Public Enemies_ America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI - Bryan Burrough [47]
All that week, as posses fanned out across Iowa in search of Bonnie and Clyde, reporters and photographers swarmed the streets around the Urschel mansion in Oklahoma City. The kidnapping was the biggest national crime story since the Lindbergh case a year before, capturing the public’s attention in a way William Hamm’s brief weekend detention had not. The mansion, the millions, the interruption of a simple bridge game—it was irresistible to the nation’s press.
On Wednesday morning, July 26, two days after Bonnie and Clyde escaped from Dexfield Park, a Tulsa oilman named John Catlett was standing in the bathroom of his home, shaving. One of his servants walked into the adjoining bedroom with a manila envelope; a Western Union messenger had brought it to the front door. “Put it down,” Catlett said, and continued shaving. When he was finished, Catlett rinsed his face, walked over to the envelope, and opened it. Out tumbled three of Charles Urschel’s business cards. Inside Catlett found three typewritten letters. One was from Urschel, asking him to take the other two to his wife. Catlett jammed the letters into his coat pocket, trotted to his car, and drove to Oklahoma City.
Berenice Urschel cried as she read her husband’s letters. A typewritten note from the kidnappers demanded a ransom of $200,000 for Urschel’s return. The letter included the text of a bogus classified advertisement for the sale of a ranch that was to be placed in the Daily Oklahoman each day for a week. When the kidnappers saw the ad, they would make contact once more. One of Urschel’s friends, a tall, sinewy oilman named E. E. Kirkpatrick, placed the ad that night.
The next day, a letter from the kidnappers arrived at the newspaper. It instructed Kirkpatrick to take the 10:10 P.M. train to Kansas City that Saturday night. At some point along the way, he would see a signal fire. When a second fire came into view, he was to toss a Gladstone bag containing the ransom money from the train. If anything went wrong, he was to proceed to the Muehlebach Hotel in Kansas City to await further instructions.p
Reading the letter in her drawing room, Mrs. Urschel paused as she considered the ransom demand: $200,000. “That’s a lot of money,” an FBI man said. “Yes, but we’ll have to spend it,” she replied. “Charlie’s life is at stake. There’s no other way.”
As the ransom negotiations advanced, Ed Weatherford, the Fort Worth detective, continued pestering the FBI’s Dallas office to investigate the Kellys. Had the Dallas agents made anything more than nominal efforts to do so, they might have broken the case. As it was, they came close. On July 24, two days after the kidnapping, Weatherford and Dallas agent Dwight McCormack arranged for a tap on Kathryn’s phone at East Mulkey Street.q The tap was a low priority, however: it was manned not by an FBI agent but by a Southwestern Bell supervisor, who was told to call if she heard anything suspicious.
Weatherford, meanwhile, watched the house. Kathryn had disappeared. He was certain she was at the Shannon Ranch. Weatherford begged the Dallas office to tap the ranch’s phone, but it was a party line, and agents said it was unlikely the Kellys would discuss anything incriminating on it. Another opportunity was missed when the FBI failed to secure a photo of Kelly. The Fort Worth police had a single image of Kelly, taken voluntarily in December 1930, and agents asked for it in order to show Mrs. Urschel. Had she identified Kelly’s photo, the case might have come to a swift conclusion. But the photo had been lost.
“[Weatherford] states that the last time he saw the photograph it was