298: Machine Gun Kelly & the Woolverton Kidnapping w/ Kevin E. Meredith

Most Notorious! A True Crime History Podcast

Erik Rivenes

True Crime, History, Education

4.7 • 2.8K Ratings

🗓️ 13 June 2023

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On a chilly January night in 1932, a wealthy industrialist named Howard Woolverton was snatched from his car by kidnappers. While he was released unharmed the next day, his apparent lack of concern for the capture of his abductors led many to believe he was attempting to halt the investigation. J Edgar Hoover would later name George Kelly Barnes, aka "Machine Gun Kelly" and his wife Kathryn as participants in his abduction, but evidence suggests other notorious gangsters were involved, and the case itself has never officially been solved.

My guest Kevin Meredith collaborated with Woolverton's grandson David W. Hendry to write “Under Penalty of Death: The Untold Story of Machine Gun Kelly's First Kidnapping.” In this interview he theorizes about why Hoover might have ignored other possible suspects, including Verne Miller and Frank "Jelly" Nash, and explains how this little-known kidnapping, along with the Lindbergh kidnapping that followed closely on its heels, helped usher in the 1932 Federal Kidnapping Act.

The author's publisher page: https://iupress.org/9781684351992/under-penalty-of-death/

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome everyone to another episode of the most notorious podcast.
0:29.8	I'm Eric Rivenes. Great to have you with me as always. Hope you're having a wonderful summer.
0:36.8	I am very excited to have Kevin Meredith with me today. He has worked as a reporter, editor,
0:44.8	photographer, and columnist at newspapers in Hillsboro, North Carolina and Savannah, Georgia,
0:51.8	covering all sorts of subjects from local politics to education to business to crime.
0:58.8	He is the author along with David Henry Jr. of a recently published book called Under Penalty of Death,
1:07.8	the untold story of machine gun Kelly's first kidnapping. Thank you so much for joining me.
1:14.8	Oh, it's great to be here. Thank you.
1:17.8	Yeah. This story revolves around an obscure but fascinating kidnapping.
1:23.8	How did this story fall into your lap and what was it about this case that you connected with?
1:30.8	What was it that led you to believe that it would make a compelling book?
1:35.8	Well, the way it came to me, my mother-in-law, Jean Miller in Ogden, Utah,
1:43.8	was a professor at Weber State and apologies but this is a very convoluted story.
1:48.8	You can edit it as you see fit.
1:51.8	Had been a French professor at Weber State University, knew some folks in the library.
1:56.8	They ran into David Henry. He was an alum at Weber State and he was asking people,
2:02.8	hey, does anybody know a writer? So they went to my mother-in-law and she said,
2:08.8	well, my son-in-law does writing along with other things and they connected with me
2:13.8	and got me in touch with David Henry. So it was really just about as much out of the blue as you can imagine.
2:19.8	David is the grandson of Howard Wolverton who was the kidnapped victim and he found some old paperwork
2:29.8	in his grandfather's archives. This was decades ago and he felt like
2:37.8	this is significant. One of the most important things he found was a 5.5-page statement
	...

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