American Criminal: Machine Gun Kelly

Most Notorious! A True Crime History Podcast

Erik Rivenes

History, True Crime, Education

4.7 • 2.9K Ratings

🗓️ 21 February 2026

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Growing up in Memphis, George Kelly Barnes starts dabbling in crime from a young age. First he blackmails his father, then he grows a successful bootlegging business for himself. But how did this small-time crook earn one of the most famous names in criminal history? And why don't we talk about his most famous crime? To listen to all four episodes of 'Machine Gun Kelly' right now and ad-free, subscribe in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠AmericanCriminal.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to True Spies.
0:02.0	The podcast that takes you deep inside the greatest secret missions of all time.
0:08.0	Suddenly out of the dark that's appeared in Laubman.
0:10.0	You'll meet the people who live life undercover.
0:13.0	What do they know? What are their skills?
0:16.0	And what would you do in their position?
0:18.0	Vengeance felt good.
0:20.0	Seeing these people pay for what they'd done felt righteous.
0:24.6	True spies from Spyscape Studios, wherever you get your podcasts.
0:31.6	All you need is a few minutes to start your day off with something historic when you
0:36.1	listen to the This Day in History podcast.
0:39.2	Every day there's a new episode for you to listen and learn about what happened that day way back when.
0:44.0	So listen and subscribe to This Day in History wherever you get your podcasts.
0:49.9	That's This Day in History, wherever you get your podcasts.
0:59.3	Hello, everyone.
1:06.9	So this has become something of an annual tradition now, swapping episodes with American Criminal. This year, they've released a series on Prohibition-era gangster George Machine Gun
1:13.5	Kelly Barnes. And a couple of years ago, I interviewed Kevin Meredith about his excellent book
1:20.3	Under Penalty of Death, The Untooled Story of Machine Gun Kelly's first kidnapping.
1:29.0	Episode number 298.
1:35.3	As part of this exchange, American Criminal is featuring that Meredith interview on their feed,
1:41.0	and today I am sharing the first installment of their new Kelly series with you.
1:45.2	And if you want to hear the rest of the series, you'll find a link in the show notes. All right, away we go.
	...

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