Timeline and location: Twentieth Century America
Name: Kate “Ma” Barker
Occupation: (Ostensibly) Crime boss
Nationality: American
Born: 1873
Died: 1935
Famous (or infamous) for: Leading the infamous Barker-Willis gang who terrorised the American midwest during the 1930s.
History is, as they say, written by the winners, and when any who would refute the facts written down are conveniently dead, it makes it difficult to know how much of the truth made it onto that paper, and how much is propaganda, or even outright lies. Anyone who has heard the name “Ma” Barker will be aware of her reputation as the feared leader of the vicious Barker-Karpis gang, a matriarch of crime and violence who presided over a brood of killers and thieves, and who has gone down in history as one of the most vicious women of the twentieth century, corrupting and twisting the whole idea of motherhood and the gentler sex. This may all very well be true, but there are doubts about the veracity of many of the statements about her, and allegations of cover-ups by the FBI that go right to the top. As this is not Trollheart’s Most Evil, therefore, I am not going to just accept the popular story as gospel, but will investigate, as far as I can, the details behind the woman and see if I can get at the truth, if indeed there is any hidden truth to be got at.
Unfortunately for me, the only book on her I could get - well, that I was prepared to pay for - already has me worried. No less than three times in the god-damn introduction to the book has the author misspelt her name, calling her Baker rather than Barker. This could of course just be evidence of poor proof-reading, but even so it’s lax to let such an important error through not once, not twice, but three times. And if it’s more than just a mistake, then it casts a real shadow of doubt over the competence of the writer; after all, if you can’t remember or make sure of the name of your subject, well, it doesn’t exactly inspire confidence, does it?
Whatever, I’m stuck with this, and various websites, so let’s make the best of it and see where it takes us. For those interested, the book in question is called, with a rather stunning lack of impartiality,
Ma Barker - America’s Most Wanted Mother: the True Story. I would love to think it is the true story, but as I say, Bina Brown has not engendered any real hope in me that this will be anything other than a regurgitation of the “facts” already in the public domain, and will support the FBI’s theory that she was, as Edgar J. Hoover once opined, “the most vicious, dangerous and resourceful criminal brain of the last decade.”
One thing we can say for sure: whether it’s Waco or Ruby Ridge, or Lee Harvey Oswald in question, the Federal Bureau of Investigation always makes sure to cover itself, as we’ve seen already in other articles I’ve written in other journals, and for me the acronym could be anagramised to read FIB; it seems the Bureau is not above twisting, moulding, shaping the truth to suit its purposes, as far as outright lying to protect itself, its reputation and its operatives. It’s a brave man or woman who will take on the FBI, an action that can land you in jail, out of work or even dead.
But perhaps we’re doing the Bureau an injustice here, and I have really nothing to base this on other than comments made on the Wikipedia page which seem to allude to a cover-up. This may not at all be the case, and maybe I’ll find, as I research this woman and her family, that she deserves her dread and hated reputation, and that there is no truth to the conspiracy theories. Or maybe there is. I go into this with an open mind, but like probably everyone else who has ever heard her name, I always assumed “Ma” Barker was just plain vicious and evil. I was not aware there was, or could be, another side to her story. It will be interesting to see if this is the case.
Oh for the love of God! I’ve just seen how many pages this “book” has! Thirteen! Forget that. Worse than a Readers Digest version of the story. You’re not going to get any deep insights or personal accounts in that, are you? What a waste of time. I think Wiki has more on her than that! Right, we’ll concentrate on whatever other sources we can find. Let’s see, true crime websites, true crime websites…
I find it odd that she didn’t like her name. If I was a girl and someone had christened me Arizona I think I would consider it a very unique name, and let’s be honest here, Arizona Barker sounds just made for the movies, the newspapers and so forth, doesn’t it? But she didn’t care for it and so Arizona Donnie Clark became Kate Barker, after having married George Barker, a tenant farmer in 1892. I suppose such things are hard to corroborate - or disprove - but one account says the young Arizona (at the time often called “Arrie”) had a mean and nasty temper, and yet on the other side of the coin she attended church regularly, though I suspect kids had little choice in those days. Another claim made is that she once saw Jesse James ride through her town, and I suppose she could have done, but she would have been at best nine - and likely much, much younger - as James died in 1882. His days of riding with the Youngers and his own gang were well past by then, so let’s assume she was maybe seven? Is that an age at which such a vision would inspire a young girl to a life of crime, as is claimed on the Biography.com website? I leave it to you to decide.
At any rate, Arizona, now Kate Barker, gave birth to four sons: Arthur, Fred, Herman and Lloyd. It’s just for my own amusement, but you can arrange those boys so that the first letter of the names of each spell the word half. Just mentioning it, nothing to do with anything. Barker’s kids were apparently - and this is according to the FBI, so make of it what you will - all illiterate, or barely able to read and write, as their parents paid no attention to their education. There’s no information extant, or none I can find anyway, which speaks of Kate’s childhood, and whether or not she went to school and if so, if she did well or not, so it’s hard to say whether this lack of interest in educating her kids is credible.
What doesn’t seem to be in dispute is that her boys were trouble from the get-go, as they say in ‘Murica, being arrested for thievery and other low-grade crimes, with most of them spending time in prison by their teens. While much of this antisocial behaviour surely can be laid at the feet of the parents, particularly Kate, who refused to allow her husband to discipline them and flew into a rage whenever he tried to even scold them, much too can be attributed to their induction into another well-known Prohibition-era crime gang.
Central Park, New York. Not terrorised, at least by this gang.
The Central Park Gang
Seems odd to me that these guys were so called, as they neither operated in Central Park nor even in New York, plying their criminal trade around Tulsa, Oklahoma. When I research I also run into the Central Park 5, which is something entirely different, so it’s hard to find out too much about them, but here’s what I have. It seems to have served as a sort of training/proving ground for criminals, with the likes of Alvin Karpis, Russel Gibson and William Underhill serving time there. Also part of the gang were Matthew Kimes and Ray Terrill, who would later leave to form their own gang, rather imaginatively called the Kimes-Terrill Gang. Although some of the Barker Boys would spend time in the Central Park Gang - notably Arthur, who would end up bringing both Karpis and Gibson into his own gang.
The relationship between Karpis and the Barkers went back further than the Central Park Gang though. When Fred, the youngest, was paroled he hooked up with him and the two embarked on a life of staying on the straight and narrow and being model citizens. Right. Once a thug, always a thug, and Fred and Karpis carried out robberies that quickly escalated to the first murder attributed to the gang now known as the Barker-Karpis Gang, when they shot and killed a sheriff who was trying to stop them. Once that line had been crossed, there was no going back. The dark genie was out of the bottle and nothing would force him back in. I suppose they considered they could only be executed once, so why not for murders rather than a single one? What had they, in their eyes, to lose?
So without going too deeply into the crimes committed by her sons, Barker’s spawn were certainly violent scum, robbing, killing and kidnapping their way across the American Midwest, and came to a deserved violent end. As did she. But the point I want to explore, if I can, is her own role in their crimes. I’m not about to give her a pass, but bringing up a bad bunch is hardly a crime - sometimes kids get out of hand, especially as they grow up - and even approving of, or at best, not disapproving of their life choices is not, I would think, justification for killing her. So, did she take an active part in their crime spree? I must admit, up to now I always assumed she was a gun-totin’ woman, backing up her kids and helping split the proceeds of their crimes. At this point, I don’t have evidence to say that’s true. Or that it’s not. Let’s dig further and see what we can unearth.
Okay, thanks to a footnote on Wiki I’ve come across a book chronicling the life of Tom Brown, ex Police Chief of St. Paul, Minnesota, who apparently secretly aided and abetted and protected the Barker-Karpis gang, so maybe I can get some actual unbiased detail from that source. Let’s see. According to the account in the book,
Secret Partners: Big Tom and the Barker Gang by Tim Mahoney, there seems to have been a lot more to the story than was officially released to the public, including the fact that the Chief of Police was not only protecting the Barker-Karpis Gang, but actually alerted them when they were about to be busted, allowing them to make their escape. I wouldn’t be surprised, to find, as I go on reading, that Kate Barker was killed to keep this dirty little secret of police corruption at the highest levels from leaking out.
Well I have to check into her earlier life, as in, during her kids’ life of crime, not her own youth, but by 1932 Mahoney notes she was frail, suffering from heart palpitations and panic attacks, as well as fits of loneliness and depression. Doesn’t sound like the cold-blooded killer painted by the FBI. Doesn’t, in fact, sound to me like anything more than a harmless old lady, despite her sons being the terror of the midwest and stone cold killers.
Having read through most of that book, I have a somewhat better idea of what went down, and as an aside, if you want an insight into the level and scale of corruption that went on in at least the St. Paul Police Department (and likely in other states too) it’s well worth a read. As for Kate "Ma" Barker, well from what I read her sons kept her out of the loop, hiding her in a variety of hotels and apartments, though whether this was to insulate her from being implicated in their crimes - a vain effort, in the end - or because she was hotly against all of their girlfriends and did her best to split each of her sons’ relationships up, I can’t say. It does speak to someone who was not directly involved in the robberies, kidnappings and murders, though it’s hard to believe she did not know about them. However, having knowledge of a crime and keeping it to yourself, while a federal crime itself, does not earn you the death penalty.
She seems to have either had no input into or perhaps knowledge of the plot to take care of her common-law husband though. Her actual husband, George, whose name she had taken and whose name the boys all now bore, had finally had enough of his maniacal criminal offspring and left her in 1928, giving up on the family when it was clear she would not countenance any sort of punishment for her children, and was in effect enabling and basically abetting their criminal lives. It’s always hard to be sure, as most sources quote the FBI, and they, as you might expect, tried to paint her in the worst light possible, but it seems that some time after George left she ended up with a guy called Arthur Dunlop, living in pretty bad poverty from what I read. I don’t think they married - he seems to have been used more as a cover so that the family could retain a slight aura of respect - but she introduced him as her husband.
He may just have had really bad luck, or he may have been a snitch, but either way the boys were not having it and, believing he had given them away when they were almost captured (but warned by Brown) they killed him. It’s not recorded what Ma Barker’s reaction to this was, but given how fiercely loyal to and protective of her sons she was, she may have believed the story and thought Dunlop got what he deserved. His murder took place in 1932, but it wouldn’t be long before his so-called common-law wife would be following him to the grave.
As tends to usually be the case, it was one of their accomplices who sold the Barkers out in the hopes of making a deal, giving the FBI a rough idea of where their hideout was - he wasn’t sure exactly where, but knew it was near a lake in northern Florida. On January 16 1935 Federal agents surrounded the house where the Barker-Karpis Gang had been discovered to be hiding out. As it happened, there were only two occupants left - Fred Barker and his mother, the rest having lit out - and one of the agents called out for Fred. Ma came to the door, asking who wanted him. Getting no answer, she slammed the door and went back inside. Tear gas canisters hit the windows but did not break them. Machine-gun fire answered this assault, and a deadly gun battle began. Amazingly, people began arriving and having picnics as they watched the hours-long exchange of gunfire. I mean, can you imagine that today? Well yeah, but they'd be filming it on their phones and uploading it to social media.* :
At any rate, Kate was not seen alive again. The FBI, not surprisingly, claim she took part in the gun battle, but this was never proven. It wasn’t even known if she had ever fired a gun, or could hold one, and at her age this seems at best unlikely. A more believable story would be that Fred made a last stand while his mother perhaps took cover, or shouted encouragement, or even shrieked hysterically, who knows? J. Edgar Hoover, however, was not about to accept or admit that his agents had killed an unarmed old woman, and so the fiction about her being a criminal mastermind was built up, and has endured to this day, though most crime historians dismiss such an idea, and even hardened gangsters who knew her, including Alvin Karpis, scoffed at the notion. “She wasn’t a leader of criminals,” he said, “nor a criminal herself.” Notorious bank robber Harvey Bailey agreed, in somewhat less kind terms: “Ma couldn’t plan breakfast,” he sneered, “let alone a criminal enterprise.”