a n te

w
Machine
d Kelly
gun

By Rebecca Nash and Lana

 Trouble
Begins
 His first sign of trouble began
when he enrolled into Mississippi
State University to study agriculture
in 1917.
 He was considered a poor
student from the start.
 His highest grade was a C+
given to him for good physical
hygiene.
 He was almost always in
trouble with teachers, and spent
most of his time as a student
attempting to work off the demerits
he had earned.
 The Bootlegger
 During his time as a student, Kelly met a
young woman named Geneva Ramsey.
He quickly fell in love with her, and decided
to quit school and marry.
 They had two kids.
 To make financial ends meet, he
obtained a job as a cab driver in Memphis.
 He worked long hours with little reward
for his time.
 Kelly wasn’t able to pay the bills for his
family, so he left Geneva and their children.
 Around this time, he started to work for
a small time gangster as a bootlegger.
 He started to enjoy the rewards of his
new trade.
 A Seasoned

Gangster
After being arrested on several
occasions for illegal trafficking, Kelly decided
to leave Memphis along with a new girlfriend
and head west.
He took on the name George R. Kelly to
help preserve his families dignity back home.
 By 1927, Kelly had already started to
earn his reputation in the underground world
as a seasoned gangster.
 He had been through several arrests and
serving various jail sentences.
 In 1928 he was caught smuggling liquor
into an Indian Reservation and was
sentenced to three years at Leavenworth
Penitentiary.
 Kathryn



Thorne
Kelly served out another long-time sentence in the State
Penitentiary in New Mexico for a similar occurrence.
After his release, he gravitated towards Oklahoma City
Kathryn Thorne

where he hooked up with a small time bootlegger named Steve

Anderson.
 He soon fell in love with Anderson’s mistress, Kathryn
Thorne, a seasoned criminal of her own.
 She had come from a family of outlaws.
 Kathryn had been charged for almost everything.
 She was twice divorced and her second husband had been
a bootlegger who had later been found shot to death under
suspicious circumstances.
 The official determination of death was suicide, but many
people (including one of the investigators) had long suspected
that Kathryn was involved.
 Kelly and Kathryn became inseparable and married in
Minneapolis in September of 1930.
 The Machine

Gun
Up until his relationship with Thorne,
Kelly had been a relatively small time
criminal.
 Kathryn purchased a machine gun for
Kelly and pressured her husband to
practice.
 She was a master at marketing her
husband to the underground circles and
public.
 She was known to take the spent gun
cartridges and pass them around to
acquaintances at many of the underground
drinking clubs, introducing them as
souvenirs from her husband "Machine Gun"
Kelly.
 The Kidnap
 In July of 1933, Kathryn and Kelly plotted a scheme to
kidnap wealthy oil tycoon & businessman Charles Urschel.
Kelly, carrying his trademark Tommy Gun, and two other men
carrying pistols entered the Urschel's mansion in Oklahoma City.
 The Urschels were playing a game of bridge with friends
when Kelly stormed in threatening to "blow everyone's head off.“
 Their new hostages were uncooperative and he was unable
to tell which man was Urschel.
 The two hostiges were forced into a sedan, covered with a
tarp and searched for identification.
 Once they found an ID on Urschel's friend, a man by the
name of Walter Jarret, they robbed him of $51 and left him on the
side of a deserted road.
 Urschel was taken into hiding on a rural ranch in Texas and
the Kelly Gang made demands for a $200,000 ransom.
 Charles

Urschel
The Urschel's family friend E.E. Kirkpatrick made
drop arrangements and delivered the ransom in
denominations of $20 bills.
 The money was delivered near the LaSalle Hotel in
Kansas City on July 30th, ending the eight-day ordeal.
 The following day Urschel was released near
Norman, Oklahoma, and casually walked into a restaurant
to call for a cab.
 Urschel was sharp, and though blindfolded throughout
the ordeal, made sure that his fingerprints were spread
everywhere, counted his footsteps to various areas when
blind folded, and audible sounds of his surroundings were
mentally cataloged, all of which would later become useful
in the FBI's investigation.
 The Nationwide

Search
After splitting the ransom money with their
accomplices, Kathryn and "Machine Gun"
started state hopping trying to stay two steps
ahead of law officials.
 From the several clues that Urschel was
able to provide, the FBI raided the ranch and
made an arrest of one of the other conspirators.
 The bills that had been used for payment in
the ransom, had traceable serial records and
the Center Bureau of Investigation (now the
FBI) started a nationwide search for whom they
now suspected was George R. Kelly.
 Sentenced For

Life
George and Kathryn bounced around different states with
Chicago becoming their main hub.
 Both dyed their hair to conceal their identities and enjoyed a
lavish lifestyle.
 After several weeks in hiding, the couple finally made their
way back to Memphis to stay with longtime friend John Tichenor.
 On the morning of September 26, 1933, Memphis police,
along with FBI Agents, surrounded the Tichenor house and then
made a violent forced entry.
 Kelly was found badly hung over from the prior evening's
drinking binge (still in his pajamas) and Kathryn was still asleep.
 The couple was quickly flown to Oklahoma where they stood
trial and both received life sentences.
 They didn’t have much of a gang, but six of those who
helped them also received life sentences.
 AZ #117
 Kelly was transferred to Leavenworth in
Kansas, and Kathryn was transferred to a
federal prison in Cincinnati.
 Kelly bragged that he would escape,
break out his wife, and they would spend
Christmas together.
 It was decided that these threats should
be taken seriously, and in August of 1934,
Alcatraz
Kelly was transferred to Alcatraz.
 Two other members of his ‘gang’ were
transferred with him.
 They arrived on September 4th , 1934,
and became one of the first group of
prisoners.
 He became AZ #117.
 Kelly on
 Alcatraz
At Alcatraz, Kelly was constantly boasting
about robberies and murders he had never
committed.
 Although he had been a major point of
frustration to many inmates, Warden Johnson
considered him a model inmate.
 He took a job as an Alter Boy at the
prison chapel.
 He would become depressed when he
received mail from family members.
 Kelly wrote many letters to Urshel
begging that he would help plead his case.
 These letters were never responded to.
 July 18 ,
th

 George “Machine Gun”

Kelly was returned to
1958
Leavenworth in 1951.
 He died of a heart attack
on July 18, 1958.
 Ironically, it was his 59th
birthday.
 Kathryn was released from
prison in 1958.
 She took a job at a
hospital in Oklahoma as a
bookkeeper.