Ma' Barker: A Doting Mother And Gangster Overlord

In Episode 93, Robert is joined by Emily Yoshida (Night Call Podcast) to discuss Ma Barker, the notorious leader of the Barker Gang.

FOOTNOTES:

1. Barker/Karpis Gang
2. The day 'Ma' Barker was slain in Florida
3. TOWN WHERE MA BARKER DIED SURE THAT ALLIGATOR DID HER IN
4. O'Connor Layover Agreement
5. Crooks’ haven: The gangster era in St. Paul
6. ‘Pretty Boy’ Falls
7. Pretty Boy Floyd's Life, Crimes Retold
8. Ma Barker: America's Most Wanted Mother
9. The Terrible Rise (and Subsequent Spectacular Fall) of the Barker/Karpis Gang

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
What strung the funk out my podcast hosts. I'm Robert Evans,
the very hungover host of Behind the Bastards, the podcast
where we tell you everything you don't know about the
worst people in all of history. And this is like
the ninth or tenth podcast I've introduced by warning everyone
that I'm very hungover. Uh. My guest today is the

(00:24):
wonderful Emily Yeshida of the Night Call podcast with Tess
and Molly, who are guests on the Reagan Astrologer episode. Emily,
how are you doing today? I'm doing great. I've been
saying like it's it's it's very good of you to
take over the hangover duties this morning because I've been
I've been taking them over uh for most of this week.
So I'm glad we could coordinate that. I'm the podcasting

(00:46):
equivalent of that that marine who dives on a hand
grenade to save his squad, but the hand grenade was
drinking too much at the live podcast recording I did
last night, and then eating Indian food and continue to drink.
It's really hard to turn down free drinks being given
to you by people who like you and think that

(01:07):
you're cool. It's Uh, it's a tough proposition to turn down.
I can I can absolutely say it beats having free
drinks thrown at you by people who hate you and
think that you're lame, which is my prior experience. So
if I have to pick one, I will pick it now. Emily,
how do you how do you? How do you? How

(01:28):
do you feel about gangsters? Um? I'm relatively down with gangsters.
I mean, there's so many there's so many genres of
gangster across history that you know, Yeah, it's hard to
say blanket, I'm into all gangsters, but sure, I'm open
to gangsters. Do you do you think that, damn it,
it feels good to be a gangster? Um? I actually

(01:51):
feel like it would be. I feel like, damn it
would be very stressful to be a gangster. Honestly, anytime
I watch one of those like norm movies or something,
I'm like, how do you live every night when you're
pretty sure that somebody's gonna barge in your house with
a Tommy gun? Like that just seems extremely stressful? But yeah, yeah, yeah,
it does seem very stressful. Um. Would you say you're

(02:13):
the kind of person who just sort of like you
got a grab bag of FBI agents on one hand,
you get a grab bag of gangsters. On another hand,
you pull randomly from both bags. What do you think
the odds are you wind up more sympathetic to the
gangster you pull out than the FBI agent you pull out. Um,
I think I'm always going to trend towards the gangster. Uh,

(02:34):
just on principle. Well, then we're copasetic on this because
I'm in the same boat, and today we are talking
about a gangster, uh, and a gangster that uh, Sophie,
our producer has been wanting me to write an episode
about for quite a while. So that's that's the story
of this day. All right, good God, I'm gonna I'm

(02:59):
gonna thanks for coming up with the idea. I wrote
it this on a plane, UM, so you can taste
the altitude and the words. I assume now, as a
recovering Oklahoman and a crime appreciator, I too have a
lot of inherent sympathy for the gangsters. Particularly of the

(03:20):
nineteen twenties and thirties, criminal capitalist speculators and baggers had
destroyed the national economy, while reckless commercial agriculture had ruined
most of the national ecology. None of the men responsible
for this ever suffered any legal consequences for their crimes.
Most of them got to keep living in giant mansions
and getting fat off the collected labor of the impoverished
American populace. When FDR tried to moderately alleviate the suffering

(03:40):
of the American people, these folks attempted to depose him
via a military coup. So I look with understanding at
the people who robbed banks and burgled the businesses of
the one percent, particularly during this period. Um. Now, these
guys also killed a lot of innocent people with machine guns,
so it's kind of hard to call them heroes. But
I don't normally call any given gangster a bastard. Um.

(04:05):
Some of my bias on this is probably due to
the fact that one of the most famous gangsters of
the gangster era was a cousin of mine, a fellow
named pretty Boy Floyd Barnes. Oh really, pretty boy Floyd.
That's incredible. Yeah, he was my great grandma's first cousin.
She was very proud of him, as was my grandmother. Yeah,
she would talk about our outlaw blood all the time.

(04:26):
I mean, that's very romantic. It's so much easier to
romanticize having a gangster in your family than an FBI
agent in your family. It's just true. It's just something
elemental about it. Yeah, I would rather be related to
a gangster than a copy unless that cop is Bruce
Willis in one of the four movies in which she's

(04:48):
he's a fun cop. He gets to do fun cop
things he does. Real police rarely get to ramp vehicles
into other vehicles, and when they do, it's usually racist.
So it's a hard one. Now. Pretty Boy Floyd was
known to his fellow Oklahoman's as the sage brush Robin Hood.
He got his start in crime at a j teen,
stealing three and fifty dollars in pennies, or, if you

(05:09):
believe Woody Guthrie, from beating a cop to death with
a log chain for cursing in front of his wife. Now,
the thing that disturbed authorities like jedeger Hoover of the
Bureau of Investigation was how popular many gangsters were with
the common folk. This was in part because they targeted banks.
Pretty Boy Floyd was famous for robbing on the insured
banks and for burning the mortgage papers of farmers when
he came across them. The FBI's archives somewhat disputes that,

(05:32):
noting while Floyd reportedly destroyed mortgage notes from a bank
or two that he robbed in hopes of saving a
few farmers from foreclosure, his reputation is a humanitarian or
a robin Hood is undeserved. Now, they don't go into
buch to tail about that. They just say, because he
shot a lot of cops, Uh, he wasn't a robin Hood.
But I should note here that the FBI is not
the most reliable source on the lives of gangsters in

(05:55):
this era. They're the agency that killed most of these people, um,
including our current subjects of the day, Mob Barker and
her sons, um. But the lives of gangsters are very
deeply politicized still, and so the research I've conducted for
this episode, which was not crazy extensive, I caught the
Bureau in at least one lie by a mission. Now,
I say all this to set it up that if

(06:16):
you read the official FBI reports on some of the
stuff we're talking about, they will contrast with the story
I am telling you today. The story I'm telling you
today is based primarily on the work of historians who
I trust more than cops. So anyway, that's the introduction. Um.
Always always robin shared banks. I just want to do

(06:37):
out there. I mean it's hard not to at this point.
If you're going to rob a bank is probably insured,
but make sure your bank's insured before you rob it.
That's the new T shirt Emily. Yeah, always rob and
shared banks. Bastards, always be rob bean and shirt banks. Yeah.
And if you get a chance to destroy mortgage paperwork,

(06:59):
do it, sure, Yeah banks, Yeah, burn up some loans,
burn ups. It was a lot easier back when everything
was on paper. Yeah, I know. Yeah, that would have
been so fun. You would have really felt like you
could make an impact as a bank robber. It would
feel a lot more political. Oh yeah, like you're not
just Point Break like trying to go surfing or whatever.
Like you can actually like change a lot of people's lives. Yeah.

(07:22):
I guess that is like the most political bank rubber
in a in a modern movie outside I maybe the
joker is like the guys in Point Break, and they
just wanted to serve. They just wanted to serve that
they did rob the bank. In President masks, they were
the president, they were the dead president's presidents, which you know,
seems mostly like a non sequit or with the rest

(07:43):
of their whole deal. But it was fun. Had they
had flair. They had flair. There was like zero politics
actually going on in the movie other than if we
hit this wave, I mean, it would I mean and
anybody would argues other wise, is uh not somebody I
want to align myself with politically. Yeah, yeah, that that

(08:05):
is my politics is rubbing banks to hit sick waves. Now,
Mob Barker is not the most famous gangster of her era,
but she was at one point public Enemy number one,
which is objectively the coolest title you can you can achieve. Um,
I hope we all become public enemy number one at
some point. Everybody gets their turn on the internet. Yeah,

(08:30):
I feel like that is kind of that is kind
of how Twitter works. Every day we have a new
public enemy number one. Yeah, that sounds way cooler than
complaining about cancel culture. It's like everybody gets their day
to be public enemy number one. You can revel in
it a little bit. At least it's going to happen. Oh,
I'm excited for my day to come when my many

(08:51):
many crimes are finally exposed to the world. That's going
to be great. Oh boy, um no, that's another thing. See,
this is why I wouldn't be cut out to be
a gangster. I'm already too stressed out about like just
saying one wrong word at one point and getting better.
Anyone realizing how often you shoplift from Costco? Yeah, oh
my god, I mean it's not yeah, you joke, I
have a I have a pretty bad shoplifting pass. So okay.

(09:14):
You know, if if if God didn't want us to shoplift,
he wouldn't have given us pockets. And that is my justification. Yeah,
checks out hard to argue with. Now. By some accounts,
mob Barker was the among the most innovative and successful
criminal masterminds of any era. By other accounts, she was

(09:36):
mostly just a chef in the moral support system for
her criminal children. The FBI takes the angle that she
was not a mastermind and that she was mostly just
supporting her boys, who did all of the real crime.
Thinking the bulk of the evidence seems to discredit them
on this. Uh, and I'm you know, that's enough of
my anti FBI pro gangster. Let's let's let's get into

(09:56):
the story. Mob. Barker's life is often summed up like
this folk see right up by the University of Florida quote.
Born in the Ozarks, she was poor in her early years.
So strong was her lust for money, furs, and bobbles.
She turned to a life of crime and led four
young sons down the same path. The eldest herman convinced
her crime does pay, so she opened up in her
own home a school of Crime for the young uns.

(10:18):
When they were arrested for petty infractions, she upbraided them
for getting caught. Trust the University of Florida to use
the word young UN's in a historical write up. I love,
I love. I mean the idea of a school for
crime is just so cute. I mean it just sounds
so I mean, it's just very very Oliver twist of course.
But um, I don't know. It seems like a fun,

(10:39):
fun time. It does seems like a good good night.
A podcasts the Old School of Crime, how a bunch
of different people come up and like this is how
I got free water from the city. This is how
I got that boot off my car without paying. Yeah,
the lecture series would be incredible At the School for
crime for crime. Yeah, the school for petty petty cry Yeah,

(11:01):
stealing some lifesavers, yeah, the school for getting by crime,
like how to sneak, how to sneak the fixings to
make your ramen palatable out of your out of the
grocery store and a jacket without getting caught. See this
is like actually stuff that I've thought about trying to
turn into a podcast at some point or another. It's
just like actual like basic poverty skills for twenty somethings

(11:25):
and up, like just like you know how to how
to jerry rigged things out of other things and make
it into like just so you can get by and
have a less stressful life on zero dollars um. Yeah.
I have a lot to say about how to specifically
jigger the breaking down pieces of your car so that

(11:46):
the police won't notice that your registration has been expired
for years. That's really critical skill, critical skills. Yeah, because
that ruined me for many like years, was my stupid
car and it's stupid registrate ship. Yeah, it's a It
says something about our society that all almost all of
our tips for living in poverty are also crimes. But

(12:09):
that's the story for another day, um So, my main
source for this episode is Mob Barker America's Most Wanted
Mother by Howard Kazanjian and Chris Ince U E N
s S. I don't know how to pronounce that. Ince
seems to be right. It's the best right up of
this particular story that I found, and it's a fun book. So.

(12:29):
Arizona Donnie Clark was born on October eighteen seventy three
in Greene County, Missouri. She was one of four children,
and her childhood occurred on a small farm eighteen miles
from nowhere. Arizona's family called her Airy, which she seems
to have hated. Her beloved father died when she was seven. What, Sophie, what?

(12:53):
What's wrong with air? It's just funny that she's Arizona
and her family is like you're Airy, and she's like, no,
I'm not call me Arizona. I don't think she liked
that either, which I don't know. It's a very hippie
name for the time. Yeah, there's a raising Arizona joke there,
but I'm not going to make because I haven't seen

(13:14):
that movie. Uh not on a Nicolas Cage's Best or
maybe it is I don't know. He's very charming in it.
But but it's about it's about crimes, and it's about
a baby. So so far, you know, it sounds like
Toronto biomography. Now, uh Ari's beloved father died when she
was seven, and her mother remarried not long after to

(13:36):
a guy with the last name of Reynolds, who she
did not like. Now, the family moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma,
where her stepfather took up work as a cop. It
would be rank speculation for me to, you know, wonder
that her stepfather's career as a police officer had an
impact on Arizona's adult life, but it's hard not to
think about given what comes next. Most sources seem to
agree that she really hated her stepdad, largely because he

(13:58):
favored his natural born children over his wives children. So
this is one of those classic step parents stories. Um,
all step parents are bastards, apparently, that's the that's the
lesson Disney taught me. That's true. It's like, you know,
but it also means you're more likely to be a
heroine in a Disney movie if you have a step parent.
So oh yeah, having a step parent is the key

(14:21):
to after ninety minutes or so, winding up in a
great place. Yeah. Yeah, being an orphan, having a step
parent being somebody's award. Also. Yeah. The first thing I
learned from popular fiction as a kid was that the
best thing to have is dead parents, Like you really
want to get those parents out of the way as
soon as possible, really helps with everything. Now, Mr Reynolds,

(14:47):
her stepdad did not approve of the man mob Barker
fell in love with at age nineteen, George Elias Barker. Uh.
They were married on September four. Now. George was ten
years older than Arizona, which in most cases would be
caused for serious concerned that the much older party might
dominate the younger Uh. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, nothing like

(15:08):
that happened. George was soft spoken, non confrontational, and even
a bit shy. He was utterly dominated by his young wife.
For her part, Kate, which is what she was going
by at this point, was disappointed in her man from
the beginning of their relationship. Decades later, the Kansas City
Star would right this. Of her upbringing, her life had
been that of an ordinary missera farm girl, church, Sunday

(15:29):
school picnics, hey riots, candy polls in a little red schoolhouse.
Somewhere she acquired a need for riches and personal power.
She hoped to obtain golden glory by way of her husband,
but eventually realized it could only be learned by her sons.
That's kind of the common right up of her. All right, yeah,
it's it's interesting to me that they all write like, oh,
she wanted all these uh, superficial things, that's what she

(15:52):
like as if it's yeah, and it's like, well, maybe
she just grew up poor in a farm and didn't
want to be poor any Yeah, like painting this picture
of like the epitome of Americana being like, but why
did she become so materialistic? It's like it's baked into
being an American, especially before being poor in a farm sucks.
It's nice to have furs, like like, like all pop

(16:17):
cultures seems to tell us unless we try to get
it by committing crimes. Well, I do feel like, I mean,
I feel like there have been some movies that have
addressed this, but like the fact that there is radio
and there's like more rapid pop culture that can be
disseminated is like why so many of these people get
into crime in the first place, and are also like
why they become celebrities become these mythical figures because they

(16:38):
are pop cultural figures at the time. Like that's what
I think a lot of Like Michael Mann's movie Um,
Public Enemies is about, um, yeah, it's great. Yeah I
think I think so. And we'll get to that in
a second. So, her husband, George, was uneducated and he
had no interest in obtaining an education. He was a
daily laborer with zero aspirations beyond working on a small
farm and making enough to serve five Kate, though, had

(17:01):
spent enough time being poor as a little girl. She
wanted more out of life, and she asked her stepdad
to loan her and her husband some money so they
could start a business. Her stepfather turned them down, and
she never spoke with him again. For a time, Kate
tried to push George into success. She lived as a
simple housewife and threw herself into religion. Most people who
knew her in those days say she was almost never

(17:22):
seen without a Bible in hand, but at home, away
from prying eyes, she developed another obsession. Outlaws. The Jesse
James Gang and the Dalton Gang were her particular favorites.
Both groups robbed banks across the same chunk of the
country where Kate had grown up. In fact, she'd even
watched the James gang right through town as a girl.
Being a woman, and this being the eighteen nineties, Kate

(17:42):
did not have any hope of being a successful gangster herself.
Bonnie Parker had not yet fired a Tommy gun into
that glass ceiling. So Kate found herself enamored with the
mothers of these daring criminals. According to mob Barker, America's
most Wanted mother quote, the Dalton's and the James boys
were raised by strong, defiant mothers whom sure they knew
how to use a weapon and fight for what they wanted.

(18:02):
The influence the women had on their families, and the
devotion their sons felt towards them mothers struck a chord
with Kate. She aspired to have it in her own life.
I mean, everybody wants to raise an army of loyal,
large adult sons to do crimes. Why are you the
president did? And look how that's work. They're not great

(18:23):
at it, but it's that doesn't seem to matter so well,
it's all about the intention I mean, it does take
a lot of work to like first create that army
of large adult sons. So and even I mean to
too can be an army. So yeah, fo is even better. Yeah,
I mean, in a way, we're all trying to raise
our own large adult sons for a life of crime.
I'm just trying to do it by radicalizing people through podcasts. Again,

(18:48):
Robin shared banks, Sophie, could we urge people to rob
banks on the show? If it's like what if it's
like my views don't reflect the views of the network. Um,
but still, Robin, sure, Banks, My my advice that people
rob ensured banks is purely humor. Yeah, satire, satiretzing satirizing

(19:14):
bank robbers by advising people to rob banks. Yeah, it's
a wonderful satire. It's really sharp. That's that's legally bulletproof,
all right. Now. Kate and George had their first son, Herman,
on October. They had three more sons over the next
several years, ending with their fourth son, Fred in nineteen
o three. All these mouths to feed strained George's limited

(19:36):
ability to provide. He did manage to save enough cash
to buy a small farm, but the house on it
was essentially a decrepit hovel, barely fit for human habitation.
Kate was desperately unhappy with these circumstances and longed for
something better. And it is hard not to see why
when we're talking about the poverty in this era, we're
not like talking about like a quaint little farmhouse. We're
talking about a building that's essentially made of trash wood, uh,

(19:59):
filled with mice and vermin and mosquitoes in the summer,
where people are basically pooping in a hole surrounded by flies. Like,
it's not a great life. This is like dust bowl time.
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it's bad. It's a bad
time to be a human being. Um. This is a
little before that during this period, but it's still a

(20:20):
time of like unspeakable poverty. Um yeah, it's so crazy
that that's like that, that's still like what we consider
the modern era more more or less than that, Like
people were living like in like the the the United
States could not necessarily yet be considered a first world country.
It's incredible, not by modern standards. And it is one

(20:40):
of those things like you really you think about, you
read about, like the Great battles in World War Two,
and World War One and how like nightmarish the privations
were for the soldiers. But then you have to think, like, well, okay,
but most of them grew up like farming dirt and
shipping in holes. Like it's not like this was new.
It's not like living rough was an incomprehensible concept to
all of them. You know, a lot of them grew

(21:00):
up in cities, but a lot of them were sucking
country people. The base the base level you're starting from
is uh considerably different. Yeah, yeah, people are tougher in
this period of time. This is right around the period
that my grandpa left home when he was seventeen. The
economy collapse and his dad was like, we can't take
care of you. And he walked across two states with

(21:20):
nothing but cornbread in his pockets to go get a
job with a Civilian conservation Corps. And it's like I
never had to do ship like that, Like that would
have been This is like a little off topic, but
I've been watching the Ken Burns country music documentary and
it's like filled with stories like that, Like there's a
family like Walks, I think from Arkansas to California or
most of the way they walked most of the way,

(21:41):
and it's just like, Also, it's like everybody dies at
thirty and they look like they're sixty two years old,
and it's like, oh my god, life life was. I
don't have to go back too far for life to
look like that. Your average thirty one year old look
like Keith Richards. Yes, it was a different time. Yeah. Now.
For his part, George Barker seems to have done his

(22:02):
best to provide for his family. His best just wasn't
very good. He worked long hours and spent all of
his free time with his children, teaching them how to
fish and hunt. Thanks to George, the Barker boys all
grew up as fabulous shots. Kate, who was renowned to
be a great chef, taught them how to cook. She
also handled discipline for the family by her own insistence.
Whenever George would attempt to discipline any of their kids,

(22:23):
she'd shout him down until he backed off. The Kansas
City Star in nineteen thirty six described the young family
thus lye she Ma attended church regularly, dragging her brood
after her. George, her husband went as well. He was
a mild, ineffective, quiet man who seemed somewhat bewildered by
his domineering wife. This was especially true when he attempted
to assume guidance of the growing boys. There was a

(22:44):
feline intensity about Kate's determination that no one but herself
should be their mentor, and in her eyes, they could
do no wrong. Mob Barker socialized with very few people.
She was cordial when spoken to, but rarely initiated a conversation.
Neighbor and fellow churchgoer, Gertrude Farmer, was the only woman
with whom she spent time. Gertrude and Ma were described
by Web City residents as odd and unapproachable. Maybe everybodyiels

(23:07):
just sucked. But the Barkers lived in Webb City, Missouri
for the early years of their children's lives, where they
met the Farmer family, whose patron, William, was a small
time con artist. He was no better at earning a
living than George, but he did have many half and
quarter true stories of outlaws and conmon that he regaled
the Barker children and Kate. With the Barker kids quickly
developed a reputation for being little criminals, damaging property, stealing,

(23:30):
and fighting. Kate Barker was reasonably happy with this. Her
only real issue was when her children got caught So yeah,
less than number one at school for school for petty crime.
Yeah yeah, don't get caught committing the petty crimes. Now.
George was worried for his boys, and he moved the

(23:50):
family to Tulsa, Oklahoma in nineteen ten as a way
to get them out of their bad environment. The city
was a boomtown, though, which means it was as filled
with criminals as the Barker family living room, so this
is probably a bad move on his part. Now, the
Barker home and Tulsa was even worse than their previous
home in Webb City. The floor was just boards over dirt,
the windows were all shattered, and the bathroom was a

(24:11):
shack with a whole on the ground. Flies covered everything
anytime it wasn't freezing. Kate continued to be miserable in
these circumstances, and her children's early memories were likely full
of her lambasting Charles for his failure to provide for
the family. So the boys began to strategize, scheming up
ways to bring in money via less than legal roots.
They had watched their father try and fail for years

(24:31):
to make a decent living on the straight and narrow
crime they decided seemed a lot smarter, which you know,
I mean, who would not arrive at these conclusions. It's
it's hard to fault. Like the logic here was kind
of seems like obeying the laws for assholes, yea, or
like that's for a different generation, you know. I feel

(24:52):
like there's always some kind of generational shift like that,
Like what he doesn't take adverts without me talk? Oh? Yeah,
Sophie is telling me that I don't take ad breaks
without her telling me, and I will have her No, Yes,
that's accurate. Sophie interrupted you, Emily, which is very rude

(25:12):
of her, But she didn't in order to make sure
that we had an ad break, which is very polite
of her. Sorry, I didn't realize what it was for Sorr.
I didn't know if I need to, It's okay. In
order to make up for this, Emily, would you like
to plug a random product of your own, of your
own desire, something you like, or a service, or a crime.
You can plug anything at this point, plug a good crime.

(25:35):
I'm what's a good product that I love right now?
I mean, honestly, I feel like I've plugged this so
many times on Nightcall, but like I love a neutro bullet,
and I desperately want a Night Call to be sponsored
by neutro bullet because I would like do an entire
podcast about the neutro bullet and all the wonderful uses
for it. I could start up like a school for crimes,
but just just like using the neutro bullet. Um anyway,

(25:56):
that's my that's my endorsement of a product. Well, I
would like to endorse my new behind the Bastard's branded
Actual bullets, which are the first gluten free ammunition on
the on the open market. So by a neutral bullet,
by some gluten free Bastards bullets. It's always so frustrating

(26:17):
when you you have to kill somebody but they have
exactly exactly and that's not okay. You're going to shoot
someone with Celiac's disease. Use gluten free bullets. Yeah, that's
it's the right thing to do. It's the right thing
to do. And the other right thing to do is
to listen to these ads products. We're back. We're back,

(26:44):
returning from some amazing ads. Just just uh, what was
your favorite one? My favorite one was the ad for
uh carjacking police vehicles. I really I enjoy that one.
I I never thought of that as a realistic product.
And I'm glad. I'm glad that the fine people at

(27:05):
Procter and Gamble suggested that because it would be a
crime if I suggested that. Yeah, um, really upstanding people
over there, and Procter and Gamble pen thank you Procter
and Gamble for urging all people to hijack police vehicles. Again,
Procter and Gamble, um, the only what do they make? Shampoo?
Shampoo like shampoo like? Yeah, drug store products. I suppose

(27:30):
home cleaning products. Yes, as the fine people at Procter
and Gamble say, by Procter and Gamble do crimes? Um, well,
Procter and Gamble was like had a satanic panics scandal
around it, you remember, they sure did. They did because
they love the devil. That's confirmed. Yeah, so they love
crimes and the devil. So the devil's a busy guy

(27:51):
and he has dandruff and he doesn't have time to
use multiple different shampoo. So Practor and Gamble two and
one dandruf shampoo is really you know, that's where the
Devil's at the devil is in your psoriasis. Alright, So
back to the Barker family. Between nineteen ten and nineteen eleven,

(28:11):
all four Barker boys made the Tulsa police blodder. The
Joplin Globe broke in nineteen thirty nine that the boys
were known as the town toughs. Before they were out
of school, their home became a meeting place for ne'er
do wells, a crime school so successful that many of
those who congregated there graduated to try it on a
bigger scale under a variety of assumed names. Now, how

(28:32):
much Mob Barker was involved in the training of her
children and the training of other criminals here is up
for debate. What's known is that whenever one of her
kids would get in trouble, she would write in for
the rescue. She was famously charismatic and good at talking
to lawmen and judges. Mom would usually argue that her
children were just high, strong, and not nearly as bad
as town gossip made them out to be. Plus, she

(28:52):
argued the police were unfairly targeting her family. She insisted
repeatedly that if the cops left them alone, her boys
would behave she seemed to have been really good at,
like just haranguing police and judges into letting her kids go. Um,
I love high sec energy as the explanation, it's not,
it's like it feels very contemporary. It feels like something

(29:13):
that somebody at like a hippie school in Brentwood would
would say about their kids to get them out of trouble.
He's just very very high strung a paraphrase warn Zevon,
They're just excitable boys. Yeah, yes, yeah, So in private,
Kate Barker took on a different tact when her young
son Hermann, was arrested and confessed to committing crimes. She

(29:36):
is reputed to have told him that confessing to anyone
but God was a sign of weakness. She expected her
sons to never snitch or admit wrongdoing. Instead, they should
keep their mouth shut and do their time. So that's
that's mom Barker. Yeah. Before before long, a small community

(29:59):
of criminals began to a less around Mab Barker and
her sons. They became known as the Central Park Gang
because they hung out in Tulsa's Central Park, not the
not the one that's famous. Um yeah, now the Barker
house was their other main gathering point, and it quickly
became a popular haunt for local crime doers. According to
the Joplin Globe, partnerships and crime were engineered in both

(30:20):
locations by Ma, who sometimes charged a fee for thieves
to use being in her presence as an alibi when
a crime was perpetrated. Sometimes she conspired with lawbreakers for
the sheer warped joy of it. It sounds to me
like she's basically Airbnb for crimes. Like I'm looking to
commit a crime and she'll be, oh, here's here's a
place you can do it. Here's someone who can help you. Yeah,
she's like an incubator. She's like an incubator for crimes,

(30:42):
like real like Silicon Valley pioneer. Um, that's that that
that's that's essentially what's going on. Yeah. Um, she's the
the famous one of those investors. She's the Peter Teal
of know, Peter Teels, the Peter Teal of crimes. Um,
she's just mob barker. But yeah so is Peter. No,

(31:04):
that's giving him too much credit. Peter Tell is not
the mob barker of Silicon Valley. No, no wishes. Yeah yeah,
yeah he wishes who is the Mom Barker of Silicon Valley.
I don't know. Yeah, yeah, somebody who knows more about
Silicon Valley um, which has probably more bastards per capita

(31:27):
than uh Tulsa at this time period. Uh it's yeah,
they can they canna let us know because at least
these Tulsa bastards, these are honest crimes. Nobody's nobody's making
Twitter here now. Once her sons were old enough to
pull off real capers, they started bringing in real money
for the first time in her life. At just over

(31:48):
age thirty, mob Barker started to enjoy the finer things
for coats, jewelry, bathrooms with a functional door and windows.
And she grew and again this was finery back in
the day, and hip hop got so materialistic and they
just started wrapping about doors and winter. Yeah, Phitty sent
Bragg into all of us about the knob on his

(32:10):
bathroom door, like a goddamn king go to the bathroom
in private. Yeah. As she grew used to finery and crime,
Kate began directing the efforts of her sons, handing them
the names and addresses of people in Tulsa who were
doing a little too well, in her opinion, and deserved
to be relieved of their wealth. Tulsa police officer Harry

(32:32):
Stiege would later told reporters her boys were slippery, young hoodlums.
She adored her children, but apart from Fred, didn't consider
them to be especially clever, which is always true of
large adults. Sons in their crimes, they're they're they're never
as good at it as the parents. Yeah, now, mob
Barker's sons committed a truly astonishing amount of petty crime
in this period. Between all of the bank robberies, jewel

(32:54):
store heists, department store robberies, and kidnappings, the total number
of capers probably numbered into of thousands. Many of these
were complex and ambitious schemes, but the majority of them
were really dumb. Barker boys would be busted more than
once because they stole distinctive fine clothing and then worried
around town after robbing it, or because they left said
clothing behind the scene of a crime. There's multiple hats

(33:15):
that get Barker boys arrested. Oh my god, I want
to see these hats. Yeah, they've got to be pretty spectacular.
I mean, what's like, what's a noteworthy hat in nineteen
what gears this like, Yeah, it's like the light nineteen ten,
nineteen fifteen, something like that. I mean, it might just
be that their hat wasn't a pile of dirt on
their head, and that son of a bitch his hands

(33:35):
made of fabric. He's got to be robbing. Yeah. So
in nineteen fifteen, Herman was the first of mob Barker's
sons to be arrested on suspicion of attempted theft. He
was the first son to leave home to in. His
criminal history on his own was wide ranging, but only
partly successful. By nineteen seventeen, he had robbed a number

(33:56):
of jewelry stores and banks, and was wanted in several states.
As their children, one by one embarked on their own
criminal careers, mob Barker became something of a mother to
countless other bank robbers in Oklahoma. According to the book
Mom Barker, among the fugitives Harvard at the Farmer's Home
where bank robbers Al Spencer, Frank Nash, and Ray Terrell,
and train robbers Earl Thayer, Francis Keating, and Thomas Holding.

(34:16):
These accomplished lawbreakers and a number of other wrongdoers would
eventually use the Barker's tiny Tulsa home as a safe house.
In addition to the farmers homestead, Ma charged them in
a modest fee to hide out at her place, where
she kept the fugitives fed and steered authorities in a
different direction if they came nosing around. So her their
kids leave the nest to start committing crimes and she
turns into like a hostel for other criminals. Basically, Now,

(34:39):
is this like kind of I mean, I'm sort of
surprised to hear that her sons go on to commit
their own crimes because like, I know that, I know
that you said that the FBI is telling of the
story is that she wasn't really a mastermind. But it
also sounds like they're pretty dumb. They're very dumb, and
their individual criminal careers, uh, in this period are nothing impressive.

(35:01):
It's not until they kind of come back together that
they start doing the ship they got famous for. But
you know, yeah, there's any kids going to try to
fly the roost and see if he can rob banks
without his mom. That's just normal parenting. Now. Herman was
imprisoned after a robbery gone bad and mob Barker blamed
his partner in the robbery, George White, on the endeavor,

(35:23):
mostly on the strength of the fact that he had
received half the sentence for the same crime. She was
convinced the judge had been lenient on him due to
his family wealth. Reporters at the time suspected that this
is what convinced her that quote, justice could be bought
or sold. Um, it seems like to me that this
is something she'd always believe. That's usually how you'll see
it written up. It did, however, help to solidify her
attitude towards wealthy families, but we'll get to that later.

(35:45):
By nineteen eighteen, all of mob Barker's children had graduated
to serious crimes. They were not always smart crimes. In
July of that year, Arthur Barker stole a Ford roadster
belonging to an Apartment of Justice employee employee parked directly
in front of a federal building. He was caught almost instantly.
Mob Barker attempted to talk her son out of jail,
but he escaped on his own and was then arrested

(36:06):
again almost immediately. Kate did succeed. Mob Barker got the
charges against him dropped, probably by bribing police officers to
destroy the evidence of his obvious crimes, but he was
arrested again a year later for stealing another Ford roadster.
This kid, you can't stop this kid from stealing police vehicles. Yeah,
he's got to have his roadsters. He's got to have

(36:28):
his fucking roadster. Yeah. Oh my god, I would be
so mad. Yeah, I pick a different brand. I mean,
maybe it was just Fords at the moment, but yeah, certainly,
after Arthur was jailed, sulfuric acid and a saw were
smuggled into the prison where he was held. He and
sixteen other prisoners escaped. It's not known who smuggled these

(36:49):
items in, but it was almost certainly mob Barker. So
she's again, she's good at talking to cops, she's good
at bribing, she's good at like burning a hole through
a prison. Yeah, or what is that? What happened? Like
they just like acid and so yeah, I think they
weakened the bars with acid and then sawed through them.
No one was good at making jails back in those days.

(37:10):
People were bad at almost everything in the in the
early nineteen hundreds. Well that's good then if you're bad
at crimes and you've wind up in jail. Then you're
in a jail that they were bad at making, and
you can get exactly. You just have to be good
at getting out of the bad jail. Yeah, the history
of the early nineteen hundreds is just a bunch of
incompetent people fucking up around each other. Yeah. Now, while

(37:31):
her sons committed a range of crimes, mob Barker continued
to run her farm as a safe house for gangsters.
She acted as something of a fixer, helping loan criminals
find other people to partner with and take jobs with.
She was known to have a good eye for the
most corrupt cops and judges in town and how much
it would cost to bribe them. The Kansas City Star
later wrote, criminals from a dozen pin of h injuries
sought out mob Barker. Only two things were lacking at

(37:52):
mars liquor and women. A man was a fool to drink,
she said. Likewise, he's a fool to run around with women.
Sooner or later they put the law on him. So
she's not not a fan of other women. Um, well,
that's surprising because the roads are thinking. The only thing
way I could justify it in my mind was that
he was drunk. He may have been drunk. Possibly, I

(38:16):
guess he was out of the house, so yeah. Now,
George Barker, mob Barker's husband, did not thrive under his
wife's new occupation as a mass crime helper. While his
children were still mostly in the house, he gave up
on challenging them with their constant lawbreaking and let mob
Barker mostly handle the discipline. When neighbors would come up

(38:37):
to him and complain about his children stealing ship, he
would say some variation of talk to their mom. She
handles the kids. Kate Barker had never been very happy
in her marriage, although from what I've read, George was
pretty far from a bad guy, but he was a
giant whimp and far from the kind of successful that
mob Barker wanted, and she grew more comfortable with hard
crime and dangerous men. Her husband grew even less appealing,

(38:57):
so she cheated on him constantly with all manner of youngsters.
Unlike George, these were passionate men and they had money
to burn. They showered her with presents and took her
out on the town. Everyone in Tulsa, including George knew
what was going on, but the man who wouldn't stand
up to his own wife about their children committing an
endless series of crimes was not about to confront actual
veteran murderers about taking his wife out to the movies.

(39:19):
You know, George, he's the kind of line like mos right,
she makes the right call, like this guy passionate men
with deep pockets, Yeah, yeah, versus the guy who couldn't
buy you a door to the bathroom. I mean, it's
Sophy's showing me a picture of mam, which I think

(39:39):
must have been well, no, she's probably given the time period,
he's probably picture. Yeah, I mean, it's pretty incredible to
imagine her like being taken out on the town by
these like wellingsters. Like the problem is like a month
after age nineteen. Everyone back then looked like they got
hit in the face by a train. Yeah, she's seen
some life, but like all the more reason for her

(40:02):
to fucking take these guys up on on their whining
and dining. Yeah, it sounds fun. Sounds fun now. By
the mid nineteen twenties, George had fucked off to Joplin, Missouri,
and abandoned his family and it's hard to blame the
guy mob. Barker, for her part, barely seemed to notice.
FBI records from the twenties and early thirties note that

(40:22):
she was romantically involved with a number of criminals who
bought her drinks and treated her like royalty. Now, yeah,
one of the down sides about having a bunch of
crime sons is that they tend to get killed. Um,
you know, yeah, and just stealing like Life savers. I
don't know why I keep coming back to the Life

(40:43):
series and must be some like dumb shoplifting thing I
witnessed as a child, Just like, how dangerous is that?
The most ambitious thing you've stolen from? Okay, good, good good?
That just feels like the crime number one. I think
my best theft was figuring out how to disassemble and
steal a plunger from Walmart when I was like nineteen

(41:07):
and in my first place and needed one but had
no extra money. Oh wait, a plunger just plug? Yeah?
What but I mean, okay, sure did you like? So
you took off the plunger part and you stick the
dowel the rod part down your pants or something. Yeah,
and you put the other part in your pants too,

(41:28):
but once it's disassembled, you can like kind of flatten
it in there. Yeah. Man, Like the the era of
baggy bag eear pants from men is also like very
conducive for shoplifted. It's harder when your skinny jeans. Um. Yeah,
it has helped. I also had a lot of like
drank a lot of lunches when I was poor, by

(41:48):
just walking around the grocery store drinking whatever they had
that had protein in it and leaving it behind. Yeah,
I mean, hey man, it was hard times. I mean yeah. No,
Whole Foods is basically like a buffet, right you can
just like oh yeah, get get whatever you want and
then walk around and like look at some products. Well
you eat. You gotta sample that ship before you decide

(42:11):
whether or not to pay. Also, now that Whole Foods
is owned by Amazon, I feel no guilt. I feel
no zero zero Sorry. Yeah, this podcast is brought to
you by Whole Foods, and Jeff Bezos specifically funds this podcast.
Uh Jeff Bezos who says, always eat all of the
grapes in the bag um before you always rob and

(42:34):
shirt banks. Famous Jeff Bezos quote. Now Mob Barker's first
son to die was her oldest boy, Herman. He'd flown
furthest from the nest and he built a gang himself
that robbed a number of jewelry stores and made off
with tens of thousands of dollars in merchandise. Their method
of robbery was actually kind of ingenious. They snuck into
crawl spaces or cut holes in the roof in order

(42:56):
to drop down mission impossible, like from the ceiling. For
a while, police were flummixed, but then Herman left his
hat at the scene of a crime, and police tracing
back to the store and sell so where he purchased it.
Not the only time a hat would would doom a
barker boy. Oh my god, these guys, why are they
doing crimes and hats. Stop wearing hats. Maybe maybe stop

(43:16):
wearing hats to crimes. Fashion and chin strap for it.
If you really need it for like style or cover
or something. Then you know, it's amazing, amazing to think
of an age when hats were so deregulated that you'd
be like, well, nobody, I'm not going to commit crimes
without a hat. I mean, the crime will be committed outside.
I must have my hat. What am I a savage.

(43:39):
Oh my god. In June seven, n Herman and a
partner stole a car from a dealership in Fairfax and
wound up in a high speed chase that ended in Kansas.
Herman escaped while his partner was caught, but Herman was
caught hours later buying another hat. Are you kidding me? Yeah?
These these Barker boys that they're fucking hats. Yeah, always

(44:01):
a problem. It's like very looney Tunes. And you know,
the cops let him keep the hat. They're like, no,
you can't put a man in prison without a hat.
What don't we He's got to have his phone call
in his hat. Yeah. Now, mob Barker bailed Herman out,
and for a time he was able to be in

(44:21):
the wind again. But even though he'd just been busted
for grand theft auto and was wanted in questioning for
two bank robberies, Herman decided to plan a third bank robbery.
On January seventeenth, Herman and several partners broke into the
First National Bank of Jasper, Missouri. They made off with
a pile of lute, but the authorities were hot on
their trail, and a thirty minute gun battle ensued. Herman

(44:43):
was wounded and arrested, but he was out again on
bail by August, which I guess this was a time
when you could shoot at the police and get out
on bail. That is incredible. Yeah. While he was out
on bail for his third robbery, he and a partner
decided to rob an ice plant. Uh. They stole two

(45:03):
dollars from the safe and fled the scene next. According
to the book, mom the ice. What about all the ice?
I it t Yeah, probably if you get caught. I
guess the side is, if you get caught stealing ice,
you just keep on the run until the ice melts.
Like you ain't got no proof. Yeah, exactly, got a

(45:24):
wet car. I just love driving wet I mean, but
I wouldn't put it past this guy honestly and be like, oh,
we're gonna do what ice ice? Like probably per pound,
the stupidest thing you could. You could be worst crime
to engage. All right, So I'm gonna quote the book
mob Barker talking about what happened after the ice heist,

(45:47):
motorcycle officer J. E. Marshall and his partner Frank Bush
spotted the gangster's car speeding through town at two in
the morning. After a short pursuit, the getaway vehicle stopped
at Officer Marshall approached the car to confront the offenders.
Herman was driving, and when the police off user got
close enough to look inside the vehicle, he grabbed the
officer around the neck, leveled a gun against his face,
and fired two shots. Officer Marshall died instantly, so this

(46:09):
provoked a chase, and herman was wounded badly During an
automotive firefight. He and his partner crashed their car, and
overcome with pain, Herman Barker shot himself dead. Mob Barker
grieved deeply for her oldest boy and used some of
her ill gotten gains to buy a four foot tall
marble headstone for herman. Some lawman would later write that
Herman's death caused mob Barker to turn her back entirely

(46:31):
on morality, but this seems to be theatric drama or
the time herman died. Ma had been a criminal mastermind
for nearly a decade, but the death of her oldest
son did have a major impact on her. Mob Barker
would not in the future be content to let her
children funk up at planning their own crimes. She had
bigger plans for them, grander plans Minnesota ear plans. And

(46:53):
this brings us to the greatest type of scum and
villany in the history of the United dates the city
of St. Paul. I knew you were going to say St.
Paul terrible place. Terrible Wait really compared to Tulsa? Well?
Actually yeah, I mean I can't speak for St. Paul today,

(47:15):
but during the Great Depression it was famous for being
a haven for gangsters. And you know what else is
a haven for gangsters? Emily, the products and services that
support this podcast. We're back. Products, done, services, service. Uh boy, howdie,

(47:39):
I'm a big fan. Alright, speaking of things I'm not
a fan of, let's talk about St. Paul, the crime city. Uh,
apologies to the people of St. Paul, Minnesota. No apologies.
The only city I apologized to is Pittsburgh. Um, but
nothing for St. Paul. Bring it on? Not true today?

(48:04):
The city of city Yeah, consistencies everything, and St. Paul
was consistently filled with criminals then and probably now, I
assume um today the city of St. Paul is most
famous for, I I don't really know is Sophie Minneapolis
being next to Minneapolis. But back in the day, it
was the crime capital of America. I'm gonna quote from

(48:26):
the Minnesota Post. St. Paul in the late twenties and
early thirties was known as a crux haven, a place
for gangsters, bank robbers, and bootleggers from all over the
Midwest to run their operations or to hide from the FBI.
The concentration of local organized crime activity prompted reformers and
crime reporters to call for a clean up of the
city in the mid nineteen thirties. So it used to
be an interesting place at some point, is what I'm

(48:47):
getting at here. Has there been a good crime movie
set in St. Paul? I don't know, probably need a
good Saint Paul movie. I don't watch a lot of Yeah, yeah,
they get on at one of Now. St. Paul earned

(49:08):
its reputation as the sanctuary for criminals in the Midwest
with the help of corrupt politicians and police chiefs who
agreed to turn a blind eye to gangster's underground activities,
which included smuggling, racketeering, and gambling. This collaboration began in
nineteen hundred with what was known as the Layover Agreement,
an unofficial contract between criminals and Chief of Police John O'Connor.
The Law and Crime and St. Paul worked out a deal.

(49:30):
Criminals would minimize the murders they committed in town and
give the cops a chunk of their profits. In exchange,
the police would warn them about upcoming FBI raids. This
became known as the O'Connor system and represents quite possibly
the most ethical chapter in the history of American law enforcement. Now,
mob Barker and her remaining kids moved to St. Paul
in the early thirties, and for the next couple of years,

(49:51):
Mob Barker would be the grand dam of crime in
that town. Along the way, she adopted a gangster friend
of one of her sons, Alvin Carpass, the former Marble's
Champion of Kansas, who was nicknamed Old Creepy for his
dead soulless eyes. Yeah that's a hell of a sentence.
Can I Is it too late to go with him
for Halloween? I just like an image is incredible. You

(50:14):
just have a gun and a pile of marbles. Yeah,
Old Creepy, You like what I can do with this gun?
Imagine what I can do with these marvels, kidd. Ma
loved Old Creepy and spent many a night out on
the town of Saint Paul. Yeah, so the old Creepy

(50:35):
Alan Carpass and Mob Barker essentially combined their powers to
build a gang consisting of Alvin and Ma's sons, with
Ma as kind of the master mind. In June, Alvin
and Ma attended the Chicago World's Fair. It is there
reportedly that Mob Barker first told Alvin that she and
her boys would be the vanguards of a new era

(50:55):
of crime, bank robberies beneath our dignity. She said, bigger
game is in our future first, but it led to
her last words. Now That bigger game was kidnapping and
ransoming the children of wealthy families. In nineteen thirty two,
the baby of Charles Lindbergh, famed American aviator and fascist

(51:18):
piece of ship, had been kidnapped by persons unknown. While
the baby was found dead six months later, and probably
had died that very night, UH, an innocent man named
Bruno Hauptmann was arrested for the crime in nineteen thirty four. UH.
The guilty parties were never caught and almost certainly made
off with tens of thousands of dollars and a baby
murder Scott free. This was all widespread knowledge in the

(51:38):
criminal community in nineteen thirty two, when Jack Piper, head
of the Holly Hawks casino and St. Paul, went to
Fred Barker and Alvin with a plan. He knew the
schedule and travel roots of thirty nine year old William
ham Jr. And he felt like the man's family would
pay handsomely if their heir was kidnapped. Now, if you
don't hail from the center northerish parts of the country,

(51:59):
Ham's is a hilariously named mediocre beer that's better than
being sober, but not a whole lot better. Uh. William
Hams Jr. Was the scion of this beer dynasty and
a very wealthy man. Jack basically told the Barker gang
that they could make a lot of money if they
stole him. He asked for ten percent of the total
take for his help. So the gang kidnapped ham fairly easily,

(52:21):
and by all accounts, they treated him well. Four days
after his capture, his hundred thousand dollar ransom was paid
and he was returned unharmed to his family. The cost
of the ransom was relatively minor in the scheme of
the families four point five million dollar fortune. When he
was returned to his family, William told a local paper,
although it was a trying experience, I was treated with
the utmost respect and courtesy. But like the old adage,

(52:42):
home sweet home is the best place of all. So
Ham seems to say, like, yeah, they were all right. Um,
feel like he's just shy of being like, I wish
I could have stayed forever. It was so much. I
wish I could have stayed forever. Food was great. Yeah. Now,
the ham family had asked authorities to hold back on
doing anything while their kid was kidnapped, and the police

(53:03):
had agreed. Um, I'm gonna read a quote from the
interview that William Hamm gave the Decatur Harold after he
had been freed. Um him only saw his captors, but dimly.
The windows of the house in which he was placed
in a second floor room were boarded up. I never
saw the men because I didn't have on my goggles,
and they made me turn my face towards the wall
when they came into the room. They were very nice
to me, I asked for anything I wanted and ordered

(53:23):
anything I wanted. The metals were good and simple, and
I think elaborate. But whoever did the cooking knew their
way or on the kitchen, that was almost certainly Mob Barker. Now,
the FBI did not catch onto the fact that the
Barker family was behind this caper. Instead, they arrested another
gangster too, He who was innocent of this crime by
at least some accounts. Too. He was tortured by the
law enforcement in an attempt to get him to admit

(53:44):
his guilt. He refused and eventually killed himself in jail.
Interestingly enough, the FBI leaves this story out of its
account of the arrest of the Barker gang. Yeah, but
I'm just I'm splitting hairs here. Now, the Barker gang
was very well at this point. The Hams caper was
their highest profile crime of this period, but they also
continued to rob banks at a pretty ridiculous rate. Meanwhile,

(54:07):
Mob Barker continued to manage the fine details of the gang,
reportedly going so far as to drive the getaway roots
before major crimes to ensure every aspect of the plan
was mapped out to her satisfaction. She did not draw
the line at just micromanaging the business aspects of her gang.
According to the book Mob Barker, she also kept a
strong hand in the romantic lives of her sons and
adopted sons. Quote. Members of the Barker Carpass gang who

(54:32):
were close to mad generally kept the women they were
seriously involved with away from her. It was a crazy system,
Alvin admitted years later, and often created friction with our women,
who couldn't understand why we were so careful with her feelings.
The boys preferred to avoid Ma's jealous anger. They were
devoted to her and considered her contribution to their organization
invaluable and something they would not jeopardize. Not only did
she recruit in school the hoodlums who joined the group,

(54:52):
but she was always a full proof cover for the gang.
Ma could project an innocence and wholesomeness to the rival
the Whistler's mother, but she could be fire an obstinate.
So yeah, that's that. That that's Ma. She won't let
you have a girlfriend, but she'll get you out of
trouble with the cops. You've got to keep your mind
on crimes. You gotta keep your mind on crimes. I mean,

(55:13):
makes sense, makes sense now. Ma was a complicated person,
and while she was a domineering field within the criminal underworld,
she operated out of her homes. She was also vulnerable
to being victimized by abusers in her own romantic life.
Starting in the late nineteen twenties, she dated a man
named Arthur Dunlop. What started as emotional support in the
wake of her first son's death evolved into a profoundly

(55:36):
abusive relationship. Arthur was basically the opposite of George Barker.
He refused to work or contribute to the family finances
in any way, but he was also a powerful personality
who constantly derided and physically abused Kate Barker. The Barker
boys hated Arthur, but for a while, they tolerated him
because their mothers seemed to love him for some inexplicable reason.
Arthur moved with the family to St. Paul, but soon

(55:58):
after they began their kidnapping game, he started to make trouble.
Arthur was no gangster, but he loved to go out
drinking on the town and brag about the crimes of
the Barker Carpas gang, even though he had nothing to
do with those crimes. Yeah, now he's a piece of shit,
piece of Yeah, I take back what I said about
passionate men with deep pockets. Yeah, well he didn't. He

(56:19):
was just taken their money, right, bragging. Yeah, just commit
your own crimes. Yeah, I have a decency to commit
your own crimes. And I don't know, it's always it's
always a bummer when when your significant other tries to
take credit for your career. Yeah. Absolutely, He's like, how
who would compare him to as celebrities? Um hm, He's like,

(56:45):
he's like Kevin Federline, He's the Kevin Federline story. Yeah,
that's that's yeah, a meaner Kevin Federline. Although I'm sure
that cover federal Line wasn't that nice of a person.
I don't know, history's greatest monster. Um So, when Arthur's
bragging finally got loud and boisterous enough that multiple criminal

(57:05):
friends of the family warned mob Barker, she finally agreed
that he had to go. Fred and Alvin shot him
dead and disposed of the corpse. Ye. By January four,
the Barker gang was ready to try their luck at
another high dollar kidnapping. Their next subject was Edward George
Brimmer Jr. The scion of a wealthy banking family. By

(57:26):
this point, the Great Depression was well underway, and the
whole country was filled with rage at the corrupt bankers
who had brought calamity down on the heads of the nation.
While the heir to the Ham's beer fortune had been
treated well, Brimmer was beaten badly and repeatedly by the
Barker Gang, particularly by Fred Barker, who hated bankers. According
to the book Mob Barker, the gang did not keep
him blindfolded at all times at the hideout, and he

(57:47):
was able to observe things which were later to be
of assistance in identifying the place where he was held captive.
The men who held him captives spoke with various accents French, German, Italian.
At one point he heard the voice of an older
woman praising the criminals holding him hostage, saying, now you're thinking, boys,
now you're thinking. Mr Brimmer assessed it was the voice
of Mom Barker. I mean, why did why did they

(58:08):
not blindfold him? It seems like a major oversight. I mean,
I'm I'm all for beating up a banker, at least
have the have the foresight to blindfold him. I mean
they were usually their faces and stuff were covered, so
he wasn't able to identify him. And that like the
they were speaking in different accents, but like there weren't
actually a bunch of different nationalities. They were just trying

(58:30):
to confuse him. I would love to hear all those accents,
like I love to all of their attempts at an
Italian and French and German accent. Yeah, I want to
know what a bunch of fucking uh criminal gangsters in
Minnesota in the nineteen thirties think of German sounds like,
I bet it's hilarious now. Eventually, the Brimmer family paid

(58:54):
two thousand dollars for the return of their son, and
this left the Barker Carpass gang fantastically wealthy, but by
this point they had committed too many serious crimes to
not be considered public enemies. After the Bremmer heist, the
Barker Carpus gang scattered to the four winds across the
nation and several other continents in an attempt to have
aid justice. Two of mob Barker's sons tried the most
extreme method imaginable to heighten from the law that decided

(59:17):
to undergo dangerous experimental surgery to change their faces. And yeah,
this is a terrible story Barker again, Yeah, it's real bad.
An ex convict named Joseph P. Morn was in charge
of the procedure, which involved looping elastic bands tightly around
the gangster's fingertips at the first joint and injecting cocaine

(59:37):
into each of their fingers and thumbs using a scalpel.
The doctor would then script a skin completely off the digits.
The work of Dr Moran did to remove the scars
on Alvin's face was equally as barbaric and unpleasant. In
the end, the extreme discomfort proofd to be a waste
of time and money. According to the FBI report dated
November nineteenth, nineteen thirty six, Fred Barker was a braving
maniac due to the pain. Dr Moran performs other services

(59:59):
for the gang, such as laundering some of the kidnap
money through his Chicago practice. Dr Morn suffered from the
same problem of running his mouth. He drank too much,
which made him especially talkative. He bragged to a couple
of prostitutes in his company, that he was a big
doctor from Chicago who could erase fingerprints and change people's appearances.
His actions weren't tolerated for long by the Barker Carpass gang.
He was warned to be quiet, but to fight orders
by stating, I have you guys in the palm of

(01:00:21):
my hand. When I guess what happened to this guy?
I got, got got, Yeah, you got you got killed
really fast? Yeah yeah. Alvin and Arthur Barker, acting on
Ma's orders, guns Dr morn down in July four. They
buried him in a hole under a pile of lie.
So that's good. Uh so wait, so it didn't even

(01:00:42):
work though the fingerprint removal it removed the fingerprints that
the guys had on them, but it also like drove
one of them crazy and uh made them look as
if they'd been horribly burned. And it was obvious like, well,
you clearly tried to have your fingerprints removed. Look at
your get your hands, Oh my god, so stupid. Really,

(01:01:04):
this is just incredible, Like who's good, who's well? When
we're finished, we should go through a ranking of like
who's actually good at their job? And this because there
aren't that many people now speaking of not being good
at their job. It took the FBI until after this
point to actually get their ship together and realized that
the Barker Gang was behind the kidnapping of several of
America's wealthiest citizens. J Edgar Hoover declared Kate mob Barker

(01:01:27):
to be the brains of the gang's operation and the
most dangerous woman in America. The dogs were out, and
the Barker family days were numbered. Flesh with cash and
fleeing the law, they made their way to the only
true home of all dangerous, unhinged criminals, Florida. Fred his mother,
and a few other sympatheticos rented a house in Lake
Weir and attempted to lay low until the heat died down.

(01:01:48):
What happened next is a matter of historical debate. Since
this is my podcast, the version of the story I've
decided to believe is the one that involves a three
legged alligator named Old Joe, as the story goes, at
least according to one Chicago Tribune article written in the
nineteen eighties based on some of the few living people
who remembered these events. By January of nineteen thirty five,
the FBI had found one member of the Barker Carpass

(01:02:09):
gang in Chicago, Arthur Barker. When they arrested him in
his hotel room, they found the partially burnt reminants of
a letter from Mob Barker. In the letter, Mob Barker
had written that wherever they were hiding, it was good
hunting for a three legged alligator called Old Joe. So
to their credit, the FBI had some good investigators, and
they combed the numerous swamps of the American South until

(01:02:30):
they found some yokels who keyed them in on where
this three legged alligator lived Lake Weir, Florida. After that
point it was only a matter of refining for the
Bureau to lock down the last few Stateside reminants of
the Barker Gang. Mob Barker and her son Fred next.
According to the Chicago Tribune, on the morning of Wednesday,
January fift nineteen thirty five, fifteen agents swooped down on

(01:02:51):
a large frame house on the shores of Lake were
on the outskirts of this Florida citrus belt town. When
the shooting ended four hours later, they found Mob Barker
sixty three dead in an upstairs room, one arm cradling
a submachine gun, the other cradling her dead son Fred two.
Oh my god, went out like a fucking g That's
tough as hell. Yeah, machine gun in one arm, dead

(01:03:14):
son on the other. It's a pretty good way to go. If, um,
that's that's great. I'm glad that. I'm glad that it
ended in Florida, as all crime stories must end, as
all crime stories in and most begin. Yeah. Yeah, but
I like that we did a detour through through Minneapolis
because I will um differ with you on the point

(01:03:36):
that I do think Minnesota is a lovely state and
uh as part of the great patchwork of America. So
I'm glad that I'm I'm glad that they found a
home there. I'm going to war with both Minneapolis. Well, no,
just st Party's sorry, Paul, Yeah whatever. I mean, you know,
if somebody's gonna get actually mad at me if I

(01:03:56):
say whatever, same if but yeah, Minny Appleans will get mad.
Nobody and nobody in Florida is going to get mad
at us saying that all Floridians are criminals like everyone
every Yeah, if you live in Florida, you know what
you are. It's like Australia, you've elected to this lifestyle.

(01:04:16):
You didn't know one forced you to live in Florida.
That's where you go if you want to be a
criminal or you want to be friends with a three
legged alligator. Yeah. Wow, well this was amazing. I have
a lot of respect to her, honestly, and I feel
like I feel like, I mean, I don't I guess
I don't know well enough to know where you would

(01:04:37):
find the seams in this, but I do kind of
feel like the FBI is sort of undermining her by
trying to say that she's not the mastermind here. I mean, yeah,
like what, like who who would the mask? She seems
If not the mastermind, she's a great instigating force and
that's like just as important to be uh moral support

(01:05:00):
and um, you know, provide food and shelter for your
gang of criminal sons and not sons. I don't know.
I mean that's his that's his important as being the mastermind.
I agree, Yeah, I I think that, Um, I don't know,
there's this like impulse and law enforcement to kind of

(01:05:21):
like reduce any sort of the myth making around these figures,
which which never works, Like the you can't stop you
can't stop people from fundamentally wanting to side with the
charismatic criminals over the g min. Uh. It's it's it's
the same reason Scarface is more popular than uh, I
don't know a movie about whoever the shot scarface? Um,

(01:05:44):
and it it always I guess it's more beneficial to
be like, oh, all these crimes are stupid done by
idiot people, which have to be fair, A lot of
these seem like pretty stupid crimes done by idiot people.
But that version of events definitely is less romantic. I mean,
it's at least funny, but it's not like, oh, I
want to grow up to be like that in the

(01:06:05):
same way that like having a criminal mastermind who's like
plotting all these amazing bank robberies or whatever. That that
feels more like something that someone might be tempted to emulate. Uh,
if given hard enough times. I don't know. Yeah, I mean,
I I stam mob barker. I mean what, She's not

(01:06:26):
a bastard, she's uh, she's a hard working mom and
then eventual single parent, just doing her best to survive
in tough times, doing her best to survive in this
workaday world. In the door for the damn bathroom. You
know that's I mean, I feel like all all great
careers start with, you know, wanting a door for your bathroom.

(01:06:48):
Uh yeah, yeah, Well Emily, speaking of doors for the bathroom, Uh,
do you have any anything you'd like to plug? Uh? Well,
you can listen to Nightcall on this very podcast network.
I co hosted with Molly Lambert and Tess Lynch as
you said, uh, previous guests on this podcast. So we

(01:07:11):
we have new episodes every Monday. And yeah, I'm getting
ready to record with them later today, So I'm I've
got a real podcast marathon day today. But um yeah,
we're on We're on social media, Nightcall podcast or nightcallo
depending on what platform it is. It's inconsistent, which is
stupid of us. Um me me, actually I'm the inconsistent one.

(01:07:35):
But and then I'm on Twitter personally at I'm on
Twitter personally at Ashida just my first and lasting Yeah,
public enemy number one, public enemy number one, not if
you want to be public, Well that's going to do

(01:07:56):
it for Behind the Bastards today. Um you can find
us on the internet. Behind the Bastards dot com where
you can find the sources for this episode. You can
find us on Twitter and Instagram at Bastard's Pot. You
can find me on Twitter at I right okay uh,
And you can find crime in your heart when you
look down the aisles of an Amazon owned grocery store. Um,
this podcast is not indoors committing crimes. Thanks, thank you, Sophie.

(01:08:20):
Are we are we safe legally? Now? Is the lawyer happy?
Don't commit don't commit a crime, don't commit a crime,
not commit a crime. Yeah, multiple crimes. That that's that.
The words of this guest do not necessarily uh reflect

(01:08:45):
the wishes of this podcast.