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 

BLONDE BOMB SHELLED

8/5/1962 - In Brentwood, housekeeper Eunice Murray wakes at 3:00 in the morning sensing something is wrong in the home she takes care of, and with her, employer, Norma Jeane Mortenson.  She is right.  Lights on beyond a locked door, but no reply from within to her queries if everything is okay, Murray calls Mortenson's psychiatrist, Dr. Ralph Greenson, who soon arrives at 12305 Fifth Helena Drive, accesses the bedroom via a window he breaks, and makes a tragic discovery ... whether accidental, on purpose, or part of a hideous conspiracy, the life of international film star, cultural icon, and soon to be legend, Mortenson, better known to the world as Hollywood's glamorous blonde bombshell, Marilyn Monroe, is over by way of a huge overdose of barbiturates (chloral hydrate and pentobarbital the culprits).  She is only 36-years-old at the time of her leaving.

Monroe - 1953

Norma Jeane is born on June 1, 1926 at the Los Angeles County Hospital to twice-married Consolidated Film Industries negative film cutter, Gladys Pearl Monroe (at age 15 to her nine year senior, John Newton Baker, by which she has two children, and to Martin Edward Mortenson whom she almost instantly separates from before divorcing him in 1928) ... the identity of her father is never known.  Mother unstable (she will have a mental breakdown in 1934, and diagnosed as having paranoid schizophrenia, be in and out of hospitals for the rest of her life, which ends in 1984), the future star has a hard childhood as she bounces between mother, relatives, the Los Angeles Orphans Home, and various foster care homes, switching schools across southern California, enduring sexual abuse at the hands of the husband of her legal guardian (a humanoid named Erwin "Doc" Goddard), and becoming withdrawn and developing a stutter.  The one place she escapes and can dream of a better, happier life is in the darkness of the area's many movie palaces.

Infant - 1927

Mother & Daughter

Somewhat settled when she begins living in the Sawtelle area of Los Angeles with Ana Atchinson Lower, Norma Jeane attends Emerson Junior High School (a so-so student, she excels in writing and contributes to the school newspaper).  The normalcy doesn't last long however, and the teenager is soon back with the Goddards as she begins attending classes at Van Nuys High School; a matriculation that is cut off when work moves the family to West Virginia and the teenager stays behind as a ward of the state of California.  About to be sent back to an orphanage, a "solution" to the youth's situation takes place in 1942 when Norma Jeane marries a neighbor of the Goddard's, 21-year-old factory worker, James Dougherty.  She is just past her sixteenth birthday when she drops out of high school and becomes a housewife in a doomed marriage (the first of three) that sees the couple living on Santa Catalina Island, when with WWII raging, Dougherty joins the Merchants Marines.  Shipped off to the Pacific, Norma Jeane lives with Doughery's parents and gets a job at a munitions factory in Van Nuys, the Radioplane Company.  There, in 1944, she meets photographer David Conover as he is shooting morale-boosting pictures of female workers for the U.S. Army Air Force, and despite protests from her husband (they will finally divorce in 1946), begins a modeling career that soon has her appearing on the covers of Peek, Pageant, Laff, U.S. Camera and other popular magazines of the time.

Teenager

Catalina.

A Star Is Born

On The Beach

Curly hair straightened and dyed blonde, her modeling career in turn leads to acting classes, interviews and screen tests for the local movie studios, and of course, a series of casting couch encounters (taking a close interest in her, she will be the sometime bed partner of Fox executive Joseph M. Schenck and also become the "protegee" of William Morris Agency vice-president, Johnny Hyde).  Now transformed into Marilyn Monroe, Paramount Pictures, RKO Pictures, 20th Century Fox, and Columbia Pictures all have a chance at making her into a star, but her career doesn't take off until she makes brief appearances in All About Eve (1950 - playing party companion to George Sanders in a film that will be nominated for fourteen Oscars, and win six) and The Asphalt Jungle (a 1950 John Huston crime caper for MGM in which she is the mistress of a crooked lawyer played by Louis Calhern).  Once rejected by the studio, she signs a seven-year contract with 20th Century Fox in December of 1950 and soon is a presenter at the 23rd Academy Awards, has a first profile written up in Collier's magazine, becomes Miss Cheesecake of 1951 for servicemen fighting in Korea (she will begin receiving thousands of letters a week in fan mail), has relationships with directors Elia Kazan (Best Director Oscars for 1948's Gentleman's Agreement and 1955's On The Waterfront) and Nicholas Ray (Rebel Without A Cause, King Of Kings, and others), actors Yul Brynner and Peter Lawford.  And when Hugh Hefner uses old nude calendar shots of the ingenue as his first Playboy centerfold in 1953, Monroe becomes even more famous!

With Anne Baxter, Bette Davis, And George Sanders In
All About Eve

Publicity Still For The Asphalt Jungle

The First Playboy Magazine

Acting in both comedies and dramas, from 1953 to 1961, Monroe appears in eleven major Hollywood releases ... the crime thriller Niagara with Joseph Cotton as her murderous husband (1953), the musical Gentle Prefer Blondes opposite Jane Russell (1953), the musical How To Marry A Millionaire alongside Betty Grable and Lauren Bacall (1953), floating down the Snake River with Robert Mitchum in the western, River Of No Return (1954), in the Irving Berlin musial blockbuster, There's No Business Like Show Business (1954, also starring Ethel Merman, Dan Dailey, Mitzi Gaynor, and Donald O'Connor), as the tempting upstairs neighbor in the marital comedy, The Seven Year Itch (the 1955 film in which her skirt is blown aloft by the New York City subway), as the singer Cherie in the drama, Bus Stop (1956), tempting Laurence Olivier in The Prince And The Showgirl (1957), as Tony Curtis's love interest, ukulele player and singer, Sugar "Kane" Kowalczyk, in the comedy classic, Some Like It Hot (1959), billionaire Yves Montand's goal in Let's Make Love (1960), and as Roslyn Tabor, opposite Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift in their last film, The Misfits (1961).  By the time the new decade of the 1960 begins, Monroe seemingly has it all, money, fame, and marriages to Hall-of-Fame New York Yankee outfielder Joe DiMaggio (the love of his life, he will never marry again after their divorce in 1955) and renowned playwright, Arthur Miller (author of Death Of A Salesman), but it has all come with a heavy cost.

Subway Moment

Sugar

With DiMaggio

With Miller

Never far away from the insecurities her traumatic childhood has caused, Monroe as an adult has to deal with criticism of her acting abilities, the perception that she is nothing more than a comely piece of meat, and more failed relationships (added to her list of lovers are Marlon Brando, Yves Montand, and Frank Sinatra, along with rumors of relationships with both John and Robert Kennedy), along with pregnancies that don't reach full term caused by endometriosis), all manifest themselves in her becoming a problem on the sets of her movies as she is often late for shootings (or doesn't show up at all), can't remember her lines, demands retakes of scenes, and requires her acting coaches be constantly available for advice (which often clashes with what the picture's actual director wants).  And for it all, downward spiral begun, she begins self-medicating her woes with barbiturates, amphetamines, and booze.  Woes, woes, and more woes, in 1962 Monroe undergoes surgery for her endometriosis, endures another surgery for a gall bladder condition, catches sinusitis, spends weeks in hospitals, and enrages 20th Century Fox executives by delaying filming of her next movie with Dean Martin, Something's Got to Give (in one incident, she manages to recover her health long enough to fly to the East Coast to sing Happy Birthday to JFK in a evening gown that makes her appear to be nude) to the point where she is finally fired by the studio and sued for $750,000 in damages.  Licking her wounds, she retreats to her new Brentwood home (purchased in 1961) to contemplate a career comeback that never takes place.

With Gable In The Misfits

Happy Birthday

Something's Got To Give

On the last day of her life, at her home, Monroe meets with photographer Lawrence Schiller about Playboy publishing nude photos of her from the Something's Got To Give pool shoot, talks on the phone with her personal massage therapist, speaks with an assortment of friends, signs for several deliveries, has a therapy session with her psychiatrist, Greenson, gets in an argument with her publicist, Patricia Newcomb, talks to Joe DiMaggio Jr. on the phone at around 7:00 in the evening about breaking up with his girlfriend (the son of The Yankee Clipper will testify that Monroe sounded fine), and now behind her locked bedroom door, has a conversation with Peter Lawford in which she sounds drugged, that concludes with what sounds like the actress saying goodbye (frightened for his friend when she drifts off, Lawford will eventually make contact with Greenson and be told that Monroe is fine).  Discovered dead in he wee hours of Sunday, the Los Angeles Police Department will be notified of the death of the actress at 4:25 in the morning.  Taken to the Los Angeles coroner's office, after autopsying Monroe's body, Deputy coroner Thomas Noguchi  (assisted by Norman Farberow, Robert Litman, and Norman Tabachnik) will classify her death as a "probable suicide" (the case will be reviewed in 1982 (after several conspiracy theories about murder lead to book contracts), with Noguchi's findings being validated.  On August 8, in a small ceremony arranged by Joe DiMaggio (the eulogy is delivered by acting coach and friend, Lee Strasberg, and along with Tchaikovsky music, a record of Judy Garland singing Somewhere Over The Rainbow is played), Monroe will be buried at the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetary (crypt #24 in the cemetery's Corridor of Memories) wearing a green Emilio Pucci dress, holding a small bouquet of pink roses.  For the next twenty years, Di Maggio will have a half-dozen roses put in a vase beside her crypt three times a week.  He never marries again or discusses Monroe in public, and according to his attorney, the Hall-of-Famer's last words are, "I'll finally get to see Marilyn."

In The Bedroom

Leaving

Yikes!

Headlines

Crypt

Gone, but in no way forgotten, Monroe lives on as a cultural icon of the 20th Century ... existing in her still watched films, as the subject of hundreds of books, a character in films, plays, operas, and songs, the basis of magazine articles, and still selling with her image of sexuality, beauty, and glamour, in a host of  products that include Max Factor makeup, Absolut Vodka liquor, Mercedes-Benz cars, and Chanel perfume.  Roller coaster life now over, rest in peace, Marilyn.
 
Monroe