by David Ward
Robbery was the crime of choice for most of these outlaws—robbery of banks, trains, post offices, stores—whatever was nearby that held money. Pretty Boy Floyd and a number of different partners robbed numerous banks in small towns such as Paden, Castle, Sallisaw, and Henryetta in Oklahoma and the Citizens State Bank in Tupelo, Mississippi. Alvin Karpis, Fred and Dock Barker, accompanied on various jobs by Frank Nash, Harvey Bailey, Tom Holden, and others, robbed larger banks in Fort Scott and Concordia, Kansas, and in Minneapolis. The Barker-Karpis mob robbed the Swift Company payroll in St. Paul, Minnesota, a Federal Reserve mail truck in Chicago, the payroll at the Youngstown, Ohio, Sheet and Tube Company, and a mail train in Warren, Ohio. Clyde Barrow, Bonnie Parker, and their friends and relatives robbed banks, gas stations, and a food store in various Texas towns, and a bank in Orenogo, Missouri. John Dillinger and his confederates, including Baby Face Nelson, robbed banks in New Carlisle and Daleville and South Bend and Indianapolis and Greencastle, Indiana, in St. Mary’s and Bluffton, Ohio, and in Racine, Wisconsin, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and Mason City, Iowa. The Dillinger gang also broke into the police armory at Peru, Indiana, and stole machine guns and other weapons. While most of the bank robberies occurred in the Midwest and the Southwest, there were occasional forays into other parts of the country, such as the robbery of $100,000 from a U.S. mail train in Charlotte, North Carolina, by Basil “the Owl” Banghart, William Costner, and Dutch Louie Schmidt.23
In the course of committing these crimes, in the ensuing shoot-outs, and sometimes during attempts to break out of jail afterward many of these outlaws ended up killing or wounding police officers, sheriff’s deputies, or other law enforcement officers. Pretty Boy Floyd kidnapped a sheriff and killed a police officer, an Oklahoma state investigator, and a Prohibition agent while robbing more than a dozen small banks.24 In separate incidents, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow gunned down a sheriff, a deputy sheriff, a town marshal, and a state police officer. John Dillinger killed a sheriff while escaping from jail in Lima, Ohio. Dock and Fred Barker and three associates killed a police officer in the course of robbing a Federal Reserve bank truck in Chicago. During a raid by federal agents on his hideout in Little Bohemia, Wisconsin, Baby Face Nelson killed an FBI agent. Some months after robbing banks in South Dakota and Iowa, Nelson, his wife, and a close associate, California bootlegger John Paul Chase, engaged FBI agents in a gun battle at a Dillinger hideout in Wisconsin. Fleeing the scene, Nelson and Chase became involved in a shoot-out that left two agents dead. Shortly thereafter, Nelson was located in Illinois and, after a high-speed chase and gun battle with federal agents, he was killed; his body was dumped on a highway by his wife and Chase.25 After robbing a bank in Minneapolis, Alvin Karpis and Dock Barker shot and killed a police officer who was pursuing their getaway car.
A KIDNAPPING “EPIDEMIC”
AND THE FEDERAL RESPONSE
While the high-profile robbers were busy, some began to engage in a different form of criminal enterprise—kidnapping the rich and holding them for ransom. Despite his success in removing large sums of money from financial institutions, Alvin Karpis complained that his chosen line of work was “becoming overcrowded”:
It seemed that every two-bit unemployed bum in the United States with the cash to dig himself up a pistol was taking a crack at the robbery business. . . . Crime was the last profession in America in the 1930s that still attracted crowds of applicants.26
(Alvin Karpis, Dock Barker, and Machine Gun Kelly too would jump on the kidnapping bandwagon in the early 1930s.)
The first ransom kidnapping cases occurred during the 1920s and involved children. The most notorious was the taking of fourteen-year-old Bobby Franks, who was subsequently murdered by Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold. The sons of millionaires, Leopold and Loeb were defended in court by Clarence Darrow and received life sentences. Other cases followed, including the abduction, for $1,500, of twelve-year-old Marian Parker, the daughter of a Los Angeles banker. Seeing his daughter apparently asleep in a car, the father paid off the kidnapper, who left the victim wrapped in a blanket a short distance away. When the father lifted the blanket that covered the girl, he found she was dead. The chief suspect, a clerk in the father’s bank, subsequently confessed. He was found guilty despite a plea that he was insane and, ten months after the crime, he was hanged at the California State Prison, San Quentin.27
The Midwest bank robbers considering kidnap prospects got the message—don’t kidnap children. Businessmen seemed the ideal alternative target.28 In December 1930 Nell Donnelly, a wealthy Kansas City clothing firm owner, was abducted with her chauffeur. Despite a threat to blind her with acid and kill the chauffeur, the $75,000 ransom was not paid and the victims were released unharmed thirty-four hours later. Earlier that year Charles Pershall, a Granite City, Illinois, banker, had been kidnapped, a $40,000 ransom was paid, and the kidnappers were never caught. Four months later a Monroe, Wisconsin, brewery owner, Fred Blumer, was taken and a large ransom paid, and his kidnappers were never found. In January 1932 a Colorado baking company executive, Benjamin Bower, was released after a $50,000 ransom was turned over to kidnappers, who also were never identified.
As other abductions were reported in Minnesota, Missouri, Colorado, Indiana, Arizona, and Illinois, prominent businessmen across the Midwest concluded that because of the repeal of Prohibition and the absence of jobs during the Depression, robbers who had learned to live off crime would be grabbing more of them as a source of income. What they wanted was federal legislation, law enforcement, and prosecution—and a federal death penalty. As the effort to lobby Congress was mounted, a survey by the police chief of St. Louis was released, reporting that 279 persons had been kidnapped in twenty-eight states during 1931.29
Congressional committees were arguing about the death penalty as a feature of the proposed legislation, and the expense of enforcing the new law, when on March 1, 1932, one of the great crimes of the twentieth century occurred—the abduction of twenty-month-old Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr. The shocked reaction of the nation was matched by that of President Herbert Hoover, who met immediately with William Mitchell, his attorney general. Mitchell announced on March 2 that every federal law enforcement agency, as well as the U.S. Coast Guard, the customs and immigration services, and the Washington, D.C., police would aid New Jersey authorities even though no specific federal law was known to have been violated.
Out of respect for Colonel Lindbergh, who was concerned that a law providing for the death penalty might prompt rash action by his son’s kidnapper, the federal kidnapping bill did not move forward until his child’s body was discovered on May 11.
When the bill passed and was signed into law by President Hoover on June 22, 1932, it required that the victim would have to be taken across state lines and did not provide for the death penalty as punishment. It did not seem to deter kidnapping—a week later the twenty-two-year-old son of St. Paul executive Haskell Bohn was abducted; he was released unharmed after a payment of $12,000. No arrests were made in this case, nor was there evidence that it was an interstate crime.30
Ransom kidnapping continued. Then on February 12, 1933, came the first case involving federal authorities under the new law. The wealthy broker Charles Boettcher II was abducted at gunpoint by two armed men as he and his wife got out of their automobile in the driveway of their home in Denver, Colorado. He was forced into the rear seat of the kidnappers’ vehicle and his eyes bound shut with tape. Verne Sankey and Gordon Alcorn drove the victim to a ranch owned by Sankey’s wife, near Kimball, South Dakota. The kidnappers demanded $60,000 for Boettcher’s safe release. While Sankey conducted negotiations, Alcorn and a third confederate, Arthur Youngberg, guarded the victim.
Based on a tip from an informant, Sankey and Youngberg were arrested by federal agents and indicted on March 29 on kidnapping charges. Alcorn was able to avoid capture until he was arrested in Chicago a year later. He pleaded guilty to “conspiracy to kidnap” charges in federal court in So
uth Dakota on February 8, a week after his arrest, and was promptly sentenced to a life term; two days later, Alcorn was in a cell at Leavenworth. His co-defendant, Sankey, who confessed that he was involved in the Bohn case, hanged himself in his cell while being held for trial.31
In May 1933 a group of kidnappers led by Walter McGee abducted Mary McElroy, the twenty-five-year-old daughter of the city manager of Kansas City, Missouri, and demanded a $60,000 ransom. The kidnappers accepted $30,000 and released the young woman, whom they had held in Kansas. Since state lines had been crossed, the FBI entered the case. When the kidnappers were caught, however, they were prosecuted in state court because Missouri had the death penalty. His associates received long prison terms, but McGee was given the death penalty even though the victim had been freed unharmed. Subsequently the victim asked that her abductor’s life be spared; McGee’s sentence was commuted to life in prison, where Mary McElroy visited him regularly.32
During the summer months and the remainder of 1933, a series of very high-profile kidnappings brought notoriety to Alvin Karpis, Dock Barker, and George Kelly, as well as fame to J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the newly reorganized Federal Bureau of Investigation. As a result of these cases, the press proclaimed that the nation was in the grip of a kidnapping “epidemic”:
Within a five-week period . . . six ransom kidnappings were reported, along with less publicized extortions and attempts. The impression was growing that state and federal legislative actions were not having the deterrent effect intended by their sponsors. The 1932 federal laws had enabled the Department of Justice enforcement and prosecuting forces to make significant contributions . . . but new cases kept occurring. The nationally publicized capital prosecution in Missouri, as a result of the McElroy kidnapping, likewise was perceived as exercising little deterrent effect.33
During the noon hour on June 15, 1933, William Hamm, president of the Hamm Brewery in St. Paul, Minnesota, left his office for his usual walk home for lunch. At an intersection a half block away, he encountered two men, one of whom asked, “You are Mr. Hamm, aren’t you?” and extended his hand. Hamm replied “Yes” and took the man’s hand. The second man quickly moved to the other side of Hamm, and the two of them, each firmly holding an arm, pushed Hamm toward the curb where a car had drawn up. They thrust him into the car and down to the floor of the vehicle behind the driver’s seat and pulled a white sack over his head. The car drove off, and when it stopped some time later Hamm heard voices, and the sack was lifted. The kidnappers put four pieces of paper into his left hand and a fountain pen in his right, and one said, “I guess you know what this is all about.” Hamm replied “Yes,” and was told, “Well, then just sign these four slips of paper,” which he did. The kidnappers pulled the hood back over his head and the vehicle drove off. Some time later, with the hood replaced by goggles, Hamm was able to glimpse a sign that said “Janesville and Beloit.” Shortly thereafter the vehicle stopped and the men led Hamm into a house and to an upstairs room. They allowed him to sit down and gave him a pork sandwich, a glass of milk, and some water. Three days later, after a $100,000 ransom was paid, the kidnappers brought Hamm back to Minnesota and released him.34
While the search went on for Hamm’s abductors, other prominent citizens fell victim: an Atlanta banker was taken in an unsuccessful effort to get $40,000 in ransom; John J. O’Connell, Jr., the twenty-four-year old son and nephew of several New York politicians, was kidnapped and $250,000 demanded for his return; August Luer, an Alton, Illinois, banker, was abducted and then released without the $100,000 being paid. In response to the Luer kidnapping and others, forty Chicago millionaires were placed under twenty-four-hour police protection to prevent them from becoming kidnap victims as well.35
The fifth ransom kidnapping during this five-week period in the summer of 1933 attracted the attention of the entire nation and catapulted Machine Gun Kelly to a place in American popular culture. It also helped to establish the image of FBI agents as relentless, efficient, incorruptible gang busters—“G-men”—who would save the country from the outlaws, bank robbers, and ransom kidnappers who were outwitting, outgunning, outrunning, and corrupting local police and county sheriffs.
On a Saturday evening in July Charles F. Urschel, a wealthy oilman, was playing bridge with his wife and their friends, Mr. and Mrs. W. R. Jarrett, on the screened porch at the back of their home in Oklahoma City. At about 11:15 P.M., a Chevrolet sedan pulled into the driveway, and two men, one with a pistol, the other with a machine gun, got out and quickly stepped through the porch door demanding to know which man was Urschel. When no one responded one of the men said, “Well, we’ll take them both.” Urschel and Jarrett were forced out of the house at gunpoint and into the back seat of the sedan, which then sped away. Within five minutes Mrs. Urschel, recalling the instructions of J. Edgar Hoover in a Time magazine article concerning the wave of kidnappings across the country, called the director’s office to notify the bureau of the abduction of her husband and Jarrett.
With this latest in a string of ransom kidnappings, the pressure was on the FBI to demonstrate that it could bring the perpetrators to justice—not just for reasons of punishment and deterrence but also to showcase the effectiveness of the Department of Justice’s campaign to subdue the “criminal element.” In addition, Charles Urschel was not just a prominent citizen of Oklahoma City, he was a personal friend of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The special agents in charge of FBI offices in San Antonio and Dallas, additional agents from Dallas and El Paso, and all but one agent in the Oklahoma City office were ordered to work on the case.
On Wednesday July 26 an oilman and close friend of Urschel, E. E. Kirkpatrick, received a package from a Western Union messenger containing a letter written by Urschel asking that he act as intermediary with the kidnappers. The Urschel family paid a ransom of $200,000—a huge sum during the Depression—and at 10:30 P.M. on July 31 Charles Urschel walked in the door to his home, having taken a taxi from Norman, Oklahoma, where his captors had released him. He was interviewed briefly by federal agents and allowed to rest; the following day he made a detailed statement that provided many clues about the kidnappers and the places in which he had been kept during the nine days of his captivity.36
The investigation that followed brought two Fort Worth detectives to the home of Kathryn Kelly, an attractive woman known to consort with gangsters. They noticed in the yard a Cadillac registered to Kelly’s mother, Ora Shannon, who lived on a farm in nearby Paradise, Texas. The detectives were well acquainted with Kathryn, who had a record of arrests for robbery, had been the chief suspect in the murder of her first husband, and had been linked to an ex-Leavenworth prisoner named George Kelly. The detectives notified federal agents that Kathryn and George should be considered suspects in the Urschel case and that Urschel may have been held captive at the Shannon farm. The FBI immediately put the farm under surveillance.
At 6 A.M., ten days after the victim had been released, fourteen men—four federal agents, four Dallas detectives, four Ft. Worth detectives, a deputy sheriff from Oklahoma City, and Charles Urschel himself—surrounded the farm of Ora Shannon and her husband, R. G “Boss.” One of the men called out Kathryn’s stepfather’s name, and he came out of the house. FBI Agent Dowd noticed a man sleeping on a bed in the yard and asked Shannon who he was. Shannon replied, “Bailey.” Dowd realized that they had happened to come upon Harvey Bailey, one of the nation’s most successful bank robbers and an escapee from the Kansas State Penitentiary. According to Dowd’s report,
Special Agent in Charge Jones rushed over with a machine gun and put it close to Bailey’s head. . . . On the bed along side of Bailey was a fully loaded 331 Winchester Automatic Rifle and a Colts .45 Automatic Pistol. . . . Bailey had been sleeping in his BVDs [underwear] and his pants and shirt were at the foot of the bed. In Bailey’s pants were found $1,200.00 in paper money, $700.00 of which consisted of $20.00 bills, being part of the ransom money paid by Charles F. Urschel.37
/> Bailey, Boss and Ora Shannon, and their son and his wife were taken to the Dallas office of the FBI where all but Bailey and Shannon’s daughter-in-law quickly made statements admitting their participation in the detention of Charles Urschel. They placed the responsibility for the whole episode on the shoulders of George Kelly and Albert Bates, another man well known to federal authorities. Harvey Bailey, the elder Shannon claimed, had nothing to do with the kidnapping and had only appeared at his house the previous evening and asked to spend the night. The Shannons and Bailey were lodged in the Dallas County Jail, with Bailey booked in under a false name and placed in the solitary confinement section of the jail to avoid publicity about his arrest. Albert Bates was arrested in Denver a few days later on suspicion of passing stolen checks and was quickly transported to Dallas to stand trial for the kidnapping.
Harvey Bailey had robbed banks for more than a decade. He was movie-star handsome and was reputed to have nerves of steel. He liked robbing banks for the money, but he also enjoyed the sheer excitement of engaging in this highly dangerous activity—a trait he shared with many other bank robbers. He talked about the “kick” that accompanied bank robbery, particularly during the getaways that followed.38 Bailey’s careful planning and calm demeanor paid off not only in the money gained from robbing dozens of banks, but in the fact that he had carried on this dangerous trade for twelve years without making a serious mistake. His FBI rap sheet listed an arrest on March 23, 1920, for investigation of hijacking and burglary; the next entry on his arrest record did not appear until July 7, 1932, when he was finally charged and convicted of bank robbery and received a sentence of ten to fifty years in the Kansas State Penitentiary.
