Gangster boss’s plan to kidnap American billionaires

USAThe game at the mansion of Charles Urschel, Oklahoma’s richest billionaire, was interrupted when two masked men with guns appeared on the night of July 22, 1933.

Two men armed with machine guns and pistols with silenced barrels pointed directly at them, loudly telling them to lie down. Urschel and his friend Walter Jarrett were tied up and gagged, then pushed into the back of the Chevrolet. The car carrying the two hostages left the mansion in the dark.

After FBI agents organized an investigation, Jarrett was suddenly released to the mansion at 1 a.m. the next day. According to Jarrett, the kidnappers left the scene on a dirt road parallel to Highway 23 to the northeast. They took their IDs, $50 in their wallets, and dropped Jarrett at the intersection. The car carrying the billionaire continued to move south.

On July 26, 1933, J.G. Catlett, a close friend of Urschel’s, received a package containing many letters. In the first letter, Urschel asks Catlett to mediate the ransom of the hostages. The second, Urschel wrote to his wife, asked Catlett to go to Oklahoma City immediately. The third letter was addressed to Mr. E. E. Kirkpatrick requesting the immediate transfer of $200,000, $20 in seven days, but without marking or recording the serial number.

Two days later, an additional letter was sent to Kirkpatrick instructing how to deliver the money. The letter asks Kirkpatrick to put $200,000 in a light-colored leather bag and buy a train ticket to Kansas City on the train that departs at 10:10 p.m. Getting on the train in the last car, he looked on his right hand side and when he saw the first fire, threw the bag of money across the tracks immediately.

In the event that this was not possible, upon entering Kansas City, Kirkpatrick had to go to the hotel and register a room under the name of E. E. Kincaid and wait for instructions. Everything had to be done on July 29, 1933, and the information had to be kept secret, otherwise Urschel’s life would be difficult to preserve.

The FBI’s primary concern at the time was focused on the safety of the victims, so verifying the origin of the letters was less focused.

Immediately, Catlett decided to accompany Kirkpatrick to Kansas and was assigned to keep a leather bag containing $200,000 in cash that had been serialized. The other bag was disguised, containing an old magazine, handed over to Kirkpatrick to keep. The overnight journey to Kansas City was heavily guarded by plainclothes FBI agents, but there were no fires on the way.

According to the instructions, the two men went to the hotel to check in under the name E. E. Kincaid and received a message that someone named C. H. Moore would contact them later. At about 5:30 p.m. on July 30, 1933, Kirkpatrick received a phone call asking him to leave the hotel, go to the LaSalle Hotel to the west by himself, and secretly hand over the money to the unknown man. The recipient of the money quickly lost interest in the crowd to the surprise of the agents.

At 11:30 p.m. on July 31, 1933, Urschel was released home exhausted after 9 days of detention. His first testimony coincided with Jarrett’s. The car moved south for about 90 minutes when it stopped where he smelled gasoline. The second stop may be the warehouse, the kidnappers transferred Urschel to a 7-seater car, forced to lie in the back compartment. After a long journey, he was taken to two houses one after another. In the second house, he was handcuffed and gagged.

The next day, the kidnapper returned to change the chain so that Urschel could walk around the room. They interrogated the billionaire for information, learned the name of his close friend John G. Catlett, and forced him to write letters.

While in custody, Urschel heard from his kidnappers about robbery of several banks. He didn’t know where he was, but every day from about 9:45 a.m. to 5:45 p.m., he could clearly hear the sound of airplane engines in the sky. At 2 p.m. on July 31, 1933, one of the kidnappers returned and said they would release him in Norman City, Oklahoma, and gave him $10.

The scale of the investigation was expanded. The mastermind of the kidnapping was identified as husband and wife George Kelly and Kathryn Kelly. The two have many criminal records, in which George Kelly, nicknamed “Machine Gun” Kelly, served a sentence in New Mexico State Prison, known as a notorious gangster at that time specializing in smuggling and robbing banks.

The details of the house where Mr. Urschel heard the sound of plane engines in the sky were focused by the FBI. All farms within a radius of more than 960 kilometers around Oklahoma City are zoned. American Airways confirmed that there are daily flights departing from Fort Worth to Amarillo between 9:15 a.m. and 3:30 p.m., corresponding to the time Urschel hears the engines daily. The Paradise, Texas, area with many farms and located about 10 minutes from the runway is recorded as a possible detention place.

Coincidentally, the area has a farm named after Kathryn Kelly’s mother. Moreover, the witness said that he had seen Kelly and his wife regularly appear during the time of Urschel’s disappearance.

Immediately, the FBI organized a raid on Kathryn’s mother’s home on August 12, 1933. The first person arrested was Harvey Bailey, a dangerous criminal who escaped from a Kansas state prison while serving a 50-year prison sentence. The other three arrested were Robert Shannon, his wife Ora Shannon, and his son Armon Shannon.

Searching Bailey’s hiding place, authorities recovered a machine gun and two pistols, as well as $1,100, including $700 with a serial number that matched Urschel’s ransom.

From here, the Shannons home was identified as the first place to be detained. Armon Shannons’ home, a 15-minute drive away, was the second scene of detention. The voices of the Shannons’ father and son were confirmed to have been watching over him during the absence of the kidnappers.

The group pleaded guilty, pointing to the two masterminds, George Kelly and Albert Bates. Bates was arrested shortly afterwards with evidence of $660 with a serial number matching the ransom. Kelly and his wife were in hiding, so they were issued a special arrest warrant by the FBI.

On October 7, 1933, Harvey Bailey, Albert Bates, Robert Shannon and Ora Shannon were sentenced to life imprisonment, and Armon Shannon was sentenced to 10 years of probation.

The fierce pursuit of the whereabouts of the Kelly couple was urgently carried out by FBI agents. During the early morning raid on September 26, 1933, the couple were arrested.

On October 12, 1933, George and Kathryn Kelly were found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. Authorities seized the evidence, and arrested the suspects who helped the Kelly couple escape and consumed the rest of the money.

The case was closed with 21 convicted offenders, whose sentences included six life sentences and other sentences, totaling more than 58 years.