The Rise and Fall of Machine Gun Kelly: A Crime Legend Unveiled
The narrative surrounding George Machine Gun Kelly, often heralded as a quintessential gangster of the 1930s, reveals a profound examination of myth-making amidst a nation in turmoil. We delve into the intricacies of his life, from his origins in Memphis, Tennessee, to his notorious criminal exploits, which were largely orchestrated by his ambitious wife, Catherine. The episode underscores the symbiotic relationship between the media, the FBI, and the public's fascination with outlaws during the Great Depression, a time when societal despair fostered an appetite for anti-heroes. As we unravel the dramatic events of his capture and subsequent trial, it becomes evident that the legend of Machine Gun Kelly was meticulously crafted, obscuring the mundane reality of his existence. Ultimately, we reflect on how the constructed persona of Kelly serves as a lens through which we can explore the broader themes of identity, morality, and the societal need for heroes, whether real or imagined.
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Takeaways:
- The narrative surrounding George Machine Gun Kelly illustrates the interplay of myth and reality in historical crime narratives.
- Catherine Kelly played a pivotal role in crafting the infamous persona of Machine Gun Kelly, transforming him into a public figure.
- The Great Depression and Prohibition contributed significantly to the rise of organized crime in America during the 1930s.
- The arrest of Machine Gun Kelly was a carefully orchestrated media event that served to enhance the FBI's public image.
- Machine Gun Kelly's eventual capture revealed the disparity between his notorious image and his actual life as a criminal.
- The transformation of Machine Gun Kelly from a feared gangster to a mere shadow of his former self highlights the demythologizing effect of incarceration.
Transcript
Memphis, Tennessee.
Speaker A: ,: Speaker A:In the pre dawn darkness, a bungalow on Rainer street is surrounded.
Speaker A:Inside, the man the newspapers have dubbed public enemy number one is sleeping off a gin binge.
Speaker A:The law is closing in.
Speaker B:When the agents burst in, they find him unarmed, hungover and still in his pajamas.
Speaker B:And in that moment, a legend is born.
Speaker B:As the story goes, the fearsome gangster throws his hands in the air and cries out the immortal words, don't shoot G men.
Speaker A:Don't shoot.
Speaker B:It's a phrase that would echo through history, immortalizing both the criminal and the federal agents who caught him.
Speaker B:It was the perfect dramatic end to the crime spree of George Machine Gun Kelly.
Speaker A:But what if it never happened?
Speaker A:What if the man behind the machine gun was a fraud?
Speaker A:And what if the real criminal mastermind was the woman sleeping in the next room?
Speaker B:Welcome to history's greatest crimes.
Speaker B:I'm Elena.
Speaker A:And I'm Michael.
Speaker A:And today we're unraveling the story of Machine Gun Kelly.
Speaker A: The real gangster of the: Speaker B:Although the present day singer adopted the stage name of Machine Gun Kelly in honor of the infamous Prohibition gangster.
Speaker A:But this is a story not just of a gangster, but of a nation in crisis during the Great Depression.
Speaker A:The birth of the modern FBI and how a myth was manufactured and then brutally dismantled on the world's most notorious prison island, Alcatraz.
Speaker A:To understand a figure like Machine Gun Kelly, you first have to understand the world that created him.
Speaker A: America in the: Speaker A:The Great Depression had shattered the economy and with it the public's faith in its own crumbling institutions.
Speaker A:Millions were unemployed, savings were wiped out overnight.
Speaker A:And for many, the American dream had turned into a nightmare.
Speaker B:That's right, Michael.
Speaker B: th of: Speaker B: By: Speaker B:Thousands of people stood in line to compete for 10 or 15 available employment positions.
Speaker B:There are stories of men deliberately setting fire to forests to get temporary employment as firefighters.
Speaker B:People lost their homes to the banks and many lived in lean to shacks made of scrap wood and metal.
Speaker B:People were so desperate and despondent they that in the first year of the Depression, it's thought that about 23,000Americans committed suicide.
Speaker A:And we have to remember that the Great Depression was great and that it lasted a long time.
Speaker A:Despite Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's efforts to create employment and boost the economy through his New Deal programs.
Speaker A: ession lasted until the early: Speaker A:It lasted over 10 years.
Speaker A:This widespread demoralization throughout the nation created a fertile ground for a new kind of anti hero.
Speaker B:At the same time, the country was in the throes of a massive social experiment.
Speaker B: ide ban on alcohol enacted in: Speaker B:This was part of a progressive era push during which reformers pressured the federal government to better society through policies and laws.
Speaker A:Reformers had good intentions in establishing prohibition at the start.
Speaker A:They thought that stopping alcohol consumption would help American families.
Speaker A: ition, which would last until: Speaker B:It sure did.
Speaker B:As one historian put it, Prohibition practically created organized crime in America, end quote.
Speaker B:It didn't stop people from drinking.
Speaker B:It just turned a legal industry into a billion dollar black market controlled by criminals.
Speaker A:Criminals like Al Capone in a previous episode.
Speaker A:But this new illicit economy demanded a new kind of criminal.
Speaker A:The old unruly street gangs gave way to highly organized syndicates that operated like corporations, with complex logistics and corrupt relationships with politicians and police.
Speaker A: efer to this period, from the: Speaker B:And the public's relationship with these criminals was complicated.
Speaker B:While the government and newspapers decried the violence of figures like Al Capone, the public often saw the more independent outlaws in a different light.
Speaker B:In an era when banks were foreclosing on family farms and life savings vanished overnight, the men and women who robbed those same banks were often cast as folk heroes.
Speaker B:They became symbols of defiance against a system that seemed rigged and broken.
Speaker A:Criminals became national celebrities.
Speaker A:The notoriety of gangs like Bonnie and Clyde was fueled by wild shootouts and spectacular car chases, turning them into romantic figures outside the law.
Speaker A:Also a previous episode.
Speaker A:The media, from newspapers to the new pulp magazines, breathlessly covered their exploits, turning them into household names.
Speaker B: cization of the outlaw in the: Speaker B:It was a symptom of the era's deep institutional collapse.
Speaker B:The public's embrace of figures who attacked banks wasn't an endorsement of criminality itself, but rather a vicarious rebellion against the very systems, financial and governmental, that they felt had betrayed them.
Speaker A:In response to the legendary image of gangsters, the government attempted to offer the public and the media a new kind of hero to replace the outlaw folk hero.
Speaker A:This new hero was the G Man.
Speaker B:In that sense, the government's response to criminal activity wasn't Just a straightforward war on crime.
Speaker B:It was a battle for the public narrative about who the actual American heroes were.
Speaker A:So with the Great Depression and Prohibition going on in the background, this was the stage on which George and Katherine Kelly would carry out their illicit activities and perform their greatest and final act.
Speaker B:But who exactly was Machine Gun Kelly?
Speaker A:I'm glad you asked.
Speaker A: rnes in Memphis, Tennessee in: Speaker A:Accounts of his family's wealth vary, with some describing it as modest and and others describing him as fairly wealthy.
Speaker A:What is clear is that his early life gave no indications of the notorious criminal he would grow to become.
Speaker A:He attended Mississippi A and M College to study agriculture.
Speaker A:But he soon found out that he was a very poor student.
Speaker A:His highest grade was a C in of all things, physical hygiene.
Speaker A:He soon dropped out to marry his first wife, Geneva Ramsey.
Speaker B:In photos from that time, George Kelly Barnes was a good looking young man.
Speaker B:Tall and slender and often wearing a smirk on his face.
Speaker B:He was frequently seen in suits and ties and often with a hat.
Speaker B:But despite having a nice appearance, his life after college was a series of failures.
Speaker B:George and Geneva had two children and afterwards George struggled to support his family.
Speaker B:He worked long hours as a cab driver in Memphis for very little reward.
Speaker A:The financial strain was overwhelming and he soon separated from his wife.
Speaker A:Distressed and broke, George Barnes drifted into the world of small time crime, becoming a bootlegger during the height of Prohibition.
Speaker B:This new career led to several run ins with the Memphis police.
Speaker B:And to escape law enforcement, he changed his name to George R. Kelly.
Speaker B:But even with a name change, his luck didn't get any better.
Speaker B: In: Speaker A: And then in: Speaker A:By all accounts, he was a model inmate and was released early on.
Speaker A:Good behavior.
Speaker B:At this point, George Kelly was, as one biographer puts it, quote, a small time hip pocket bootlegger.
Speaker B:He was a man defined really by his failures, not his fearsomeness.
Speaker B:This was not the resume of a future public enemy number one.
Speaker B:So George needed a catalyst.
Speaker B:He needed a director, a publicist, a mastermind.
Speaker A:And some people claim that there's a woman to blame.
Speaker A:My apologies for singing there.
Speaker B: ooks in Salio, Mississippi in: Speaker B:Catherine was an experienced criminal in her own right.
Speaker B:She had a criminal record for shotlifting and robbery.
Speaker B:And her third husband, a bootlegger named Charlie Thorne, had been found dead with a typed suicide note.
Speaker B:And this was highly suspicious, given that it was common knowledge that the man was illiterate.
Speaker B:But the judge looked past this, and Catherine was never convicted for the murder.
Speaker A:So Catherine was the original fafo woman?
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker B:Catherine was beautiful, ambitious, intelligent, and had family connections in the crime world.
Speaker B:In fact, she first met George Kelly while he was still serving time.
Speaker B:Catherine was from a family of moonshiners and was visiting relatives in prison at the time.
Speaker B:And when she saw the handsome, smirking George Kelly, she saw a man she could mold into her ideal outlaw.
Speaker A: ge Kelly got out of prison in: Speaker A:Interestingly, the author of a series of female focus histories, Chris Ends, described her as scheming mole, as driven as Bonnie Parker and Ma Barker.
Speaker A:A woman with the lust for danger who masterminded the crimes that would make them famous.
Speaker A:She was the one quote who pushed her husband to commit greater crimes.
Speaker B:Her first and most important act was branding.
Speaker B:She understood the power of a good story, A terrifying image.
Speaker B:She went out and purchased Kelly's first Thompson machine gun and insisted that he practiced with it, despite his apparent lack of interest in weapons.
Speaker A: t created for military use in: Speaker A: The models of the: Speaker B:Following the gun purchase, Catherine launched a one woman public relations campaign.
Speaker B:She began spreading stories that her husband was so proficient with the gun that he could write his name in bullets on a fence.
Speaker A:She was known to take the spent gun cartridges and pass them around to acquaintances at underground drinking clubs, introducing them as souvenirs from the fearsome machine gun Kelly.
Speaker A:She boasted that he was a desperate criminal wanted in three states for murder and bank robbery.
Speaker A:It was all marketing and it was brilliant.
Speaker B:She crafted the entire Persona.
Speaker B:George Kelly Barnes was her creation.
Speaker B: io who understood that in the: Speaker A:And to be clear, this wasn't a partnership of equals.
Speaker A:Catherine was the strategist, the ambitious leader.
Speaker A:Her ruthlessness became clear later when on the run, she tried to broker a deal with an FBI agent to turn in her husband to in exchange for a lenient sentence for herself and her mother.
Speaker A:She wasn't just with a gangster, she made the gangster.
Speaker B: So in the early: Speaker B:They moved to Fort Worth, Texas where they operated together as bootleggers.
Speaker B:But not being content with being secret criminals, Catherine and George Kelly, AKA Machine Gun Kelly, were intent on making themselves famous.
Speaker A:It wasn't long before the Kelly's graduated from bank robbery to the most feared crime of the era.
Speaker A:Kidnapping for ransom.
Speaker A:In Oklahoma City.
Speaker A: ,: Speaker A:Urschel and his wife Berenice were playing a game of bridge with their friends Walter and Elizabeth Jarrett.
Speaker B:Armed with Kelly's trademark machine gun.
Speaker B:The kidnappers demanded to know which of the men was Urschel.
Speaker B:When no one answered they declared, quote, well we'll take both of them, end quote.
Speaker B:They forced both men into their car and after driving a few miles, identified their wealthy target by checking his wallet.
Speaker B:They released Walter Jarrett on the side of the road and drove Charles Urschel, now blindfolded, to a remote farmhouse in Paradise, Texas.
Speaker A:The hideout belonged to Catherine's mother and stepfather who had agreed to watch Urschel in exchange for for a cut of the ransom.
Speaker A:And the demand was a staggering $200,000, the equivalent of nearly $5 million today.
Speaker B:And the instructions were precise.
Speaker B:The money was to be paid and used $20 bills.
Speaker B:And the family was warned not to record the serial numbers.
Speaker B:A warning they wisely ignored.
Speaker A:And to signal their compliance the family was instructed to place a specific classified ad in the daily Oklahoma newspaper that read, quote, for sale 160 acres, good five room house, deep well, also cows, tools, tractor, corn and hay.
Speaker B:But the Kelly's and their accomplices made a fatal mistake.
Speaker B:They completely underestimated their victim.
Speaker B:Charles Urschel, though blindfolded for most of his nine day ordeal, was not a man to panic.
Speaker B:He became in effect a one man detective agency.
Speaker B:Meticulously collecting evidence against his captors.
Speaker A:He paid attention to every detail.
Speaker A:He memorized the sounds of the farm, the crowing of roosters, the squeal of pigs and other barnyard noises that told him he was in a rural area.
Speaker A:He noted the distinct sulfurous taste of the well water he was given to drink.
Speaker A:He counted his steps whenever he moved, estimated the dimensions of the room where he was held captive.
Speaker A:And as he later told the FBI, he made a conscious effort to touch every surface he could, intentionally leaving his fingerprints as a trail for investigators.
Speaker B:But Urschel's most critical observation was a sound pattern.
Speaker B:As he would later testify, an airplane flew over the farmhouse at precisely the same times every day.
Speaker B:Once at 9:45am and again at 5:45pm he even noted that the plane did not fly on one particular Sunday, which he recalled was rainy.
Speaker B:This single, seemingly minor detail would prove to be the key that unlocked the entire case.
Speaker B:Charles Urschel wasn't just a victim, he was actively working to solve his own kidnapping.
Speaker A: ,: Speaker A:And for one man, the kidnapping couldn't have come at a better time.
Speaker A:That man was J. Edgar Hoover, the fiercely ambitious director of the Bureau of Investigation, soon to be renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation or the FBI.
Speaker B:The nation was in the grip of what the press called a kidnapping epidemic.
Speaker B: ar spurred by the sensational: Speaker A:The public outcry from the Lindbergh case had pressured Congress into passing the Federal Kidnapping act, popularly known as the Lindbergh Law.
Speaker A:This legislation made kidnapping across state lines a federal offense, giving Hoover's agency, soon to be renamed as the FBI, unprecedented power to pursue criminals across the country.
Speaker A:The law was a cornerstone of a new federal war on crime.
Speaker B:Hoover saw the Urschel case as the perfect opportunity to showcase his new professionalized and powerful federal force.
Speaker B:He had spent years reforming the Bureau and establishing a scientific crime lab, a centralized fingerprint file and rigorous training for his agents.
Speaker A:These new skilled agents of the Bureau became famous for their attention to cases, especially those of espionage or organized crime and other high profile crimes.
Speaker A: By the late: Speaker A: can usage of the term came in: Speaker B:So J. Edgar Hoover was making great strides as the director of the Bureau of Investigations.
Speaker B:However, we have to be careful not to glorify his efforts too much.
Speaker B: In: Speaker B: And then in: Speaker B: That ban lasted until: Speaker A:Yikes.
Speaker A: But good or bad, in: Speaker A:He took a personal interest in the Urschel kidnapping case, pulling his best agents off of other major investigations to lead the manhunt for Kelly.
Speaker B:The FBI's investigation was a massive multi state effort, a textbook example of the Bureau's new national reach.
Speaker B:A key element of their strategy was tracking the $200,000 in ransom money.
Speaker B:Before the money was delivered, the FBI had meticulously recorded the serial numbers of every single $20 bill.
Speaker B:These numbers were then circulated to banks and financial institutions across the country.
Speaker A:It didn't take long for the trap to spring.
Speaker A:Soon, the marked bills started popping up.
Speaker A:A bundle of them appeared at a bank in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where an accomplice tried to exchange them for a cashier's check.
Speaker A:More bills were used to purchase 125 cases of whiskey.
Speaker A:The money trail led agents to a sprawling web of accomplices to money changers and safe houses, but slowly and surely tightening the net around the Kelly gang.
Speaker B:While the money trail was heating up, agents were working with the clues provided by Charles Urschel.
Speaker B:His detailed sensory account was invaluable.
Speaker B:The airplane sounds he had so carefully memorized corresponded perfectly with the daily flight path of an American Airways plane that flew between Fort Worth and Amarillo, Texas.
Speaker B:This, combined with other clues like the sulfurous water, allowed investigators to pinpoint the location of the hideout.
Speaker B: ,: Speaker A:With their network collapsing, George and Catherine Kelly were now on the run.
Speaker A:Interestingly, during this time that the authorities were chasing them, Catherine tried to broker a deal with an FBI agent for a lenient sentence for herself and her mother in exchange for turning in George.
Speaker A:This deal never went through as the FBI captured both George and Catherine before the deal could be finalized.
Speaker B: ,: Speaker B:In the early morning hours, FBI agents conducted a raid during which George and Katherine Kelly were taken into custody.
Speaker A:The popular story, the one promoted heavily by Hoover and the FBI for decades, is that a cornered and terrified machine gun.
Speaker A:Kelly, without his trusty machine gun, surrendered with the now immortal cry, don't shoot, G men.
Speaker A:Don't shoot.
Speaker A:It was a powerful piece of propaganda, casting the FBI agents as fearless heroes who had brought a notorious public enemy to his knees with nothing more than.
Speaker B:Their authority but the truth as pieced Together from forgotten interviews and internal documents is far less dramatic and much more interesting.
Speaker B:One of the arresting agents, William Rohrer, gave a telephone interview to a Chicago American reporter just hours after the capture.
Speaker B:In that interview, he said that it was Catherine who actually used the term.
Speaker B:As she was being arrested, Rora recalled, she cried like a baby.
Speaker B:She put her arms around Kelly and said, honey, I guess it's all up for us.
Speaker B:The G Men won't ever give us a break.
Speaker A:Other accounts, including some early press reports, say that Kelly, badly hungover, simply stumbled out of his bed and mumbled something like, quote, I've been waiting for you all night.
Speaker A:The official FBI reports from the time make no mention of Kelly saying g Men at all.
Speaker A:But it seems the more colorful version was simply too good of a story to let the facts get in the way.
Speaker A:The myth was far more useful to Hoover than the mundane reality.
Speaker B:This episode reveals a fascinating, almost symbiotic relationship between Hoover's FBI and and the outlaws they hunted.
Speaker B:Hoover needed larger than life villains to justify his agency's expanding power and budget, and the media was more than happy to create them.
Speaker B:In turn, the FBI's high profile war on crime amplified the gangster's notoriety, creating a feedback loop of myth making.
Speaker A:The capture of Kelly wasn't just an arrest.
Speaker A:It was a carefully managed media event that designed to replace the outlaw hero with the G Man hero in the public consciousness.
Speaker A:The likely fabrication of the famous quote demonstrates that Hoover was also a master of public relations.
Speaker B:The trial of George and Katherine Kelly was a national spectacle.
Speaker B:One of the first federal criminal trials where newsreel cameras were allowed inside the courtroom.
Speaker B: Beginning in the: Speaker B:And this became a popular form of entertainment and information for the general public that they could view at local movie theaters.
Speaker A:So as all of America was watching in the courtroom, drama itself did not disappoint.
Speaker A:Charles Urschel himself took the stand, calmly and precisely recounting his entire kidnapping ordeal.
Speaker A:In a moment of high drama, Catherine's own grandmother was brought forward in a wheelchair to testify against her, causing Catherine to break down into tears.
Speaker A:But the most striking feature of the trial was the contrast between the two main defendants.
Speaker B:Catherine was defiant and poised.
Speaker B:Ever the performer, she was fashionably dressed and seemed to relish the media attention.
Speaker B:Posing for cameras multiple times after her conviction, she famously sneered, quote, anyone would have been convicted in this court if they'd brought my dog in here, he would have got a life sentence too.
Speaker A:George Kelly, on the other hand was the shell of his fearsome public image.
Speaker A:He had been on bread and water diet in jail and had been pistol whipped by an agent after an altercation in the courthouse.
Speaker A:So entering the courtroom, he had a swollen temple and blood trickling down his face.
Speaker A:The man whose identity was built around a machine gun sat silently through the proceedings.
Speaker A:He never took the stand in his own defense.
Speaker B:In his closing argument, the district attorney Herbert Hyde framed the case as a battle for the soul of the nation.
Speaker B:Speaking to the jury and to the newsreel cameras, he declared, quote, we are here to find an answer to the question of whether we shall have a government of law and order or abdicate in favor of machine gun gangsters.
Speaker B:If the government cannot protect its citizens, then we had frankly better turn it over to the Kelly's.
Speaker B:End quote.
Speaker A: ,: Speaker A:They were sentenced to life in prison.
Speaker B:George Kelly was initially sent back to Leavenworth penitentiary, But he couldn't resist boasting.
Speaker B:He bragged to the press that he would escape, break his wife out of prison, and they would spend Christmas together.
Speaker A:The federal government decided to take these boasting threats seriously.
Speaker A: In August of: Speaker B: ,: Speaker B:Popularly known as the Rock.
Speaker B:Alcatraz was designated to be the end of the line, a place to break the spirits of America's most notorious and incorrigible criminals.
Speaker A:According to a warden who worked there during his time, his life at Alcatraz was largely uneventful.
Speaker A:The fearsome public enemy became the model inmate.
Speaker A:He worked in the prison laundry and held an administrative job in the industries office.
Speaker A:He played bridge on the weekends.
Speaker A:He even served as an altar boy in the prison chapel.
Speaker A:He became deeply remorseful, writing letters to Charles Urschel begging for his forgiveness.
Speaker A:The letters went unanswered.
Speaker B:To his fellow inmates at Alcatraz, hardened criminals like Al Capone and Doc Barker, the fearsome machine gun Kelly was a complete joke.
Speaker B:They saw right through the bravado that Catherine and the press had created.
Speaker B:He was constantly boasting, telling big fish stories about robberies he'd never committed and murders he'd never done.
Speaker A:A fellow inmate later recalled how Kelly earned a new, more fitting Nickname.
Speaker A:He said that Kelly told big fish stories.
Speaker A:So the cons called him Pop Gun Kelly, after cork guns that were popular with kids.
Speaker A:The guys didn't take him seriously.
Speaker A:The man whose entire identity was built on a powerful weapon was.
Speaker A:Was now named after a child's toy.
Speaker B:Another inmate who sailed next to Kelly remembered him as an intelligent man who loved to read.
Speaker B:But his most prominent memory was of Kelly's petty side.
Speaker B:Nearly every night, Kelly would accuse his neighbor of snoring, reach out of his cell and slap him on the head with a magazine.
Speaker B:This was the pathetic reality of the great public enemy.
Speaker A:The transformation of Machine Gun Kelly into Pop Gun Kelly perfectly illustrates the psychological purpose of Alcatraz.
Speaker A:The prison was designed not just for incarceration, but for the systemic dismantling of the Public enemy Persona.
Speaker B: gnated as a federal prison in: Speaker B:Most prisoners were notorious bank robbers and murderers, and the staff at the prison were highly trained in security, but not rehabilitation.
Speaker B:There was little hope for anyone jailed there of making it out anytime soon.
Speaker A:By stripping away the tools of their trade the guns, the fast car, the media attention and subjecting them to a rigid, monotonous, isolating routine, Alcatraz revealed the ordinary, often pathetic men behind the myths.
Speaker A:Kelly's story shows that the gangster image so potent in the outside world could not survive the brutal, demythologizing realities of the rock.
Speaker B:After spending 17 years on Alcatraz as an inmate, George Machine Gun Kelly was quietly transferred back to the Leavenworth Prison in Kansas.
Speaker B:There, three years later, he died of a heart attack on his 59th birthday.
Speaker B:When none of Kelly's family claimed his body, Catherine's stepfather, who had finished his own 11 years in prison, had him buried in his family plot in Cottondale, Texas.
Speaker B: e that states George B. Kelly: Speaker A: herine Kelly was sentenced in: Speaker A:She changed her name back to Lara.
Speaker A: obscurity until her death in: Speaker B:In the end, the story of Machine Gun Kelly is the story of an era.
Speaker B:He was a small time crook, a failure at almost everything he tried, who was inflated into a legendary figure by an ambitious wife, a sensationalist press and a public desperate for anti heroes.
Speaker B:He was the perfect villain for J. Edgar Hoover's rising FBI.
Speaker B:A larger than life public enemy whose capture could be spun into a tale of federal triumph.
Speaker B:For the heroic G Man.
Speaker A:He was a man defined by two guns.
Speaker A:The Thompson submachine gun that gave him his fearsome manufactured name.
Speaker A:And the pop gun that defined his pathetic, unraveled reality.
Speaker A:His story shows us that in the theater of crime, the myth is often more powerful, more dangerous than the actual man.
Speaker B:I'm Elena.
Speaker A:And I'm Michael.
Speaker B:Until next time.
Speaker A:Stay curious.
Speaker A:Sa.
