The Year of Fear (38 page)

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Hamilton Stanley.
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On the Rock
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King, Jeffery S.
The Life and Death of Pretty Boy Floyd
. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1998.

Kirkpatrick, E. E.
Crimes’ Paradise: The Authentic Inside Story of the Urschel Kidnapping
. San Antonio, Texas: Naylor, 1934.

^______
.
Voices from Alcatraz—the Authentic Inside Story of the Urschel Kidnapping
. San Antonio, Texas: Naylor, 1947.

Knowles, Ruth Sheldon:
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The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI
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^______
.
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^______
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The Age of Roosevelt, Volume II, 1933–1935
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am indebted to an army of friends and associates who helped make this book possible. Notably, my publisher, Andrew Martin, at Minotaur, whose enthusiasm for the project was both infectious and inspiring. Kathy Huck and Marc Resnick, my editors, who shepherded this book through the process and who taught me so much about the nonfiction narrative form. Hector DeJean was masterful in getting the word out and getting the book noticed, no small task these days.

My agent, Wayne Kabak, believed heartily in the story and provided many brilliant insights and suggestions as it was shaped into a book.

Several of the descendants of the main characters in the story were most helpful, guiding me to sources and sharing their own collected resources and knowledge of the events. Kent Frates, a lawyer in Oklahoma City and occasional golf partner of Charles Urschel, has spent a lifetime collecting material related to the case and has written extensively about it himself. He was generous with his time and resources and toured me through the stately federal courtroom in Oklahoma City, where the principals in the case were tried. Valerie Urschel Guenther, the granddaughter of “Big Charles,” was kind enough to share her materials and recollections.

Research librarians at the Library of Congress and the Oklahoma Historical Society were enormously helpful and patient, as was Linda Lynn at the Oklahoma Publishing Company.

Several colleagues from my days in the news business provided valuable editing advice and encouragement, particularly Cathy Trost, Susan Bennett and Sharon Shahid.

I never could have written this book without the loving support of my wife, Donna, my daughter, Liz, and my son, Eric. Their wise counsel, editing and constant cheerleading were invaluable. I love them immeasurably.

Newspapers of the 1930s were coming of age during the Gangster Era, and their emerging professionalism and competitive zeal left us with a treasure trove of material on events and personalities that, if it wasn’t for the reporters’ and editors’ fascination—and the fact that crime sells newspapers—might have been lost to history. E. E. Kirkpatrick, a principal in the Urschel kidnapping, was a former newsman, and if it hadn’t been for his efforts to get the Urschel story down in print with his two books on the subject, many of the great details of this seminal crime would have been lost. Popular historians and journalists drew heavily on his accounts as they pursued the story in later years, adding great detail and context with their reporting and research. Among their writings, the work of Stanley Hamilton, Robert Unger, Bryan Burrough, Rick Mattix and Paul Maccabee were immensely informative—and great reads.

The FBI files on the era are informative and fascinating, and now, for the most part, readily accessible. Ironically, it would be those extensive files of the FBI’s later years, kept so meticulously and obsessively by J. Edgar Hoover, that would ruin his reputation after a band of antiwar protesters broke into an FBI field office in Media, Pennsylvania, stole voluminous amounts of the agency’s files and released them to the press in 1971. That event and its consequences are marvelously recounted in Sue Medsger’s book,
The Burglary,
published in 2014.

INDEX

The index that appeared in the print version of this title does not match the pages in your e-book. Please use the search function on your e-reading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.

Akers, Dutch

Al Spencer gang

Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary

Alcatraz Express

as bad for prisoner health

creation of

draconian rules of

dungeon in

notorious inmates of

Alcorn, Gordon

Alderson Reformatory for Women

Allegretti, Mike (“Bon Bon”)

Alterie, Louis (“Diamond Jack”)

Anderson, Jack

Anderson, “Little Steve”

Arlen, Richard

Arnold, Flossie Marie

Arnold, Geraldine

Kelly enslavement of

Kelly Memphis hideout located through

as named in press

testimony of

Arnold, Luther

assassination

Associated Press

automobiles.
See
getaway car

aviation

Bailey, Harvey

as Alcatraz inmate

as arrested for Memorial Day escape

bank robbery success of

Brennan alias of

as captured by Jones

as contemptuous of Floyd

death of

escapes of

Jones focus on

as Kelly mentor

as Leavenworth inmate

life sentence of

Mathers attorney for

Oklahoma City transfer of