Alcatraz_ A Definitive History of the Penitentiary Years - Michael Esslinger [109]
Machine Gun Kelly
George “Machine Gun” Kelly
Like Al Capone, George “Machine Gun” Kelly has endured as one of the most famous gangsters of the prohibition era. “Machine Gun” was born George Kelly Barnes on July 18, 1895, to a wealthy family living in Memphis, Tennessee. His early years as a child were uneventful and his family raised him in a traditional household. The first sign of trouble began when he enrolled at Mississippi State University in 1917 to study agriculture and engineering. From the beginning, Kelly was considered a poor student. He was constantly in trouble with the faculty and spent much of his academic career attempting to work off demerits earned for troublesome behavior.
It was during this time that Kelly met Geneva Ramsey, the daughter of a contractor for whom he worked part-time. Kelly quickly fell in love with Geneva and made an abrupt decision to quit school and marry. The couple had two children and in an effort to make ends meet, Kelly worked in various construction camps around the Memphis area. He worked long hours with little compensation for his time. Kelly and Geneva struggled financially as the construction work was failing to provide enough money to support their family. Distressed and broke, the strain proved to be overwhelming and Kelly left his job to seek other ways to make ends meet. At nineteen years of age, he found himself without steady work and separated from his wife. Kelly then hooked up with a smalltime gangster and started a new venture as a bootlegger. He seemed to enjoy the financial rewards of his new trade, as well as the notoriety. But along with this new success came the difficulties of working in the underworld. After being arrested on several occasions for illegal trafficking, Kelly decided to leave Memphis with a new girlfriend and head west. It was during this period when he adopted the alias of George R. Kelly, to preserve the reputation of his upstanding family back home. Kelly’s luck varied, with hugely profitable scores alternating with several unfortunate mishaps. By 1927, Kelly had already started to earn a reputation in the underground world as a seasoned gangster, having weathered several arrests and various jail sentences. In 1928 he was caught smuggling liquor into an Indian Reservation and was sentenced to three years at Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary.
After serving another long sentence at the State Penitentiary in New Mexico in 1929, Kelly gravitated to Oklahoma City, where he hooked up with a smalltime bootlegger named Steve Anderson. Kelly soon fell for Anderson’s attractive mistress Kathryn Thorne, a seasoned criminal in her own right. Thorne came from a family of outlaws and had been arrested for various charges ranging from robbery to prostitution. She was twice divorced and her second husband had been a bootlegger, who was later found shot to death under suspicious circumstances. The official determination held that his death was a suicide, but many people (including one of the investigators) had long suspected that Kathryn was involved result from assorted threats she had been known to make against him. Kelly and Kathryn became inseparable, and in September of 1930, they married in Minneapolis.
Up until he began his relationship with Thorne, Kelly had been a relatively smalltime criminal. But Kathryn’s influence soon became obvious, as Kelly’s crime sprees would win him the prestigious status of “Public Enemy Number One.” Kathryn purchased a machine gun for Kelly and criminal lore is that she pressured her husband to practice. It was said that her purpose was premeditated