Public Enemies_ America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI - Bryan Burrough [52]
Urschel closed his eyes, then shook his head. “No,” he said. “I’m sure I didn’t.”
Jones smiled. “For a man who was blindfolded and chained,” he said, “I’d say you saw one helluva lot.”15
Jones’s debriefing of Charles Urschel became famous within the Bureau, and for years afterward, while rarely crediting Jones by name, Hoover cited his work as a shining example of the FBI’s “scientific” approach to crime solving. In fact, as canny as Jones’s deductions proved, they proved unnecessary. As Jones launched a furious effort to find a North Texas farm that matched Urschel’s description, the Fort Worth detective, Ed Weatherford, had persuaded agents in Dallas that the Kellys were the kidnappers.
The morning after Urschel’s release, Weatherford coaxed a Dallas agent named Kelly Deaderick out to the town of Paradise, where they interviewed the woman who ran the town switchboard.s She reported that Kathryn Kelly, whom she knew well, had been at the Shannon Ranch with her mother all week. Everyone in town was suspicious of the Kellys and their flashy cars and the twenty-dollar bills they threw around like confetti, she said. The man at the telegraph office said much the same thing. He said Kathryn boasted that her husband was a bank robber.
Agent Deaderick returned to Dallas convinced they were onto something. He called and briefed Gus Jones. But Jones continued to ignore the Kellys; he had secured a plane from Phillips Petroleum and was busy flying agents across North Texas, trying to find the farm Urschel described. Despite all Weatherford had learned, an FBI case summary prepared August 5 made no mention of the Kellys. The Dallas office’s frustration peaked two days later when its number two, Dwight McCormack, wrote a report summarizing the evidence. In place of a title for his memo, McCormack put an argument: “Investigation of activities of George Kelly and gang at Fort Worth and Paradise, Texas, indicates strong possibility they were involved in Urschel kidnapping.”
Still, Jones didn’t listen. He continued peppering the Dallas office with requests for airline schedules and weather reports all across Oklahoma and North Texas. FBI legend, and Jones’s own version of events, holds that it was only after a rigorous analysis of this data that the Paradise area was identified as the kidnappers’ probable hideout. In fact, what was happening was something more subtle: each time Jones asked for data, the Dallas office checked conditions at Paradise and pointed out how they fit Urschel’s descriptions. The clincher came late on Wednesday, August 9, when Dallas forwarded data on rain patterns at Paradise. They fit Urschel’s memory exactly.
At last, Jones saw the light and ordered the Dallas office to reconnoiter the Shannon Ranch. Early the next morning, Thursday, August 10, Ed Weatherford drove an FBI agent named Ed Dowd to the town of Decatur, five miles from Paradise, where they interviewed an officer at Boss Shannon’s bank. Dowd became convinced of the officer’s honesty and decided to take a risk. He explained that Shannon might be mixed up in the Urschel kidnapping. The bank man called in his credit investigator, and Dowd laid out a map Urschel had drawn of a small shack. The investigator said he knew just such a shack on Shannon’s property.
A plan was devised. The bank officer drew up a meaningless document for Shannon to sign. The credit investigator said he would take Dowd to the ranch and ask Shannon to sign the document; Dowd could masquerade as a bank examiner. Dowd slid into the man’s Ford coupe and was taken along bumpy dirt roads to the Shannon Ranch, where they found Boss Shannon’s son Armon standing outside his shack. While the credit investigator talked with Armon, Dowd asked for a drink of water. Armon helped him draw it from the well. Dowd noticed that the well’s pulley squeaked. The water had a mineral taste.