CUFFS FOR THE KIMES BOYS

8/29/1926 - After a long week that has them honeymooning with their newly married wives in Arkansas, driving across Oklahoma, robbing two banks at the same time in the Sooner town of Covington, killing Deputy Sheriff Perry Chuculate at a roadblock near the town of Sallisaw, while also kidnapping the town's police chief, J.C. Woll, and a local farmer named Wesley Ross, the sibling criminal escapades of the Kimes Brother, George and Matt, come to an end in a hail of lawman lead at the home of a relative, Ben Pixley (the duo's mother's nephew).

Matt And His Wife, Bertha Opal (14)

George And His Wife, Flossie Fern (16)

Bred in poverty, the Arkansas natives' first known crime is rifling the candy counter of a little country store, and a taste for theft acquired, unwillingly to do the hard labor farming at the time takes, the youngsters begin stealing anything of value they can get their hands on, farm tools, guns, saddles, selling the booty, and then spending the cash received on themselves and family.  Moving up the criminal ladder (or down depending on your point of view), the brothers move on to stealing cars, cracking safes, and burglarizing businesses.  Garnering the attention of the authorities, the brothers are soon behind bars ... for awhile.  Freed after a short stint of incarceration, the boys soon put together a band of like-minded hooligans and begin daylight depredations of the regions financial institutions (and Matt escapes from jail for the first time).  Ready to join the ranks of Oklahoma killers like Bob Dalton, Bill Doolin, and Henry Starr, in July of 1926, George is twenty-two and Matt is twenty-one when they begin planning their two bank hit of Covington (selected for the banks being across the street from each other, its small population of about 4,000 souls, and that its town marshal, Herman Yost, never carries a gun).

Early Covington

On a warm summer Wednesday, six men (along with the Kimes Brothers, the criminal Brandon Brothers, Clyde and Roy, will also participate in the robbery), in a sedan and a blue Buick roadster rob Covington's two banks, the American State Bank and the Covington National Bank, of $9,033.38 in currency and coins ... one man stays with each car, one man covers the street, and three men plunder first one bank, then cross the dirt street and hit the other.  No weapons are pulled or pointed, and the only violence that takes place is when George Kimes kicks a confused elderly man in the rear end for not following directions.  Flight from town uncontested, the bandits split the proceeds of the job equally among themselves and then escape in two different directions ... the car with the Brandons heads for Joplin, Missouri, while the Kimes Brothers change rides, stealing a yellow Buick sedan, and head for their wives, 250 miles away in Van Buren, Arkansas.  A rough drive on back roads and gravel byways that will pass through the communities of Checotah, Webbers Falls, Sallisaw, and Ft. Smith before ending in Van Buren), Matt and George stop in Muskogee, Oklahoma at their aunt's and uncle's house, enjoying a hot meal, soothing baths, and a good night's sleep before filling the sedan up with gasoline the next morning ... and making the mistake that will soon get them caught. 

Yellow Buick Sedan

Paying for the gasoline they have bought to complete their journey, George will pull a roll of bills out of his pocket that will raise suspicions with the gas station attendant (Matt chastises his brother about the reckless display, but George is unconcerned as the twin bank robberies were the day before on the other side of the state).  Suspicions taken to the authorities, soon lawmen are looking for the sedan (bearing the license plate of a truck) in the region south of Muskogee.  Advised that trouble might be headed their way, Sallisaw Police Chief J. C. Woll sets up a roadblock on a hill four miles west of town that the outlaws will not see until they are right upon it ... a police car blocking the road with Woll and Deputy Sheriff Perry Levi Chuculate, supported by Deputy Sheriffs Bert Cotton and Dan Sharp, behind rocks, on either side of the road.  The plan to waylay the outlaws works perfectly with one huge exception ... the lawmen are horribly outgunned.  In the gun battle that takes place, Woll is buckshot wounded in the face and shoulder, Cotton is knocked unconscious by a round that grazes his temple, Sharp disengages and runs for help, and Chuculate is mortally wounded by a shot gun blast to the neck and a rifle slug that tears up his right lung (taken to the nearby St. John's Hospital in Fort Smith, he will die later that day at 5:50 in the afternoon ... buried on Sunday at the Sallisaw City Cemetery, the thirty-five-year-old lawman is survived by his wife, Ruby, two boys, Owen <13> and Odell <10>, a daughter, Opel <14>, both of his parents, three brothers, and two sisters).  Stolen sedan holed in the shootout (two wounds in the radiator and a flat tire), the Kimes boys take the police blocking vehicle, while kidnapping Woll and a passing farmer, Wesley Ross (to help with navigating the area), and flee into the Ozark Mountains.

Chuculate

Gravesite

State already buzzing looking for the Covington robbers, the intense ire of law enforcement grows even greater with the killing of Chuculate, and identification of the killers as the Kimes Brothers.  All wanting the Kimes arrest as a prize, shortly after the killing, six different posses are swarming the area ... two from Sallisaw, two from Van Buren, one from Fort Smith, and one organized by Creek County, Oklahoma.  Family members under observation (or outright arrest) and roads watched, it doesn't take long for the brothers to stumble into the trap being set.  Driving on back roads, but still headed towards their wives and family, the men abandon their captives about eight miles outside of Van Buren, then abandon the ride when it runs out of gas near the community of Chester and continue their journey on foot.  Shelter of family seemingly finally reached with their arrival at the home of Ben Pixley at 2:45 on Saturday morning, the weary brothers are instead confronted by three car loads of waiting lawmen.  Commanded to halt, the brothers ignore the order and run for the house as the posse, led by Sheriff A. D. Maxey, Lee Pollock (special agent for the Oklahoma Bankers Association), and A. B. Cooper (a representative of the William Burns Detective Agency in Oklahoma City), opens fire.  Downed into compliance, George is shot in both arms, while Matt is hit by buckshot in his right shoulder, along with pistol wounds to his left arm and shoulder (the wounds of both men will be tended to at the local jail by Dr. M. S. Dibrell).  Searched, the Covington money has gone missing, but the officers do confiscate from their captives six pistols, three automatic shotguns, and the rifle used in the Chuculate killing.

Van Buren, Arkansas - 1920s

Quickly put on trial for the killing of Chuculate, death penalty requested, both men are instead convicted of manslaughter (both men claim they were firing the rifle) ... George is sentenced to twenty-five years behind bars, while Matt receives a thirty-five year sentence.  Delivered to the Oklahoma State Penitentiary at McAlester by early October, it is the end of the brothers criminal partnership, but not of the Kimes boy's crimes.  Filing for a second trial, Matt is broken out of the Sallisaw jail in November of 1926 by parties unknown and soon joins two other recent escapees, Ray Terrill (a train and bank robbing graduate of the Central Park Gang of Tulsa, Oklahoma that produces the notorious Barker Brothers and Volney Davis) and Elmer Inman (a crook who will also be an associate of Herman Barker and Wibur Underhill), in a new series of crimes that will include another double bank job, more murders and shootouts with authorities, his capture at the Grand Canyon in June of 1927, another prison escape in 1945, a final bank robbery in Morton, Texas, and his death in a hospital on December 14, 1945, after being hit while crossing a road in North Little Rock, Arkansas ... by a poultry truck.  He is forty-years-old at the time of his passing.  Meanwhile, George serves his sentence, escapes from prison in 1948 (walking away from his trustee job tending to the prison's bloodhounds), is back in captivity by June of 1941, before eventually being granted a parole on May 28, 1957.  Criminal acts behind him, he works as a logger, vacuum cleaner salesman, and on a turkey ranch in Idaho and California until his death from cancer in 1970.  George is sixty-five-years-old at his leaving.

Ray Terrill

Still Making The News In 1927

Matt Kimes - Arizona Arrest Photo
  

REAPED IN EL PASO

8/19/1895 - On the dirty sawdust floor of an El Paso, Texas bar called the Acme Saloon, the murderous 42-year long life of gunfighter John Wesley Hardin comes to an abrupt end, compliments of another low-life shootist, 56-year-old outlaw turned lawman, John Henry Selman, Sr.

Hardin

One of the most notorious desperadoes to ever call Texas his home, in 1896 Hardin is trying to begin live anew in El Paso, after indulging in almost a decade of sudden violence after the American Civil War (Hardin tries to run away from his preacher father's farm and join the fighting, at the tender age of nine) that has the youth killing his first man, former slave Major "Maje" Holshousen, at the age of fifteen (only because the student he stabs in school over a supposed insult, Charles Sloter, survives an 1867 attack), sending a man to his doom for snoring too loudly in the hotel room next door, killing numerous ex-slaves, Indians, and Mexicans that cross his path (he does not keep track of the total, finding them all unworthy opponents), participating in the infamous Sutton-Taylor feud that costs thirty-five individuals their lives, and generally creating havoc throughout the state and its border regions (so much so, that when Hardin escapes justice in 1874, a mob takes its wrath out of members of Hardin's family, lynching his brother Joe, and cousins, Bud and Tom Dixon).  Hiding out from his myriad crimes, in 1877, the gunfighter is arrested on a train in Pensacola, Florida by Texas Rangers that beat him unconscious when he attempts to draw on them (his pistol, a cap-and-ball Colt .45 catches in the suspenders he is wearing).  Brought back to Texas in chains, Hardin is found guilty of 1874 murder of Brown County Sheriff Charles Webb and sentenced to serve twenty-five years at the state prison in Huntsville.  Finally settling down after multiple escape attempts, in prison he reads theological treatises, becomes superintendent of the prison's Sunday School, studies law, and writes an autobiography filled with tall tales in which he confesses to killing forty-two men.  Released in 1894, having served seventeen years of his sentence (he will receive a full pardon from Governor James Stephen "Big Jim" Hogg in 1896), Hardin passes the bar and obtains a license to practice law in the state, marries fifteen-year-old Callie Lewis in 1895 (they soon separate), and moves to the wild border town of El Paso.

Young Hardin

Hogg
 
In El Paso, Hardin learns a lesson many former convicts receive upon being released from prison ... the public has not forgotten his past crimes. Cases few and far between, the outlaw is soon drinking and gambling again (a habit that brought about many shootings of his youth), practicing his quick draw in front of a mirror, using his gun to take back monies he feels he has been cheated out of, handing out autographed playing cards he has shot holes in, and associating with many of the town's tarts.  One tart, Helen Beulah M'Rose will be the death of him.

El Paso - 1890s

The Acme Saloon - El Paso, Texas -
1892

The road John Henry Selman Sr. takes to El Paso also features excessive gun violence.  Born in Madison County, Arkansas in 1839, after his father dies in 1861, Selman joins the 22nd Texas Cavalry as a private to fight in the American Civil War, deserts after fifteen months, re-enlists in the Texas State Militia in 1864, and ends the conflict as a lieutenant in 1865.  Married and with children, he settles in New Mexico, and becomes a deputy sheriff under Shackelford County Sheriff John M. Larn ... but Larn is actually a crook who controls crime in the region, rustling cattle from his neighbors' ranches and gunning down anyone who gets in his way, assisted by his corrupt deputy.  Their game discovered in 1877 (arrested and shackled to the floor of the Albany, Texas jail floor in June of 1878, Larn will be gunned down by vigilantes irate that they can't take the rustling lawman outside for a lynching), Selman moves on to being the head of a gang of cut-throats known as "Selman's Scouts" that become involved in the territory's Lincoln County War (featuring the exploits of Billy the Kid).  Moving back to Texas, Selman is arrested by Texas Rangers, escapes from jail, hides out in Mexico (wife Edna Degrafenreid dead in 1879 giving birth to a stillborn baby, his four children are placed in the custody of his wife's niece), then when his name is somehow cleared of all charges against him, comes back to the United States and moves to El Paso in 1893, soon marrying Romula Granadine and becoming a town constable.  As a member of the town's law enforcement, trying to quiet down a drunken former Texas Ranger, he engages in a whorehouse gunfight with Sebastian Lamar "Bass" Outlaw in 1894 that sends the ex-lawman to Boot Hill (after he kills a former friend, Texas Ranger Joe McKidrict), and gets Selman wounded twice in the thigh.  Then John Wesley Hardin comes to town.

Selman 

Larn

Outlaw

Trouble between the pair of badmen takes place when Hardin engages in relationship with the widow M'rose, the wife of a former outlaw client (crossing the border from Mexico into the United States, Mr. M'rose is shot to death by El Paso Police Chief Jeff Milton and Deputy U.S. Marshal George Scarborough on the evening of 6/29/1895).  He is incensed when his "lady" is arrested by Selman's son, Constable John Selman, Jr. on charges of being drunk and disorderly in public.  Soon he is threatening to kill the younger Selman, threats get back to the father, and in the blink of an eye, the two gunfighters feud, yelling at each other on the streets of El Paso ... a feud that ends at the town's Acme Saloon.  Drinking and playing dice at twenty-five cents a throw with local grocer H. S. Brown, Hardin learns the Wild Bill Hickok lesson of not having your back to a door.  Tossing four dice, the gunfighter exclaims, "You have four sixes to beat," to the grocer as Selman Sr. enters the saloon with his gun already drawn, walks up behind Hardin and fires his Colt Single Action Army .45.  In some accounts, Hardin sees the danger coming in a mirror mounted over the bar and is in the process of turning and drawing his own revolver, in others, the gunplay comes with no warning whatsoever.  Whether from the front or the back, the first bullet Selman Sr. fires is fatal to Hardin, a slug that goes through the shootist's brain and leaves a hole under his left eye.  Crashing to the barroom floor, Selmon Sr. then makes sure the job is done, firing three more bullets down at Hardin's body (one bullet misses and hits the floor, while the other two hit Hardin in the arm and chest).  Over.  Pulled away from his triumph when Junior runs into the bar a moment later and admonishes his father, "Don't shoot him anymore.  He's already dead."

Junior

Hardin

Hardin And His Pistol

Swearing the shooting was in self-defense, everyone in Texas knowing what a viper Hardin is, a jury hangs over innocent or guilty verdicts, and Selman Sr. is released on bond, pending a retrial ... which never comes.  One too many gunfights, on Easter Sunday, April 5, 1896, after a evening of drinking and cards at the Wigwam Saloon, Selman Sr. tries to convince his friend, Deputy U.S. Marshal George Scarborough, to cross into Mexico and help break Junior out of the Juarez jail he is being held in (as a result of an affair with the daughter of a Mexican ambassador that doesn't approve).  The refusal causes Selman Sr. to become irate, the men argue, and finally decide to step into a nearby alley and settle things, with the settling not going the killer of Hardin's way thanks to slugs that drill him in the neck, hip, knee, and side.  No witnesses to the 4:00 in the morning encounter, Scarborough is acquitted of the killing by an El Paso jury, but again, won't be around to celebrate for long.  Forced to move from El Paso after the killing, Scarborough settles in Deming, New Mexico, where he finds work as a deputy sheriff, state ranger, and stock detective for the Grant County Cattleman's Association.  On April 1, 1900, while tracking rustlers near San Simon, Arizona with rancher Walter Birchfield, Scarborough gets into one last gun scrape, taking out one of the rustlers, but also being hit in the leg by a bit of rifle lead ... taken back to Deming, though his leg is amputated, the lawman dies four days later at the age of forty.

Scarborough

As for Hardin, though a stone cold psycho killer killed, he never really leaves the American consciousness, appearing as a character in fictional literature, as a character in films (Rock Hudson and Jack Elam playing Hardin ... GIVE ME A BREAK!), in numerous television westerns, as the subject of magazine articles and non-fiction tales of the Wild West (a TV ad for the Time-Life series on the Old West uses the gunfighter to sell its books), and as a musical subject capable of interesting the likes of Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, Michael Martin Murphy, and other singers, and as a collectible name (one revolver and holster belonging to Hardin has sold for $168,000, another pistol of the gunfighter has brought in $100,000, and incredibly, the bullet that blew out the desperado's brains, in 2002, is sold in auction is sold for $80,000 grand!!!!!!).  And in death, even still, over a century later, Hardin has the ability to start major feuds ... in 1997 there is a confrontation at his El Paso grave site between two groups wanting the rights to his resting place, a tug of war between El Paso and great-grandchildren of the shootist wanting him dug up and buried in Nixon, Texas, next o his first bride, Jane Bowen (a judge will eventually rule in El Paso's favor).
 
Movie Poster

Dylan Album

Jane Bowen Hardin

If you have a thing for saying hello to dead maniacs and are in El Paso, stop in to the Concordia Cemetery, where you will find John Wesley Hardin reaping what he sowed in a very bloody life of forty-two years.

Resting Place

John Wesley Hardin

THE PARADISE RAID

8/12/1933 - Using information provided by the recent memories of kidnap victim, oilman Charles F. Urschel of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Federal and local law enforcement officers launch an early morning raid on farm property outside of Paradise, Texas belonging to Robert and Ora Shannon.  In custody, and in big trouble along with their son, Armon, it doesn't take long for the Shannon's to identify the outlaws responsible for the crime ... 39-year-old bank robber, Albert Lawrence Bates, 39-year-old bank robber, George Kelly Barnes, better known as Machine Gun Kelly, and the woman that gave Barnes his nickname, his wife, career crook, Kathryn Kelly (the four time married daughter of Ora, and the step-daughter of Robert "Boss" Shannon).

The Shannon Farmhouse

Shack Where Urschel Was Hidden

Tired of being shot at during bank robberies, the Kellys and Bates decide to try their hand at what they believe will be easy pickings, and on the evening of 7/22/1933, at around 11:30, with the gunpoint assistance of a machine gun, interrupt the last rubber of a bridge game taking place on the back porch of the home of 43-year-old oilman Charles Urschel (also present on the porch are Urschel's wife, Berenice, and their neighbors, Walter Jarret and his wife) and kidnap the millionaire (estimated to be worth $50 million before Wall Street's collapse).  Blindfolded, and enraged at being taken hostage, Urschel will spend the rest of the evening and nine days that follow memorizing as many details of his experience as his memory can handle ... and it can handle a lot!  Released when a ransom of $200,000 in cash (worth around $3.6 million by today's standards) is exchanged with his kidnappers on 7/29, Urschel is back in his home on Monday, 7/30, and in almost immediate communication with the FBI team working the case.

The Urschels

The Urschel Home

Brought into the case only minutes after the kidnapping takes place (as the kidnappers drive off, Berenice runs upstairs, locks herself in her bedroom and calls Oklahoma City Police Chief Watts with news of the crime, then uses a Time magazine article about the recently passed Federal Lindbergh Law to telephone the Justice Department at National 7117 about the evening's events and speaks directly to J. Edgar Hoover), Hoover takes 51-year-old Special Agent Gustave "Gus" Tiner Jones (a former Texas Ranger and the head of the Bureau's San Antonio office) off bringing the Kansas City Massacre killers to justice, and reassigns him to the kidnapping.  By 11:00 in the evening, Jones is at the Urschel home, interviewing Charles.  Due to Urschel fatigue, the first questioning lasts only thirty minutes, but the men are back at it in the morning and a host of critical information is related ... the kidnappers pass through a major rainstorm about an hour after leaving Oklahoma City, at a filling station an attendant comments on "broom corn," a crop grown in a southern portion of Oklahoma, the kidnap car passes over a long wooden bridge, he is held at a farm that has roosters crowing and pigs squealing, gives distances from the farm's main house and the shack (and draws an overhead layout of the farm), he drinks water from a tin cup that has been pulled out of nearby well and has a mineral taste, twice a day a plane passes overhead (Urschel guesses at around 9:00 in the morning and at about 6:00 in the evening), a huge rainstorm takes place during his captivity during which the plane breaks its pattern of appearances overhead, and blindfold loosened enough eventually for quick glances about where he is being held, Urschel is able to make a sketch of the shack (and a description of the furniture inside) he is held in, and he gives descriptions of the two men that hold him captive (not the original kidnappers) ... and he even leaves fingerprints about should the hiding spot ever be found by authorities.  It is an incredible performance of recall!  Off and running with the info they have (including the Bureau's Dallas office providing links to Fort Worth detective Ed Weatherford, who believes Kathryn Kelly is involved in the kidnapping) after an over six hour debrief of Urschel, the focus of law enforcement soon narrows to a farm in northwest Wise County, Texas belonging to the Shannon Family that fits the memories of the kidnap victim almost exactly.

Hoover

Jones 

Verifying that they have actually located the location where Urschel had been held before being ransomed, Jones sends in agent Edward Dowd to explore the property as a bank examiner needing Robert Shannon's signature on some bogus documents.  There, Dowd confirms an iron taste in the water (brought up from a well by a creaking pulley), the presence of various animals (in the quantities reported), sees the iron bed and high chair the victim was chained to, looks in the cracked mirror the victim used for shaving, and notes the east to west running of the shack's floorboards ... all matching information Urschel has provided.  Once off the farm and far enough away from the Shannons so as not to arouse suspicion, Dowd heads for the nearest pay phone and calls Jones with his confirmations of the site, and Jones in turn calls Hoover, who tells him to raid the farm as soon as possible.  Orders received, wanting to be prepared for anything, Jones puts together a raiding party consisting of Bureau agents James "Doc" White and Charles Winstead (both former Texas Rangers, Winstead will be credited with being the agent that drops John Dillinger outside the Biograph Theater in 1934), Deputy Sheriff Bill Eads of Oklahoma City, Detective Ed Weatherford, and other trusted lawmen from the region ... fourteen men in all, including Urschel who insists on going along with a double-barreled shotgun (the sheriff of Wise County, J. T. Faith is also advised as to what is coming).  The raid is scheduled to take place on Friday, August 11.

Where Urshel Was Held

Winstead

Meeting near the town of Denton (north of Dallas), the men pile into three cars with their weapons, and head for Paradise and the Shannon farm.  Delays take place though, and realizing the group will not arrive before dark, Jones stops the car caravan twenty-six miles away from their destination, pulls everybody together, and over a map drawn in the dirt, goes over his new plan ... the posse will go back to Fort Worth and rest up, then hit the farm at sunrise.  Told to expect "fireworks," in the early darkness of the next day the men set off and arrive a mile from the farm just before the sun comes up, where they go over the plan for the raid once more ... the lead car, containing Jones and Urschel, will be responsible for surrounding the farmhouse, the second car and its occupants will surround the barn, and the third car will help wherever it is required.  Driving on to the farm as the Saturday sun lights up the property, Urschel instantly recognizes Shannon as the man comes out of the house pulling on his suspenders.  Pointing his shotgun at Shannon's head, Urschel proclaims, "That's the old man that guarded me."

The Shannons

As agents cuff a protesting Shannon, machine gun in hand, Jones heads around the structure to the back porch where he finds a man in his underwear he immediately recognizes, sleeping on a cot, near a Winchester rifle and a pistol ... it is a recent escapee from the Kansas State Prison at Lansing (6/1/1933), the notorious bank robber, Harvey Bailey.  Ecstatic, Jones brushes Bailey's nose with his machine gun and tells Bailey to get up, and what will happen if any armed resistance takes place.  "I'm here alone," Bailey proclaims with a smile.  "You have me.  Hell, a fella's gotta sleep sometime."  A surprise plum, Bailey is at the farm to return a machine gun belonging to Kelly that he'd used in a recent robbery, collect a money debt from Kelly while the kidnapper is flush with illicit earnings, and nursing a leg wound, to seek an underworld medical attention from a doctor (enjoying a home cooked meal at the farm the night before with their partner, Bailey, fellow Kansas escapees "Big Bob" Brady and Ed Davis have moved on just in time to miss the morning's festivities).  Shannon, his wife, two children, and Bailey under guard, the rest of the raiding party heads down the road and arrests Armon Shannon and his 17-year-old wife, Oleta (along with taking the couple's baby into custody).  Confronted by how much time Armon might be spending away from his wife and infant, the youngest Shannon soon gives up the names of the Urschel kidnappers (last laugh to Urschel, he mockingly thanks Ora Shannon for the fried chicken dinner she made him on his first night at the farm) ... the men who took him off the porch in Oklahoma City were Machine Gun Kelly and Albert Bates (in a grand stroke of luck, later that same Saturday, Bates is arrested getting off a train in Denver after being identified by a detective with the American Express Company).

Bailey

Bates

The quest to find Machine Gun Kelly and his wife now on, the huge national manhunt that develops eventually corners the couple in Memphis, Tennessee on September 26, 1933.  Arrested in the bungalow of shady garage attendant they have hidden with before, Kelly becomes an FBI legend when confronted by armed lawman while just waking up from a night's slumber dressed only in his underwear, he is purported to give the FBI its new nickname, screaming repeatedly to the raiders, "Don't shoot G-men!"  Crime solved and its culprits in custody (though Harvey Bailey briefly breaks out of the Dallas jail he is in), for the Urschel kidnapping Machine Gun Kelly will be sentenced to life in prison (which he does, dying in Leavenworth Penitentiary from heart disease at the age of 59 in 1954), Albert Bates will get life (and dies of heart disease on Alcatraz Island at the age of 54 in 1948), Harvey Bailey is sentenced to life (convicted by having Urschel ransom cash on his person though he wasn't involved in that crime, the bank robber is released from prison in 1964 after stints at Leavenworth and Alcatraz, and dies in Joplin, Missouri in 1979 at the ripe old age of 91), Kathryn Kelly is sentenced to life in prison (she serves 25 years before being released and dies in Oklahoma City at the age of 81 in 1985), Kelly's mother, Ora Shannon also gets life (she is also released after 25 years and lives with her daughter in Oklahoma City until she dies in 1980 at the age of 92), Boss Shannon gets a sentence of 25 years (he is released after 11 years and dies 12 years later, but not before making a nice last gesture for his son-in-law ... body not claimed by his family, the "Boss" of the family arranges the outlaw to be buried in the Shannon Family plot in 1954), and Armon Shannon is sentenced to ten years behind bars.  The raid is the FBI's and Hoover's first victory in what will be called "The War on Crime."

Machine Gun & Kathryn

Caught

On Trial - Standing Left To Right - Bates, Bailey, And The Three Shannons, Armon,
Robert, And Ora