"Machine Gun" Kelley

The plaque tells the crime; the case turned on a victim's memory. Charles Urschel, kidnapped from Oklahoma City in July 1933, counted footsteps, noted background sounds and left fingerprints on what he could reach while blindfolded. Wikipedia says the FBI concluded from the sounds he recalled that he had been held in Paradise, Texas. Kelley was arrested in Memphis on September 26, 1933, and he and Kathryn received life sentences. He was buried in the family plot of her stepfather, with a small headstone reading George B. Kelley 1954, the spelling that the marker also uses.

What the plaque says

"Machine Gun" Kelley During the Prohibition Era, organized crime increased. Big-name gangsters like Al Capone ruled the streets while public enemies such as Bonnie and Clyde swept across the country. One of the most infamous criminals of this time was George Francis Barnes Jr., also known as George B. "Machine Gun" Kelley. Born on July 17, 1900, in Chicago, Barnes grew up in Memphis. He briefly held a job and family, but following divorce and the loss of his job, he fell into bootlegging. He built up a nasty reputation, being jailed numerous times, and headed westward by the late 1920s. In 1930, he met the widow Kathryn Thorne. They eventually married, and joined together to go on crime sprees of higher and higher magnitudes, robbing banks across the south and midwest. Kathryn was known to be a good shot with various firearms, and eventually bought a Thompson machine gun for her husband, earning him his nickname. George and Kathryn robbed banks for years, gaining large amounts of money and notoriety. On July 22, 1933, the couple set out to kidnap Charles Urschel, an oil baron in Oklahoma City. They held him at the farm house of Kathryn's stepfather Robert "Boss" Shannon in Wise County until the ransom of $200,000 was paid. However, in August the couple was caught and arrested. During one of the first court cases under the new Lindbergh law on kidnapping, George, Kathryn, and much of the Shannon family were given life sentences in prison, although boss was granted clemency after 11 years. George died of heart disease in Leavenworth Prison on July 18, 1954. George Barnes was buried here by Boss Sannon as nobody from George's immediate family claimed the body. (2015)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Wise County Courthouse — 14 mi
  J. Riely Gordon's granite Romanesque courthouse of 1895-96 in Decatur, built after fire destroyed the Second Empire courthouse and set off a fight over the county seat.
• Chandor Gardens — 22 mi
  A portrait painter's English-and-Chinese garden rooms, blasted and planted from a bare 3.5-acre hillside in Weatherford beginning in 1936, abandoned after 1978 and reopened by the city in 2002.
• Lake Mineral Wells State Park and Trailway — 26 mi
  A Cross Timbers park on the old Camp Wolters grounds, built around a 1922 water-supply lake for a spa town, with Penitentiary Hollow's rock climbing and a 20-mile trailway.
• Fort Richardson State Park and Historic Site — 28 mi
  The northernmost post of the Texas frontier line, outside Jacksboro, where a stone hospital and six other buildings stand from 1867 and a later Guard unit became the Lost Battalion.

More markers nearby

• Cottondale — steps away
• Site of Old Town Paradise — 5.4 mi
• Keeter Cemetery — 5.8 mi
• Dr. M. W. Matthews — 6.1 mi