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Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Dale Killingbeck

Dale Killingbeck

Wyoming Life

Around Wyoming

Wyoming’s oil, gas, coal, uranium and other minerals were not its only buried wealth from August 1933 through at least several months of 1934.

There was also a good portion of $90,000 in $20 bills buried somewhere near Cheyenne, part of a ransom payment in the July 22, 1933, kidnapping of an Oklahoma oilman.

Nearly a century later, it’s still not known for sure of all of that money has ever been found and there’s still loot still buried somewhere in Cheyenne.

The kidnappers were Machine Gun Kelly and Albert Bates, and the Cheyenne money represented Bates’ cut of the loot. 

It was buried by Bates’ wife of three months and her 21-year-old son. 

FBI documents from the time are not clear about whether all of that money was removed or recovered; however, a 1934 Oklahoma newspaper article seems to indicate the money was eventually dug up and taken to Oregon.

Regardless, the ground somewhere around the Wyoming Capitol in those months played a part in one of that decade’s notorious gangster sagas.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Kidnapping"}]

One year after Congress passed the “Lindbergh Law” making kidnapping a federal offense if the victim is transported across state lines, Bates and Kelly went to the Oklahoma City home of Charles Urschel.

With his wife, Urschel was playing cards on a screened porch with Walter Jarrett and his wife. The Urschels represented millions of dollars in oil wealth.

Two masked men, one with a machine gun and one with a pistol, opened the door at 11:15 p.m. on Saturday, July 22, according to FBI documents dated Oct. 15, 1935. 

The men asked Urschel to identify himself. When there was no response, they took both men.

“After warning the women against calling for help, they marched Urschel and Jarrett to where they had driven their car, put them into the back of the Chevrolet sedan and drove them away,” the FBI file states. 

“Mrs. Urschel, in accordance with the (U.S.) Attorney General’s advice to the public, immediately telephoned J. Edgar Hoover,” the documents continue. "Special agents were sent to Oklahoma City where an extensive investigation commenced.”

Jarrett was released by the kidnappers 12 miles outside the city after they had identified him through his wallet and robbed him of $50.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"$200,000 Demand"}]

The FBI initially let the ransom process play out. 

Another Oklahoma oilman friend was contacted days later through a Western Union package with a letter from Urschel detailing how the kidnappers wanted $200,000 and asking him to be an intermediary.

An elaborate scheme involving a newspaper ad, post office box, and train trip by Urschel’s friend carrying a new suitcase full of the cash in $20 bills was outlined by the kidnappers. 

The FBI’s policy at the time was to try and ensure the safety of the victim.

When it came time to provide the money, the family, with counsel from the FBI, went to the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City and got $200,000 in $20 bills. 

All the serial numbers on the 10,000 bills were recorded.

The train scheme to deliver the case was followed, and on July 31, Urschel was taken to Norman, Oklahoma, given $10 and released.

Though blindfolded and with cotton in his ears for some of his transport and captivity, the oilman’s description of sounds of oil rigs, airplanes and snippets of conversation helped the FBI pinpoint the Texas ranch of Machine Gun Kelly’s wife as the place he was held captive.

A raid on the ranch found Kathryn Kelly’s parents admitting that they had stood guard over Urschel and told agents that George “Machine Gun” Kelly and Bates had kidnapped him. 

At their home, the agents also arrested a Kansas State Penitentiary escapee who had $700 worth of Urschel ransom money on him.

The FBI put out nationwide information for law enforcement to be on the lookout for Bates and the Kellys.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Bates Arrested"}]

On Aug. 12, 1933, Bates was arrested in Denver after returning from a trip to Oregon. 

Colorado detectives received a tip he has appeared at the train station and arrested him for robbing the First State Bank of Louisville, Colorado. They also started looking for his wife.

“Detectives Henry Tormay and Harry Bernstein, who arrested Bates, began a search here Friday for Bates’ wife, who is said to have come to Denver and is believed to be using the name ‘Mrs. George L. Davis,’ an alias police say Bates used,” the Fort Collins Coloradan reported on Aug. 18, 1933.

FBI documents dated April 25, 1934, from the agency's Salt Lake City office show the agency still actively looking for Clara Feldman, Bates' wife, who also was using the name Ruth Johnson. 

Agents also were doing research trying to track a Chevy automobile. A Salt Lake City agent also was sent to Cheyenne to dig into “undeveloped leads.”

“Will secure all information possible, helpful in locating Ruth Johnson (Clara Feldman) and (the name was blacked out),” the agent wrote.

But Bates' wife was not found until months later. 

The FBI’s tactic of copying the serial numbers of all the $20 bills and distributing that information to banks across the country paid off.

“Urschel Ransom Found In Oregon,” the Morning Oregonian newspaper reported on Nov. 8, 1934. “Officers take $1,360 off driver hurt in crash.”

The driver was Alvin Scott, 46, who on Nov. 2 was involved in a high-speed crash that put him in the hospital in critical condition. 

Police found $1,360 in $20 bills linked to the kidnapping. 

Clara Feldman’s sister, Margarette Hurtienne, was his housekeeper. His and Hurtienne’s arrests led agents to Feldman and her son, Edward, 21, and his wife, Betty, in Dunsmuir, California.

Clara Feldman, aka Clara Davis and Clara Bates, told FBI agents that she and her son had traveled from Denver to Oregon with Albert Bates in August 1933 — just after the kidnapping — to visit family and they had returned to Denver without Bates.

She had not been aware of her husband’s return to Denver until she heard from a released county jail cellmate who brought a message from Bates to her apartment.

The message was brief: “Look in the suitcase.”

When Feldman opened it, it was filled with $20 bills.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"'Vicinity Of Cheyenne'"}]

An FBI memo to J. Edgar Hoover on Dec. 16, 1934, states that Edward Feldman told agents that in the year prior they buried the money “in the vicinity of Cheyenne” and stayed in the area for two or three weeks, maintaining contact with a family in Denver connected to Margarette Hurtienne.

A Casper Tribune-Herald Article on Dec. 18, 1934, reported that Laramie County Sheriff George Carroll told local reporters that Feldman and her son were just a few steps ahead of the FBI and law enforcement in 1933 when they were in the region.

“The sheriff said he received information that persons sought in connection with the federal search for the Urschel ransom money were in Cheyenne,” the newspaper reported.

Both Clara and Edward Feldman told the FBI that once they buried the money, they were contacted by noted Denver attorney Ben Laska, who was going to defend Albert Bates at the kidnapping trial in Oklahoma. 

Laska confiscated their identification papers and told Edward Feldman to use the name “Axel C. Johnson” and to go to big cities in the East to live.

Laska weeks later contacted them and asked for $10,000 to represent Bates. That would be the equivalent of $248,000 in 2026 purchasing power. 

The Feldman’s delivered Laska $8,000 of the ransom money, they told the FBI.

“Laska then asked for a diagram of the place where the remaining ransom money was buried,” the FBI reports states. “Edward Feldman furnished him with a fictitious diagram.”

Edward Feldman told agents he later delivered $2,000 in additional ransom funds to Laska and another attorney while they were in Oklahoma defending Bates at the trial.

The Feldman’s and Hurtienne agreed to testify about those payments for the feds and were extradited to Oklahoma.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Guilty Pleas"}]

Feldman and her son went on to plead guilty to conspiracy charges related to the kidnapping cash and testified against, Laska, who also had been charged for his part in accepting what he knew to be the ransom cash. 

They were given five-year suspended prison sentences and placed on five years of probation.

Laska was convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

FBI files in the case report that the Feldmans after their arrest gave agents information to where more than $38,000 of cash was buried. 

But the FBI files do not make clear where they recovered the cash.

However, the Tulsa World reported on Dec. 18, 1934, that the cash ended up on the West Coast after reporting the amount the Feldman’s buried in Cheyenne was “about $75,000 of the money” from Bate’s $90,000 haul.

The newspaper reported that the Feldmans removed “the money after a year and transported it to Oregon and Washington.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Cash Unaccounted For"}]

FBI files do not account for the close to $25,000 not recovered from the Feldman’s or their associates such as Scott and Hurtienne that represented Bates’ haul from the kidnapping.

Clara Feldman and her sister may have used part of the funds for their wardrobe. During their first court appearances in Oregon following their arrest, The Oregon Daily Journal on Nov. 10 reported on their court attire.

“Both Mrs. Hurtienne and Clara Feldman are attractive women. They wore brown fur coats of expensive make and their entire ensembles were of corresponding color, even to their shoes, hats, dresses, scarves, purses, gloves and hosiery,” the newspaper reported.

For their actions in the kidnapping, Bates, George “Machine Gun” Kelly and his wife, Kathryn were sentenced to life in prison. 

Both men were sent to Alcatraz. Bates died on July 4, 1948 of heart disease while at Alcatraz.

Kelly died on July 18, 1954, after being transferred Leavenworth prison in Kansas.

Kathryn Kelly was initially sent to a Milan, Michigan prison and was released in 1958. She died in Oklahoma in 1985.

Edward Feldman died on March 11, 1977 and is buried in Medford, Oregon. His mother was listed in the 1940 U.S. Census as living in Portland, Oregon. Cowboy State Daily could not determine her date and place of death.

Laska was paroled from prison in 1941 and later pardoned by President Harry Truman for his role in accepting the cash and directing the Feldman’s actions.

And decades later, it’s possible there's $25,000 still buried somewhere around Cheyenne.

Downtown Cheyenne and notorious kidnappers 5 30 26

Cowboy State Daily is Wyoming’s largest newspaper with Wyoming’s most experienced journalists. 

<title>$25,000 From 1933 Kidnapping Ransom Could Still Be Buried Somewhere In Cheyenne | Cowboy State Daily</title>

FBI files from 1933 reveal that $90,000 in ransom loot from a Machine Gun Kelly kidnapping scheme ended up buried somewhere around Cheyenne. Whether all the loot was ever recovered remains a question with about $25,000 still unaccounted for.

$25,000 From 1933 Kidnapping Ransom Could Still Be Buried Somewhere In Cheyenne

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's Feature Reporter, Andrew Rossi.

Andrew Rossi

Outdoors

Public Lands

[{"type":"text","text":"Wyoming’s winds are so strong, they actually move Devils Tower."}]

The nation’s first national monument has been swaying back and forth for millions of years — and it’s moving right now.

 published by the Geological Society of America has revealed that Wyoming’s iconic Devils Tower is constantly moving. 

An international team of geologists studied the massive monolith and determined that it's perpetually and ever-so-slightly swaying, twisting, and turning in the wind.

“It’s not only a static rock structure, millions of years in the making,” said Jeffrey Moore, a professor of geology and geophysics at the University of Utah and lead author of the new study. “It is moving on human timescales. It's constantly in motion.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Solid As A Rock"}]

Devils Tower is a giant, eroded plug of volcanic rock. It was an intrusive body of magma that cooled under the surface and was gradually exposed by millions of years of erosion.

When most people see Devils Tower, they assume it’s as solid as a rock. Moore’s research shows that it isn’t entirely true.

“It’s lively with vibrational energy,” Moore said. “You can't see it, feel it, hear it, or anything, but it's nonetheless very real. It’s happened right this very second.”

Moore and his colleagues studied Devils Tower using ambient vibration modal analysis techniques. 

It’s a way of analyzing the ambient vibrations moving through solid rock forms, identifying the mode of those vibrations, and determining the extent and nature of movement they cause.

“It’s similar to playing a note on a piano,” Moore said. “If you looked at the sound wave of that, it wouldn't look like much, but if you looked at the frequency, it would tell you quite a lot about the frequencies of what you’re hearing. That’s what we did at Devils Tower.”

To conduct the study, the team placed two sensors at the base of Devils Tower and a seismometer at its 867-foot summit.

Kathryn Vollinger, another author of the study, was tasked with climbing Devils Tower twice in two days to set up and remove the seismometer at the top.

“She hauled it up, set it there, left it overnight, and climbed up the next morning to take it down,” Moore said. “All done with a permit from the National Park Service, of course.”

The data collected by the sensors revealed a lot about the movement of Devils Tower. It’s not just a once-in-a-while phenomenon, but an everyday occurrence.

[{"type":"text","text":"“It’s constantly in motion,” Moore said."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Twist And Turn, Back And Forth"}]

Different movements have different frequencies. By analyzing the frequencies collected by the sensors, Moore and his colleagues determined how Devils Tower moves.

“We were able to discern the three modes of vibration,” Moore said. “The first two modes are what we might call full-height swinging, as it sways in one direction and then back in the other direction.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Unnaturally tall, narrow objects do this. "}]

It’s a physical force that constantly acts on skyscrapers, forcing architects to design and use the proper materials so their hundred-story buildings can safely sway with the wind.

The third mode of vibration Moore found was a torsional mode. That means Devils Tower twists on its vertical axis, around and back, and not just back and forth.

“That’s a rather interesting one, but again, something that's relatively common for tall buildings,” Moore said.

So, on an average day, Devils Tower is swaying and twisting back and forth.

[{"type":"text","text":"And what are the forces causing that movement? Wind and seismic activity."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Moore said Wyoming’s wind was particularly impactful on Devils Tower."}]

“When it was windier, the amplitudes of movement were higher, but the frequencies were the same,” he said.

Seismic activity was a smaller factor, but one that was easily distinguished and had an impact, according to the data collected. Moore said there is enough seismic activity to keep Devils Tower moving even on the rare windless day.

“There’s enough seismic energy to keep the tower in constant motion,” he said. “On a windy day, it's going to sway stronger, but it's still in motion on a calm day. It's just very, very subtle.”

[{"type":"text","text":"In this case, the subtlety is definitely in the details."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Never Blink And You’ll Miss It"}]

If Devils Tower is constantly in motion, could it eventually twist or sway enough to partially or fully collapse? Could the nation’s first national monument send itself to hell?

Unlikely, said Moore. While the tower is constantly in motion, that motion is so minuscule that it’s barely noticeable.

“The movements are very, very small,” he said. “They’re on the order of a micrometer. That's a thousandth of a millimeter, and a millionth of a meter. It’s easily measurable on modern seismographs, but not to the human eye.

Someone could stare at the constantly moving Devils Tower all day and not see a thing. If someone pointed a time-lapse at the tower for 100 years, it would appear to remain motionless.

The difference between Devils Tower and Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, now the tallest building in the world at 2,717 feet, is that Devils Tower is solid. That’s why the swaying and twisting of skyscrapers is noticeable and much more intense.

“Tall buildings are mostly hollow steel structures, so they sway enough that people feel ill,” Moore said. “Devils Tower is solid throughout, so its movements are very small.”

It’s also important to note that while Devils Tower constantly moves, technically it isn’t moving.

While the tower itself is swaying, twisting, and turning on a daily basis, it isn’t migrating across the landscape like the Yellowstone or Hawaiian hotspots. The volcanic activity that created Devils Tower ended a long time ago and shows no signs of reawakening.  

But what about the worst-case scenario? Moore and his colleagues have that covered.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Future In Modeling"}]

As part of their research, the team created models of Devils Tower’s structural dynamics. They used their data to create predicted resonance models visualizing its constant directional movement to the extreme.

“These are very exaggerated deformation shapes,” Moore said. “They're exaggerated so you can see the motion, and how it's bending, swaying, and twisting.”

The models are a little alarming, showing a much more precarious Devils Tower leaning to-and-fro to an extent that would make anyone scared of an imminent collapse.

However, these are not predictive models. Nobody’s saying Devils Tower can or ever would reach these extremes.

The volcanic activity that created Devils Tower ended millions of years ago. 

Today, northeast Wyoming is far from any active seismic faults that could create enough force to twist the tower out of shape or cause a collapse.

Like all geologic wonders, Devils Tower will be worn down by wind, water, and erosion over a prolonged period. Its daily micrometers of swaying, twisting, and turning are not a cause of concern.

“These animations help us understand how it might move if there were a big earthquake,” Moore said. “There isn’t any sort of risk associated with these movements that I know of, and I don’t even know that there could be.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Twist And Shout"}]

Devils Tower is the latest geologic wonder that Moore has studied using ambient vibration modal analysis. He’s done similar studies on Utah’s famous rock arches and the Matterhorn in the Swiss Alps.

The scientific justification for these projects is using the ambient movement of geologic landforms to determine their composition and study how their properties change over time.

“It’s called structural health monitoring,” Moore said. “What we've shown is that by placing a seismometer on top of a geologic landform for a few hours, you can derive the key structural and mechanical properties of the materials and then compare those to other materials across the world.”

Structural health monitoring can help identify the effects of cracks on famous landforms and how geologic composition may lead to future failures that could affect people.

There’s nothing to worry about at Devils Tower. According to Moore, another fact they confirmed during their research is that the monolith is “pretty monolithic.”

“In some cases, we find important impacts of cracks and other structural additions, but that’s not super prominent at Devils Tower,” he said. “Based on its rock properties, it’s pretty solid.”

Moore hopes his work will reignite interest in Devils Tower and its unique geology.

 At the very least, people who visit the iconic Wyoming landmark will know that the seemingly still, immovable object looming above them is actually constantly in motion.

“Hopefully, we’re adding a new layer to the way that people can appreciate Devils Tower,” he said. “It’s an unexpected layer of interest. The motion is very, very tiny, but it’s constantly in motion. It’s alive.”

Devils tower storm 8 7 24

<title>"It's Alive!": Scientists Say Devils Tower Is Constantly Moving | Cowboy State Daily</title>

New research published by the Geological Society of America has revealed that Devils Tower is constantly moving. An international team of geologists determined that it's perpetually and ever-so-slightly swaying, twisting, and turning in the wind.

"It's Alive!": Scientists Say Devils Tower Is Constantly Moving

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's business and tourism reporter, Renée Jean

Renée Jean

Business & Tourism

Business

CHEYENNE — In some ways, it was the ultimate Mother’s Day gift, even though the gift didn’t necessarily happen on that exact date. 

In 2019, Shareen Brendle’s mother was showing early signs of dementia.

“So I bought Bouquets Unlimited from her, because it was her only out for retirement,” Brendle told Cowboy State Daily. “And then she passed away in 2022.”

Four short years later, Brendle’s independent florist shop faces a tough reality. Her Mother’s Day sales were down 10% this year, even as she heard of a nearby store giving away free bouquets for the holiday as an in-store promotion.

It felt like a sign of the times to Brendle. She’s been helping her mom at the family’s legacy shop for 38 years, and she’s watched independent florist shops dwindle all along the way.

In 1992, there were 27,000 florist storefronts in America. By 2012, that number had dropped by almost half to 14,000. Today, they number 11,750. 

Cheyenne’s Bouquets Unlimited is closing its doors after 44 years because they can't compete with the online giants. In 1992, there were 27,000 florist storefronts in America. Today, they number 11,750.  “I’m broken-hearted about it,” the owner said.