George Kelly was not a self-made bank robber and kidnapper. Kathryn Thorne Kelly, his moll who became his wife, pushed him to rise above his humdrum crimes such as delivering bootleg moonshine whiskey during Prohibition. She wanted George to make more money so he could lavish nicer things on her. To help make that happen, this daughter of rural Texas moonshiners gave her husband both a fearsome new nickname, “Machine Gun,” and a real Thompson submachine gun to go with it. And she made sure the press began paying attention to the dangerous exploits of Machine Gun Kelly. 

Chris Enss’s intriguing and insightful new crime biography, Meet the Kellys, tells the fascinating story of an early 1930s crime couple who had strong connections to Fort Worth. Enss, a California writer who focuses on extraordinary women throughout history, has won multiple writing awards and is a New York Times bestselling author of more than 50 books. Her new work is expertly organized and drawn from an impressive array of research materials. 

George and Kathryn Kelly, she points out, were not as famous as some of their contemporaries, such as Bonnie and Clyde. When they married in 1930, George was Kathryn’s fourth husband, and she was just 26. Yet, over the next three years, the Kellys captured national and world attention by pulling off brazen bank robberies in Texas and several other states and grabbing a $200,000 ransom payment during their first attempt at kidnapping. 

The 1933 kidnapping and peaceful release of their victim, Oklahoma oil executive Charles F. Urschel, not only led to big headlines, it also hastened the Kellys’ downfall. With Urschel’s help, law enforcement officers were able to track down their hideout in Memphis. Their peaceful arrests and widely covered trial gave a significant boost to a struggling new federal law enforcement agency led by J. Edgar Hoover. It would later be known as the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The author also shows how some people with connections to the kidnapping profited afterward by traveling from town to town giving paid talks to audiences eager to know more about the Kellys. In the days before social media, there were few ways to quickly spread news and information.

George Kelly had been just another fast-driving moonshine smuggler from Memphis when he was sentenced in 1928 to serve three years in Kansas’s Leavenworth Penitentiary for possession of alcohol during Prohibition. One day, despite Leavenworth’s status as a maximum security prison, Kelly somehow managed to meet a beautiful young woman from Paradise, Texas, Kathryn Thorne, who was visiting a relative at the prison. Kathryn and her parents were rural Texas moonshiners.

Some time later, after Kelly got out of prison, he met up with Kathryn again. And once they decided to get married, it was a match made in criminality heaven, Enss writes. “Both relished shortcuts in life—robbing instead of working and stealing whatever they wanted instead of buying.”  

While Kathryn Kelly did not take direct part in many of Kelly’s crimes, she did have pivotal roles in several, especially the kidnapping, which they had carried out on their third wedding anniversary. 

“Kathryn was quick to suggest she be allowed to find the right person to be kidnapped,” Enss emphasizes. “[She] routinely pored over society pages of various newspapers and was confident she could pick a target who would yield a handsome profit.” She had chosen Urschel.

The Kellys’ Oklahoma City trial quickly became a three-ring media circus, and Enss provides eye-opening looks into what happened inside and outside the courtroom, as well as behind the scenes. Trial sessions were alive with deceit, self-sacrifice, arrogance, pride, and self-promotion, as well as facts and confessions. 

Cover to cover, Chris Enss’s Meet the Kellys is crime biography at its finest.