But facts rarely get in the way of an FBI story, and the Bureau will always go to the greatest lengths to show itself as “the good guys” no matter what. And there had been a wanted poster for Ma Barker, so they capitalised on that and labelled her as the leader of a killer brood, when in fact, while she was certainly not innocent, she is highly unlikely to have taken any real active part in any of the crimes. For one thing, she was normally kept away from them by her sons, they sending their girlfriends to stay with her while they robbed, murdered or kidnapped. With nobody left alive to refute their story about the shoot-out, the legend gained traction and led to several hyperbolic movies which spread Ma’s fame/infamy far and wide, and whose writers didn’t too much bother with researching the truth.
It would be unfair and also inaccurate, I believe, to paint Kate “Ma” Barker as an innocent whose reputation was tarnished, even created by the FBI, but it would also be unfair to accept the image they painted of her. She was certainly guilty of losing control - or not even trying or wanting to have control, or even encouraging the bad habits - of her sons, and of never making them feel they should pay for their crimes. She was guilty of aiding those crimes in the sense that she provided shelter and cover for the gang, and she was without question indirectly responsible for many deaths, especially of cops, due to the actions of her sons. But the idea that she was some cigar-smoking, Tommy-gun-toting hard-as-nails black widow who snarled defiance at the Feds as she died in a hail of bullets is at the very best questionable. It’s quite possible she was terrified as the slugs shattered windows and impacted walls and furniture, and though it’s impossible to say whether Fred died before her or not, if he did then she must have gone through her own personal hell, seeing her son cut down in front of her, although she wouldn’t have to wait long before being violently reunited with him.
The legend persists, and I wouldn’t want to whitewash or say she was unfairly treated. Did she deserve to die? Maybe, maybe not. Contemporary accounts speak of the FBI giving the two of them multiple chances to surrender, though it’s unlikely a stone-cold killer like Fred Barker would have taken that deal. But it’s quite clear that once the smoke cleared and they realised they had killed an old woman, possibly an unarmed old woman, agents shrugged their shoulders and turned to congratulating each other on a job well done.
I am a little surprised though at the need to invent the legend of Ma Barker. I mean, yes, the FBI knew she was in the house but Fred started shooting first (according to them, and I’d accept that’s likely as he was hardly going to be taken without a fight) so why didn’t they just further blacken his name by saying “he even got his poor old innocent mother killed” and leave it at that? Why create this - frankly, hard to believe - image of a desperate woman toting a Tommy-Gun in, what, her sixties? With no previous experience documented of her even firing a gun? They could have held her up as the tragic result of what happens when gangsters care more for their own freedom than the lives of their parents, which would not only have been more believable, but also more than likely closer to the truth.
I wonder if it had anything to do with the FBI being a pretty new organisation - they had only obtained permission to carry guns the previous year - and Hoover wanting to have a “big story” to tell? Killing Fred Barker wouldn’t be it: he was just one of the gang, and the others were still at large. But killing the “evil mastermind” of the gang, and thus cutting off the serpent’s aged head? That plays well in the papers. Not only that, if the true story had come out, the depth of corruption in the St. Paul police department would have been a major embarrassment to US law enforcement, and hard questions would have been asked. Better to scapegoat an old woman and deflect any possible inquiry into the performance of the guardians of the law. Plus then, it's likely any nascent sympathy the general public may have had for the old woman would have evaporated in a possible cloud of lies and half-truths woven by the Bureau. No case to answer: she was evil and deserved to die. File closed.
I suppose in the end you can say that while the raid on the Barker-Karpis hideout yielded only two bodies, it resulted in another casualty: the truth. From that moment on, the legend around Ma Barker took on a life of its own and grew, and persists to this day.
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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018
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