[music playing] NARRATOR: From A&E,
this is "Biography". For February 24th, 1999,
"Biography" with Jack Perkins. [gunshot] JACK PERKINS: She was sure
not your typical mother. Ma Barker gave birth
to a crime wave, a crime wave that swept
through the Midwest and ended in a blaze
of machine gun fire. To her neighbors, she was
Mrs. Wilson, a friendly and God fearing woman. To the FBI, she was Ma Barker,
one of America's most vicious criminal masterminds. Her story has always been
a mixture of mythology and reality, but without
question she was the matriarch of a notorious family, she was
a mother who took permissiveness to the extreme. I mean, Ma and her boys
graduated from shoplifting to kidnapping and murder. One by one she saw her outlaw
offspring thrown in jail or killed, until
finally it was just Ma Barker and her favorite
son against the FBI. She was a wicked woman. How can anybody
raise their children to be criminals of that ilk? J. Edgar Hoover called
Ma Barker a monument to parental indulgence. Ma Barker let her boys
literally get away with murder. NARRATOR: In the 1920s
and '30s, the Barker name was synonymous with violent
bank robberies, kidnapping, and murder. Ma Barker's sons, Herman,
Lloyd, Doc, and Fred, cut an unparalleled swath
of crime across the Midwest. Her dubious
achievement as a mother was to raise four
violent career criminals. They would all die violently. So would she. Kate Barker was born
Arizona Donny Clark in 1872, on a small farm in
southwest Missouri. Her hometown of Ash Grove was
in rugged hill country, scored by creeks and deep ravines. By all accounts, her family
life was humble, even poor, but stable. Arizona was a headstrong girl
with dark, penetrating eyes and a harsh temper. Along with her siblings, she
attended church regularly, sang in the choir,
and played the fiddle. For many Missourians,
including young Arizona, the animosities of the
Civil War and its aftermath were slow to die,
animosities which led to the rise of
outlaws like Jesse James. Western Missouri became known
as the cradle of bandits. Legend has it that a young,
wide-eyed Arizona watched Jesse James and his gang ride
through her hometown and that the experience whet
her appetite for adventure. In 1892 Arizona married a man
unlikely to fulfill her dreams, tenant farmer George Barker. George was hard
working, but very poor. His soft spoken disposition
was in direct contrast to that of his
high-spirited wife. Uncle George has never been
anything but a very meek, mellow type person. I don't think I've ever heard
anybody say anything about him ever just raising his voice. NARRATOR: Over the next decade,
the couple had four sons, and Arizona, who now
adopted the nickname Kate, played the role of
devoted wife and mother. She was known as a
good cook and a regular at church on Sundays, the very
model of a good countrywoman. Aunt Ari was known to
sing around the house and play the fiddle and
she always took the kids to church and to Sunday school. She was just a real hard
working Christian woman then. NARRATOR: That would all change
as the boys grew to school age. George's meager
income as a farmer could barely support
his wife and sons. Poverty began tearing
the family apart. The four Barker boys
became a roving band of pint-sized troublemakers. They were often
absent from school, they shoplifted from
local merchants, and attacked other children. My father speaks of how
one of the Barker guys would come up and
grab him behind, and the other Barker brother
would come up and just flay him good, just beat
the socks off of him, and it was just unreal how
unmerciful these guys were. NARRATOR: Kate Barker refused
to discipline her boys, and she flew into a rage at
anyone, including her husband George, who tried to scold them. This rift over control
of the boy's behavior would drive a wedge
between the Barkers and eventually destroy
their marriage. She was one of these mothers
that would not let anybody say anything derogatory
about her boys. She was very, very
overly protective. And Uncle George being
Uncle George I guess let Aunt Ari take control. He said he just couldn't do
nothing with them without her getting all over him, go and
do this and do that, you know, and he said he, he just gave
up on them a time or two. NARRATOR: George also
gave up on farming, and moved his family
out of the Ozarks to Webb City, a mining
boomtown on the Kansas border. He took a job in the
zinc and led mines. The Barkers lived in a rundown
shack on the edge of town, and the locals were soon
well aware of the wild Barker boys and their pranks. They began to have
run-ins with the police. Herman, the oldest, was arrested
in 1910 for petty thievery. As usual, Ma Barker
defended her boys. She used the same hysterical
tactics with the police that she had with her neighbors. Amazingly, it worked. She would raise
hell with them. She would scream at them,
rage at them, and finally cry, just weep like a weeping mother. Actually, it got to the
point where she was harassing the police to where they didn't
want to hold the Barker boys. They would let them go. NARRATOR: The pattern persisted. Ma became more detached
from her neighbors, the boys more familiar
with the police. By the time her two
youngest, Doc and Fred, reached their teen
years, the Barker family had become notorious. Now Ma decided on her own
that it was time to move on. Claiming police persecution,
she packed up the family and headed south
to Tulsa, Oklahoma. Her husband George said
nothing and went along. When Ma Barker and her boys
arrived in Tulsa in the spring of 1915, it was a town
bursting with oil, opportunity, and outlaws. It suited them just fine. The Barker boys,
with the complicity of their indulgent Ma, started
a gang with other young hoodlums and began to make good on
their mother's outlaw dreams. Immediately the
boys came in contact with some of the
local Tulsa boys and became part of what was
known as the Central Park Gang. NARRATOR: With
Ma's encouragement, and to the chagrin
of her husband, the Barker house became a
gathering place for the Central Park Gang, and Ma stood up
for the other gang members just as she did
for her own sons. By the early 1920s,
two of the Barker boys were convicted felons
doing hard time. Lloyd, the second
oldest, was serving 25 years in Leavenworth Kansas
for a failed post office robbery. Ma would never see him
outside prison walls again. Doc, Ma's third son, was found
guilty of killing a night watchman and got a life
sentence at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. At Doc's sentencing, Ma
was overcome with grief and made sure that
reporters knew it. Ma was losing her
sons fast, and she was about to lose her husband. Uncle George finally left
because, number one, he didn't approve of all the
things that was going on and he knew that
there was nothing he could do to change it. So there was no alternative
for him, you know, but to leave and just
leave her with the boys if that's the life they wanted. He just didn't want
any part of it. NARRATOR: Ma Barker lost another
of her men in November 1926, when her youngest,
25-year-old Fred, was convicted of grand larceny
and sentenced to 5 to 10 years at the Kansas State
Prison in Lansing. She now had three
sons in prison, and one, Herman, her oldest,
roving from one small town to the next, robbing
and burglarizing. Herman always made sure to
send some of what he stole back to Tulsa, to his ma as
well as to his wife Carol. Then, on August 29th, 1927, Ma
suffered the worst blow of all. After killing a deputy, Herman
was wounded and cornered by police near Wichita, Kansas. Refusing to surrender, Herman
raised his gun to his temple and pulled the trigger. LEE MCGEHEE: This just
totally destroyed Kate Barker. One of the ways that we
know that is when you look at his grave in Welch, Oklahoma,
he has an enormous tombstone that was erected by Kate in
tribute to her oldest son. Once Herman was killed, she
really saw absolutely no value in the legal authorities. NARRATOR: Alone in her Tulsa
shack, Ma Barker now launched an unrelenting and hysterical
campaign to get her three sons out of prison. She badgered the wardens and
beseeched the parole boards, demanding as a
mother that she not be left alone without her boys. Desperate for
companionship, she took up with a part time billboard
painter named Arthur Dunlop. The couple moved in
together, but there were problems from the start. Dunlop drank more than he
worked, and money was short. With a lazy lover and
no sons to support her, Ma was forced to rely on her
daughter-in-law, Herrman's widow Carol. LEE MCGEHEE: She
depended on Carol for groceries and supplies
basically, and she hated it. But she had always hated Carol. She thought she was a hussy. NARRATOR: In fact, Ma Barker
despised all the women in her son's lives, most of
whom were drugstore clerks or waitresses. Ma made sure to find something
to dislike in each of them. I'm sure she wanted to
be the focus of attention with her boys. It's kind of hard to turn
your boys over to other women. PAUL MACCABEE: Whenever the
Barker boys would fall in love, they wouldn't even show
Ma their girlfriend. They'd keep their girlfriends
in another apartment building. She was simply so jealous of
any other female companionship other than her. NARRATOR: These were
hard times for Ma Barker. She was dirt poor, with
one son in the grave, and three more in prison. But her fortunes would
soon change dramatically. Two of her sons would be
freed, and she would join them as they embarked on
the most prolific crime spree of the 1930s. It would make Ma
both proud and rich. NARRATOR: In early 1931, as
the Great Depression was taking hold, Ma Barker was
lonely and poor. Then in the spring, her
youngest, Fred Barker, was unexpectedly paroled
from Lansing Prison in Kansas at the age of 29. Ma was overjoyed to be
reunited with one of her boys. Adding to Ma's happiness,
Fred brought with him a fellow parolee named Alvin
Karpis, who quickly became like an adopted son to Ma. She did take an
instant liking to him and they became very close. Karpis himself later said that
she was more like a mother to him than his own
mother had been. NARRATOR: Karpis was
the 23-year-old son of Lithuanian immigrants. Like the Barker boys,
Karpis had been a criminal since childhood. In prison, he and
Fred had made plans to team up once they were out. Ma approved wholeheartedly,
and once again her Tulsa shack became a haven for
criminal enterprises. Fred and Alvin went
to work, committing a series of burglaries and
a small time bank robbery. With some of the money
they stole, Fred and Alvin rented a house for
Ma on seven acres of land in Thayer, Missouri
near the Arkansas border. It was just what Ma wanted,
comfort, and the chance to live vicariously through
the exploits of her boys. In December 1931, Fred and
Alvin robbed a department store in West Plains, Missouri. The very next day, they
returned to West Plains to have a flat tire repaired. At the garage, they
were approached by the town's Sheriff, CR. Kelly. As Sheriff Kelly
walked up to the car, it would have been an opportune
time to have taken him hostage, to have gotten out of
town without any injury, but instead, in a really
cold blooded murder, they shoot the sheriff down. NARRATOR: Sheriff Kelly
was shot four times from point blank range. His murder started a pattern
of excessive violence and thoughtless killing that
soon became the trademark of the Barker gang. And for the first time, Ma
Barker became a wanted woman. She and her lover Arthur
Dunlop, along with son Fred and Alvin
Karpis, headed north to hide out in Saint
Paul, Minnesota, where the boys had
underworld contacts. In the 1930s, Saint Paul
was an enclave for gangsters of every sort, a corrupt
city where outlaws on the run could live with little
fear of being arrested. It was just the place for
Ma Barker and her gang, who rented a house in a
residential neighborhood posing as the Andersons, a family
of traveling musicians. They hid their Tommy guns
in their violin cases. We saw them leaving the
house in the evening with their so-called suitcases. We thought they
were a violinists. We thought they were
in an orchestra. NARRATOR: The Andersons
had odd habits, late hours, and frequent visits
from strangers. But their neighbors
never suspected a thing. That's because Ma Barker,
now in her early 60s, was playing her role
in the gang perfectly. She was the decoy, the
grandmotherly presence who helped the gang
blend into the community. Ma Barker, she was very nice
from what I remember, mainly because when I brought
donuts over to her, and my grandmother always
made raised sugar donuts, and she gave me a
bowl of these donuts to be taken over to Ma
Barker, and she receives me into the house. And she says, could
you wait a minute? And as I was
waiting, she returned with a half a dozen bars of
all different kind of candies. NARRATOR: What the
neighbors did not know was that the traveling musicians
next door were planning a bank robbery. On March 29th, 1932, Fred
Barker, Alvin Karpis, and three accomplices robbed
the Northwestern National Bank in neighboring Minneapolis,
making a clean getaway. Back at their hideout
where Ma was waiting, the Barker gang was ecstatic
as they split over a quarter million dollars
in cash and bonds, the modern equivalent
of over $3 million. Kate Barker, the poor
girl from the Ozarks, suddenly had more money than
she ever dreamed possible. It was soon time to flee
their Saint Paul hideout. The son of their landlady
recognized Fred Barker and Alvin Karpis
from wanted photos in a pulp detective magazine. He raced to the Saint
Paul Police Department in hopes of claiming the reward,
but the corrupt police chief, Tom Brown, tipped off the gang. Ma and her boys made a
hasty exit from their house shortly before it was raided. They left the lights
on, the gas stoves on. Food was on the table
because they were preparing a breakfast, and they just
went out the front door and the back door. NARRATOR: Fred Barker
now turned his attention to a problem that
had been nagging him and Alvin Karpis
since they got out of prison, Ma's lazy and
drunken lover Arthur Dunlop. They had tolerated
him, but now they suspected that his loose
talk had sold them out to the police. Fred and Alvin took Ma aside and
explained that they would all be better off if Dunlop were
sent packing to Chicago. Ma reluctantly agreed. Dunlop never made it to Chicago. He was driven to Lake
Fremstadt in Western Wisconsin, forced into the woods, and shot. Ma did not know that her
lover was going to be killed. Apparently, maybe
this is poetry, maybe this is some kind
of allusion to Ma Barker, next to Arthur Dunlop's body
was found a single black woman's glove. Maybe it was a message
to Arthur Dunlop that he shouldn't have fallen
in love with their Ma Barker. NARRATOR: In a few
months, Ma forgot all about her
freeloading boyfriend. The gang was on the move. They retreated to White Bear
Lake, a vacation spot northeast of Saint Paul. They rented a private cottage,
posing as a widowed mother traveling with her two sons. Sometimes the boys
found humor in the sight of their indomitable Ma,
all 5 foot 2 inches of her, propped up on an air cushion
in the front seat of one of their sedans. Ma maintained the cottage
and did the cooking, as Fred and Alvin were busy
planning their next bank job. This time, they
drove over 600 miles to a bank in Cloud
County, Kansas. As part of their
carefully rehearsed plan, Fred, Alvin, and
their accomplices dressed in overalls to blend
in with the local farmers. When I first saw Alvin
Karpis come down the lobby, not aware that it was a bank
robber, I remarked, you know, that he couldn't have
been out on a farm working very long
because it was July. He was real white,
pasty faced, and all our farm people around here had
wonderful tans by that time. As he showed us the gun,
he said, this is a holdup. Put your hands up and
come on back and lie down in the back room and
you won't be hurt. NARRATOR: The gang rifled
through the cash drawers and safety deposit
boxes, but they couldn't open the main safe. They had pistol whipped
the vice president, and he couldn't remember
the combination. In fact, he was hit so
hard that there was even blood spattered on
the roof of the vault. NARRATOR: The gang gave
up on the main safe and fled with over $20,000 in
cash and $200,000 in bonds. They drove all night, returning
to the White Bear Lake cottage and a happy reunion with Ma. She was always overjoyed when
the boys returned from a job and often greeted them with
a full home cooked spread. Ma's joy was even greater
in September 1932. Her third son, Doc, was paroled
from his murder sentence by the governor of
Oklahoma, William Murray. Ma's years of haranguing, not to
mention some hefty bribe money, had done the trick. The Barker gang was now at
full strength and more menacing than ever. With Ma's blessing, they quickly
plotted another bank job, but this time they
wouldn't think it through, leading to a violent
shootout with the police and adding to their legend is
the most vicious criminal gang in America. NARRATOR: In December
1932, the Barker gang concocted a dangerous plot
to rob a bank in Minneapolis. Ma Barker pleaded with
her boys to be careful. Her instincts told her
the plan was flawed. She complained of
heart palpitations. The gang member she treated as
an adopted son, Alvin Karpis, also had bad premonitions. I left all my money home,
I left my jewelry home, I left all my identification,
even the phony identification that I carried,
because I wasn't-- there wasn't the least
bit of doubt in my mind we're were going to have
trouble in that place. NARRATOR: The Third Northwestern
National Bank in Minneapolis was a bad place to rob. It was located on
a busy intersection and had large
single pane windows. But the gang, spurred on by
their greed and recklessness, went ahead with the plot. Earl Patch was a young
bookkeeper working at the bank on December 16th, 1932. They were pros. They knew what they were doing. They knew the
layout of the bank. They just what to do, where
to go, who to take care of, and the important thing
was to get that safe open. Well, Freddie Barker
was running the show, and he leaps over
the officer's desk and rolled over the
top of this barrier. And he got the
assistant cashier and he told him to open that vault.
Well, the first time he twisted the dial, he missed, and Freddie
jammed the gun in his ribs and he said, buddy, don't
let it happen again. Unfortunately, one of the bank
clerks who was pistol whipped by the Barker-Karpis gang,
pressed the button that brought the police to the bank. NARRATOR: A squad car with
officers Ira Evans and Leo Gorski arrived at
the scene in minutes. Waiting for them was one of the
gang's vicious gunmen, Larry DeVol. As they got out
of their police car, Larry "The Chopper" DeVol, with
a tripod setup machine gun, blew out the windows, fired
directly into the officers. One took 10 bullets directly
into the body, died instantly. The other died within a day
or two, mortally wounded. It was a bloody,
terrible shootout, and it was just the kind
of machine gun-filled, violence-filled bank robbery
that the Barker-Karpis gang loved and other gangs like
the John Dillinger gang tried to avoid. NARRATOR: The bank
was shot to pieces, as the gang fled
with nearly $125,000 in cash and securities. While they were changing license
plates outside Minneapolis, a curious motorist named Oscar
Erickson had the misfortune of crossing paths
with the Barkers. Fred Barker opened up on
Erickson with a Tommy gun, killing him. The Barkers came to be
known as the Blasters, and this was very appropriate
because they were completely careless and had a complete
disregard for human life. Their first instinct to
any situation that arose was simply to open
up with their guns and blast it out of the way. NARRATOR: As the game became
more violent and daring, Ma Barker was ever more
afraid that her boys would end up back in prison or
be killed in a shootout. Ma was getting old and
weary of life on the run, but as much as she might have
liked a quiet retirement, her boys were still on a tear. In the summer of
1933, the Barker boys, along with their mother
and their accomplices, returned to the woods
North of Saint Paul, renting a cabin on
Bald Eagle Lake. Plotting their
next crime, the men kept entirely to themselves,
rarely venturing out to enjoy the lake. Shadowy visitors
would always signal before approaching the cabin. Ma Barker, now using
the alias Mrs. Wilson, again played the role
of generous neighbor with the local residents. Allan Lindholm was
eight years old when he lived across the street from
the Barkers' cabin and Mrs. Wilson. When my mother had these ice
cream social tickets to sell, she said to be sure and
go over to Mrs. Wilson, and I'm sure that she'll buy
a couple of tickets from you. So that was the first place
I went was over there, and she bought the whole
roll of tickets from me and gave me back the roll. NARRATOR: The peace and quiet
of the Minnesota Lake Country was exactly what Ma wanted,
time to spend with her sons, Fred and Doc, as well as the man
she treated as her adopted son, Alvin Karpis. She was the type of
person that didn't want to be left alone by herself. She was an old, religious,
holy roller type in the Ozarks. She never read newspapers. The only thing she
listened to on the radio was hillbilly program,
and her greatest pastime was working jigsaw puzzles. NARRATOR: Eventually,
the good people of Bald Eagle Lake learned the
real identity of Mrs. Wilson and her boys. Quite a bit later,
the FBI came to the door and he informed my mother
that it was Ma Barker. My mother was devastated. She broke down and
cried, and I was really mad at this guy coming
in and making my mother cry. NARRATOR: Later that
summer, the Barker boys decided it was time for Ma to
have an apartment of her own in Chicago. She was too old for
life on the run. Ma hated being
separated from her sons, but she agreed with
the understanding that they would visit her
whenever they came to town. Alvin Karpis even
spent a day with Ma at the Chicago World's Fair. With Ma out of the
way, the Barker gang resumed their violent exploits,
beginning on August 30th, 1933, at the South Saint
Paul Post Office. They were targeting a cash
payroll carried by post office messengers. The messengers were escorted
by two armed police officers, John Yeaman in a squad car
and Leo Pavlak on foot. Pavlak had been on the
force just five days. He was married
with two children. The gang waited for the convoy
in a tavern across the street from the post office. When the convoy arrived,
the Barkers attacked. And they shot officer
Yeaman, and at the same time, a vehicle with the other bandits
pulled up in front of the post office and got the
drop on officer Pavlak and the messengers. NARRATOR: Doc Barker disarmed
Leo Pavlak at gunpoint, then he raised his shotgun to
the officer's head and fired. Officer Pavlak's 11-year-old
daughter Eleanor was at home when she heard the news that
her father had been killed. About 9 o'clock I was
out hanging the laundry, and all of a sudden there were
a lot of people in the yard and in the house, and I couldn't
imagine what was going on. And somebody took me in the
house and rounded up my brother and told us what happened. And my brother Bob
took off, just ran, like if he wasn't there
it wouldn't have happened. It isn't true. NARRATOR: Fred Barker filled
the air with machine gun fire to scatter the crowd
before the gang sped away with over $30,000. Alvin Karpis would later
call it a good day's work. These people
have no conscience about what they've done. What they did to our
family was destroy it. We had a loving, wonderful
mother and father. My dad was fun, my
mother was wonderful, and that was taken away from
us in the twinkling of an eye. NARRATOR: All the while, the
mother who not only condoned but prospered as a result
of all this violence quietly worked her jigsaw
puzzles in Chicago, longing to reunite with her boys. By the end of 1933,
the Barker gang had stolen about $3 million
in just under three years. But as they hid out in Saint
Paul's Kennington apartments, they were not satisfied. Their next and most notorious
crime, a kidnapping, would not only drive their
mother to distraction, it would draw the attention
of the president of the United States. NARRATOR: In early 1934,
with Ma Barker living in quiet retirement in
Chicago, the Barker boys were planning to kidnap a
wealthy businessman named Edward Bremer for $200,000. Bremer's family owned
the Schmidt Brewery, which was making money
again now that Prohibition had been repealed. A few timid people-- NARRATOR: Bremer was a very
poor choice as a kidnap victim, because his family
was well connected to the man in the White
House, who had campaigned so hard against
Prohibition, Franklin Roosevelt. Despite the risks,
on the morning of January 1th, 1934, the Barker gang tailed
Bremer as he drove to work, blocked his car at
an intersection. Doc Barker grabbed him. Bremer resisted. As he tried to escape, Doc beat
him savagely with a pistol. Bremer's bloodstained car
was abandoned in Saint Paul. He was transferred
to the gang's car and driven to a safe
house near Chicago. NEWSREADER: Kidnappers
strike again. Here is their latest victim,
Edward G. Bremer, a Saint Paul banker whose father is a close
friend of President Roosevelt. NARRATOR: The gang did not
tell Ma where they were, but the kidnapping
was no secret. President Roosevelt was
informed and so was the press. The FBI went to work. Immediately after the
kidnapping of Edward Bremer, the Barker-Karpis gang realized
that they'd made a terrible mistake. The president, Franklin
Delano Roosevelt, immediately sent a
message to the family. The American Legion said
that all of their members would be put on alert
to look for clues. The post office alerted
the mail carriers to look for clues
on their routes. NARRATOR: Adding to
the gang's problems, Bremer's father wanted the
ransom cut in half to $100,000. The gang stuck to its demand. Three long weeks went
by with no resolution. 21 days now seems
just incredible to me, because it is a very long
time to be separated from-- my mother from her
husband, me from my dad, and not knowing where
he was was a great ache in everyone's heart. NARRATOR: Ma Barker, lonely
and increasingly deluded, could only follow the Bremer
kidnapping on the radio. Ma Barker had been
basically abandoned during the Bremer kidnapping,
left to her own devices. They made sure she
was taken care of. They had money delivered. But she became very paranoid. She thought she'd
been left behind. NARRATOR: Finally, on
February 6th, 1934, the $200,000 ransom was ready. A flashing red light on
a deserted country road was the dropoff signal. The following day,
the Barker gang released Bremer
outside of Saint Paul. Trembling and exhausted,
he appeared unexpectedly on his father's front porch. My father was very distraught
and very uptight I guess is the word you'd use now. You know, I called
it white knuckled. He would clench his
hands and we did not talk about the kidnapping. NARRATOR: Ma Barker
had been right to fear that her boys were
overplaying their hand and courting disaster. Shortly after Bremer's release,
the FBI began closing in. Agents discovered four
gas cans along a route in Southern Wisconsin,
which Edward Bremer believed his kidnappers had taken. On one of the cans was a
fingerprint that matched Doc Barker's. Fred and Doc Barker, as
well as Alvin Karpis, were all on J. Edgar
Hoover's public enemies list. Ma began losing her mind. The pressure was so intense
in the Barker-Karpis gang after they kidnapped Ed Bremer. Ma Barker began to get
stressed, tremendously tense about her sons being captured
or killed or sent to prison. NARRATOR: Distracted by
their mother's hysteria, the gang decided to split
up in the fall of 1934. Doc hid out in Chicago. Alvin Karpis took his
girlfriend, Dolores Delaney, and headed for Miami. Fred collected Ma
in Chicago and took her to hideout in the
small town of Ocklawaha in central Florida. They rented this home on
the shores of Lake Weir and adopted another
alias, the Blackburns. As usual, Ma was highly
regarded by the locals. Ma Barker was well
received in the community, because in this period of
time, when there was not much money floating around,
and she paid with large bills and sometimes she allowed
the grocery people to keep the change, then
everybody thought that she was a good person to be close to. She attended church at
the Ocklawaha Baptist Church on a regular basis and was
very, very committed to that, and some people even said that
she took some turns singing in the choir. NARRATOR: Fred was also popular,
organizing deer hunting trips with local sportsmen. I don't think anybody could be
more enthusiastic about hunting deer than Fred Walker was. When Fred and Ma Barker
was with us in the camp, if we had have taken 10 people
and told each one they had 10 chances to pick their occupation
on what Ma and Fred Barker did for a living, none of them would
have picked their lifestyle. NARRATOR: Fred Barker also
ventured onto the lake in front of their house to fish and
to hunt a legendary alligator called Old Joe. There was a three legged
alligator named Old Joe, and he was apparently
a sizeable alligator, and it was very popular at
the time to try to find a way to catch the alligator. And people would drag dead
pigs behind, behind boats very slowly and try to
see if they could attract the alligator, and
it was a local sport. NARRATOR: By the end of
1934, the Barker gang, along with Alvin Karpis, were
the last of a dying breed. John Dillinger, Pretty Boy
Floyd, Bonnie and Clyde, and Babyface Nelson had
all been gunned down. Still hiding out from
the Bremer kidnapping, Ma and Fred were in their
lake house spending Christmas together. The FBI was closing in,
and the myth of Ma Barker was about to be created in
a blaze of machine gun fire. NARRATOR: The collapse
of the Barker gang began in Chicago on
January 8th, 1935. Ma Barker's second son Doc
was caught by surprise by FBI agents outside his apartment. He surrendered
without a struggle to G-man Melvin Purvis. Also arrested was a Chicago
gangster, Byron Bolton, who had worked with the Barkers
on the Bremer kidnapping. Both Doc and Bolton were
charged with the kidnapping, but Bolton decided to rat in
exchange for reduced charges. He told the G-men
that Ma and Fred were living on a lake in Florida. He couldn't remember the
town, but he recalled hearing about Old Joe. Fred was just bugs over some
alligator called Old Joe, said Bolton. All he talked about was
getting Old Joe with a chopper. The FBI launched a statewide
manhunt for an alligator. The search eventually brought
the agents to Ocklawaha in the house on Lake Weir. The federal men kept the
Barker house under surveillance and positively identified Fred. They believed that other gang
members were in the house as well. On January 16th, 1935, 15
heavily armed FBI agents took up positions around
the Barkers' house. LEE MCGEHEE: They were
in place before daylight, and as the sun rises,
then the scenario begins. NARRATOR: The agent in
charge, E.J. Connelley, approached the house
and knocked on the door. Ma Barker came to the door and
was informed of the FBI warrant for Fred's arrest. She spoke with Connelley,
then calmly stepped away, presumably to summon Fred. Within minutes, Fred Barker
appeared in an upstairs window. He fired a machine
gun volley, narrowly missing agent Connelley,
and the gun battle began. [gunfire] The G-men pumped over 2,000
rounds into the house. Freddie and Ma fought
for their lives, shooting back with
everything they had, ducking from room to room. Finally after four hours and
with the G-men running out of ammunition, the scene
became deathly quiet. A trail of blood led
to an upstairs bedroom, where Ma and Freddie were
found lying side by side, dead. Freddie was riddled
with 14 bullet wounds. Ma was shot in the
chest and head. The captured assortment of
weapons used in the shootout was not dusted for prints,
so whether Ma was shooting is still debated. I fully believe
that Kate Barker was an active participant
in this gun battle, from the damage that
was done to the house and from the testimony that
there was more than one gun being fired from inside
the house at the same time. What I found in the FBI files
is that the FBI killed Freddie Barker and
inadvertently they also killed Freddie Barker's mother. And in the FBI
files from that day, the public relations
office turned Ma Barker into this evil genius of crime. NARRATOR: The FBI created
the misleading legend that Ma Barker was the leader
of the gang, masterminding robberies and toting
a machine gun. Hoping to flush
out Alvin Karpis, the FBI kept the
bodies of Omar and Fred on display in a
Florida funeral parlor for eight gruesome months. In a sad irony, George
Barker, still very poor, came down from Missouri to
claim his dead wife and son. He had their bodies
taken to Welch, Oklahoma and buried
next to Herrman's. Doc Barker was
returned to Saint Paul and tried for the
Bremer kidnapping. He was found guilty and
sentenced to life in prison on the Rock, Alcatraz Island. Four years later,
in January 1939, Doc was gunned down
while attempting to escape from Alcatraz. His dying words, "I'm
all shot to hell." The one surviving
Barker brother, Lloyd, was finally released
from Leavenworth in 1938. He had spent the last 16
years in relative peace, but he would not escape the
violent fate of his family. He was murdered in 1949 by his
unstable wife Jenny, killed by a shotgun blast to the face. The gangster era officially came
to a close on May 1st, 1936. Public enemy number one, Ma's
adopted son, Alvin Karpis, was caught by federal
agents in New Orleans. J. Edgar Hoover took credit
for personally handcuffing his nemesis. Karpis reported his capture
somewhat differently. I say this, that 28
agents arrested me. This was on the corner. I see a guy peeping
around the corner. And I go, what the hell is this? And finally here came another
one looking around the corner. One of the agents shouted,
we got him, Chief! We got him! Come on, come on! Everything's all right. We got him. So here they came,
and it turned out to be Hoover and Clyde Tolson. NARRATOR: Karpis pleaded
guilty to kidnapping and served 33 years in
federal penitentiaries, mostly at Alcatraz. He was paroled in 1969,
authored two books, and retired to Spain. He died in 1979 from an apparent
overdose of sleeping pills. The Barker gang was the last
and deadliest incarnation of depression era outlaws. Through their ruthless
methods, they single handedly destroyed the myth of
the gentleman bandit and verified the need
for the newly formed FBI. The Barker boys also
represent a chilling testament to unbridled
childhood delinquency. J. Edgar Hoover
called Ma Barker a monument to
parental indulgence, and J. Edgar Hoover was correct. Ma Barker let her boys
literally get away with murder. That's a wicked woman. How can anybody
raise their children to be criminals of that ilk? LEE MCGEHEE: Her legacy is she
is buried in a small cemetery, and in that cemetery Herman
has a very large monument and the other graves, which are
her and her sons all together, are still the temporary
markers that are 60 years old, and yet no one has ever put
a permanent marker there. But that she resides
there with her sons, I would imagine that's how
Kate Barker would have wanted the end to be. Well, last month, the
Florida town of Ocklawaha celebrated its Ma Barker Day. The 1935 shootout was
re-enacted by police officers and local residents and
did pretty much the same as the original. They do that every year. You know, if Ma Barker had
survived that gun battle, she might have served very
little time in prison. There was no evidence
directly linking her to murder or kidnapping. What she was guilty of, of
course, was blind devotion to her sons, first back when
they were rowdy youngsters, and later when they
were hardened killers. Tomorrow on "Biography", the
crack shot in petticoats. Annie Oakley's magic when the
pistol made her the world's greatest sharpshooter. Annie Oakley, our
biography Thursday. For A&E, I'm Jack Perkins. [music playing]
