JUNE 2022

JUNE  2022
I DON'T NEED A RIDE. I NEED AMMUNITION.

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Saturday, July 30, 2022

A TWIST IN THE PLOT

 

I once had my doubts, but then so did General William Tecumseh Sherman (above). He wrote in his memoirs, 25 years later, “At first I discredited the story of the massacre, because,...I had ordered Fort Pillow to be evacuated...” 
Sherman had ordered the Hoosiers and New Yorkers garrisoning the river fort to join his February 1864 raid on Meridian, Mississippi. After he left the rail head's supply depots burning, southern Mississippi and Alabama would no longer support a rebel army, leaving “Uncle Billy”' free to organize his summer campaign against Atlanta.,  And then, behind his lines, western Tennessee was reignited, inspiring Sherman to declare, “There will never be peace in Tennessee till Forrest is dead.”
It can be argued the 750,000 Americans killed in the Civil War were sacrificed so men like Bedford Forrest could succeed. When the war broke out Forrest's personal fortune was $1.5 million, mostly in human property. Bedford, as he preferred to be called, was a slave trader, who could neither read nor write. But politicians saw the 6'2”, 210 pound Forrest as a walking recruiting poster, and made him first a colonel and then a major general. And white Tennesseans flocked to serve him.
He was a brutal man, often governed by his quick temper. He killed at least 30 men with his own hands. In 1863 an argument with a subordinate escalated to a personal confrontation, and Forrest stabbed a fellow Confederate officer to death with a knife. But as a commander of light cavalry, Forrest proved to be a genius. And in the wake of the Meridian debacle Forrest set out with 1,500 men on his third raid behind union lines, seeking to feed, clothe and mount his hungry men, and to replace those who were no longer volunteering behind Confederate lines with naive civilians, determined to believe in the romance of the southern cause.
Just after it succeeded, in July of 1861, the state of Tennessee built Fort Pillow on the first of the Chickasaw Bluffs coming south on the Mississippi River. It was laid out by soldiers trained to think expansively. The fort's horse shoe outer defense line enclosed 1,600 acres, anchored on the big river to the south, and tiny Cold Creek on the north. One hundred-fifty yards inside this was the main defensive position, cut through the high ground, about 800 yards long. All this was to defend artillery positions 100 yards behind, on the lower riverside bluff, looming over a narrowing on Mississippi River. The only problem was it would require 4 – 5,000 men to man these defenses,.and neither the Provisional Army of Tennessee, nor the Confederacy, could spare such numbers. As soon as Memphis, 40 miles to the south, fell to Federal naval forces on June 6, 1862, Fort Pillow was evacuated, and western Tennessee became occupied territory.
Once the federal regiments were established in Fort Pillow, the profiteers poured in. By 1864, there were 14 federally licensed cotton traders alone in the nearby village of Fulton. Typical was Edward Benton, representing Chicago based investors, who bought 215 acres of rich bottom land, paying 50 newly freed slaves $10 a month to tend the valuable crop. There were also corn and livestock traders, supplying the federal armies pushing south. So when Sherman ordered the evacuation of Fort Pillow, he was endangering a substantial and growing investment. Which may explain why, on February 3, 1864, the commander at Memphis, General Stephen Hurlbut, ordered still green cavalrymen to reoccupy Fort Pillow.
Thirty-six year old west Tennessee attorney, William “Bill” Braford became a major in the Union army for the same reason Bedford Forrest had been made a General in the rebel army - to attract volunteers. Some 120,000 Tennesseans served in Confederate armies during the war, but another 42,000 served in Union forces. Four companies of “Bradford's Brigade” were mustered into service two miles south of the Kentucky border, in Union City, Tennessee, the day after Christmas, 1863. A little over a month later, on February 8, 1864, these as yet unmounted cavalrymen occupied the now abandoned Fort Pillow. They were ordered to “...use all diligence in recruiting and mounting...”, and were “...authorized to impress horses from both the loyal and disloyal, giving vouchers...” And by April 1st, enough volunteers had turned up to form a fifth company, giving Bradford's Brigade a total strength of 295 troopers. 
It was not nearly enough to hold the fort's main defensive line, so on the final bluff Bradford ordered an “L” shaped earthen barricade constructed, with soil from a ditch in front used to raise the parapet even higher. And General Hurlbut promised to send reinforcements.
They arrived on 28 March, in the form of twenty-five year old Major Lionel Booth and 265 artillery men. But the arrivals brought problems. First, Major Booth's commission was a few weeks older than Major Bradford's, making the younger man post commander. And Booth had a confusing past. In 1861 and under the name George Lanning, he had escaped an abusive, alcoholic stepfather by joining the federal army, as a private. He was promoted to sergeant of artillery for his actions in the 1862 Battle of Wilson's Creek, in Missouri, and was then promoted to Major when he accepted command of negro troops, which was the second problem.
The black artillery men were a section of the Second U.S. Colored Light Artillery regiment ,who manned the fort's two 6 pound rifled cannon and brought with them two 12 pound howitzers, and the First Battalion Sixth U.S. Colored Heavy Artillery battery which brought with them two 10-pound Parrott guns . None of the now 560 members of the garrison had ever functioned as a unit, and they were burdened with 100 civilians, both white businessmen and escaped slaves. The white Tennessean soldiers were uneasy with black men carrying guns, and the African-American soldiers were uneasy dealing with whites on an equal bases. To have called these 560 men a unit would be extraordinarily optimistic.
Bedford Forrest set out on this third raid on March 15, 1864, with 1,500 men. A month after Bradford's Brigade had been ordered south, Forrest captured Union City, took 475 union prisoners but captured only 300 horses to replace his 1,500 weary mounts. He quickly moved into Kentucky, added another 200 volunteers to his own force, and on 25 March,  threatened the vital union supply depot at the mouth of the Tennessee river - Paducah, Kentucky.
Forrest's standard approach was to throw skirmishers at the defenses, and then threaten to slaughter the garrison if they did not immediately surrender. Usually isolated rear echelon units folded under the pressure, but if they did not Forrest rarely risked his men's lives, preferring to steal horses and supplies to fighting for them. But in a troubling breakdown of discipline, after the federals rejected his surrender demand, one rebel officer led an unauthorized charge against the federals, losing almost 50 men. His nose uncharacteristically bloodied, Forrest then retreated back into Tennessee.
For the first time Forrest's raid had not made him stronger. There was the lapse in discipline, and a scarcity of fresh horses which slowed his retreat. Union politicians might be panicking, but Bedford Forrest was frustrated and his men tired and hungry as they approached Fort Pillow. Inside they knew were horses and weapons, and food. Advance parties opened fire on the fort's pickets before dawn on 12 April.
Unknown to the rebels, about 9 that morning, as Major Booth was making a reconnaissance of the assault, and after he had sent a fast boat to Memphis seeking reinforcements, the union commander was struck in the chest by a ball and killed. By the time Forrest arrived with his 90 man personal guard an hour later, the union pickets had retreated into the main defense line trenches atop the high ground. As he scouted the perimeter, placing his weary men as they slowly arrived, Forrest had two horses shot and killed out from under him, both times throwing the commander to the ground and bruising his ribs.
Finally, about 3:30 p.m., after having outflanked and overrun the defensive line on the high bluffs, Forrest sent his standard demand under a flag of truce. “...I demand the unconditional surrender of the entire garrison, promising that you shall be treated as prisoners of war. My men have just received a fresh supply of ammunition, and from their present position can easily assault and capture the fort. Should my demand be refused, I cannot be responsible for the fate of your command.” It was a lie, as usual. His men were short of ammo, short of horses, and exhausted, having ridden all night to get ahead of pursuing federal cavalry.
 
Inside the fort, William Bradford was convinced Forrest had 6,000 fresh, well arm battle hardened men on three sides, now attacking him from high ground. But since his casualties to this point were light, Bradford decided to hold out for reinforcements from Memphis. He ordered Captain John Young to the river bank with boxes of ammunition, for a possible last stand. While the truce held, both black and white soldiers taunted the rebels from the walls, shouting, “If you want the fort, come and take it.” And only after an hour and 20 minute delay, did Major Bradford respond to General Forrest's demand. “I will not surrender.”
The end took just about 20 minutes. A bugler sounded the charge. And while snipers on the high ground suppressed the union gunners, rebels who had used the truce to filter unseen into the ditch, now boosted each other onto the parapet, and swarmed the defenders. The fighting was for the most part, short lived. The wounded Bradford told his men, “Save yourself boys”. And then the slaughter began.
The next day a Confederate trooper in the 20th Tennessee cavalry, Achilles Clark, described what happened in a letter to his sister. “The slaughter was awful,” he wrote. “The poor, deluded, Negroes would run up to our men...and...scream for mercy, but they were ordered to their feet and then shot down. The white men fared but little better. Their fort turned out to be a great slaughter pen....General Forrest ordered them shot down like dogs...Finally our men became sick of blood and the firing ceased."
Private George Shaw, one of the black artillery men, sought escape at the riverbank, where he was grabbed by a rebel soldier. The unarmed Shaw begged, “Please don't shoot me. The rebel answered, “Damn you, you are fighting against your master,” and shot Shaw in the mouth. The union soldier was left bleeding and floating downstream in the Mississippi River.
Charles Robinson, a white civilian from Minnesota, had come to Fort Pillow to practice his trade as a photographer, taking photos the soldiers sent home to their families. He wrote his own family five days after the fight. “Our boys...threw down their arms...but no sooner were they seen than they were shot down, ...I...could see our poor fellows bleeding and hear them cry “surrender...I surrender”...The rebels ran down the bank and putting their revolvers right up to their heads would blow their brains out or lift them up on bayonets and thrown them headlong into the river below. One of them soon came to where I was laying with one of the “C Company” boys. He...shot the soldier in the head...scattering the blood and brains in my face and then putting the revolver right against my breast he said, “You'll fight with the niggers again, will you? You damn Yankee!” He snapped the revolver but she didn't go off”. The break seemed to break the rebels fury, and he took Robinson prisoner, later stealing his watch.  Robinson added, “I saw them laugh and cheer when they were shooting our boys who had jumped in the river.”
Dr. Charles Fitch had set up a union field hospital just below the bluff, and saw his patients shot and “chopped to pieces by sabres”. He watched as 20 surrendered black union soldier were ordered into a line and neatly cut down by a single volley of musket fire. Spotting General Forrest,  Fitch demanded he stop the slaughter. Forrest responded by asking if Fitch was a doctor for the black or the white soldiers. And when Fitch refused to choose between them, Forest shouted, “I have a great mind to have you killed for being down there!” Instead, Forrest assigned a soldier to guard the doctor, and finally ordered a halt to the butchery, even shooting one Confederate soldier who continued the killing. Three days later Forrest himself admitted in an official dispatch, “The river was dyed with the blood of the slaughtered for 200 yards” He went on to hope this would show, “negro soldiers cannot cope with Southerners.”
Union witnesses reported some rebels hunted for black union survivors through the night, killing those they found. The wounded Major Bradford was taken prisoner, but was shot and killed several days later “while trying to escape.” Of the entire garrison of 560 men, about 285 survived, 61 with wounds. But among those wearing blue, 69% of the whites survived, while just 35% of the African-American soldiers survived.
Northern newspapers and politicians labeled it a war crime. Southern newspapers and politicians downplayed the slaughter or denied it. But the truth is that slavery had so twisted southern culture, that after the war Bedford Forrest could insist, “I am not an enemy of the negro. We want him here among us; he is the only laboring class we have.”
And if you talk to the current residents of Ferguson, Missouri, or Staten Island, New York, or police officers in almost any American city,  the shooting of unarmed African American males, is a continuing theme in America. The Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court may believe we live in a post-racial United States, but that ideological driven contention is as absurd as Bedford Forrest's contention that he was in any way shape or form, the Negro's friend. 
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Friday, July 29, 2022

THE QUALITY OF FRAUD IN AMERICA

 

I believe no one should be handed a high school diploma without being provided with an understanding of the history of fraud in America. The ambitious and the greedy have always found a way to profit by cheating. And the mantra of deregulation is yet more proof that a good education in cheating might at least warn the suckers. For example, did you know that one of the men who did the most to advance the 19th century's greatest fraud upon the American people was “Honest” Abe Lincoln?
Lincoln’s break through case as a lawyer involved the 6 May 1856 destruction of the “Government Bridge”. The bridge was actually owned by the Mississippi and Missouri Railroad, but by calling it "Government Bridge" the railroad attracted more investors. It was first the bridge over the lower Mississippi River, between Rock Island, Illinois and Davenport, Iowa. Just two weeks after the bridge was opened to trains a steamboat, the old and leaky “Effie Afton”, ran into one of the bridge's piers which caused a fire that destroyed the boat and one span of the bridge. The owners of the Effie sued the owners of the bridge, claiming that bridges were a navigational hazard to river commerce.  It was an argument that promised to enrich the steamboat owners, and cripple the growing railroad industry.
The mercurial Charles Durant, one of the railroad’s officers, hired Lincoln to defend the bridge. In lieu of payment, Lincoln accepted $3,000 in railroad stock (the equivalent of about $66,000 today). After winning the case (he got a hung jury) Lincoln traveled all the way to Kansas to inspect the intended route of the future transcontinental railroad, which would be built by corporations that Durant ran and manipulated. And then, one of the first bills signed into law by President Lincoln was “The Pacific Railroad Act of 1862” which officially authorized the Central Pacific Railroad corporation to build east from California and the Union Pacific (whose vice president was Charles Durant) to build west from Council Bluffs, Iowa. This meant that Lincoln now owned some very valuable stock.
To pay for the construction across all those hundreds of empty miles, the railroad company was to be re-reimbursed for the total cost of building the line.  They were expected to make their profits from selling land they were awarded on either side of the rails. The completed railroad would make that land accessible, which would make it valuable. But the fact that Lincoln traveled all the way to Kansas to see the route and the property with his own eyes, showed that Lincoln knew enough not to trust the word of Charles Durant. And yet he had just turned this rapacious wolf loose upon the American taxpayers. Well, Lincoln had an excuse; he was a little distracted by the outbreak of the Civil War.
Doctor Charles Durant (Medicine had been his formal training), immediately showed his true genius by first buying out Union Pacific stockholder Herbert Hoxie for $10,000. This, in addition to stock he had already owned, gave Durant majority control of the railroad, even though the “Railroad Act” had limited individual stock ownership to avoid just the kind of manipulation Durant had in mind. Then Durant bought stock in competing railroads (on margin, of course, meaning borrowed money), and spread rumors that they would soon be joined to the Union Pacific line, thus giving them a piece of the projected profits from the transcontinental trade.
When those railroad stocks then went up, Durant sold them out. Eventually the suckers realized there would be no joining, and the stocks fell to below their original value. With the Civil War raging Durant had just cleared $5 million profit (the equivalent of about $100 million today), and he had yet to lay an inch of rail.
Durant was hot tempered, erratic and prone to manic depression. But he had a genius at cheating. And what he had done so far was just the prologue. Doctor Durant now came up with an idea he had learned from the French construction of the Suez Canal.
In early 1864 the good Doctor Durant sent his director of publicity, George Francis Train, on a search for just the right corporate vehicle. Train found what he was looking for in the Pennsylvania Fiscal Agency, one of the innumerable stock schemes chartered by the states to fund "The American people’s railroad to the Western Sea.” None of these shell companies ever laid a single length of rail, but this one still had an effective charter and it was for sale, cheap. Train bought the company and renamed it Credit Mobilier, a name vague enough to leave you unsure just what they did. Then he sold shares in this new company for nominal amounts (often even on credit) to the principle stockholders of the Union Pacific Railroad - the majority going, of course, to Doctor Durant.  In other words, it was a shell company.
And in the completion in this little of slight-of-hand, the Union Pacific signed an exclusive “no bid” contract with Credit Moblier (meaning themselves) to supply the Union Pacific with all labor, grading, rails, ties, spikes, bridges, abutments, rolling stock and engines needed to actually build and run the railroad; let the fleecing begin. The owners of the Union Pacific had just agreed to pay Credit Moblier (themselves) whatever it cost to build the railroad, the bill, of  course, to be paid by the American tax payers, and the patriotic rubes who invested in the Union Pacific. 
The original engineer of the Union Pacific had calculated that the first 100 miles of track would cost $30,000 per mile to build. But Credit Moblier billed the railroad $60,000 per mile, which was taken directly from the pocket of the federal government. The route also began to meander across the landscape, like a drunken sparrow in flight. Each twist and turn added miles to the bill presented to the Federal government. By the end of construction in 1869, the profit from this padding of the construction bills produced a profit for the stockholders of Credit Mobilier of $50 million (equal to about $800 million today). Remember this was not the side of the equation that was supposed to provide a profit for the builders, the sale of farmland on either side of the tracks was supposed to justify the entire project.
Better yet, for the principle investor, the Union Pacific Railroad was something new on the American scene, a “limited liability corporation”. Under the old rules stockholders were liable for any debts the company ran up. A bankrupt company meant bankrupt investors. But investors in the Union Pacific Railroad Limited, including Doctor Durant, Mr. Train and several members of Congress who had been given Credit Moblier stock (because they would control any investigations into Credit Moblier) were liable only for the amount they had invested in the U.P.  And in many cases that was literally nothing.  And what little they did have invested, they sold out before the public found out what shoddy work was being done.
When the golden spike completed the “the people’s railroad to the western Sea” in 1869,  the Union Pacific Railroad Company was bankrupt. It had been looted by Credit Mobilier. The U.P. stock wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on. And, of course, by then, the very rich investors in Credit Mobilier were off looking for other railroads to loot.
Only after literally thousands of more scams just like this one would congress close the loophole in this particular invitation to fraud, making shell companies like Credit Mobilier largely illegal. But not completely. These laws allow for the seizure of all profits made from them, and assessing fines for even setting them up. This is called regulation. And by regulating the stock market the government attempts to limit the profits made on Wall Street to the actual profits from the real companies the suckers think they are investing in.
It’s enough to make you realize that if Lincoln had not been murdered in 1865, his reputation might have been more closely tied to that of Doctor Durant than it is today. When ever the  truly powerful in this nation have been caught red handed, they hide behind limited liability. They are still doing it. Without limited liability the bank executives called before Congress in 2008 to explain how they profited from creating the mortgage bubble, would never have had the guts to blame working class citizens for taking on home loans they could not afford.  Truth be told, capitalism begets scams like spring rains beget crab grass. 

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Thursday, July 28, 2022

WILD CARD IN KANSAS CITY

 

I think if the train had been late, things might have turned out differently. Perhaps the waiting men would have attracted attention, or grown bored or been out of position. But the overnight train from Fort Smith was unfortunately right on schedule, pulling into Union Station on Track Twelve, at 7:15 A.M. on Saturday 17 June, 1933. And because it was punctual, the train efficiently and smoothly delivered seven souls right on time to their final destination. And that was because there was a wild card in the deck, which turned all the aces into eights.
It all started 24 hours before with the capture of Frank “Jellybean” Nash, “the most successful bank robber in U.S. history”.
Frank was a 20 year career thief who worked with the Barker gang and the Dillinger mob among others, and of whom it was difficult   “…to find anyone who didn't have something nice to say…”, according to Clyde Callahan, co-author of the book “Heritage of an Outlaw”. Even the cops liked "Jellybean"  
While serving a 25 year term in Leavenworth (above),  in October of 1930,  Frank walked right out the front gate, carrying a copy of Shakespeare under his arm.  No one even thought to stop him.
Frank was often employed as a bank robber after his escape, and so well paid that in the summer of 1933,  he could afford to take his wife and daughter on a vacation, to the resort town of Hot Springs (above), southwest of Little Rock, Arkansas.  And it was there, on 16 July, that two FBI agents,  Joe Lackey and Frank Smith, along with an Oklahoma police chief, Otto Reid,  captured "Jellybean"  in a Hot Springs cigar store.
Dick Galatas ran gambling in Hot Springs, and he took the arrest of an underworld tourist in his territory, personally.  The local cops,  who were paid more by Galatas than by the taxpayers,  threw up roadblocks on the highway back to Little Rock  calling Frank a kidnap victim.  But anticipating this,  the FBI took their prisoner northwest,  on the long drive to Fort Smith.  There they planned on catching  the 8:30 P.M. overnight train to Kansas City. They even wired ahead to Special Agent in Charge of the F.B.I..’s Kansas City office, Reed E. Vetterli,  to meet them at Union Station in the morning. 
But the  train was late in arriving at the Fort Smith station (above),  and a stringer for the Associated Press spotted the three men and their shackled prisoner in the waiting room. Before midnight the story broke over the wires, in time to be printed in the early addition of the Kansas City morning newspapers : “Frank Nash…was recaptured today at Hot Springs, by three Department of Justice agents…They revealed the identity of the prisoner for the first time here...”  Meaning in Fort Smith.
Galatas,  in Hot Springs, had already asked for the help of Johnny Lazia (above, coat less), who ran gambling and vice for the Pendergrast machine, which controlled Kansas City.  A newspaper editor at the time described the level of mob activity in that town, “If you want to see some sin, forget about Paris. Go to Kansas City.”
And the man Lazia assigned to this problem was an old buddy of Frank Nash’s, an ex-South Dakota Sheriff turned bank robber named Vernon Miller (above).
Miller called in at least two more gunmen to assist him,  their identities disputed to this day. The FBI claims it was Charles Arthur "Pretty Boy" Floyd and Adam Richetti,  who just happened to be passing through Kansas City that morning. But there were numerous other gangsters who would have willingly stepped up to help "Jellybean" escape.  And now might be a good time to address the question of why crime in America in 1933 was so well organized but law enforcement was not.
When J. Edgar Hoover (above) took over the Bureau of Investigation in 1924 he commanded just 400 agents.  He spent the next forty years battling small “r” republicans, who were suspicious of a big federal police agency. Hoover eventually overcame their resistance, growing the F.B.I in both numbers and budgets. And yet, until 1963, Hoover still denied the existence of any centralized crime organization in America. But it was there. During the 1920's it was a called the syndicate or the mob, but with prohibition it became the mafia, and was dominated by Italian Americans thanks to their overseas criminal contacts for first liquor and then narcotics.
Even after the Appalachian Conference of November 1957,  where more than 60 Mafia bosses from the U.S., Canada and Italy were detained by local cops in upstate New York,  Hoover still insisted, “The F.B.I has much more important functions to accomplish than arresting gamblers all over the country.” Whatever his reasoning,  too many people paid with their lives for his denial.
That morning of 17 June the two agents,  Frank Smith and  Joe Lackey and Oklahoma police Chief Otto Reid, left the train heavily armed. According to research done by Pulitzer Prize winner Bob Unger – “The Union Station Massacre: The Original Sin of the FBI” - agent Lackey inadvertently grabbed a pump action Winchester Model 1897 shot gun, which belonged to Chief Reid, who grabbed Lackey’s twelve gauge, also by mistake.
On the platform they were met by Agent in Charge Reed Vetterli (above)...
and agent Ray Caffrey (above),  ...
along with two K.C. police detectives, William "Red" Grooms (above)...
 and Frank Hermanson (above).
 As the seven men moved through the cavernous station they formed a "V", with their handcuffed prisoner, "Jellybean" Nash,  protected in the center.   A four door Chevrolet was parked in front of the station, head in, and K.C. policemen Grooms and Hermanson screened the car from the front. Nash was first placed in the front bench seat, behind the steering wheel. Agents Lackey and Smith and Chief Reed sat in the back. 

As Agent Caffey was about to enter in the driver’s side door, Joe Lackey noticed three men appear from behind a green Plymouth parked in the space in front of them  At least two carried machine guns. One of the gunmen called out, "Hands up! Up, up, up!"  Instead, the F.B.I. says, the gunmen opened fire. In that first burst of machine gun fire, KC police detectives Bill Grooms and Frank Hermanson were killed, and Agent-in-Charge Vetterli was wounded in the shoulder, crawling toward cover.
But according to Bob Unger's research,  it was right at the beginning that Joe Lackey (above) found himself holding the wild card.
The Winchester 1897 was a WWI army surplus shotgun and lacked a safety feature most shotguns have – a trigger disconnect, or a safety.  In the slam mode this “trench sweeper” would automatically fire if the trigger was compressed at the same time the action was pumped, forcing a round into the chamber. Unfamiliar with this feature, and without even waiting to get his weapon up,  Lackey pumped a first round into the chamber. As he did so the weapon went off and blasted a load of ball bearings into the back of Frank Nash’s head (below), just 12 inches away.  A stray pellet also went “…right into the side of the head of agent Caffrey” who just getting into the car.
As proof Unger offers an image of the Chevrolet's windshield,  taken shortly after the shooting stopped and the wounded had been removed (above) .  Shattered glass is scattered over the car's hood, indicating the shot gun pellets came from inside the car, where the FBI agents sat,  and not from outside,  where the attacking mobsters were. Also, witness Harry Orr, just feet away in his cab, testified, "I saw one man with a shotgun, and he was trying to fire it." And this was just before the shooting started. 
Panicked at the unexpected explosion, Lackey pumped the action on the shotgun a second time, and again the weapon immediately discharged.  Bill Unger described what he thinks happened next. “Hermanson is in a direct line between Lackey and the machine gun wielders. Joe Lackey gets off a second shot, which takes of the left side of Frank Hermansons’ head…. 
"So here we are in the first two seconds of shooting, and already Frank Nash – the top of his head is gone and he is dead, and Ray Caffrey is dying of a fatal wound….And Hermanson is dead. So far no one has fired a shot except Joe Lackey…"  And those shots by accident.
Continues Mr. Unger, "At this point everyone begins to shoot, and there’s massive firings by machine guns...and by the time all of this is over, Bill Grooms, the other Kansas City policeman, is also dead. (above, lying between the cars). And Reed in back seat….when they finally get to him, he has a fatal wound…”.    When one of the gunmen finally got close to the Chevy,  he glanced inside and shouted, “They’re all dead. Let’s get out of here.”
They weren’t all dead. Agent Lackey was wounded three times and barely survived, but he survived. Agent Smith, having ducked behind an adjacent car when the shooting started, was uninjured. Agent-in-Charge Reed Vetterli had made it inside the train station, bleeding from a wound in his shoulder.   The entire shootout took less than 60 seconds. And that quickly the Kansas City Massacre was over.
Five months and two weeks later, Vern Miller (above), one of the few men who could be proved to be responsible for the shootout, was found mutilated and murdered outside of Detroit, Michigan.   Rumor at the time said the syndicate running organized crime in America had issued orders that Nash was not to be helped because of the publicity surrounding him. And the press frenzy covering the Kansas City Massacre proved them right.
One week short of the first anniversary of the massacre, John Lazia (above), the man who had okayed the attempt to rescue Jellybean,  was gunned down out side of his hotel in Kansas City.  And ballistics tests run decades later indicated the gun which fired the bullets that cut down Lazia, had also been used in the massacre. So perhaps it was mob justice for not following orders.  As he lay dying in a hospital, John Lazia asked his doctor, “Doc, what I can't understand is why anybody would do this to me? Why to me, to Johnny Lazia,  who has been the friend of everybody?”
It was a question that Frank "Jellybean" Nash would probably have asked,  if he hadn't been dealt a wild card.
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