by David Ward
What happened next is an example of convict thinking in the early 1930s. According to Berta the three men in the house took “ ‘the Dutch route’ [because] when you go out of the institution with firearms and anytime you take an official, like a Warden or Deputy Warden, out of an institution don’t ever come back because if you do you are going to have a hard, hard time.” Following this credo, one of the prisoners shot and killed the other two and then shot himself. Berta along with Brown and Underwood, soon surrounded by soldiers, made their own attempt at suicide:
Brownie had six sticks of dynamite, he tried to set them off, but he couldn’t light the fuse. If he had set it off that would have been it. But the funny part is that when we got back to the institution they never laid a hand on us. Warden White was a hell of a man, he left strict orders, “No hands on these people, leave them alone. Treat them just like the rest of the prisoners.” All we got was Isolation. Otherwise we’d have got our heads broken in. We got a light sentence for escaping—five years. Of course, I lost good time on the 25 [his original sentence]. I’d have to do 25 flat and five on top of that. We were lucky. They had just organized the BOP and they didn’t want no publicity. We went to court and pled guilty because they wanted to get it over quick.53
In the subsequent investigation by federal agents, three guards were identified as having assisted the prisoners: two committed suicide before they could be prosecuted and the third was tried and convicted. Although J. Edgar Hoover and Bureau of Prisons Director Sanford Bates defended White’s handling of the escape attempt, Attorney General Mitchell was critical of White’s leadership:
The general tenor of the reports would suggest that he has been deficient in executive ability in the administration of the prison by the lack of training of his subordinates and failure to establish discipline and proper methods to detect and avoid trouble of this kind.54
After Warden White recovered from his injuries, Bates transferred him to a new federal penal farm and appointed a warden at Leavenworth who was to implement new training procedures.
The plan to aid their inmate associates having failed, Nash, Holden, and Keating were busy trying to elude federal agents. Through confidential sources in St. Paul, Minnesota, the FBI learned that Thomas Holden had been living with a paramour in a nearby suburb, and that he and the other escapees, Francis Keating and Frank Nash, frequented certain nightclubs and restaurants in St. Paul, sometimes with other Leavenworth convicts, including George Kelly. Nash was identified by a waitress, who reported that he appeared to be wearing a wig. Holden, Keating, and Harvey Bailey were said to have played golf frequently on a course in St. Paul.
This affinity for golf had prompted the FBI to begin watching golf courses throughout the Midwest and it was on the Old Mission Golf Course in Kansas City that Holden and Keating, unarmed and accompanied by another man and three women, were arrested; their male companion was subsequently identified as Harvey Bailey. Holden and Keating were taken back to Leavenworth on July 8, 1932; Bailey was sent back to the Kansas State Penitentiary (from which he would escape eleven months later).
The search for Nash focused on St. Paul, where he had been seen in the St. Paul Hotel and at the home of Harry Sawyer, a local racketeer well known in gangster circles and reputed to represent Capone interests in the Minneapolis–St. Paul area. In early June 1933 the FBI received a report from a confidential informant that Nash had been seen in Hot Springs, Arkansas, another hideout location favored by gangsters. On June 13, FBI agents Lackey and Smith, along with the chief of police from McAlester, Oklahoma, Otto Reed, went to a store identified by the informant, arrested Nash, and immediately left town.55
When the agents and their prisoner arrived in Fort Smith, Arkansas, Nash was locked up in the county jail while the agents asked for instructions from a supervisor. They were told to purchase tickets for a train to Kansas City, Missouri, where they would be met by other agents with a car; the group would then proceed directly to Leavenworth.
On Saturday morning, June 17, 1933, Frank Nash and agents Lackey and Smith were met at the Union Station by agents Caffrey and Vetterli, along with Kansas City detectives Hermanson and Grooms. The group walked out of the station to enter Agent Caffrey’s car. Nash was placed in the middle of the front seat to allow three officers to watch him from behind. As Lackey was about to get in to the driver’s seat he noticed two men, one with a machine gun and the other with a rifle or shotgun. The man with the machine gun pointed at Caffrey was alleged to have said, “Up, up, up!” or “Stick ’em up !” Realizing they were friends of Nash’s, Lackey said, “Here they are.” At that instant one of the men said, “Let them have it” and proceeded to fire on the officers and the car. Lackey reported that his gun was jammed, that Nash ducked, held up his handcuffed hands, and yelled, “My god, don’t shoot me,” but was shot almost immediately after the firing began. Agent Smith leaned over between the two front seats and crouched down while Lackey crouched down behind the driver’s seat.
After Agent Lackey was hit by three bullets, he realized the persons who were shooting were very close to the car, so he lay perfectly still. When the shooting stopped, one of the gunmen approached the car, looked in the window, and said, “He is dead. They are all dead in here.” After the gunmen left, police officers arrived to find agents Smith and Lackey still alive in the car. But both Vetterli and Nash were dead, and detectives Grooms and Hermanson were lying dead near the car. Caffrey, who had been shot through the head, died en route to the hospital.
In the weeks that followed the Union Station massacre, the FBI received many conflicting statements from witnesses as to the identity of the shooters. Some bystanders said they saw notorious gunmen Verne Miller and Wilber Underhill; others identified Pretty Boy Floyd and Harvey Bailey. In addition, Alvin Karpis and the Barker brothers were reputed to have wanted Nash killed after he refused to kill his own wife because she knew too much about their activities and could not be trusted. The search for the shooters never produced clear evidence of the actual identities of the gunmen, but it did result in a wide variety of theories.56
The investigation of the events at the Union Station resulted in charges being brought against several individuals who were not present at the Union Station gun battle but were alleged to be friends of Verne Miller or Harvey Bailey or Frank Nash and were said to be responsible for trying to arrange Nash’s liberation. Frank Mulloy, Richard Gallatas, and Herbert Farmer received two-year sentences. Despite their short terms they would end up at Alcatraz, “as a matter of public policy.”57
Regardless of who was responsible for the massacre, the incident brought to national attention the consequences of inmates escaping from federal prisons. Once free, they could not only continue their criminal careers but also mount efforts to free friends and partners from jails, state prisons, and federal penitentiaries, causing death and mayhem in the process. As a result, Department of Justice officials became even more apprehensive about the safekeeping of high-profile federal offenders.
This general apprehension had a specific focus in the cases of George Kelly, Albert Bates, and Harvey Bailey, the principals in the Urschel kidnapping. After the three received life sentences, the problem that confronted Attorney General Cummings and FBI Director Hoover was how to make certain that Kelly, Bates, and Bailey—with their underworld connections, still hidden ransom money, and ability to ingratiate themselves with local law enforcement officers, county jail deputies, and prison guards—were actually delivered to federal penitentiaries and kept there. Hoover was not convinced that even the high-security prisons at Leavenworth and Atlanta could contain such desperadoes. He warned the Bureau of Prisons not to compromise the new image of federal criminal justice invincibility by letting any of the celebrity criminals captured by his agents escape from custody. He reminded Director Bates that Harvey Bailey and Albert Bates were “desperate and dangerous criminals” and that their associates Holden, Keating, and Nash had managed to escape from Leavenworth. Hoover iden
tified members of “the Bailey gang” as among those responsible for the Union Station massacre and claimed that Kelly had “boasted that he could not be held in a penitentiary and that he will escape.”
After they were sentenced, Bailey and Bates, surrounded by ten armed agents, were flown from the Oklahoma City jail to the military airfield at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. They were loaded into an armored car and transported to the Fort Leavenworth Annex, a former U.S. Army disciplinary barracks adjacent to the federal penitentiary. Each man was placed in a solitary confinement cell to prevent any contact with other inmates. The importance of keeping the nation’s most highly publicized kidnappers securely locked up was emphasized in a personal letter sent directly from the attorney general to Warden Robert Hudspeth at the Annex:
Because of the especially fine work of the Federal officers in capturing and prosecuting Harvey Bailey and [Albert] Bates, and the notoriety given to the case . . . I consider that it would be a shock to the country should either of these men escape. I shall expect, therefore, that you give personal attention to these men. I am informed that you have ample means to keep them in confinement. I shall hold you personally responsible for their safekeeping.58
George Kelly was transported separately. Handcuffed and placed in leg irons, he was placed aboard a special railroad car fortified with bars and special bulletproof armor plating. Inside the car, eight agents armed with machine guns kept watch. When the train arrived at the Leavenworth station, Kelly was transported to the federal penitentiary, where he was said to have told a guard “I’ll be out of here by Christmas,” prompting the guard to retort, “What Christmas are you talking about, Kelly—1960?”59 Director Bates clearly outlined to Warden Fred G. Zerbst the conditions under which Kelly was to be kept:
[He] should be held incommunicado and no messages or letters should be delivered to or from him. He should be permitted no visits, not even from lawyers, except with the special permission of the Attorney General. He may be seen by the Doctor or by the Chaplain if in your judgment that is wise and safe. I suggest that he be placed in one of the cells in the segregation building; that he be permitted under no circumstances to communicate with other prisoners or to mingle in the yard. He will, of course, be given exercise but in the small exercise yard connected with the segregation unit. He will have regular food, tobacco, books, and newspapers but no other privileges.60
The same rules applied to Bates and Bailey, except Bates’s privileges were even more restricted due to his refusal to discuss the whereabouts of his share of the ransom money—he was not permitted access to the daily newspapers given to Bailey and Kelly.
Despite these extraordinary measures, J. Edgar Hoover reported to the Bureau of Prisons that his agents, after a visit to the Annex, were not particularly impressed with the security arrangements. Bates and Bailey had both been allowed to go to the hospital on the same date for the purpose of being fitted for eyeglasses, leading the director to comment, “I believe they were there for the sole purpose of looking over the situation and getting the lay of the ground. . . . I also ascertained that both Bailey and Bates, while confined in small cells in the prison, are given the opportunity to wander around the cell block.” This interference by the FBI in Bureau of Prisons matters prompted Sanford Bates to note on Hoover’s memo, “These two men were in the hospital under three guards having their pictures taken and giving them routine prison exams like any other prisoners. Who’s running this prison anyway?”61
On January 7, 1934, Albert Bates began a hunger strike to protest what he considered the brutal and unjust treatment he was receiving, which included being deprived of mail, visits, and other privileges ordinarily granted newly arrived prisoners.62 A week after Bates began his protest, Harvey Bailey also refused to eat. Bailey said his intention was “to end his life by starvation,” and that he was protesting for the same reasons as Bates, except that he also claimed he was innocent of any involvement in the Urschel kidnapping. When informed that the two prisoners were starving themselves to death over the restrictions of their confinement, Assistant Attorney General Keenan advised Director Sanford Bates that Albert Bates “should be kept in solitary until the ransom money is turned over to its rightful owner.” Finally a U.S. Public Health Service physician at the Annex decided that Bates would have to be force-fed. A single bed was placed in the corridor outside his cell; the doctor requested that Bates come out for the purpose of being fed; he refused, and two guards were ordered to go into his cell and carry him out: “He made little resistance, quietly submitted to being placed on the bed and strapped down after which food was given him by nasal feeding . . . which consisted of eggs with milk.” Another forced feeding was administered later in the day. The following day Bates experienced severe hunger pains when he was given no food and agreed to call off his protest. Bailey, when advised that Bates had stopped his hunger strike, also resumed eating.63
For more than a year Bailey, Kelly, and Bates remained isolated from each other and from other inmates in the two prisons at Leavenworth. They would next meet again on a prison train bound for Alcatraz.
CORRUPTION AND SCANDAL IN FEDERAL PRISONS
Preventing high-profile federal inmates such as Bates, Bailey, and Kelly from escaping was not the only concern of the Bureau of Prisons, the Department of Justice, and FBI Director Hoover. There was also the problem of notorious and influential inmates carrying on their lives in federal prisons much as they had outside its walls—receiving special privileges and wielding considerable power in the convict social hierarchy. Press reports of inmates’ special treatment and revelations of alcohol and drug smuggling and bribes were bad publicity for a federal justice system trying to portray an image of competence and invincibility. Moreover, inmates’ ability to communicate easily with associates in the outside world and with other inmates, to obtain smuggled contraband, and to influence prison staff raised anxiety about security.
The root causes of these problems were lax management and a system that tolerated—even encouraged—influence peddling, the buying of favors, and other improper relations among prisoners and guards. The potential for corruption and mismanagement in the federal prison system had been recognized for some time. During the late 1920s, the Bureau of Investigation sent undercover agents posing as inmates into all three federal prisons. Wardens were not informed of these agents’ presence; they reported only to their own headquarters and were expected to spy on prison staff as well as prisoners. Warden Finch Archer at McNeil Island (already unhappy at what he saw as unwarranted meddling in his affairs by bureaucrats located thousands of miles away in Washington, D.C.) was furious when informed that the FBI had sent an agent disguised as an inmate to work undercover without his knowledge. It didn’t help that the agent had discovered that the warden’s trusted male secretary was the leader of a group of employees who, for payoffs, dealt drugs to and mailed letters for inmates and did other favors. Warden Archer was also criticized for some of his management techniques, such as administering physical beatings to inmates and handcuffing prisoners to the bars of their cells and then forcing castor oil down their throats.64
A series of articles in the New York Times in March 1929 exposed the undercover operation, called “Snoopervision.” The publicity produced angry reactions from the three wardens and from new Bureau of Prisons Director Sanford Bates, who learned only through the Times series that the information gleaned by the agents had not been forwarded to his office. In the decades to come, the relationship between the FBI and the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) would be continually strained by similar FBI practices. FBI agents, investigating law violations on the grounds of federal prisons, would also collect information about management practices (which, in the agents’ opinions, contributed to killings, riots, and escapes) and forward this information directly to J. Edgar Hoover, who referred it to various attorneys general without the knowledge of BOP administrators. Bates and his successors learned of these reports only in instances in which the attorney gen
eral’s office asked for their response to criticisms of prison policies, practices, and personnel.
During the early 1930s, events occurred that highlighted staff corruption and incompetence at all three federal prisons. Allegations that employee collusion with certain prisoners was rampant at the Atlanta Penitentiary prompted Director Bates to send Assistant Director James Bennett, this time accompanied by an FBI agent, to the prison in June 1931 to conduct an investigation. Bennett reported “incontrovertable [sic] evidence that some of the inmates have been shaken down for as much as $300 or $400” for favors “such as assignments to preferred jobs, transfers to prison camps and assignment to cells with friends.”65 For example, an attorney who represented a former warden, and later a guard accused of rape, was permitted to take two federal law violators out to the prison after they were sentenced but before they were committed, to demonstrate his cordial relations with the captain and other employees. Impressed, each of the men gave the attorney $500 to use his influence to assure them of favorable job assignments. When they did not like the first jobs they were given, they complained to the attorney and the next day were moved to new work assignments. Bennett’s investigation further revealed that the wife of one of these influential inmates stayed at the home of a guard when she came to Atlanta to visit her husband.66
