Kindle Edition
Amazon
Category:
Action/Thriller
Publisher: Strategic Media Books
ISBN-10: 10:1939521491
Type: Non-Fiction
Pages: 150
Copyright: February 1, 2016
ISBN-13: 13:9781939521491
Price: $10.99 (eBook)
The 1930’s produced some of the most violent crimes known in the history of the United States. Fed by need and greed during the era of Prohibition, some of the notorious criminals included women, one of which became a legend in her own right for establishing the feared persona of her husband—Machine Gun Kelly. Her name: Kathryn.
Kathryn Kelly: The Moll Behind Machine Gun Kelly is a biography of the woman who made a career of crime. With a lust for danger, she masterminded the crimes that took her and her husband, and others who included her own mother and step-father, on a spree across Tennessee, Oklahoma, and Texas. Starting with smaller crimes that included bootlegging, smuggling liquor onto an Oklahoma Indian reservation, and robbery, the seriousness of their criminal activity escalated into kidnapping and extortion. Some believed, including FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, that the two were somehow connected in the Lindberg kidnapping. When Kathryn and her husband were finally captured, she remained unrepentant, smiling and primping for the cameras, and writing threatening letters to the judge assigned to the case as well as her victims. Convicted in 1933, Kathryn served twenty-five years of her life at FPC Alderson, West Virginia, when in 1958 she was finally released into obscurity.
Excerpt
(Charles) Urschel’s statement to the FBI was comprehensive. In addition to the things he remembered once they arrived at the location where he was held, he remembered things en route, such as the car passing through oil fields about an hour after his abduction—possibly a small field or the end of a large one. He could smell the gas and hear the oil pumps working. He remembered driving through two gates, and then stopping so the license plate from the Chevrolet sedan could be transferred to a larger car, possibly a seven-passenger Cadillac or Buick. Urschel stated that about 9 or 10 a.m. it rained and the road became slippery, so much so that one of the men had to get out and push the car.
When they arrived at their destination, Urschel asked for the time. It was 2:30 p.m. They remained in what Urschel assumed was some sort of garage until dark when he was taken outside, through a narrow gate and along a boardwalk. He was then led into a house and into a room with two beds. He heard the voices of a man and woman in an adjoining room, but they soon left. He ate at a small table and heard barnyard animals outside.
The next day, he was taken in an automobile by the two men to another house about 15 minutes driving distance. At this house—a crude shack—he was told to lie on some blankets in a corner of the room. His observations included among other things a banging screen door, three small rooms and their dimensions, two small porches, the direction of the bare floorboards, a potbellied wood cook stove, a blue high chair, an old-fashioned organ, a hole in the door where a knob had once been, a missing front window pane filled with a piece of cardboard, and the shack itself, “infested,” as he put it, “with rats.”
He also heard the voices of a man and woman. Besides the two men who kidnapped him, Urschel stated that he was also guarded by an old man and a younger man. Later, a chain was attached to his handcuffs which allowed him to move about to some extent. He observed dogs, chickens, cows, a mule, and hogs around the place and was told by one of the guards that they had four milk cows. Having grown up on a farm, it was easy for him to identify the animals. Also, he had determined that a plane would always pass over at approximately 9:45 in the morning and then again at 5:45 in the evening. However, on Sunday, July 30, when it rained very hard, the morning plane did not pass.
A review of all airplane schedules within a radius of 600 miles of Oklahoma City was made, and the records of the meteorologist of the United States Weather Bureau of Dallas, Texas, were consulted. It was determined that a plane normally leaving Fort Worth at 11:45 a.m. had been detained by a storm on Sunday, July 30, and subsequently had taken a northerly course to avoid the storm.
With air travel being relatively rare back then, it didn’t take long for the agents to figure that Paradise was on the flight path between Fort Worth and Amarillo. Also, the records of the meteorologist indicated that Paradise and vicinity had an extremely dry season, causing the corn to burn in June; and that the first real rain since May 20 in that vicinity was on July 30.
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