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‘Why take banks when you can take the bankers.’ Natural Born Outlaws: Barker-Karpis Gang, Karpis, Discovery 2016
West Plains, Missouri, December 1931: ‘Robbing banks, burglary, whatever would make money.’ ibid. commentator
January 17th 1934: Just hours after the abduction of Edward Bremer junior, St Paul police find his abandoned car. ibid.
He [Karpis] was ultimately paroled in 1968. ibid.
On 16th January 1935 FBI agents surrounded a house in a remote rural area of Florida. A gun battle broke out after warnings had been shouted. Teargas shells were fired. And after forty-five minutes agents broke in to find the inhabitants dead. They had killed two of America’s most wanted criminals: Kate Ma Barker, and Fred, one of her four sons. Great Crimes & Trials: Ma Barker and other Public Enemies
‘It’s like walking into a time capsule in 1935. The fact that it has this extra history is a really interesting cachet,’ said Mark Arnold, an agent with Stirling Sotheby’s International Realty, who are handling the sale.
He was referring to how Kate ‘Ma’ Barker, who was branded Public Enemy No. 1 by the federal government for a rash of murders, kidnapping and robberies committed in the early 1930s, was killed in the house along with one of her sons in a barrage of bullets from federal agents.
Photos released at the time, believed by some to have been staged, show Barker lying dead in a second-floor bedroom clutching a machine gun.
But the Barker story is the stuff of gangster legend and crime buffs may put a premium on a prime piece of criminal memorabilia.
The house is 2,016 square feet (187 sq meters) with four bedrooms and 1 1/2 bathrooms. The sale includes 9.5 acres shaded by stands of old oak trees and 1.5 acres of sandy beach on Lake Weir.
Books and movies including the 1970 film Bloody Mama starring Shelly Winters focus on what some see as the mythical Ma Barker. But the real Barker may have had little to do with Hollywood images and the criminal exploits of her four sons.
The four men were members of the ruthless Barker-Karpis gang that rampaged across the South and Midwest in the 1920s and early 1930s. But there has been little evidence to support claims that Barker herself was some sort of stone-cold criminal mastermind. Daily Mail online article 22nd August 2012
I’ve told you and I told you and I told you not to curse in my house. Bloody Mama 1970 starring Shelley Winters & Lisa Jill & Robert Walden & Alex Nicol & Robert De Niro & Pat Hingle & Don Stroud & Diane Varsi & Bruce Dern & Clint Kimbrough et al, director Roger Corman, Ma Barker
You got to fight the bastards always, boys. ibid. Ma
I’m sure glad I didn’t raise me any girls. Who knows how they would have turned out. ibid. Ma
Herman, tonight you sleep with Ma. ibid. Ma
1929 was a bad year for a lot of folks. ibid.
I’m not Mary, mother of God. ibid.
The trouble with our Lord was that he didn’t have a smart slick lawyer. ibid.
It was God’s will. If He didn’t want us to have that there money He wouldn’t have left it for us in that bag. ibid.
We are decent respectable law-abiding hunters. ibid.
Ma, do you reckon Dillinger’s more famous than we are? ibid. Son
I aim to be freer than the rest of the people. ibid. Ma
I told my boys you just rob banks and stay out of trouble. ibid. Ma
Nothing disgusts me more than a sissy. Ma Barker’s Killer Brood 1960 starring Lurene Tuttle & Tristam Coffin & Paul Dubov & Nelson Leigh & Myrna Dell & Dan White & Victor Lundin & Paul Power et al, director Bill Karn, Ma
You got caught, that’s what you did. ibid.
If only you’d been a better father. ibid. Ma
There was a few people killed in the robberies I was in. They claimed when I was arrested they accused me of killing 14. The Gangster Files s1e5: Alvin Karpis: Myth & Reality, Amazon 2023
The gang was founded by Fred Barker and Alvin Karpis. ibid. comment
Although the Barker-Karpis Gang were not as notorious as their contemporaries, such as the Dillinger Gang or the Barrow Gang, the Barker-Karpis gang was in fact much more ruthless. ibid.
The Barker-Karpis Gang is renowned for its long-running myth that the activities of the gang were actually run and controlled by the Barker brothers’ mother, Kate. ibid.
The life and death of Arizona Barker, better known to posterity as Ma Barker, has widely captured the imagination of popular society in America for nearly a century. The Gangster Files s1e6: Ma Barker: Myth & Reality, comment
We know for certain that from 1931 to 1935 Ma Barker was an enabler and an accomplice of the notorious Barker-Karpis Gang, one of the most infamous criminal gangs operating in the Midwestern United States. ibid.
Ma Barker was depicted as a very evil crime boss. Hoover in particular depicted her as one of America’s most notorious gangsters who was controlling and building crimes. ibid.
Those who knew Ma Barker personally insisted she had no criminal role. ibid.