Machine Gun Kelly
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
George R. Kelley aka George "Machine Gun" Kelley Barnes (July 18, 1895 - July 18, 1954) was a notorious American gangster during the prohibition era. His crimes included bootlegging, armed robbery and kidnapping.George "Machine Gun" Kelly is probably considered one of the most famous "gangsters" from the prohibition era.
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Early life and education
"Machine Gun" was born George Kelly Barnes on July 18, 1895, to a wealthy family living in Memphis, Tennessee. Kelly's early years as a child were essentially uneventful and his family raised him in a traditional household.
His first sign of trouble began when he enrolled into Mississippi State University to study agriculture in 1917. From the beginning, Kelly was considered a poor student with his highest grade (a C plus) awarded for good physical hygiene. He was constantly in trouble with the faculty and spent much of his academic career attempting to work off the demerits he had earned; and then a life of crime.
[edit] Marriage
The couple married, had two children, but not wanting to rely on his family's money, struggled to make ends meet. His father was also not inclined to help George because of what had happened at Mississippi State, and his dislike of Geneva. Money strained the relationship, and the couple soon separated. This was during prohibition, and George found work with a bootlegger. and also a colleage.
[edit] Crime
After a short time, he had several run-ins with the local Memphis police, he decided to leave town and head west, with a new girlfriend.
To protect his family and escape law enforcement officers, he changed his name to George R. Kelly. He continued to commit smaller crimes and bootlegging. He was arrested in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for smuggling liquor onto an Indian Reservation in 1928, and sentenced for three years to Leavenworth Penitentiary, Kansas. Sent to Leavenworth on February 11, 1928, he was a model inmate and was released early.
His last crime activity proved disastrous when he kidnapped a wealthy Oklahoma City resident, Charles F. Urschel and his friend Walter R. Jarrett. Urschel, having been blindfolded, made sure to foil his kidnappers by noting all possible evidence of his experience such as carefully noting background sounds, counting footsteps and leaving fingerprints on every surface in reach. This in turn proved invaluable for the FBI in their investigation.
An investigation conducted at Memphis disclosed that, after 56 days on the lam, the Kellys were staying at the residence of J.C. Tichenor. Special Agents from Birmingham, Alabama, were immediately dispatched to Memphis, where, in the early morning hours of September 26, 1933, a raid was conducted. George and Kathryn Kelly were taken into custody by FBI Agents and Memphis police. Caught without a weapon, George Kelly supposedly cried, "Don't shoot, G-Men! Don't shoot, G-Men!" as he surrendered to FBI Agents. The term, which had applied to all federal investigators, meaning simply 'Government Men' became synonymous with FBI Agents. Reports of the raid, however, indicate that George Kelly came to the door, dropped his pistol and said, "I've been waiting for you all night." Recent research revealed a 1933 newspaper interview with one of the federal agents at the arrest. He commented that, upon their arrest, Kathryn Kelly put her arms around George and said, "These G-men will never leave us alone." Thus, it was actually Kathryn Kelly who coined the term. However, the FBI press machine generated the G-Man story to build its own reputation.
On October 12, 1933, George and Kathryn Kelly were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. Kathryn Kelly and her mother had all charges dropped and were released in 1958.
The kidnapping of Urschel and the two trials that resulted were historic in several ways: 1) they were the first, last and only federal criminal trials in the United States in which moving cameras were allowed to film; 2) the first kidnapping trials after the passage of the so-called Lindbergh Law, which made kidnapping a federal crime; 3) the first major case solved by J. Edgar Hoover's evolving and powerful FBI; and 4) the first crime in which defendants were transported by airplane. At the time it was the largest ransom ever paid in the United States. Most historians agree that it also marked the end of the Gangster Era in America.
[edit] Death
Kelly died of a heart attack on his 59th birthday in Leavenworth after spending most of his term of imprisonment on Alcatraz.
