Kelly wrote several remorseful letters to Urschel begging his help in pleading his case. His letters provide a genuine sense of the pain and loneliness he suffered during his imprisonment on the Rock. In one letter written to Charles Urschel on April 11, 1940, Kelly penned perhaps some of the most profound observations ever written on the subjects of crime, and time served on America’s “Devil’s Island.” He wrote in part:
I feel at times you wonder how I’m standing up under my penal servitude, and what is my attitude of mind. It is natural that you should be infinitely curious. Incidentally, let me say that you have missed something in not having had the experience for yourself. No letters, no amount of talk, and still more, no literary description in second-rate books, and books on crime cannot but be second-rate – could ever give you the faintest idea of the reality.
No one can know what it’s like to suffer from the sort of intellectual atrophy, the pernicious mental scurvy, that come of long privation of all the things that make life real; because even the analogy of thirst can’t possibly give you an inkling of what it’s like to be tortured by the absence of everything that makes life worth living.
Maybe you have asked yourself, “How can a man of even ordinary intelligence put up with this kind of life, day in, day out, week after week, month after month, year after year.” To put it more mildly still, what is this life of mine like, you might wonder, and whence do I draw sufficient courage to endure it.
To begin with, these five words seem written in fire on the walls of my celclass="underline" “Nothing can be worth this.” This – kind of life I’m leading. That is the final word of wisdom so far as crime is concerned. Everything else is mere fine writing...
George Kelly’s Leavenworth mug shot, taken in 1951 (top) and (bottom) the last known living photo of Machine Gun Kelly, taken just prior his death in 1954.
A telegram to the Director of the Bureau of Prisons, announcing George Kelly’s death in 1954.
Kathryn Kelly playing the piano at the women’s correctional facility in Ohio, and prison portrait taken during the same period.
R.G. (Boss) Shannon, takes a last look at George Kelly, during the famed gunman's funeral in Cottondale, Texas on July 27, 1954. Shannon also served time in prison for his part in the kidnapping of Charles Urscel.
Charles Urschel apparently never responded to any of Kelly’s letters. George “Machine Gun” Kelly would spend seventeen years on Alcatraz and was returned to Leavenworth in 1951. Kelly died of a heart attack on July 18, 1954. Ironically, it was his fifty-ninth birthday. Kathryn was released from prison just four years following Kelly’s death, and took a job at an Oklahoma hospital as a bookkeeper. Albert Bates died of a heart attack on July 4, 1948, while still an inmate at Alcatraz.
Morton Sobell
Morton Sobell
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
In March of 1951, Morton Sobell, known internationally as the notorious Atom Spy, was brought to trial for conspiracy to commit espionage against the United States. He was the co-defendant of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, and their court case remains one the most famous and controversial trials in American history. Their alleged acts were declared the “Crime of the Century” by J. Edgar Hoover and the trial would result in the execution of both of the Rosenbergs. Sobell would escape the death penalty, but would receive a harsh thirty-year Federal prison term. In an attempt to apply one of the most severe punishments that the Federal prison system could impose, J. Edgar Hoover personally requested that Sobell be sent to Alcatraz.
In 1950 the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested Julius Rosenberg, then an electrical engineer employed by the U.S. Army Signal Corps, and his wife Ethel, a vocal activist for communism. They were indicted for conspiracy to transmit classified military information to a foreign power. During the course of their trial, the prosecution charged that the Rosenbergs had persuaded Ethel's brother David Greenglass, an Army Technical Sergeant at a top-secret governmental laboratory in Los Alamos, to furnish a Soviet agent named Anatoli Yakovlev with classified data on nuclear weapons. Greenglass had allegedly sketched schematics of the atomic bomb design, and provided several other key documents. It was revealed during the trial that he had full military clearance, with access to the most sensitive Defense Department data.
Morton Sobell was born on April 11, 1917, to Russian immigrants who had remained active in the Communist Party after immigrating to the United States. Morton met Julius Rosenberg while attending the City College School of Engineering in New York. Both men belonged to a young communist league and were active in promoting their political views. After completing their studies, Sobell and another colleague, Max Elitcher, moved to Washington D. C., where they shared an apartment while working at the Bureau of Ordnance in the Department of the Navy.
Years later during the famous trial, the sole evidence that would be introduced against Sobell was the testimony of Max Elitcher. Elitcher had admitted to being a communist, attributing this to Sobell’s influence. It was also through Sobell that he had become acquainted with the Rosenbergs, who he alleged were known to him as secret Soviet agents. He testified that he had acted as a courier between Sobell and Julius Rosenberg. Despite Elitcher’s incriminating testimony, the prosecution failed to present any substantial proof that Sobell had any connection with atomic bomb research and supplied no evidence of the alleged transmission of information on his part. Nevertheless, the prosecution asserted that an extensive spy ring had been in operation of which Sobell had been a principle member. They built their case around his previous political and personal affiliations and his association with the Rosenbergs.
The case was further based on a decision Sobell had made in 1950, when two days before the Korean War broke out, he left with his family to seek sanctuary in Mexico – perhaps knowing that he would be sought in connection with the Rosenbergs. Initially he made no attempts to conceal his identity in his travels. He used his own name to book the flight, and to rent property during his stay in Mexico. But the fact that Sobell then assumed an alias to seek passage to Europe would prove seriously detrimental to his case. The prosecution was able to link Sobell further with the Rosenbergs’ activities, because he departed for Mexico during the same time window in which Greenglass was paid by the Russians for transmitting atomic bomb secrets.
Although the evidence linking Sobell to the case was weak, the prosecution effectively persuaded the jury to convict him, stating in part: “Sobell’s conduct fits the pattern of membership in this conspiracy and flight from an American Jury when the day of reckoning had come.” On March 29, 1951, the jury pronounced all three defendants guilty of conspiracy to commit espionage, and the Rosenbergs were sentenced to death. The judge asserted that while he was fully confident that Sobell had also engaged in espionage activities, he was bound to recognize the lesser degree of his implication. Soviet agent Anatoli Yakovlev managed to escape back to Russia before the F.B.I. could apprehend him.