The Year of Fear (25 page)

“While this is a matter completely discretionary with the court,” Hyde said, “I will ask that it be given precedence over all pending criminal matters. I hope to see it go to trial not later than the first week in September. We will not wait for the arrest of George Kelly. Evidence on hand is sufficient to convict nearly all of those now held, even if we do not ask Urschel or others who contacted the kidnappers to testify.”

Meanwhile, Keenan had arrived in Kansas City to assess the case the county prosecutors there had against Bailey. They wanted to tag him for murder in the Kansas City Massacre. If they could, they would send him to the chair. Keenan wanted Bailey taken down by the federal prosecutors in the Urschel case and he was virtually certain of success. Conversely, the county prosecutor in Kansas City had very little evidence to go on. His case was weak. Nevertheless, he wanted to take a crack at it on the basis of just two eyewitnesses that could identify Bailey as one of the shooters.

Keenan knew how things worked in Kansas City, the biggest organized crime empire west of Chicago. Bailey’s connections could buy an acquittal if they didn’t simply decide to spring him from jail. In Oklahoma City, the shoe was on the other foot. It was the victim who had the courts on his side. It was the victim whom the police wanted to protect. No, it would be in Oklahoma City where Bailey would go on trial with Charles Urschel’s longtime friend and hunting partner, Edgar Vaught, sitting on the bench. Keenan, with the force of the federal government behind him, made it clear Bailey would not be moved to Kansas City. He’d stand trial in Oklahoma, where the kidnapping occurred. And the federal government would get the credit for bringing down the nation’s most notorious bank robber.

The next day, he made the announcement that Bailey and ten others would be tried in Oklahoma City. He would seek life sentences for every one. On the morning the grand jury convened, three county sheriffs in suits and ties appeared on the front page of the newspapers showing off their new weaponry. The caption gave the details: “George Kerr is shown demonstrating a Thompson submachine gun similar to those used by Charles F. Urschel’s kidnappers. [Tom] Miler in the center, is holding a heavy Browning automatic rifle of a type especially developed by the army to pierce armor plates. Bullets from this gun will rip through the armored cars used by many eastern gangsters. [Earl] Gordon is demonstrating a new gas gun, with its seven-inch cartridge. One shot would start tears in the eyes of every person within fifty yards. These are the types of guns that will be used by officers during the federal grand jury quiz of the Urschel kidnap suspects which opens Wednesday.”

The grand jury’s decision didn’t take long. Twenty-one witnesses, including the Urschels and the Jarretts, testified. The jury deliberated and handed up indictments for fourteen people, including Kelly, Bates, Bailey, the Shannons and five underworld figures from St. Paul who’d been caught passing or laundering Urschel ransom money.

Keenan took to the stage immediately to announce the government’s “new deal” in the War on Crime, which he said would soon lead to the “hanging and electrocution” of the nation’s racketeers. The case would go to trial in two weeks.

The measured Ivy Leaguer said the federal government intended to stamp out organized crime even if it had to use the United States Army to do it. With a hint of a smirk, he added that that would not be necessary.

“We are ready to meet the challenge of these gangsters fearlessly and with our own weapons. We are in deadly earnest and this statement is made with no desire to be melodramatic,” he said.

“Representatives of the federal government in Washington are very much pleased with the cooperation received locally in this case. They are pleased with the dispatch with which the matter was handled, with the earnest attention given it by Judge Edgar S. Vaught, Herbert K. Hyde, the U.S. Attorney and the grand jury.

“We appreciate fully the patriotic response of Mr. Urschel in casting aside personal considerations. It is encouraging to the government in its drive to wipe out gangster depredation in which he offered his services as a witness. The federal government will respond by giving Mr. Urschel and his family full protection. Neither Mr. Urschel nor anyone else will be left to further fear attacks of the underworld,” Keenan concluded.

*   *   *

As he was speaking, William F. Wood, a cousin of President William Howard Taft, was being held captive by kidnappers in California. Howard Meek had kidnapped Wood, and tortured him relentlessly while trying to determine the extent of his wealth. After learning Wood had large amounts of cash and securities in his safe-deposit box, Meek took him to the bank and forced him to withdraw it.

With more than $10,000 in his pockets, Meek decided to indulge himself as he and his captive walked through San Francisco’s crowded Market Street. He bought a bag of walnuts and, as he struggled to crack one open, Wood shouted to a nearby policeman, “Get that man! He’s got a gun!” and started running away.

Patrolman Michael McDonald looked over at the gesticulating Wood, but before he could respond, Meek drew his gun and fired, hitting McDonald three times as pedestrians on the crowded street scrambled for cover. The wounded McDonald chased Meek, who was firing wildly over his shoulder, wounding an elderly woman in the process. McDonald continued his pursuit, chasing Meek as he unknowingly ran toward two other officers, who shot him dead. McDonald, a forty-year-old father of six, died a short time later.

*   *   *

Kidnapping out West had been so rare prior to the ’30s that states rarely saw the need to address it with stiff penalties. Armed robbery, however, was quite another matter. On the roads that traversed the wide-open prairies and high deserts, holding up travelers at gunpoint was a practice that had a long tradition dating back to the early settlers. As automobile travel exploded in the ’20s and ’30s, hijackings and holdups proliferated, and the sparsely staffed, underfinanced sheriff’s departments could do little to stop it.

In Oklahoma, the state legislature tried to solve the problem by passing a draconian law designed to instill fear in any criminal who would contemplate holding up some innocent traveler on the road. They made highway robbery a crime punishable by death in the electric chair. The irony of the fact that Kelly and Bates could fry for stealing $50 from Jarrett, but not for kidnapping Urschel, holding him against his will for nine days and ransoming him for $200,000, was not lost on Joseph Keenan. But there was no way he was going to allow two notorious outlaws to be convicted for a $50 highway robbery and be sentenced to death before he got the chance to put the power of the federal government on display on the national stage. Keenan, Cummings and Hoover needed a big victory in their first prosecution to fuel their drive for federal laws and federal law enforcement. They were not about to let some county prosecutor take that opportunity away from them.

Nevertheless, Keenan would not let the gross incongruity go to waste. On Monday, September 11, he announced that following the federal kidnapping trial, he would assist County Attorney Lewis R. Morris in seeking the death penalty for Bates and Kelly for the armed robbery of Walter Jarrett during his abduction from the home of Charles Urschel the night of the kidnapping.

“This offense carries the death penalty in Oklahoma and we feel that the good citizens of Oklahoma would not be averse to bringing the desperate criminals to the bar of justice in that court,” he stated.

*   *   *

George had learned from his brief stay in Chicago that his usual contacts could not, or would not, be of much help to him. In fact, they wanted him gone. Capone’s lieutenant, Frank Nitti, had put the word out that Kelly was “too hot.” So with their plans to lie low in Chicago thwarted, the Kellys, with their adopted daughter in the backseat, got back on the road and headed to the city where Kelly had launched his criminal career: Memphis, Tennessee.

While Kelly was driving south, Alvin Karpis was putting to work the armor-plated car that Joe Bergl had customized for him. With the Barkers, George Ziegler and Bryan Bolton, he handily stole a cartload of sacks thought to contain cash and securities from two bank employees under armed guards who were wheeling them out of the Federal Reserve Bank. They pulled the heist off flawlessly, but in his haste to get away quickly, Karpis slammed into an oncoming car. The accident happened right in front of two Chicago cops walking their beat. As they approached the cars, Bolton began firing his submachine-gun, killing one of the patrolmen.

Within hours, news of the machine-gun murder and bank robbery was blanketing the Chicago papers and blaring from the radio. Purvis and the Bureau announced that the prime suspects were Machine Gun Kelly, Verne Miller and Pretty Boy Floyd.

The investigation led them straight to Joe Bergl and turned up a pair of octagonal glasses, the very type known to be worn by Kelly.

Based on the very slim evidence he had, Purvis called a press conference and announced that the machine gun that had killed Chicago police officer Miles Cunningham was the same one that had been used in the Kansas City Massacre. The nationwide hunt for Kelly and his fashionable wife had just intensified tenfold.

The Kellys made it to Memphis a few days later and moved back into Tichenor’s house on East Raynor Street. Once there, they no longer needed the kid for cover. What they were going to need was a lot more money. Once again, Kelly turned to his brother-in-law, Langford Ramsey, for help.

Kelly persuaded Ramsey to drive back to Texas with Geraldine as his guide to retrieve the rest of the ransom money, which was buried at the Coleman farm. After that, Kelly wanted him to reunite Geraldine with her parents at the boardinghouse in Oklahoma City and bring back the rest of Kit’s wardrobe, which Flossie Mae was holding there.

So Geraldine, who had just endured a six-hundred-mile journey in the backseat of the Kellys’ car bouncing along back roads, got back into the car with a perfect stranger for the final leg of her summer road trip, heading back to the desolate prairies of wasted West Texas. After two days on the road, they arrived at the Coleman farm at 5:00 a.m.

Ramsey tried to introduce himself to Coleman and explain what he was after. But Coleman, realizing he was being watched round the clock, was not about to tell some clean-cut “lawyer” whom he’d never met where the Urschel ransom was buried, especially one that was traveling with an exasperated twelve-year-old kid.

“I’m the contact man for George and Kathryn Kelly,” Ramsey explained.

“I don’t care anything about your name,” Coleman replied. “Or the Kellys.”

Ramsey then asked if he could at least take some of Kathryn’s fur coats back with him.

“No,” said Coleman.

“I’m not hot,” said Ramsey.

“You will be before you get far. They’ll tail you out of here.”

He sent Ramsey away empty-handed.

Ramsey then drove back to Fort Worth, put Geraldine on a train to Oklahoma and sent a telegram to the Arnolds telling them when the kid would arrive.

He then sent a second telegram to Kathryn:

Had several tough breaks. Ran into several rain storms. Caused brake trouble. Deal fell through. Tried to get later appointment. But prospect was afraid. Impossible to change his mind. Didn’t want to bring home a sad tale. Can go on if advisable. Wire instructions here.

Both wire transmissions ended up in the hands of the federal agents guarding the Arnolds. After intercepting the first one about Geraldine’s return, they contacted Western Union asking if the person who sent it had sent any others while he was there.

The wire operator told them another telegram had been sent to one J. C. Tichenor, c/o Central Garage, Memphis, Tennessee. They phoned the Memphis police, who looked up the name in the telephone directory and found a J. C. Tichenor at East Raynor Street. They immediately put the house under surveillance.

After Ramsey gave Geraldine her ticket back to Oklahoma City and left her at the train station, the precocious kid fired off her own telegram to her parents after he’d left:

Meet me Rock Island station ten fifteen tonight. Gerry.

Her parents were there to meet her when she arrived, but so were Pop Nathan and his agents. Geraldine was not at all reticent to speak. She rambled on chapter and verse about all the places she’d been dragged, all the odd manners she had been expected to affect. She told everybody about the Kellys and their marital battles, their professional battles, their battles about everything.

She’d been dragged off here, she’d been dragged off there. Kelly had taken her to places she’d never been. Places she didn’t like. Introduced her to creepy people. Sent her off with some stranger named Ramsey, who put her on this train with a ticket and a couple bucks and that was that.

The agents asked if she knew where the Kellys were staying in Memphis.

Her answer was decisive. They were in a house on East Raynor Street. Staying with “some guy named, Tich.”

Might the name be “Tichenor?”

Yes, that was it, she said.

Nathan wasted no time. He immediately got word to the Special Agent in Charge of the Birmingham, Alabama, office, William A. Rorer, a young World War I vet. Get to Memphis and raid this home before daylight. The Bureau had only one agent in Memphis and it did not want that limited kind of involvement. The Bureau had chased Kelly over about one-third of the country and they didn’t want some local police force to get credit for his capture. Shortly after Nathan’s call, Rorer got another from the director himself in Washington. Hoover reiterated how important it was to get to Memphis immediately. He should arrange air travel using any means necessary. Nathan also called the St. Louis office, the next closest to Memphis, and told them to dispatch agents, as well. The race was on. Who would get to Memphis first to capture the Kellys.

It was after midnight when Rorer got the call from Nathan. He knew he had almost no time to get to Tennessee to complete his assignment. It was too long a drive and there was no train service. He’d need to fly. But there were no night flights. He appealed to a local air charter service, but they weren’t allowed to fly at night. The charter service told him the only planes that could fly out of Birmingham at night were at Roberts Field under the command of the National Guard. In desperation, he tried the National Guard, finally getting through to the wife of Commander Sumpter Smith, who told him her husband was out of town in Montgomery. When the desperate Rorer finally located Smith at his hotel, Smith told him he lacked the authority to release the planes. Well, who has it, demanded Rorer. Smith told him he’d have to get in touch with General Edward King at Fort McPherson, Georgia. When he did, King ordered two planes to carry Rorer and anyone else he could round up to Memphis.