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Fred Barker was the youngest of four sons born to Ma Barker, and her husband left or was forced out after Fred was born. Ma lacked the energy to discipline her sons, so they took to crime, while she concerned herself with yelling at the police who frequently came to their home to arrest one brother or another, hoping that the officers would get tired and leave. Herman, the eldest, robbed stores until he killed himself in 1927 after he was surrounded by police. Lloyd, the second eldest, had already received a twenty five year sentence for robbing a mail truck in 1921 and a year later Arthur (nicknamed Dock), along with his friend Volney Davis, was given a life sentence after a night watchman was killed during a robbery.

Fred was sentenced to Kansas State Prison in March 1927, and he met Alvin Karpis there. They were released in the spring of 1931, but they soon ended up back in jail. Karpis was let go for lack of evidence but Barker was not and had no desire to return to prison, so he escaped. Fearing pursuit, they took Ma Barker and her boyfriend to Missouri, where they robbed a bank to buy her a farm. However, when Karpis shot a suspicious sheriff at a gas station in mid-December 1931, they quickly said good-bye to Missouri. The two men ended up in St. Paul, Minnesota, where a corrupt police force had permitted the town to become a major crime center, and it was not long before they were invited to join the big leagues. They worked with veteran bank robber Harvey Bailey until he was arrested in the spring. The rest of the summer of 1932 was spent robbing banks to obtain the bribe money needed to arrange for Dock and Davis to be released from prison.

Several law enforcement officers had already been put in graves by Karpis and Barker but when a member of the gang was killed during a bank robbery in Nebraska in late winter, they decided to switch to the less hazardous profession of kidnapping. Their first victim was William Hamm, the chairman of Hamm’s Brewery in Minneapolis, on June 15, 1933. The family called the police, who then brought in the local FBI office. However, Tom Brown, a member of the St. Paul Police Department’s kidnapping squad, was keeping the gang informed in exchange for a cut of the ransom. He warned the men that the FBI planned a trap, so the negotiator was told that if he cooperated with the police, Hamm would die. The family decided to pay the $100,000 ransom and he was released the following morning. A suspicious neighbor had called the police, but a tip from Brown enabled them to escape before officers arrived at the gang’s hideout.

Although the kidnapping had gone well, it took money to get the ransom laundered, Brown took a big cut, and the rest was divided by fourteen people, so the gang was forced to pull another job. On August 30, they robbed a payroll shipment from the Minneapolis Federal Reserve guarded by two policemen, but even though they had observed the shipment’s routine for two weeks, two members of the gang were a bit jumpy, which led to a shootout, where both policemen were wounded but they still managed to escape with the money.

The next day several men working for Frank Nitti, Al Capone’s successor, told Karpis that his neighbor Baby Face Nelson would be hit soon because of his ties to rival gangster Roger Touhy, so he was told to make himself scarce. Karpis had met Nelson in Reno and although he had declined Nelson’s request to join the gang, he had introduced him to Ed Bentz, an experienced bank robber, who used to work with Machine Gun Kelly. Despite the danger of angering the syndicate, Karpis did warn Nelson, who thus avoided the hit but Karpis was spared because Nitti knew that the only bank robber mixed up in the gangs was Verne Miller.

On September 22, Karpis and his gang robbed the Federal Reserve right next to the FBI’s Chicago office but they had a car accident during the getaway and ended up exchanging fire with two policemen who happened to be nearby. One policeman was killed but they escaped only to learn that they had stolen mail, not money. Although the FBI suspected Miller and Kelly, Karpis knew that the Syndicate would not welcome the attention and decided that it would be good for their health to leave Chicago.

Ending up in Reno, the men gambled until money began to run short and then returned to Chicago, where they were offered a job kidnapping Edward Bremer, the son of Adolph Bremer, owner of the Schmidt Brewery in St. Paul and a big financial backer of President Roosevelt. The national crime wave meant that the FBI was expected to be granted increased powers, which would make their business much harder, so Karpis wanted to make some money and get out of the country.  

Bremer was such a big job that there were seven men: Karpis, the two Barker brothers, Shotgun Ziegler, Dock’s friends Bill Weaver and Volney Davis, and a new man, Harry Campbell. A couple of weeks were spent tailing Bremer to learn his routine. It would later turn out that Bremer had been suggested as a kidnapping target because the Bremer family supplied mob owned bars and taverns with beer, and a Bremer controlled bank laundered stolen money and bonds but they had somehow offended members of the mob. He was captured on January 17, 1934 and the family called the St. Paul police chief, who brought in both the local FBI and the head of the kidnap squad, Tom Brown, so once again the gang knew exactly what the police were doing. Since the family was relatively cash poor at the moment it was suspected that the kidnapping had been arranged by a rival bank as part of a takeover attempt. Raising the money was more difficult, so the kidnapping dragged on much longer than the Hamm case had. Worse, Roosevelt himself was mentioning the kidnapping in radio speeches, saying that the crime would not go unpunished.

However, by early February the family was so desperate that they publicly announced that they would pay the ransom and would not cooperate with the FBI, so the kidnappers should find another intermediary since the FBI were bugging their lines. J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the FBI, was infuriated but could do nothing. The ransom of $200,000 was delivered on the evening of February 6 and Bremer was released the next day after all of his old clothes had been burned to prevent the FBI from dusting them for fingerprints. Bremer told the FBI he would not work with them because the kidnappers had threatened his family and he only changed his attitude after the FBI agent in charge of the case threatened to release a statement saying that Bremer was refusing to cooperate.  

In mid-March, Fred Barker and Karpis paid Doctor Joseph Moran to change their fingerprints, which involved tightening rubber bands around the individual fingers to cut off circulation, and then injecting cocaine into each finger before cutting off the meat of each fingertip. The next three days were spent in a morphine induced fog.

Returning to reality, they learned that the police had found Dock Barker’s fingerprints near the drop off point for the ransom and they were now suspects in the Bremer kidnapping. Several days later, they found out that their partner Shotgun Ziegler had been killed in a drive by. Ziegler had been a hitman for Al Capone and the syndicate disapproved of its members moonlighting as bank robbers. If they had angered Nitti, then it was time to leave Chicago. They were not afraid of the FBI, and with good reason since the bureau’s agents had been unable to dig up any concrete information on the gang since they mainly kept to themselves. Hoover’s insistence on sending agents to search hundreds of towns to find where Bremer had been kept proved futile and took manpower away from the hunt for John Dillinger.

However, the massive manhunt meant that none of their usual fences would touch the ransom money, so in desperation they turned to Dr. Moran. The first $30,000 was moved relatively easily but Moran’s friends who had been enlisted to help pass the ransom money proved to be incompetent and passed too large amounts. One of the men was caught on April 26 because he had mentioned that he worked at a nearby bookmaking establishment and he fingered several other friends of Moran.

The gang had moved to Toledo but after the Moran disaster none of their old contacts would help them move the ransom money. Forced to launder the money themselves in supermarkets and small stores, the gang became bored and their habit of releasing the stress by drinking heavily did not make for a calm situation. When Karpis was offered a job handling security for a casino in a Cleveland suburb run by several old friends, he happily said goodbye to the gang in May. He proved to be good at his job, partially by threatening to harm the families of his friends’ rivals if anyone caused trouble for the casino.

Meanwhile, Doctor Moran had showed up in Toledo and when his bragging about the fingerprint operations became too obvious, Fred and Dock killed him. While Karpis may not have missed the rest of the gang, they missed him, so they followed him to Cleveland one by one. A trip to Chicago to see Ma Barker made it clear that while the syndicate was not actively hunting them, the welcome mat was not out. Still, Karpis was content with his peaceful existence and he even allowed his girlfriend to keep the baby when she became pregnant. One night in July, Pretty Boy Floyd and Adam Richette appeared at the casino and although they talked about robbing a bank together nothing came of it. The FBI may not have caught them but when Tom Brown arranged for Dillinger gang member Homer Van Meter to be killed by police in St. Paul, it meant that Chicago, Reno and St. Paul were no longer safe havens. Brown was suspected of being involved in the kidnappings committed by the Karpis-Barker gang and setting up a wanted criminal was the best way to throw the police off his trail. Thinking it was time to disappear, in August Karpis and Fred decided to give the remaining $100,000 of the ransom money to a gangster named Cash McDonald, who would launder it in Havana.

Karpis was right to be worried since the destruction of Dillinger’s gang meant that agents could be transferred to the hunt for the Barker gang. The FBI had little success at first but caught a lucky break when three women associated with the gang got so drunk in a Cleveland hotel bar that the police were called. The women had tried to bribe their way out of being arrested and when one of them threw the contents of her purse out of the car window, the police became suspicious and questioned the adopted daughter of one of the women. After she led them to the women’s car, the police found a gun and addresses. Even so, it took time for the police to figure out that that they were dealing with the Barkers, and Karpis’ employers were able to use their connections on the force to delay the investigation long enough for the gang to get out of town.  

Although the women had been arrested on the afternoon of September 5, the FBI did not learn until Friday morning when the hunt for the Barkers was reported in the newspapers. After a day of questioning by FBI agents, the women broke down and told everything they knew. After the laundered money was picked up and divided on September 12, Karpis decided that it was time to part company with the gang and that this time he would not tell them where he was going.

Earl Connelley, the head of the FBI in Cincinnati, was brought in to take charge of the Chicago office after the previous head, Sam Cowley, was killed in a shootout with Baby Face Nelson, and found that morale among the remaining agents was low. Although they had quite a few leads about the Barkers, Karpis had already moved to the coast of Cuba, where he quickly settled into a routine of fishing and relaxing but he was warned that the FBI was looking for him and made it out of Cuba just in time.

Fortune smiled on the Bureau when Dock Barker’s new wife could not resist telling one of her friends how exciting it was to be hanging out with criminals and she then told a friend, who told her dentist, who told his brother, who was an FBI agent. Barker was soon found in Chicago and kept under close surveillance.  

Back in Miami, Karpis contacted Fred Barker and they discussed robbing Southern banks. A quick visit to Cleveland made it clear that it was still too hot. Dock would prove to be the weak link. While planning a job in Cleveland, he found it difficult to remember where to send messages, so he circled on a map the location of the lake house in central Florida where Fred and Ma Barker were staying.

Dock Barker and Bryan Bolton were captured in a raid on their Chicago apartment and Russell Gibson died from wounds received in a shootout. Dock refused to talk but Bolton sang like a canary, which included both the Hamm and Bremer kidnappings, and most important, Fred Barker’s lake house in central Florida. He did not know the exact location but when the agents found a map in Dock’s suitcase with a circle around a lake in central Florida, Connelley immediately flew out to Florida, with more agents and weapons following by train. It was a race against time to find the exact lake because Fred would disappear as soon as the press learned that Dock had been arrested. By Tuesday they had found the lake and it was an ideal location, at least from their point-of-view, since it was easily viewed from the road, so unlike Little Bohemia, they were able to carefully plan the raid. Connelley led fifteen agents to raid the house at dawn on January 15, and once the house was surrounded he called for Barker to surrender. To no one’s surprise, Barker stayed in the house. Tear gas canisters failed to break through the windows and after roughly 20 minutes, Barker started firing at the agents. The shootout started and stooped over a period of two hours but when it had been quiet for a while the caretaker was convinced to go into the house and try to persuade the gang to surrender. The terrified man went in and found that both Ma and Fred Barker were dead. They also discovered receipts that indicated that Karpis was in Miami.

Realizing that the press would not react well to FBI agents killing a grandmother with no criminal record, regardless of whether or not she had refused to surrender, Hoover decided to take the offensive and say that Ma Barker had actually been the brains of the Barker gang. He even claimed that she had been found with a machine gun in her hand, which he knew was a fabrication. There was no evidence to support Ma’s role as mastermind but there were no witnesses to oppose it either, so reporters believed Hoover. In fact, Hoover would repeat for years that Ma had been the mastermind and use her as an example of what was wrong with modern society.

The news that Fred and Ma were dead reached Karpis before FBI agents could catch him at his hotel in Miami, and he was already on his way to Atlantic City before they broadened their search. When Karpis and his pregnant girlfriend did not return home for several days, their maid contacted the police, who discovered a record of Karpis’ car, which was sent to every police department along the Eastern Seaboard. Police in Atlantic City found first the car and then Karpis at a hotel. The police had not notified the FBI nor had they properly surrounded the hotel, so Karpis was able to escape but without his girlfriend.

Connelley suspected that Karpis had returned to his old haunts, either Cleveland or Toledo, but without conclusive proof Hoover would not assign the extra men needed to properly check the areas. Hoover no longer considered Karpis to be a great priority and the FBI’s resources were stretched tracking down the rest of the gang and their accomplices.

Karpis was on the run and his money was running low, but no one dependable would work with him, so he and Harry Campbell hired a heroin addict who was a friend of a friend. The three men robbed a payroll shipment and made $72,000. The money enabled Karpis to move around but none of his old friends were too welcoming, so he ended up spending the summer in Hot Springs, Ohio where the law was not enforced that strictly. By that time, the search had pretty much died down. However, when Karpis and his little gang finally left Hot Springs in September, the corrupt detective who had sold out Frank Nash announced that he had learned that Karpis had been staying there. He even provided the FBI with their license plates and aliases, but it seemed to be another goose chase.

Increasingly restless, Karpis decided to rob a train and brought in more men, even buying a plane for the getaway. Although the robbery went smoothly, they only made $34,000. Even that did not really stir up the FBI, mainly because it was not in their jurisdiction. However, several postal investigators took it seriously and they worked with the state police to track down Karpis’ gang. Instead of cooperating, the FBI looked down on the postal investigators. In the end, the postal inspectors picked up several members of Karpis’ gang one by one but the FBI managed to take over when they figured out where Karpis was. However, their arrival in town had not been quiet and Karpis had been warned early enough to escape.

Hoover had been criticized for his lack of experience during a senate hearing and he was so embarrassed that he decided to arrest Karpis personally. Both the FBI and the postal inspectors had staked out Hot Springs, watching each other more than looking for Karpis. The FBI got to Karpis’ girlfriend, a madam, first and learned that he was in New Orleans. The arrest took place on May 1, 1936, and when it appeared that Karpis was about to leave earlier than expected, Connelly managed to block his car and arrest him, although Hoover grabbed all of the publicity, saying that he had personally leapt forward and caught Karpis. The resulting publicity made Hoover a national hero.

Karpis was sentenced to Alcatraz, where he met a number of old acquaintances, including Machine Gun Kelly, Harvey Bailey, Dock Barker, and Volney Davis, to name a few.

Dock Barker was killed on January 13, 1939 while trying to escape from Alcatraz Prison. Lloyd Barker was shot by his wife in 1949, two years after being released from Leavenworth. Bill Weaver died of a heart attack in Alcatraz in June 1944. Karpis was finally released in January 1969 and deported to Canada. He produced two ghostwritten books, one of which was an autobiography, and then moved to Spain where he passed away from an accidental overdose of sleeping pills on August 26, 1979.

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Related Movies:

Ma Barker’s Killer Brood (1960)
Directed by Bill Karn, starring Lurene Tuttle and Paul Dubov
Ma Barker leads her four sons in a wave of bank robberies and kidnappings, while providing advice for other gangsters.
Public Enemies (2009)
Directed by Michael Mann, starring Johhny Depp and Christian Bale
Led by Melvin Purvis, the FBI pursues notorious outlaw John Dillinger during the Public Enemy Era. (please click here to read the review)

Further Reading :

Public Enemies: America’s Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34. Bryan Burrough, New York: The Penguin Press, 2004.

The author grew up listening to stories about Bonnie and Clyde, and decided to write the book because there was no single history of that period, partially because the FBI files had only been released in the late 1980s. His access to previously sealed FBI files means that the story is as much about the evolution of the FBI as it is about the gangsters themselves. It is a superb, one-stop look at that brief period where outlaws seemed to roam free. Ignoring the easy approach of dividing the book into several sections that focus on individual gangs, the story is told in chronological order, which might appear confusing to some readers but serves to show how interrelated the events were. Most of the gangs knew each other and their paths crossed more frequently than I would have thought, which may help to explain why the FBI was so confused in the beginning. Burrough’s attention to detail is impressive, he shows what happened to the main FBI agents, the surviving outlaws who ended up in prison, and their various girlfriends and accomplices. What is odd is that once the War on Crime was over, no one really talked about it. The agents rarely told their families, while the families of the outlaws often preferred to move forward and leave their tainted past behind them.

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