Memphis-born George "Machine Gun" Kelly (born George Kelly Barnes) was
unlike most of his contemporary "celebrity" gangsters in that he didn't
come from a poverty-stricken background--his father was a well-to-do
insurance company executive and George was raised in very comfortable
circumstances. Kelly graduated high school and actually attended
college (Mississippi A&M, studying agriculture). His academic career
was a bust, however, as his grades were poor and he was constantly
receiving demerits for getting into trouble, so he left after four
months. He married and fathered two children, but his inability to keep
a job doomed the marriage and his wife eventually left him and took the
kids with her.
Kelly then hooked up with a small-time bootlegger in Memphis, and for
the first time in his life, he began to make some real money. However,
after several arrests, he left Memphis with a new girlfriend and a new
name, George Kelly (he dropped the name "Barnes" because he despised
his father), and headed west. He continued his bootlegging career, but
in 1928 got caught smuggling liquor onto an Indian reservation--a
federal crime, although the hapless Kelly apparently didn't know
it--and was sentenced to three years in Leavenworth Federal
Penitentiary. He got out after a year, but his luck didn't hold out. He
was arrested in New Mexico on bootlegging charges and sent to state
prison there. Upon his release, he went to Oklahoma City and hooked up
with a small-time gangster and bootlegger named Steve Anderson. He fell
for Anderson's girlfriend, a convicted robber and ex-prostitute named
Kathryn Thorne who was suspected by local police of murdering her last
husband. She left Anderson for Kelly and they married in 1930.
It was Kathryn who brought out Kelly's "talents" as a big-time
criminal; up to that time he had been a pretty small-time bootlegger.
She was determined to make her husband "Public Enemy #1", more famous
than John Dillinger,
Pretty Boy Floyd or any of the other
notorious gangsters of the era. She bought him a Thompson submachine
gun and had him constantly practice with it (which didn't do much good,
as he didn't like the loud noise it made when fired and he was never
much of a marksman). However, Kathryn would take his spent shells from
target practice and pass them around to her underworld friends as
"souvenirs" from the many robberies she claimed her husband had
committed. Her marketing campaign began to pay off, and soon "Machine
Gun Kelly" gained a reputation (completely unjustified) as a tough,
cold and hardened bank robber. In order to please his domineering wife,
the intimidated Kelly participated in the robberies of several
small-town banks across Texas and Mississippi. His gang would burst in
waving their machine guns, while Kelly (whom many witnesses described
as "looking terrified") cleaned out the registers. Even the FBI fell
for Kathryn's publicity campaign, putting out flyers describing Kelly
as an "expert machine gunner". Not satisfied with robbing small-town
banks, Kathryn came up with a scheme to get them some "real"
money--they would kidnap wealthy Oklahoma businessman Charles Urschel.
Kelly and two accomplices broke into the Urschel mansion where the
millionaire was playing cards with friends. True to form, Kelly's
planning for the operation left much to be desired--he didn't know what
Urschel looked like and had no idea which, if any, of the card players
was him, so he and his gang wound up taking all of the men. When they
later positively identified Urschel they let the other men go, sending
along with them a demand for a $200,000 ransom. The ransom was
eventually paid and Urschel was released unharmed. However, he had
deliberately left his fingerprints all over the house where he was
being kept, and even though he had been blindfolded he was able to pay
enough attention to his surroundings (noises, smells, etc.) so that the
FBI eventually determined where he had been held. They raided the house
and arrested one of the kidnappers, who identified Kelly and the rest
of the gang. Kelly and his wife were on the run, traveling around the
Midwest and spending their share of the ransom money (not knowing that
the serial numbers of the bills had been recorded and were being traced
whenever they turned up). They eventually went back to Memphis, where
they holed up in a rooming house. It didn't take the feds long to find
out where they were, and on the night of 9/26/33, FBI agents
and Memphis police raided the building. Kelly was trapped in a
stairwell by cops and FBI agents aiming machine guns at him, and
shouted the famous words, "Don't shoot, G-men! Don't shoot!" He and
Kathryn were quickly arrested and flown back to Oklahoma to stand trial
for the Urschel kidnapping. They were found guilty and sentenced to
life imprisonment. Kelly was sent to Leavenworth, where he bragged to
reporters that he would soon break out. That got him transferred to the
infamous--and much harder to break out of--Alcatraz Prison in San
Francisco Bay, being one of the first prisoners to be housed there.
Away from his wife's influence, Kelly became a model prisoner, popular
with guards and inmates alike. He was transferred back to Leavenworth
in 1951, and on 7/18/54, died there of a heart attack.
