Departures of note

In July 1933, Charles F. Urschel, an Oklahoma City oil tycoon, was abducted at gunpoint from his home during a bridge game by George 'Machine Gun' Kelly and Albert Bates. While held blindfolded for over a week in a Texas farmhouse, Urschel meticulously noted details of his surroundings, including the daily flight of an airplane overhead. After his release following a $200,000 ransom payment, he provided this information to the FBI, which helped locate the hideout and led to the arrest and conviction of the kidnappers and their associates.

Urschel's kidnapping came under the new federal Lindbergh Law, and FBI director J. Edgar Hoover made it a priority to restore the agency's reputation. The investigation resulted in 21 convictions, including life sentences for Kelly and Bates, and was one of the first trials to be filmed. Urschel's careful observations were crucial to the case, and he later testified in court.

Born in Ohio in 1890, Urschel became wealthy through oil, partly through marriages linking him to the Slick family. After the kidnapping, he continued his business career, relocating to San Antonio, Texas, in 1945, where he ran the Slick-Urschel Oil Company and helped found research institutions. Despite believing Kelly's wife Kathryn was the mastermind, Urschel anonymously funded the college education of her daughter, a fact discovered years later. He died on September 26, 1970.