George Kelly Barnes (July 17, 1900 – July 18, 1954), better known by his pseudonym "Machine Gun Kelly", was an American gangster from Memphis, Tennessee, active during the Prohibition era. His nickname came from his favorite weapon, a Thompson submachine gun. He is best known for the kidnapping of oil tycoon and businessman Charles F. Urschel in July 1933, from which he and his gang collected a $200,000 ransom. Urschel had collected and left considerable evidence that assisted the subsequent FBI investigation, which eventually led to Kelly's arrest in Memphis on September 26, 1933. His crimes also included bootlegging and armed robbery.
Early life
Kelly's first sign of trouble came when he enrolled in 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. It was during this time that Kelly met a young woman by the name of Geneva Ramsey. Kelly quickly fell in love with Geneva and made an abrupt decision to quit school and marry.
Career
During the Prohibition era of the 1920s and 1930s, Kelly worked as a bootlegger for himself as well as a colleague. After a short time, and several run-ins with the local Memphis police, he decided to leave town and head west with his girlfriend. To protect his family and to 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, in 1928, for smuggling liquor onto a Native American Reservation, and sentenced to three years at Leavenworth Penitentiary, Kansas, beginning February 11, 1928. He was reportedly a model inmate and was released early. Shortly thereafter, Kelly married Kathryn Thorne, an experienced criminal who purchased Kelly's first machine gun and insisted—despite his lack of interest in weapons—that he perform target practice in the countryside. She also went to great lengths to familiarize his name within underground crime circles.
According to Persons in Hiding, a 1938 book by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, Kelly worked with Kathryn and Eddie Doll in the kidnapping of a wealthy manufacturer in South Bend, Indiana, for a $50,000 ransom. Similar claims were made in several 1937 American Magazine articles co-authored by Hoover. While Hoover chose not to name the victim in either his book or magazine articles, local newspaper stories about Hoover's claims assumed that he was referring to the January 26, 1932, abduction of Howard Arthur Woolverton. Woolverton was released unharmed after less than 24 hours in captivity, and the crime was essentially forgotten in the following decades, but his kidnapping was reported widely at the time and proved to be historic, characterized by contemporary reporting as a turning point in America’s growing kidnapping scourge. The New York Daily News called his abduction "spectacular", asserted that "for brazen audacity (it) has no parallel", and suggested that such crimes "represent a challenge to organized society". Woolverton's kidnapping revived consideration of the Lindbergh Law in Congress and spawned several nationally distributed newspaper projects that sought to take the full measure of the growing crime wave, and which described kidnapping as a threat to every American. Completion of these projects (including a 16-part series in the Daily News), were ready for publication within days of the March 1, 1932, kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh Jr., meaning that the infant's abduction was presented not as a single crime but as part of a growing national problem.
Kelly's last criminal activity was another history-making abduction – the July 1933 kidnapping of wealthy Oklahoma City resident Charles F. Urschel and his friend Walter R. Jarrett – which would prove to be Kelly's undoing. The Kellys demanded a ransom of $200,000 ($ million today), and held Urschel at the farm of Kathryn's mother and step-father. Urschel, having been blindfolded, made note of evidence of his experience, including remembering background sounds, counting footsteps and leaving fingerprints on surfaces in reach. This proved invaluable for the FBI in its investigation, as agents concluded that Urschel had been held in Paradise, Texas, based on sounds that Urschel remembered hearing while he was being held hostage.