Most Notorious! A True Crime History Podcast · Blue Ewe Media

American Criminal: Machine Gun Kelly

·41 min·2 clips

George blackmails his father into raising his allowance and letting him use the family car.

1. Most Notorious! A True Crime History Podcast opens its American Criminal crossover series with George Machine Gun Kelly Barnes and the first part of his life story. 2. Jeremy Schwartz hosts, writes, and narrates the episode, and the exchange with American Criminal matters because this feed is carrying that show’s Kelly series. 3. The episode asks whether George Barnes was really the gangster his nickname suggests, or something smaller and more opportunistic. 4. George grows up in Memphis, Tennessee, where his father George Sr. is an accountant and George himself works shoe-shining and caddying before high school. 5. Tennessee becomes a dry state in 1909, so George starts crossing into Arkansas to buy alcohol and smuggle it back for profit. 6. After hearing that his father is having an affair, George stakes out the other woman’s apartment and then uses the information to negotiate a larger allowance and access to the family car. 7. George attends Mississippi A&M in 1917, earns a C+ in physical hygiene, and accumulates 55 demerits in his first semester. 8. He falls for Geneva Ramsey, elopes with her in 1919, and later leaves school and returns to bootlegging after his father-in-law dies. 9. Geneva leaves with their sons in 1926 after years of George’s absences, drinking, and legal trouble. 10. The episode then turns to Catherine Thorne, born Cleo Mae Brooks in Mississippi in 1904, who changes her name to Catherine at 13 in Coleman, Texas. 11. Catherine marries Lonnie Frye at 14, has a daughter named Pauline, works in beauty parlors and hotels, and is later arrested in Oklahoma City for stealing jewelry from a salesman. 12. Her marriage to Charlie Thorne ends amid violence, cheating rumors, and a death that the episode says was ruled a suicide after a gunshot to the head. 13. Catherine uses the resulting inheritance to buy a bungalow in Fort Worth and a maroon LaSalle, which the episode presents as the start of her more comfortable life. 14. George’s own criminal career escalates after a federal conviction for smuggling alcohol onto a Native American reservation sends him to Leavenworth for three years. 15. In prison, he meets and exchanges letters with Catherine while also sharing space with Frank Nash, Harvey Bailey, and Thomas Holden. 16. The episode connects the 1929 Wall Street crash and the Great Depression to George’s shift from bootlegging toward bank robbery and kidnapping. 17. George and his crew rob the Bank of Wilmar in Minnesota on July 15, 1930, taking $70,000 in cash and $70,000 in paper securities during a gunfire-filled escape. 18. He and Catherine marry in September 1930 after a restaurant conversation, then George resumes work in a series of daylight bank jobs, including the Sherman, Texas robbery that brings in more than $30,000. 19. The tone is narrative and chronological, with detailed scene-setting, period dates, and occasional asides about money, nicknames, and historical uncertainty. 20. Listeners interested in Depression-era crime history will get the most out of this episode, while people wanting a self-contained conclusion may not need the full series.

As heard by us

Catherine's mirror, lip rouge, and new name give this gangster origin story its spark.

American Criminal opens its George "Machine Gun" Kelly Barnes series by setting a Prohibition-era criminal path beside Catherine's more practical, unsettled life.

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Why you'd press play

You get George Kelly at the edge of a career turn, moving from small-time bootlegging toward gun-toting bank robbery, alongside Cleo Mae Brooks trying on the name Catherine.

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