The Year of Fear (24 page)

The grand jury would convene in two days.

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

Ignorant Charles:

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

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

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

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

Adious, smart one.

Your worst enemy,
GEO. R. KELLY

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

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

See you in hell.

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

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

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

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

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

Dear Sirs—

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

Gentleman:

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

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

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

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

I hate and despise the government for their crooked dealings and do not wish them to convict people as innocent of that crime and guilty of one thing—talking to me. I can take care of my end and will the way I want to. You might state for Mr. Keenan’s benefit that he has never come anywhere near catching me, although I have been in Oklahoma City four nights and up town each day.

We will see how the trial progresses and can adjust our end accordingly. I am putting my prints on this so you will know it is genuine.

Yours truly,

Geo. R. Kelly

Nathan had reunited the Arnolds, bringing Flossie Mae into Oklahoma City, where he waited for the Kellys to make contact. On Thursday, September 21, they did. Kathryn penned a letter to Flossie Mae writing in coded language about what a good job Luther had done arranging the legal team to defend her in court.

Dear Midge,

How are you? I am just fine, so is the baby. She has a lot of new clothes. Shoes, and etc. She is having a nice time. Tell the “boy friend” I want him to drop me a letter to the below address and tell me what is needed when he wants to meet me, etc. Tell him his friend has been swell in my estimation, and I believe I will have my part here fixed within the next week anyway as I am waiting on some New York people. If he wants me at any time write that address, below, and tell him anything he can do for those people, to do it.… I am taking care of the baby honey. She’s never out of my sight, and be careful to take care of my clothes for they are all I have so don’t lose them … Communicate with—Burt Edwards, 1150 S. Michigan Ave. Chicago, Ill.

After weeks of near-misses, the Bureau finally had a solid lead on the Kellys. Nathan called Purvis in Chicago. He gave him the address of the Michigan Tavern and told him the Kellys were using it as a communications center. Stake it out. When they show up, grab them.

By then, Caplan had obtained a car from Joe Bergl for the Kellys and dropped it off at a tire store so that it could be equipped with four new tires and two spares. He told the Kellys to meet him at the tavern at 9:30 a.m.

On September 21, George, Kathryn and Geraldine went into the Michigan Tavern and told the bartender they were there to see Caplan. They then took a seat in a booth and ordered two beers, some pretzels and a soda for Geraldine. Caplan joined them a few minutes later and plopped a whiskey bottle down on the table, giving Geraldine a quizzical look.

“She’s all right,” said George. “She’s a nice little girl.”

Caplan told Kelly the car was ready and could be picked up at the General Tire Company at Twenty-third and Cottage Grove. Kelly handed over $265, shook hands, grabbed Kathryn and Geraldine, got in a taxi and drove off to get their new ride.

That very morning, Purvis finally got around to following up on his instructions to stake out the Michigan Tavern. He put two agents on it, but before heading to Michigan Avenue, they went to the post office to interview the tavern’s mail carrier and see if they could intercept any interesting deliveries. They were too late. The carrier was already on his route.

When they managed to catch up to him outside the tavern, they quizzed him about suspicious special deliveries going in and out. Of course, no postal clerk servicing the Michigan Tavern would last very long giving information to the cops, so not surprisingly, the postman gave up nothing the agents found useful. They got back in their car and returned to the Bureau downtown.

Had they gone inside the Tavern to look around, they would have found the Kellys sitting in the booth with Geraldine.

When Hoover discovered what had happened he went ballistic. His favorite agent had blown the best tip they’d had for nabbing Kelly. Why had he waited? What reason was there for the delay? Time was of the essence and he let a notorious kidnapper slip through his grasp. This was unconscionable. “This,” lamented Hoover in a note he put in Purvis’s file, “was a miserable piece of work.”

Purvis and his men were about to let a second prized capture slip through their fingers. Purvis had received a tip that a close friend of Verne Miller’s girl, Vi Mathias, was living at the Sherone Apartments on Sheridan Road. They put the apartment under surveillance and discovered that Mathias herself had moved in. One of Purvis’s junior agents, Johnny Madala, moved into the apartment building to keep her under surveillance. When a man answering to Miller’s description showed up, Madala phoned in the information and agent Ed Guinane arrived with a team of agents and Chicago policemen. They surrounded the apartment and waited.

The next morning, Miller emerged and disappeared down a hallway as the lawmen in Madala’s apartment delayed while trying to make a positive identification as their frustrated junior agent kept insisting in a stage whisper, “It’s Miller! It’s Miller!”

By the time Miller was jumping in his car, agent Lew Nichols caught up to him and ran after the fleeing car shouting, “Stop!”

Miller turned and fired two shots at Nichols, uncharacteristically missing with both. Nichols returned fire as panicked pedestrians screamed and ran for cover. A state trooper sprayed the car with a burst of machine-gun fire, but it sped away. Despite a citywide police alert, Miller disappeared.

(While the agents had earlier been chasing Miller in cities like Chicago, Detroit and New York, he’d been on a cross-country road trip visiting the nation’s top resorts and playing golf on some of its finest courses.)

*   *   *

On Monday, August 31, signed confessions from Ora, Oleta and Armon Shannon were handed over to the prosecutor. Salter said they would be included in the evidence presented on Wednesday by U.S. Attorney Herbert Hyde. In Washington, DC, Joseph Keenan boarded a plane headed for Oklahoma City.

(The kidnapping scourge continued unabated even as Keenan was headed toward the airport. Dr. E. L. Beck, a noted Texarkana surgeon, had just started up his car and was leaving the hospital when a masked man jumped on his running board, stuck a gun in through the window and ordered him to stop. Another man jumped in the passenger seat and the gunman got in back and ordered him to drive away.)

In Dallas, reporters pressed the Bureau’s agents for details about the confessions, but they stayed mum.

“No person outside the government service knows what is in those statements and no one can know until the proper time. It is our policy when a statement is given to us to protect it. We must on account of prospective witnesses and the like and we do, even if it tears the hide off,” said agent Frank Blake.

“We have to do one thing above all else: to stop this kidnapping business. We have to make victims realize they can tell us whatever they want to and that their confidence will be respected. We have got to treat the statements of witnesses—codefendants or otherwise—in the same way. We have to protect them to that extent. It might be bad indeed for certain persons on the outside to find out who made this or that confession and what they said.”

Blake was well aware that witness intimidation and witness elimination were part and parcel of the gang business. The Bureau had a cooperative witness and victim in Charles Urschel. With everything that was going on, they did not want him getting cold feet. He, his wife and their associates were ready and eager to testify in the most important case in the Bureau’s history. Nothing was being left to chance.

On Monday, the county sheriff’s department ordered in twenty machine guns for the guards who would surround the courthouse when the grand jury convened on Wednesday. Six deputies had spent two weeks being trained to operate the weapons expertly. Each witness would be guarded by federal agents armed with submachine guns and automatics. U.S. Attorney Hyde announced that the grand jury would deliberate behind an armed wall, which “will result in an impregnable barrage of gunfire should any desperate effort be made to approach witnesses or principals in the Urschel case.”

Hyde also announced that if indictments were handed up by the grand jury, he would seek an immediate trial.