Larry Welch captivated his audience with crime stories Tuesday during the second day of a Crime Stoppers conference at Riverside Park.
Welch came to talk about his book, “Beyond Cold Blood: The KBI from Ma Barker to BTK.”
“There hadn’t been a history of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation written,” Welch said, and as he neared retirement as its director — which came in 2007 — “I decided to write one. Not the history, but a history.” Welch, 81, spent 27 years with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, beginning in 1959.
Welch opened with a tale about a bank robbery years ago in Nickerson.
After conducting interviews with bank tellers, Welch said he and the local sheriff were walking away when one of the tellers asked if they had heard what the crook had said to them. “No,” they answered in unison. “He said, ‘Merry Christmas.’” The robbery occurred three or four days before the holiday.
Welch took the parting comment personally.
Later that night he received a call from an informant who said he might have some information if there was a reward.
“I knew the Kansas Bankers Association offered one,” Welch said, either $5,000 or $10,000, “I don’t remember which.” The FBI also was willing to sweeten the pot. And the local Crime Stoppers group kicked in a $1,000. That was the only time he remembered having been involved with Crime Stoppers.
The accumulation of cash was enough to loosen the informant’s tongue and he named a Hutchinson man who was put under surveillance. A bit later another tip conveyed the man planned another robbery.
The information proved solid. Welch and Fontaine followed the suspect into a bank. “I got in line behind the guy and Jim (Fontaine) was next to me.” At an opportune time, Welch put his handgun’s barrel behind the guy’s ear and said, “Happy New Year.”
THE KBI was created in large measure because of the disruptive 1930s, when the Great Depression and drought occurred, and crime was rampant.
Beginning at the start of the decade, the Kansas Bankers, Kansas Livestock and Kansas Peace Officers associations each year encouraged the Legislature to authorize a state agency similar to the FBI or the Texas Rangers. On July 1, 1939, the agency was born, eight special agents and a director — eight of the nine former sheriffs or undersheriffs — and a secretary.
Welch’s wrote his account of the department shortly after he retired. A side note is that he wrote it all in longhand. “I never learned to type and don’t know how to turn on a computer, and don’t want to,” he mused. It fell to his wife and KBI secretary to transpose the pages into a typed manuscript.
“There were two cases that I wanted to be sure were in the book,” he said. One was the murders of the Clutter family by Richard Hickok and Perry Smith. The other, his favorite, is Kansas vs. Pyle, in which the defendant was convicted without officers ever finding a body.
