued running his empire and in time married Selick's widow, Berenice.
Herschel's own wife was Berenice's sister, so he ended up
being the husband of two sisters.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
And of course that generates a lot of headlines in
the paper about how rich these folks are and in
what their oil holdings entail. All of this was the
interesting reading that got Kelly thinking about kidnapping Charles Ershaw.
Speaker 4 (05:14):
But who hood of Holms were no ordinary thugs either.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Kelly started out in Memphis, Tennessee. He was the child
of upper middle class parents. He was a caddie at
the local country club. Pretty smart kid. In fact, he's
not known to have killed anybody. He didn't like machine guns.
He was kind of afraid of them. He was one
of these charming hail fellow well met irishmen. But he
(05:41):
did not enjoy a very good relationship with his father,
whom he hated, and when he caught his father in
a tryst with another woman, basically blackmailed him and said,
I won't tell mom about this. This is when he's
in high school. If you give me the family car
and increased my allowance by amount of money, which Kelly
(06:02):
then used his new transportation and his money top across
the board at Arkansas, which was a wet state, Tennessee
was dry, and that's when he started his liquor running
business as a young entrepreneur in high school, and things
basically went downhill from there. But that wasn't good enough
for Catherine. Catherine wanted to be married to the most
(06:22):
famous criminal in all of America, so she started working
on his reputation. She buys him a machine gun at
a pawn shop in Fort Worth, then starts spreading stories
about him at speakeasies all over Fort Worth, and she'd
leave spent shells behind and say that, you know, we've
been down to the farm and George has been working
(06:43):
on his skills and he can shoot walnuts off a
fence post or write his name on the side of
a barn. With this gun, and then that got into
the press, and one thing led to another, and suddenly
we have this psychopathic machine gun Kelly.
Speaker 4 (06:57):
Their destination a farm owned by the stepfather of George
Kelly's wife.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
It's a sad, broken down farm with a few animals.
They cover his ears with cotton and tape them shut.
Speaker 4 (07:12):
There they held a Rshel captive for nine days. The
motive lots of money, two hundred thousand dollars and used
twenty dollar bills. Two hundred thousand dollars was a huge
sum of money. You could buy a brand u Ford
(07:32):
Va automobile for five hundred dollars.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
But nevertheless, he's the kind of guy who does not
part with his money very willingly. He is blind in
death and found and determined that if he ever gets out,
he's gonna come back and find these guys and get
his money back.
Speaker 4 (07:51):
Herschel's friend made the money delivery in Kansas City on Sunday,
July thirtieth, nineteen thirty three, eight days after the abduction.
The next evening, a disheveled man approached the back door
of the Rshall mansion. It was the missing Charles F. Rshel,
(08:17):
who had been carried to the outskirts of Norman, just
south of Oklahoma City and was left at the side
of the road. Kelly, Bates and their accomplices congratulated themselves
of what they believed had been.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
A perfect crime.
Speaker 4 (08:39):
What Kelly and the others did not realize was that
Charles F. Rshall was not just a financial genius. He
had what today might be called a photographic memory.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
And you've been listening to doctor T. Lindsey Baker and
joe Urschel tell the story of the kidnapping of one
of the richest oil men in the country, and by
virtue of that tell the story of Machine Gun Kelly.
The story of Machine Gun Kelly and the Southwest Oilman
continues here on.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
Our American stories.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
And we returned to our American stories and the story
of the capture of Machine Gun Kelly. When we last
left off, wealthy oilman Charles F. Rschel had been released
after his ransom was paid. But to the surprise of
the FBI and later his captors, Herschel wasn't just good
at business. Let's return to the story here to start
(10:00):
us off.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
He's doctor T.
Speaker 4 (10:02):
Lindsey Baker Erschall was not just a financial genior, he
had what today might be called a photographic memory.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
He knows how long the car ride took. He also
realizes that they were going in a circituous route designed
to confuse him. But this is a guy who's been
working his whole career for the King of the Wildcatters.
He and Urshall have been finding oil all over Oklahoma
and Texas, and they know just about every inch of
that territory backward and forward. And realizes, of course, that
(10:39):
he's on a farm. He begins counting the number of
different animals.
Speaker 4 (10:42):
A bull, four milk cows, a block of guineas.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
What the postman's name is, who the local prostitute is.
Speaker 4 (10:50):
Most importantly, he noted hearing the regular drone of an airplane.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Is that at nine thirty in the morning and at
five point thirty at night, a plane is passing overhead.
So he puts all that in the data bank while
he's leaving his fingerprints all over anywhere he possibly can.
Speaker 4 (11:11):
The very evening that the fatigued didn't care, Warren Charles
Urshchall stumbled to his own back door. Special agent Gus
Jones plied him with questions. The federal law man must
have smiled to himself when he discovered the remarkable recall
(11:33):
that the oil man offered just Rshall's observation that he
heard the kidnapper's car riding across the bumpy Canadian River bridge,
plus his estimate of the eight hour driving time during
his release, pointed southward toward Texas.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
Gus Jones just listens to this data dump, and having
started out telling him that finding these kidnappers would be
like fine a needle in a haystack, after ninety minutes
of talking to Charles, he said, well, we just got
a really small haystack.
Speaker 4 (12:10):
Jones assigned investigators to find out what localities to the
south experience the same sequence of rain and wind that
Ershall remembered, and to check commercial airlines schedules. They quickly
concluded that the airplane sound likely came from a dayly
(12:34):
American Airlines flight between Meecham Field in Fort Worth and Amarilla.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Urschel borrows a plane from one of his oil friends.
They go up in the air, fly the route. They
look down, using Erschel's sketch of what he thinks to
the farm looks like, identify a farm that looks exactly
like the drawing.
Speaker 4 (12:54):
Jones dispatched agent Edward Dowd. The investigator arrived there only
three days after Urshall's release, visiting in the guise of
a mortgage salesman. Dowd confirmed with the oil man, remembered
(13:15):
the house had a broken window pane patched with cardboard.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
The foreboard ran the right directions. He saw the correct number.
Speaker 4 (13:25):
Of cattle, mules, and even guineas. When the agent asked
for a drink of water on the hot summer day,
the pulley at the well made the right squeak and
the water had the same minrng eyes taste that Erschall describes.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
There was no question in the all man's mind.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Rschall insists that he be in the lead car the
raiding party with a sowd Off shotgun on his lap,
and in the middle of the night they burst in.
They arrest the Shannons and a fellow named Harvey Bailey,
who was staying at the farm kind of hiding out
after his escape from state prison in Kansas. Harvey Bailey
(14:12):
an incredible character. Bailey was considered the most successful bank
robber in American history. He was a guy who basically
invented the modern form of bank robbing, which involves determining
what the best escape routes are, riding the escape routes,
figuring out when there's the most money in the bank
to be robbed, by studying the local economy and the
(14:35):
county tax records, what the police activity is like, how
far away the police station is, what kind of cars
the police have, if they have any. Basically, if Harvey
was planning your bank robbery, it was going to go
well and nobody was going to know who did it.
He robbed the Lincoln National Bank of so much money
that the bank failed the next day. He did so
(14:55):
well in the twenties that by the late twenties he
retired from the bank robbing business and opened a series
of gas stations and car washes in Chicago, but lost
all his money in the market crash and had to
go back to the business that he knew so well.
So he had worked with George, and in fact had
(15:15):
lent George one thousand dollars when George was low on funds.
So after he heard about the kidnapping, he went down
to the farm in Wise County to collect the money
that George odum and to nurse a wound that he
sustained when he was escaping from prison. He just happens
to be sleeping in the backyard on a cot.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
In the semi darkness. Just before down.
Speaker 4 (15:38):
Gus Jones awakened Harvey Baying with the muzzle.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
Of a machine gun.
Speaker 4 (15:47):
Meanwhile, George Kenny and Albert Bates absconded with the ransom money.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
So even though George and Catherine had already fled the
scene along with Albert Bates to launder their the FBI
agents still score an important victory here by pulling in
Harvey Bailey, and it arrives just in time for jaed
Gar Hoover, who was not yet director of the FBI.
In fact, he was barely holding on to his job
(16:18):
when FDR took office. His first choice for Attorney General
was a guy named Thomas Walsh, Senator from Wyoming. Walsh
had a long and bad history with jade Garhover during
the Harding administration. Jaedgar Hoover's job was to well, you know,
he tapped his phone, and he read his mail, and
(16:38):
he tried to entrap him in a hotel room with
a woman to get an incriminating evidence on him, none
of which succeeded, but it did succeed in making a
lifelong enemy of mister Walsh. Walsh vowed to get rid
of that miserable son of him as soon as he
got to town. Now, unfortunately, Walsh was seventy two years old,
and before he got to town, he went down to
(16:59):
Miami and married a Cuban debutante. And on the train
ride back to Washington, when the train stopped in North Carolina,
Walsh's wife woke up, but he did not. Subsequently, you know,
the FDR was prosecuting a war on this, war on that,
it war on everything, and war on crime.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
So Jay Edgar is.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Under a lot of pressure at this time to bring
in some big score, and it looks like the machine
gun Kelly case could be the one. The FBI had
just been given the sole responsibility for chasing kidnappers across
state lines. They were really the only organization that could
bring this to fruition. But there were two problems that
(17:42):
they still had. One was the fact that they were
not an armed police force. They were not trained in weapons.
Most of them were lawyers and accountants who would help
local municipalities prosecute criminal investigations. So Hoover looked around his
agencies to try to find people who would be skilled
(18:03):
enough to go up against machine gunners and shotgun wielders
and whatnot. And he discovers that he's got fewer than twelve,
so he puts those guys together. They find Kelly in Memphis, Tennessee,
successfully arrest him.
Speaker 4 (18:18):
George Kelly, R. G. Shannon, Albert Bates, and Harvey Bailey
all went to the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas, while
Catherine Kelly and her mother, Aora Shannon went to a
penal institution for women, all of them with life sentences.
(18:38):
When the US Department of Justice opened a new maximum
security prison on Alcatranz Island in California, at transferred Kelly,
Bates and Bayn A.
Speaker 3 (18:50):
Shire.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
The Urschels lived happily ever after. But Charles by that
point had softened on the whole affair, and he went
to FDR and Hoover and said, look, Carvey Bailey had
nothing to do with this, you know, we ought to
let him out. He agrees to probation for Harvey and
sets him up in Jobson, Missouri, with a job as
(19:14):
a cabinet maker. He lived out the rest of his
life without committing another crime.
Speaker 4 (19:18):
Two decades later, George Kennay died in federal prison. His
body went uncleaned, so a released RG boss Shannon, agreed
to bury him in a plot that he owned in
Wise County. There beneath a homemade concrete marker lie the
(19:41):
remains of the man who coined the term still used
for the FBI when he declared at his Memphis arrest,
how you ug men would get me?
Speaker 1 (19:57):
And a special thanks to doctor T. Lindsay Baker and
to joe Urschel for sharing this story. A special thanks
also to the Fort Worth Public Library and the Library
of Congress for allowing us to access this audio the
story of the oil man who brought Machine Gun Kelly
to justice. Here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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