July 2, 2012 • 26 mins
During the Gangster Era, many believed Ma Barker led the Barker Gang. In the late 1800s, Barker had four sons, two of whom joined the infamous Barker gang. But was Ma really the mastermind behind their criminal activities?
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from house
works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
de Bliey Chocolate Boarding and I'm Fair Dowdy and we've
covered several gangster and gangster related crimes on this podcast
by now Campone Dillinger. The St. Valentine's Day Massacre, and
(00:25):
these stories of the gangster air in the US for
the most part, with maybe the exception of Bonnie and Clyde,
tend to be very macho, very guy centric. The women involved,
usually wives, girlfriends, tend to take on secondary roles in
the stories, for example the Blonde Alibi and the St.
Valentine's Day Massacre. But there was one different sort of
(00:48):
female criminal who came to the forefront during this period
and really captured the imaginations of the American public and
even of law enforcement officials, and that was Mob Barker. Yeah,
you've probably heard her name, Barker. We've fed by some
who have been the leader of the Barker Gang, also
known as the Barker Carpus Gang, whose members have been
called quote the unsung villains of Depression era crime. J
(01:11):
Edgar Hoover, who he always pops up in these gangs
for episodes too. He called the Barker Gang the quote
brainiest and most dangerous gang of the War on crime.
So if he has the high opinion of you, then
you're probably pretty tough stuff. Well we'll see about that.
But even though the Barkers aren't as famous as Capons
or Dillinger's gangs today, in the nine thirties, they caused
(01:33):
quite the stir, setting off a crime spree that put
them and their mother at the top of Hoover's to
catch list. Hoover himself painted a really intimidating picture of
Mob Barker. He said of her, quote the most vicious,
dangerous and resourceful criminal brand this country has produced in
many years belonged to a person called Mother Barker. In
(01:54):
her sixty years or so, this woman reared a spawn
of hell. To her, her sons looked for guidance for
daring and resourcefulness. They obeyed her implicitly. I really hope
there's a book out there that titled something like Barker
Boys Bawn of Hell. But other people, other people besides
jig Or Hoover, paint a very different picture of Mob Barker,
(02:17):
one of a daughtering old mom who couldn't plan a crime,
as she even tried one gangster for instance, Harvey Bailey
actually said the old woman couldn't plan breakfast. So there
you go. Vastly different opinions on this one woman. So
how did she get this reputation as a criminal mastermind
and why did she get the reputation and what was
(02:40):
her actual involvement in her son's escapades. Was she really
planning this or was she just attempting to cook them
breakfast and doing so unsuccessfully. We're going to take a
look into all of that in this episode. Yeah, But
first we're going to take a look at who mob
Barker was before she was a mom to anyone. She
was born Arizona of Donnie Clark to Scottish Irish parents
(03:02):
in Ashgrove, Missouri, in eighteen seventy two, and she started
calling herself Kate pretty early on. It was the same
area of southwest Missouri that the famous outlaws Frank and
Jesse James were from, and she said to have grown
up kind of idolizing them, looking on Jesse James as
a sort of robin Hood like folk hero. She saw
(03:22):
James in person once riding by when she was just
a kid, and it made this big impression on her.
She actually cried when he was killed in eighteen eighty two.
So she grew up really looking up to outlaw life,
and she grew up pretty tough herself, although according to
William B. Brower's book j Edgar Hoover and His g Men,
she was also a devout churchgoer and was known to
(03:44):
say Praise the Lord at meal times. She also sang
in church and played the fiddle. So when she was
about twenty years old in eighteen ninety two, Kate married
George Barker, who was a poor farm worker from Missouri
and by all accounts a very mile old mannered sort
of guy. He seemed just fine with the status quo.
He felt resigned to the fact that he would be
(04:06):
a poor working man um. So Kate kind of ran
all over him, and according to Breyer, she basically wore
the pants in the relationship. But early on the couple
defended to settle in Aurora, Missouri, and it wasn't too
long before they started having kids. They had four boys
pretty quickly. Herman was born in eighteen nine, Lloyd was
(04:27):
born in eighteen ninety. Arthur or Doc came along in
eight and Fred, the youngest, showed up in nineteen o two,
and when the two oldest boys were still young, Kate
and George moved the family to the mining town of
Webb City, Missouri, where George took a job in the
Minds and Kate pretty much had her hands full of
raising the boys, who were a rowdy bunch right from
(04:49):
the start. She would haul them into church every Sunday,
but it didn't really seem to make an impression on
them at all. The Barker boys started dabbling in minor
offenses like petty theft and vandalizing property by their early teens.
By the time they were in their late teens, pretty
much all of them had gotten into trouble with the
law in one way or another. But instead of disciplining
(05:11):
them and trying to keep them in line, I mean,
you might imagine a parent just trying to come in
with a firm hand and put a stop to this,
And you would think that as a church going mother,
especially Kate would put the fear of God in exactly,
But she actually defended her boys to the hilt when
they got into trouble. She'd basically bully the authorities or
(05:32):
cry and plead with them into letting her sons go.
She acted as if her kids were being unfairly picked
on by the law, and she was devoted to them,
and it was as if they could do no wrong
in a way in her eyes. Yeah, But eventually the
boys had so much heat on them in the Web
City area, Kate decided that it was time for the
whole family to move. Usually this happens if there's better
(05:55):
opportunities for a family, but they needed to get out
of town, so they all moved to Tula, Oklahoma around
nineteen ten, and things didn't exactly calm down for the
Barkers once they reached their new town either. In fact,
Kate seemed to do everything she could to encourage her
boy's lawless habit, so it wasn't just she wasn't trying
to make them stop, make them improve their behavior. She
(06:18):
seemed to be egging them on. And they moved into
this old rundown house in Tulsa, and Kate set it
up as a kind of safe house or what was
called a kind of a cooling off service for criminals.
So any gangster, anyone who had been who had had
the cops on their trail who needed a place to
hide out could pay a fee and stay at the
Barkers for a while. So this way the boys and
(06:40):
their mom got exposure to real criminal minds who were
making real money, the kind of money that far exceeded
what they could bring in with the small, small time
crime that they were doing in their early years. So
just a side note here, the Barker Boys didn't really
appear to have the stature of intimidating criminals a warding
to Breyer, they were all about five ft three five
(07:03):
ft four and they weighed in between one dred nineteen
and one pounds. But what they lacked in their build
they made up for in attitude. They seemed to be ruthless,
and they were said to have never hesitated to pull
the trigger. Eventually, though, I mean that ruthlessness brewing, the
Barker Boys started to branch out on their own, so
(07:24):
according to Public Enemies, America's greatest crime wave and the
birth of the FBI by Brian Burrow, Herman, who remember
was the eldest brother, became a stick up man and
started robbing stores around the American West, and Lloyd also
eventually became involved in robberies in their teen years. The
two younger boys, Doc and Fred also got involved in
(07:46):
in some more serious crimes, something called the Central Park Gang,
which was basically a group of teenage burglars and car
thieves who would hang out in the park during the
day commit crimes at night. And according to Burrows's book,
several Central Park Gang members would do stints in the
Barker Carpus Gang later in life, so these were early
(08:07):
criminal contacts they were making. Just another little side note here.
Later the FBI also portrayed this Central Park Gang as
a kind of quote school of crime, which had Mob
Barker as the teacher, but Burrows says that there really
isn't any evidence to support this idea. It's another good
possible book title, though it is. What is clear, though,
(08:28):
is that the deeper her son's got into the crime world,
the less Kate Barker was able to protect them, just
by badgering police officers. As a result, she saw some
really hard times in the nineteen twenties. For example, in
nine Lloyd was arrested and sentenced to twenty five years
and eleven worth prison for robbing a postal truck. In
nineteen two, Doc was arrested when he shot a night
(08:51):
watchman during a robbery in Oklahoma. He got a life
sentence in the Oklahoma State Prison, fred In the meantime
up five to ten in Kansas State Prison for shooting
an officer while he was trying to steal a car.
And then the biggest blow happened. In nineteen Herman was
involved in a series of bank robberies in Oklahoma, Missouri,
(09:11):
and Texas, and when the cops finally caught up with
him in Kansas that August, there was a big shootout.
Herman was killed, and according to the account in Mike
Mayo's American Murder, the official story was that Herman had
killed an officer and then killed himself to avoid being arrested.
But Ma Barker just refused to believe the story. She
(09:32):
said that her sons would never commit suicide, um sticking
up for him right to the end again. According to
an article and Outlaws, Mobsters and Crooks, Hoover later pinpointed
Herman's death as a kind of turning point for Kate Barker,
saying that it changed her quote from an animal mother
of the she wolf type to a veritable beast of prey,
(09:53):
So this would have been her motivation, um if he
used to believed for becoming the violent, no holds barred
criminal that the FBI later made her out to be.
But the other images and descriptions of mob Barker portray
her in a really different light as someone who liked
to do jigsaw puzzles and listen to Amos and Andy
and knit and cook a biscuits for her son to
(10:16):
enjoy when they were home from their jobs. And she
certainly didn't look the part of a devious, cold blooded
criminal mastermind. I don't know, you might want to google
some pictures of her or something, But Burrow's book describes
her as a short and plump person with stringy black hair,
and the public who read about her and her boys,
they seemed to really perceive her as a mother who
(10:36):
was blinded by love. Essentially, people thought her feelings for
them just clouded her judgment. Yeah, I mean, people could
clearly be persuaded with those kind of feelings. That's how
the body and Clyde myth got so big. Um, much
like she did when they were younger. Mob Barker is
said to have continued to pest her prosecutors than others
about releasing her sons while they were locked up, even
(10:59):
though they were all due being some pretty serious time
at this point. Some sources even suggest that she may
have bought her favorite son, Freddie's freedom in the early
nineteen thirties, but regardless of how it exactly happened, whether
his mom took care of business or not, Fred was
released from prison in nineteen thirty one, and while he
had been on the inside, he had gotten to to
(11:21):
meet some new contacts and had met another inmate named
Alvin Carpass. And Carpass had also been mixed up in
crime since his teen years and had gotten his sentence
reduced while working in a coal mine while he was
incarcerated and mining a certain amount of coal. So he
and Fred wound up being released the very same year.
(11:41):
So free at last, Fred and Carpass met up at
Mob Barker's home in Tulsa. Mob by this point had
left George Barker. They hadn't really ever meshed, They hadn't
gotten along for years, and she left him in about
nineteen six and she already had a new boyfriend, Arthur Dunlop,
So I guess her short plumpness didn't work against her
at that time, and monto to Carpas, Fred's friend. Almost
(12:05):
immediately they became pretty tight, and Carpus was almost like
where he became almost like an adopted son to her.
According to Burrow, Fred even said at one point that
she preferred Carpas to her own boys. He said, quote,
you don't get on her nerves the way I do
to Carpas. So Carpas and Fred soon started pulling off
(12:26):
a series of robberies around Tulsa. Apparently Fred did not
mind that his mother preferred this other guy to him,
but they didn't. Their crimes didn't exactly go undetected. They
were arrested and they had to escape, so they grabbed
them on Alfred and they moved them initially to southern Missouri,
where Fred and Carpas soon started robbing banks. And robbing
banks was lucrative, but again it didn't exactly keep them
(12:49):
out of the limelight. So it wasn't long before Fred
and Carpass started to feel the heat on them in
Missouri too, so they decided to move again. I mean,
these Marker boys have been moving around their whole life.
They moved at the end of nineteen thirty one beginning
of nineteen thirty two, this time to St. Paul, Minnesota,
which was known at the time it's kind of a
refuge for criminals. The police force there was corrupt, so
(13:11):
criminals who lived there could work within an established system
as long as you so as long as you follow
the rules, you could get away with crime. And bro
said it was the quote crime capital of the Midwest
at the time. So you got there, you'd check in
with a guy named Harry Sawyer who owned a club
called the Green Lantern, which was sort of the headquarters
of criminal activity in St. Paul. And then Sawyer would
(13:34):
organize all the criminal activities in the area. And of
course Fred and Carpus went to visit him early on,
and he introduced them to other criminals, set them up
with a potential gang members exactly in jobs. With St.
Paul is their home base. Fred and Carpas pulled off
several bank robberies and they made off with quite a
bit of cash, enough for Fred to bribe his brother
(13:57):
Doc's way out of prison so that Dot could join
the gang. There were other gang members, of course, but
it was a bit of a rotating cast, and you know,
throughout this time included people like Francis Keating, Frank Nash,
and Harvey Bailey, who we mentioned in the intro to
this episode. So, during this crime spree of theirs, Ma's
boyfriend Dunlop turned up dead on the shores of a
(14:19):
lake outside of town. What happened here is that Fred
and Carpas had suspected him of leaking tails of their
various escapades to their Saint Paul landlady's son who used
to drink with Dunlop on occasion, and ended up calling
local detectives on them. They got away, but Dunlop wasn't
so lucky. Fred and Carpas either had him killed by
(14:40):
an accomplice or killed him themselves. And don't you have
to wonder a little bit about what mob Barker thought
of this? You know, she stuck with him, so I
have to think that maybe she wasn't as into old
Alfred Dunlaw after all. Seed um. So after this murder,
after these robberies, they relocated to Kansas City and continued
(15:01):
robbing banks. But eventually they had enough close scrapes with
the cops and with bullets, of course, that they decided
kidnapping might be a safer line of work to get
into the bank robbery, so they pulled off to fairly
high profile kidnappings. The first one was in nineteen thirty three,
they kidnapped William Ham, who was the chairman of Minneapolis's
largest brewery, ended up getting a hundred thousand dollars in
(15:25):
ransom for his kidnapping. And then six months later, in
early nineteen thirty four, they kidnapped the Minneapolis banker Edward G. Bremer,
and they got twice the amount they had gotten for him,
two hundred thousand dollars. And they weren't suspected of these
crimes at first, so best of all for them, since
they're always used to the cops following them around. They
(15:45):
weren't suspects, but one of their accomplices on both of
the kidnappings, a Chicago gangster named George Ziegler, who had
worked in the past for al Capone, ended up ended
up talking. He told some of his friends about what
they'd done, and they decided he was a threat, and
Fred and Carpas had Ziegler murdered. Bethbi searched Ziegler's body afterwards, though,
(16:08):
and they apparently found some leads, which meant bad news
for the Barker Carpass gang. After the Bremer kidnapping, Carpus
and the Barkers had split up and they had actually
left St. Paul. According to an article by Jane Galvin
in American History, Carpus hit out with his pregnant girl
friend in northern Florida and in Cuba, kind of moving
around a little bit, but Fred and Mob Barker stayed
(16:30):
in central Florida. So even though as Sarah mentioned, they
hadn't initially been accused of the kidnappings, the Barkers and
Carpas were well known enough. They had just gotten into
so many runnings with the law, had gotten into so
many shootouts that laying low for them was really very necessary.
Hoover had coined the label quote public Enemy number one,
(16:50):
which we've mentioned on this podcast before a couple of times.
He coined that term in ninety three, and Carpas was
one of them. He was the one of the first
four gangster to earn that moniker, along with Dillinger and
baby Face Nelson, So they were really keeping a close
eye on him and taking him very seriously. So things
started to break down in January of nine thirty five,
(17:11):
when the authorities caught up with Doc Barker, he was
actually captured by the famous g man Melvin Purvis, who
we also mentioned previously in a different episode. Doc had
a map of Florida in his apartment with o'calla circles,
so the FBI figured that's where Mom and Fred were.
So with that very obvious clue, by January nineteenth, agents
(17:32):
had the house surrounded and demanded the surrender of of
Mom and her son, and then machine gun fire started
to come from the house, so the FBI of course
answered with more machine gun fire plus tear gas plus
rifle fire, and according to Mayo's account, the fight lasted
anywhere between forty five minutes and four hours, depending on
(17:53):
what source you're looking at. But when it was finally over,
Fred and Ma were both dead, and according to the
FBI's report at the time, Mall was even still collecting
her Tommy gun when they were found inside the house.
Doc ended up being sentenced to life in Alcatraz, and
he died trying to escape from there. Four years later,
(18:14):
the FBI, actually led by Hoover himself, finally caught up
with Carpas in New Orleans in May of nineteen thirty six.
They caught Carpass off guard, But the FBI was kind
of caught off guard in this situation as well. They
weren't quite finished setting up to catch Carpas before he
came out, so when he showed up, they had to
use an agent's neck tie to handcuff him because they
(18:35):
couldn't find any handcuffs, like right off the bat. But
he surrendered peacefully and actually was the first Public Enemy
Number one to be taken alive. He was also sentenced
to life in Alcatraz, and when Alcatraz closed in the
nineteen sixties, he got transferred to Tacoma, Washington. He ended
up dying in nineteen seventy nine from an overdose of
sleeping pills. Alright, so we've covered the fates of the
(18:58):
gang members, But where did mab Barker get this reputation
as the mastermind of her son's crimes? Because if you noticed,
in this entire discussion so far, we never really mentioned
her participating in any of the crimes planning them out.
She merely seemed to encourage her sons in in the
criminal direction and certainly routed the benefits from what they stole,
(19:20):
and advocated for them when they were in trouble, but
didn't seem to actually be out there with the tommy
gun herself. She was known to do a few sort
of small errand type things for the gang, like, for instance,
when Ziegler was killed, she visited his widow to get
her to turnover Ziegler's share of the money from the
kidnapping escapades. But there's no evidence she actually participated in
(19:42):
the Barker gang's crimes. So many people think that the
FBI Hoover in particular, perpetuated this myth of Mab Barker
as the leader of the gang, that diabolical and violent
criminal that we described in the intro to the podcast,
and he did this simply to justify the fact that
they had killed us sixty three or so year old lady.
(20:03):
In his book, in fact, Borrow refers to her as
quote an FBI sponsored myth. Regardless, today, even the FBI
seems to believe that this image of mob Barker is
a myth. So it's a lot more likely that Fred
and Carpass were the real leaders of the gang. And
then many people even think Carpass was really the brains
behind the operation. Well we know it wasn't don now,
(20:23):
it was not Doc with his captain obvious map. But
because of that Carpas connection, and because some people think
he was the brains behind it, that's why it's often
referred to as the Barker Carpass Gang instead of just
something like the Barker Boys or the Barker Gang. Mayo
even called Carpus quote an experienced, an imaginative criminal, and
(20:44):
he was intimidating to We talked about how the Barker
Boys were mean, but they didn't necessarily seem intimidating in
a physical way. Carpass's nickname was old Creepy because he
had a very frosty personality. He had a cold, scary
expression and um the kind of guy you'd want to
stay away from. Beaty little eyes, even though Mob Barker
(21:04):
seemed to really loved him, which I guess that's something
about her, but yeah, I mean, if you read about
about Carpass, you'll often to see him referred to by
authors as Creepy Carpass, which is kind of a funny game.
But in his memoirs, which were published in Carpass himself
wrote quote, the most ridiculous story and the annals of
(21:26):
crime is that mob Barker was the mastermind behind the
Carpas Barker gang. The legend only grew up after her
death to justify why she was slaughtered by the FBI.
She wasn't a leader of criminals or even a criminal herself.
There is not one police photograph of her or set
of fingerprints taken while she was alive. She knew we
were criminals, but her participation in our careers was limited
(21:48):
to one function. When we traveled together, we moved on
as a mother and her sons. What could look more innocent?
And then he goes on to say it's no insult
to Ma's memory that she just didn't have the brains
or know how to direct us on a robbery. It
wouldn't have occurred to her to get involved in our business,
and we always made a point of only discussing our
(22:08):
scores when Ma wasn't around. We'd leave her at home
when we were arranging a job, or we send her
to a movie. Moss all lots of movies. It's pretty great.
I like I like this image of Ma going off
to movies, coming home working on a puzzle for a
little bitting a little bit and then go and knocking
on the widows door and think you better pay up.
(22:29):
You know, So you have to wonder, I mean, what
the exact truth was in any of these stories. It
kind of reminds me of The Bell Star episode two
about how the stories that were told about her after
her death were so vastly different from who people say
she really was. Well and again even back to Bonnie
and Clyde, how much did Bonnie really do so true?
(22:51):
So in these cases you have to wonder, is it
kind of a combination of the two? Do they meet
sort of in the middle, or is it really one
or the other characterization? So I don't know if any
of the listeners out there have any opinions on it
that they want to share, I'd be very interested in
hearing them me too. Yeah, we're at history podcast at
fevery dot com, and you guys love the gangster topics,
(23:13):
so I'm sure you're gonna have some opinions on mob
Barker and her boys and maybe some suggestions for future podcasts.
I mean, now we've covered three of those four original
public Enemy number one, so we just maybe it is
Maybe it is or maybe it's time for the fourth
pretty boy Floyd. Oh yeah, so we could put him
(23:35):
in at some point too. But we actually have another
little announcement of sorts to make on this podcast. It
wasn't by accident that we picked a topic about mother
because I am actually expecting, so I'm going to be
going on maternity leave soon and we wanted to use this,
I guess is kind of a topic, which, now in retrospect,
is kind of a strange choice. Uh, to introduce that
(23:59):
idea some day you can tell your child that this
is how you introduced him or her to the world. Yeah,
I don't know. I think I'll wait to see how
he or she turns out to to mention that. So, yeah,
we're obviously super excited about Dablina having a baby and
big congrats to you and your husband. But yeah, we're
also working on on covering episodes during her maternity leave
(24:23):
and keeping you guys in stock with new podcasts too. Yeah,
We're gonna do kind of a mix of things, which
I think will be kind of fun. It's obviously going
to be new episodes. We've been kind of working double
time or trying to to record, yes, researching like mad,
and we're also going to be kind of recapping some
(24:43):
older episodes, doing a few reruns that have a twist
on them. Say, some of the older episodes that have
new information has come out, you know, things that you
guys email us about and tell us and we think, oh,
that would be nice to update. Now we're finally doing
some of the those. And then we'll also have some
best of classics and those will all be handpicked though,
(25:05):
so it'll be our favorite, our favorite old episodes for
you guys to listen to again. So hopefully you'll stay
entertained over the summer. Yeah, and then we'll be back
the same as we've always been. Some new ideas, with
some new ideas, new perspective and history Baby a new
baby for Dablina. I think probably one of my favorite
(25:26):
things about this baby is when you told me that
it could hear. So it's been listening to the podcast
that should know something about history, and I think it
will know your voice there. Uhm. I'm interested to see
what it's like when the baby meets you. The cutest
thing ever, I'm really hoping it will it will recognize
my voice from hearing me from me and naturally long
stretches of time when we're recording, But um, I can't wait,
(25:49):
and I'm super happy for you guys, been excited and
thank you. We are too. So back to the podcast though,
if you guys have any ideas you want to share
with us, UM any concert learns about the upcoming maturity leave,
I hope not. Like Sarah said, I hope we'll keep
you entertained. Feel free to write us. We're at History
Podcast at Discovery dot com. We're also on Facebook and
we're on Twitter at in history, and we do have
(26:11):
some fun image galleries I believe of public enemies who
can search for that on our home page at www
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dot com
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from house
works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
de Bliey Chocolate Boarding and I'm Fair Dowdy and we've
covered several gangster and gangster related crimes on this podcast
by now Campone Dillinger. The St. Valentine's Day Massacre, and
(00:25):
these stories of the gangster air in the US for
the most part, with maybe the exception of Bonnie and Clyde,
tend to be very macho, very guy centric. The women involved,
usually wives, girlfriends, tend to take on secondary roles in
the stories, for example the Blonde Alibi and the St.
Valentine's Day Massacre. But there was one different sort of
(00:48):
female criminal who came to the forefront during this period
and really captured the imaginations of the American public and
even of law enforcement officials, and that was Mob Barker. Yeah,
you've probably heard her name, Barker. We've fed by some
who have been the leader of the Barker Gang, also
known as the Barker Carpus Gang, whose members have been
called quote the unsung villains of Depression era crime. J
(01:11):
Edgar Hoover, who he always pops up in these gangs
for episodes too. He called the Barker Gang the quote
brainiest and most dangerous gang of the War on crime.
So if he has the high opinion of you, then
you're probably pretty tough stuff. Well we'll see about that.
But even though the Barkers aren't as famous as Capons
or Dillinger's gangs today, in the nine thirties, they caused
(01:33):
quite the stir, setting off a crime spree that put
them and their mother at the top of Hoover's to
catch list. Hoover himself painted a really intimidating picture of
Mob Barker. He said of her, quote the most vicious,
dangerous and resourceful criminal brand this country has produced in
many years belonged to a person called Mother Barker. In
(01:54):
her sixty years or so, this woman reared a spawn
of hell. To her, her sons looked for guidance for
daring and resourcefulness. They obeyed her implicitly. I really hope
there's a book out there that titled something like Barker
Boys Bawn of Hell. But other people, other people besides
jig Or Hoover, paint a very different picture of Mob Barker,
(02:17):
one of a daughtering old mom who couldn't plan a crime,
as she even tried one gangster for instance, Harvey Bailey
actually said the old woman couldn't plan breakfast. So there
you go. Vastly different opinions on this one woman. So
how did she get this reputation as a criminal mastermind
and why did she get the reputation and what was
(02:40):
her actual involvement in her son's escapades. Was she really
planning this or was she just attempting to cook them
breakfast and doing so unsuccessfully. We're going to take a
look into all of that in this episode. Yeah, But
first we're going to take a look at who mob
Barker was before she was a mom to anyone. She
was born Arizona of Donnie Clark to Scottish Irish parents
(03:02):
in Ashgrove, Missouri, in eighteen seventy two, and she started
calling herself Kate pretty early on. It was the same
area of southwest Missouri that the famous outlaws Frank and
Jesse James were from, and she said to have grown
up kind of idolizing them, looking on Jesse James as
a sort of robin Hood like folk hero. She saw
(03:22):
James in person once riding by when she was just
a kid, and it made this big impression on her.
She actually cried when he was killed in eighteen eighty two.
So she grew up really looking up to outlaw life,
and she grew up pretty tough herself, although according to
William B. Brower's book j Edgar Hoover and His g Men,
she was also a devout churchgoer and was known to
(03:44):
say Praise the Lord at meal times. She also sang
in church and played the fiddle. So when she was
about twenty years old in eighteen ninety two, Kate married
George Barker, who was a poor farm worker from Missouri
and by all accounts a very mile old mannered sort
of guy. He seemed just fine with the status quo.
He felt resigned to the fact that he would be
(04:06):
a poor working man um. So Kate kind of ran
all over him, and according to Breyer, she basically wore
the pants in the relationship. But early on the couple
defended to settle in Aurora, Missouri, and it wasn't too
long before they started having kids. They had four boys
pretty quickly. Herman was born in eighteen nine, Lloyd was
(04:27):
born in eighteen ninety. Arthur or Doc came along in
eight and Fred, the youngest, showed up in nineteen o two,
and when the two oldest boys were still young, Kate
and George moved the family to the mining town of
Webb City, Missouri, where George took a job in the
Minds and Kate pretty much had her hands full of
raising the boys, who were a rowdy bunch right from
(04:49):
the start. She would haul them into church every Sunday,
but it didn't really seem to make an impression on
them at all. The Barker boys started dabbling in minor
offenses like petty theft and vandalizing property by their early teens.
By the time they were in their late teens, pretty
much all of them had gotten into trouble with the
law in one way or another. But instead of disciplining
(05:11):
them and trying to keep them in line, I mean,
you might imagine a parent just trying to come in
with a firm hand and put a stop to this,
And you would think that as a church going mother,
especially Kate would put the fear of God in exactly,
But she actually defended her boys to the hilt when
they got into trouble. She'd basically bully the authorities or
(05:32):
cry and plead with them into letting her sons go.
She acted as if her kids were being unfairly picked
on by the law, and she was devoted to them,
and it was as if they could do no wrong
in a way in her eyes. Yeah, But eventually the
boys had so much heat on them in the Web
City area, Kate decided that it was time for the
whole family to move. Usually this happens if there's better
(05:55):
opportunities for a family, but they needed to get out
of town, so they all moved to Tula, Oklahoma around
nineteen ten, and things didn't exactly calm down for the
Barkers once they reached their new town either. In fact,
Kate seemed to do everything she could to encourage her
boy's lawless habit, so it wasn't just she wasn't trying
to make them stop, make them improve their behavior. She
(06:18):
seemed to be egging them on. And they moved into
this old rundown house in Tulsa, and Kate set it
up as a kind of safe house or what was
called a kind of a cooling off service for criminals.
So any gangster, anyone who had been who had had
the cops on their trail who needed a place to
hide out could pay a fee and stay at the
Barkers for a while. So this way the boys and
(06:40):
their mom got exposure to real criminal minds who were
making real money, the kind of money that far exceeded
what they could bring in with the small, small time
crime that they were doing in their early years. So
just a side note here, the Barker Boys didn't really
appear to have the stature of intimidating criminals a warding
to Breyer, they were all about five ft three five
(07:03):
ft four and they weighed in between one dred nineteen
and one pounds. But what they lacked in their build
they made up for in attitude. They seemed to be ruthless,
and they were said to have never hesitated to pull
the trigger. Eventually, though, I mean that ruthlessness brewing, the
Barker Boys started to branch out on their own, so
(07:24):
according to Public Enemies, America's greatest crime wave and the
birth of the FBI by Brian Burrow, Herman, who remember
was the eldest brother, became a stick up man and
started robbing stores around the American West, and Lloyd also
eventually became involved in robberies in their teen years. The
two younger boys, Doc and Fred also got involved in
(07:46):
in some more serious crimes, something called the Central Park Gang,
which was basically a group of teenage burglars and car
thieves who would hang out in the park during the
day commit crimes at night. And according to Burrows's book,
several Central Park Gang members would do stints in the
Barker Carpus Gang later in life, so these were early
(08:07):
criminal contacts they were making. Just another little side note here.
Later the FBI also portrayed this Central Park Gang as
a kind of quote school of crime, which had Mob
Barker as the teacher, but Burrows says that there really
isn't any evidence to support this idea. It's another good
possible book title, though it is. What is clear, though,
(08:28):
is that the deeper her son's got into the crime world,
the less Kate Barker was able to protect them, just
by badgering police officers. As a result, she saw some
really hard times in the nineteen twenties. For example, in
nine Lloyd was arrested and sentenced to twenty five years
and eleven worth prison for robbing a postal truck. In
nineteen two, Doc was arrested when he shot a night
(08:51):
watchman during a robbery in Oklahoma. He got a life
sentence in the Oklahoma State Prison, fred In the meantime
up five to ten in Kansas State Prison for shooting
an officer while he was trying to steal a car.
And then the biggest blow happened. In nineteen Herman was
involved in a series of bank robberies in Oklahoma, Missouri,
(09:11):
and Texas, and when the cops finally caught up with
him in Kansas that August, there was a big shootout.
Herman was killed, and according to the account in Mike
Mayo's American Murder, the official story was that Herman had
killed an officer and then killed himself to avoid being arrested.
But Ma Barker just refused to believe the story. She
(09:32):
said that her sons would never commit suicide, um sticking
up for him right to the end again. According to
an article and Outlaws, Mobsters and Crooks, Hoover later pinpointed
Herman's death as a kind of turning point for Kate Barker,
saying that it changed her quote from an animal mother
of the she wolf type to a veritable beast of prey,
(09:53):
So this would have been her motivation, um if he
used to believed for becoming the violent, no holds barred
criminal that the FBI later made her out to be.
But the other images and descriptions of mob Barker portray
her in a really different light as someone who liked
to do jigsaw puzzles and listen to Amos and Andy
and knit and cook a biscuits for her son to
(10:16):
enjoy when they were home from their jobs. And she
certainly didn't look the part of a devious, cold blooded
criminal mastermind. I don't know, you might want to google
some pictures of her or something, But Burrow's book describes
her as a short and plump person with stringy black hair,
and the public who read about her and her boys,
they seemed to really perceive her as a mother who
(10:36):
was blinded by love. Essentially, people thought her feelings for
them just clouded her judgment. Yeah, I mean, people could
clearly be persuaded with those kind of feelings. That's how
the body and Clyde myth got so big. Um, much
like she did when they were younger. Mob Barker is
said to have continued to pest her prosecutors than others
about releasing her sons while they were locked up, even
(10:59):
though they were all due being some pretty serious time
at this point. Some sources even suggest that she may
have bought her favorite son, Freddie's freedom in the early
nineteen thirties, but regardless of how it exactly happened, whether
his mom took care of business or not, Fred was
released from prison in nineteen thirty one, and while he
had been on the inside, he had gotten to to
(11:21):
meet some new contacts and had met another inmate named
Alvin Carpass. And Carpass had also been mixed up in
crime since his teen years and had gotten his sentence
reduced while working in a coal mine while he was
incarcerated and mining a certain amount of coal. So he
and Fred wound up being released the very same year.
(11:41):
So free at last, Fred and Carpass met up at
Mob Barker's home in Tulsa. Mob by this point had
left George Barker. They hadn't really ever meshed, They hadn't
gotten along for years, and she left him in about
nineteen six and she already had a new boyfriend, Arthur Dunlop,
So I guess her short plumpness didn't work against her
at that time, and monto to Carpas, Fred's friend. Almost
(12:05):
immediately they became pretty tight, and Carpus was almost like
where he became almost like an adopted son to her.
According to Burrow, Fred even said at one point that
she preferred Carpas to her own boys. He said, quote,
you don't get on her nerves the way I do
to Carpas. So Carpas and Fred soon started pulling off
(12:26):
a series of robberies around Tulsa. Apparently Fred did not
mind that his mother preferred this other guy to him,
but they didn't. Their crimes didn't exactly go undetected. They
were arrested and they had to escape, so they grabbed
them on Alfred and they moved them initially to southern Missouri,
where Fred and Carpas soon started robbing banks. And robbing
banks was lucrative, but again it didn't exactly keep them
(12:49):
out of the limelight. So it wasn't long before Fred
and Carpass started to feel the heat on them in
Missouri too, so they decided to move again. I mean,
these Marker boys have been moving around their whole life.
They moved at the end of nineteen thirty one beginning
of nineteen thirty two, this time to St. Paul, Minnesota,
which was known at the time it's kind of a
refuge for criminals. The police force there was corrupt, so
(13:11):
criminals who lived there could work within an established system
as long as you so as long as you follow
the rules, you could get away with crime. And bro
said it was the quote crime capital of the Midwest
at the time. So you got there, you'd check in
with a guy named Harry Sawyer who owned a club
called the Green Lantern, which was sort of the headquarters
of criminal activity in St. Paul. And then Sawyer would
(13:34):
organize all the criminal activities in the area. And of
course Fred and Carpus went to visit him early on,
and he introduced them to other criminals, set them up
with a potential gang members exactly in jobs. With St.
Paul is their home base. Fred and Carpas pulled off
several bank robberies and they made off with quite a
bit of cash, enough for Fred to bribe his brother
(13:57):
Doc's way out of prison so that Dot could join
the gang. There were other gang members, of course, but
it was a bit of a rotating cast, and you know,
throughout this time included people like Francis Keating, Frank Nash,
and Harvey Bailey, who we mentioned in the intro to
this episode. So, during this crime spree of theirs, Ma's
boyfriend Dunlop turned up dead on the shores of a
(14:19):
lake outside of town. What happened here is that Fred
and Carpas had suspected him of leaking tails of their
various escapades to their Saint Paul landlady's son who used
to drink with Dunlop on occasion, and ended up calling
local detectives on them. They got away, but Dunlop wasn't
so lucky. Fred and Carpas either had him killed by
(14:40):
an accomplice or killed him themselves. And don't you have
to wonder a little bit about what mob Barker thought
of this? You know, she stuck with him, so I
have to think that maybe she wasn't as into old
Alfred Dunlaw after all. Seed um. So after this murder,
after these robberies, they relocated to Kansas City and continued
(15:01):
robbing banks. But eventually they had enough close scrapes with
the cops and with bullets, of course, that they decided
kidnapping might be a safer line of work to get
into the bank robbery, so they pulled off to fairly
high profile kidnappings. The first one was in nineteen thirty three,
they kidnapped William Ham, who was the chairman of Minneapolis's
largest brewery, ended up getting a hundred thousand dollars in
(15:25):
ransom for his kidnapping. And then six months later, in
early nineteen thirty four, they kidnapped the Minneapolis banker Edward G. Bremer,
and they got twice the amount they had gotten for him,
two hundred thousand dollars. And they weren't suspected of these
crimes at first, so best of all for them, since
they're always used to the cops following them around. They
(15:45):
weren't suspects, but one of their accomplices on both of
the kidnappings, a Chicago gangster named George Ziegler, who had
worked in the past for al Capone, ended up ended
up talking. He told some of his friends about what
they'd done, and they decided he was a threat, and
Fred and Carpas had Ziegler murdered. Bethbi searched Ziegler's body afterwards, though,
(16:08):
and they apparently found some leads, which meant bad news
for the Barker Carpass gang. After the Bremer kidnapping, Carpus
and the Barkers had split up and they had actually
left St. Paul. According to an article by Jane Galvin
in American History, Carpus hit out with his pregnant girl
friend in northern Florida and in Cuba, kind of moving
around a little bit, but Fred and Mob Barker stayed
(16:30):
in central Florida. So even though as Sarah mentioned, they
hadn't initially been accused of the kidnappings, the Barkers and
Carpas were well known enough. They had just gotten into
so many runnings with the law, had gotten into so
many shootouts that laying low for them was really very necessary.
Hoover had coined the label quote public Enemy number one,
(16:50):
which we've mentioned on this podcast before a couple of times.
He coined that term in ninety three, and Carpas was
one of them. He was the one of the first
four gangster to earn that moniker, along with Dillinger and
baby Face Nelson, So they were really keeping a close
eye on him and taking him very seriously. So things
started to break down in January of nine thirty five,
(17:11):
when the authorities caught up with Doc Barker, he was
actually captured by the famous g man Melvin Purvis, who
we also mentioned previously in a different episode. Doc had
a map of Florida in his apartment with o'calla circles,
so the FBI figured that's where Mom and Fred were.
So with that very obvious clue, by January nineteenth, agents
(17:32):
had the house surrounded and demanded the surrender of of
Mom and her son, and then machine gun fire started
to come from the house, so the FBI of course
answered with more machine gun fire plus tear gas plus
rifle fire, and according to Mayo's account, the fight lasted
anywhere between forty five minutes and four hours, depending on
(17:53):
what source you're looking at. But when it was finally over,
Fred and Ma were both dead, and according to the
FBI's report at the time, Mall was even still collecting
her Tommy gun when they were found inside the house.
Doc ended up being sentenced to life in Alcatraz, and
he died trying to escape from there. Four years later,
(18:14):
the FBI, actually led by Hoover himself, finally caught up
with Carpas in New Orleans in May of nineteen thirty six.
They caught Carpass off guard, But the FBI was kind
of caught off guard in this situation as well. They
weren't quite finished setting up to catch Carpas before he
came out, so when he showed up, they had to
use an agent's neck tie to handcuff him because they
(18:35):
couldn't find any handcuffs, like right off the bat. But
he surrendered peacefully and actually was the first Public Enemy
Number one to be taken alive. He was also sentenced
to life in Alcatraz, and when Alcatraz closed in the
nineteen sixties, he got transferred to Tacoma, Washington. He ended
up dying in nineteen seventy nine from an overdose of
sleeping pills. Alright, so we've covered the fates of the
(18:58):
gang members, But where did mab Barker get this reputation
as the mastermind of her son's crimes? Because if you noticed,
in this entire discussion so far, we never really mentioned
her participating in any of the crimes planning them out.
She merely seemed to encourage her sons in in the
criminal direction and certainly routed the benefits from what they stole,
(19:20):
and advocated for them when they were in trouble, but
didn't seem to actually be out there with the tommy
gun herself. She was known to do a few sort
of small errand type things for the gang, like, for instance,
when Ziegler was killed, she visited his widow to get
her to turnover Ziegler's share of the money from the
kidnapping escapades. But there's no evidence she actually participated in
(19:42):
the Barker gang's crimes. So many people think that the
FBI Hoover in particular, perpetuated this myth of Mab Barker
as the leader of the gang, that diabolical and violent
criminal that we described in the intro to the podcast,
and he did this simply to justify the fact that
they had killed us sixty three or so year old lady.
(20:03):
In his book, in fact, Borrow refers to her as
quote an FBI sponsored myth. Regardless, today, even the FBI
seems to believe that this image of mob Barker is
a myth. So it's a lot more likely that Fred
and Carpass were the real leaders of the gang. And
then many people even think Carpass was really the brains
behind the operation. Well we know it wasn't don now,
(20:23):
it was not Doc with his captain obvious map. But
because of that Carpas connection, and because some people think
he was the brains behind it, that's why it's often
referred to as the Barker Carpass Gang instead of just
something like the Barker Boys or the Barker Gang. Mayo
even called Carpus quote an experienced, an imaginative criminal, and
(20:44):
he was intimidating to We talked about how the Barker
Boys were mean, but they didn't necessarily seem intimidating in
a physical way. Carpass's nickname was old Creepy because he
had a very frosty personality. He had a cold, scary
expression and um the kind of guy you'd want to
stay away from. Beaty little eyes, even though Mob Barker
(21:04):
seemed to really loved him, which I guess that's something
about her, but yeah, I mean, if you read about
about Carpass, you'll often to see him referred to by
authors as Creepy Carpass, which is kind of a funny game.
But in his memoirs, which were published in Carpass himself
wrote quote, the most ridiculous story and the annals of
(21:26):
crime is that mob Barker was the mastermind behind the
Carpas Barker gang. The legend only grew up after her
death to justify why she was slaughtered by the FBI.
She wasn't a leader of criminals or even a criminal herself.
There is not one police photograph of her or set
of fingerprints taken while she was alive. She knew we
were criminals, but her participation in our careers was limited
(21:48):
to one function. When we traveled together, we moved on
as a mother and her sons. What could look more innocent?
And then he goes on to say it's no insult
to Ma's memory that she just didn't have the brains
or know how to direct us on a robbery. It
wouldn't have occurred to her to get involved in our business,
and we always made a point of only discussing our
(22:08):
scores when Ma wasn't around. We'd leave her at home
when we were arranging a job, or we send her
to a movie. Moss all lots of movies. It's pretty great.
I like I like this image of Ma going off
to movies, coming home working on a puzzle for a
little bitting a little bit and then go and knocking
on the widows door and think you better pay up.
(22:29):
You know, So you have to wonder, I mean, what
the exact truth was in any of these stories. It
kind of reminds me of The Bell Star episode two
about how the stories that were told about her after
her death were so vastly different from who people say
she really was. Well and again even back to Bonnie
and Clyde, how much did Bonnie really do so true?
(22:51):
So in these cases you have to wonder, is it
kind of a combination of the two? Do they meet
sort of in the middle, or is it really one
or the other characterization? So I don't know if any
of the listeners out there have any opinions on it
that they want to share, I'd be very interested in
hearing them me too. Yeah, we're at history podcast at
fevery dot com, and you guys love the gangster topics,
(23:13):
so I'm sure you're gonna have some opinions on mob
Barker and her boys and maybe some suggestions for future podcasts.
I mean, now we've covered three of those four original
public Enemy number one, so we just maybe it is
Maybe it is or maybe it's time for the fourth
pretty boy Floyd. Oh yeah, so we could put him
(23:35):
in at some point too. But we actually have another
little announcement of sorts to make on this podcast. It
wasn't by accident that we picked a topic about mother
because I am actually expecting, so I'm going to be
going on maternity leave soon and we wanted to use this,
I guess is kind of a topic, which, now in retrospect,
is kind of a strange choice. Uh, to introduce that
(23:59):
idea some day you can tell your child that this
is how you introduced him or her to the world. Yeah,
I don't know. I think I'll wait to see how
he or she turns out to to mention that. So, yeah,
we're obviously super excited about Dablina having a baby and
big congrats to you and your husband. But yeah, we're
also working on on covering episodes during her maternity leave
(24:23):
and keeping you guys in stock with new podcasts too. Yeah,
We're gonna do kind of a mix of things, which
I think will be kind of fun. It's obviously going
to be new episodes. We've been kind of working double
time or trying to to record, yes, researching like mad,
and we're also going to be kind of recapping some
(24:43):
older episodes, doing a few reruns that have a twist
on them. Say, some of the older episodes that have
new information has come out, you know, things that you
guys email us about and tell us and we think, oh,
that would be nice to update. Now we're finally doing
some of the those. And then we'll also have some
best of classics and those will all be handpicked though,
(25:05):
so it'll be our favorite, our favorite old episodes for
you guys to listen to again. So hopefully you'll stay
entertained over the summer. Yeah, and then we'll be back
the same as we've always been. Some new ideas, with
some new ideas, new perspective and history Baby a new
baby for Dablina. I think probably one of my favorite
(25:26):
things about this baby is when you told me that
it could hear. So it's been listening to the podcast
that should know something about history, and I think it
will know your voice there. Uhm. I'm interested to see
what it's like when the baby meets you. The cutest
thing ever, I'm really hoping it will it will recognize
my voice from hearing me from me and naturally long
stretches of time when we're recording, But um, I can't wait,
(25:49):
and I'm super happy for you guys, been excited and
thank you. We are too. So back to the podcast though,
if you guys have any ideas you want to share
with us, UM any concert learns about the upcoming maturity leave,
I hope not. Like Sarah said, I hope we'll keep
you entertained. Feel free to write us. We're at History
Podcast at Discovery dot com. We're also on Facebook and
we're on Twitter at in history, and we do have
(26:11):
some fun image galleries I believe of public enemies who
can search for that on our home page at www
dot how stiff work dot com for more on this
and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff Works
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