Pod Insights Infamous America BARKER GANG Ep. 1 | “Born To Raise Hell” About this episode In Missouri and Oklahoma, Ma Barker raises four sons to be outlaws like her idol Jesse James. They begin with petty crimes, and when they get caught, Ma runs to the rescue and talks them out of trouble. But in June of 1921, her son Arthur commits a crime so serious that Ma can’t help. And by the end of the year, three of the four Barker boys are in prison serving lengthy sentences. It’s a rough beginning to one of the most infamous gangs in American history.
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Transcript 0:11 Speaker 00 FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover described Ma Barker as “the most vicious, dangerous, and resourceful criminal brain of the last decade.” But Hoover was notorious for exaggeration, and others disagreed with his assessment. Infamous bank robber Harvey Bailey said Ma Barker “couldn’t even plan breakfast.” Bailey credited Fred Barker and Alvin Karpis with dreaming up and planning the increasingly high-profile series of crimes committed by the Barker-Karpis gang in the early 1930s.
0:45 Speaker 00 Ma Barker may or may not have been a criminal mastermind, but she definitely raised her four sons to be outlaws. She was the caretaker and guiding force of the Barker gang, who added Alvin Karpis to the lineup in 1931 before they embarked on an epic crime spree. They were as reckless as Bonnie and Clyde, as ruthless as baby-faced Nelson, and more prolific than John Dillinger. By the time Alvin “creepy” Karpis became the final Depression-era outlaw to wear the crown of the FBI’s Public Enemy Number One at the end of 1934, the Barker-Karpis gang was considered the scourge of the land. They had killed more people than Nelson and stolen more money than Dillinger. They were at the end of a
1:28 Speaker 00 15-year run, and for the Barker boys, the run hit the big time at the end of August 1921. In the scorching heat of a Tulsa, Oklahoma summer, Arthur Barker and his buddy Volney Davis wanted to commit a simple, easy robbery. And of course, it didn’t work out that way.
1:52 Speaker 00 Arthur Barker, 23 years old, was better known as Doc. His friend, Volney Davis, was 19 years old. Dating back to their teenage years, they had accumulated a long list of petty crimes. But in 1918, Volney was arrested for grand larceny and sent to Big Mac, the Oklahoma State Prison in McAllister, Oklahoma.
2:14 Speaker 00 That same year, Doc was arrested for car theft in Missouri. He broke out of jail in Joplin, Missouri in February 1920 and returned to Tulsa. A year and a half later, in June of 1921, Volney got released, and he and Doc went back to work. Volney secured a job at a construction site in Tulsa. The construction site housed valuable equipment and a small temporary building which served as an office. For Volney and Doc, the shack of an office contained one item of interest: a small iron safe which held payroll papers and money. During the day, when the site bustled with workers, it was impossible to get into the safe. But at night, there was only one guard on duty.
2:59 Speaker 00 The guard used the shack as a resting spot between rounds of walking the construction site. Doc and Volney just had to time it so they entered the shack right after the guard started a round. He would be gone for an hour, and that would give them plenty of time to open the safe and escape. Unfortunately for all involved, the one thing the partners forgot to do was to time the rounds. They recruited two more guys for the job and broke into the construction site a little before 11 o'clock at night on August 16, 1921. Doc and Volney brought guns with them, which elevated the crime from burglary to armed robbery, even though either charge would soon be inconsequential.
3:42 Speaker 00 When the four robbers headed for the shack to break into the payroll safe, the guard was nowhere to be seen. But, he was finishing a round instead of beginning a round. As he walked back to the shack, Doc, Volney, and their two associates were in the middle of stealing money from the safe. When the guard spotted them, Doc and Volney opened fire. The guard fell back from the shack as the four robbers sprinted away from the construction site. The getaway was clean, but the crime was nowhere near. During the poorly planned heist, the robbers left two critical clues behind. 1921 would turn out to be a very bad year for the Barker family.
4:35 Speaker 00 I’m your host, Chris Wimmer, and this season, we’re telling the story of the Barker Carpus Gang, the longest-running and deadliest group of Depression-era outlaws. This is Episode 1: Born to Raise Hell.
5:00 Speaker 00 If J. Edgar Hoover wanted to pin the Barker Gang’s reign of terror on Ma Barker, he should’ve saved some credit for Jesse James. The woman who’d become infamous in American criminal history as Ma Barker was born with the name Arizona Clark. She grew up in severe poverty in the Ozark Mountains near Ash Grove, Missouri. While she grew up in Missouri in the 1870s, the James Younger Gang ruled the state. When she learned to read, she devoured every article about the most famous outlaw gang of the era. Later in life, she claims she actually saw Jesse James. She claimed Jesse and his older brother Frank rode through Ash Grove, and she spotted the outlaw who became her idol.
5:45 Speaker 00 If true, she would’ve been six years old, and the sighting would’ve happened in the second half of 1881, before Jesse was killed in March of 1882. When Erie heard about Jesse’s death, she was shattered. She believed Jesse’s career as an outlaw had pulled him out of poverty, and she made it her goal to follow in his footsteps. But thirteen years later, when she married George Elias Barker at age nineteen, her life went in the opposite direction. George Barker was ten years older than Erie Clark, and at that point, she adopted the name Kate because she thought it was a respectable upgrade. They settled in Aurora, Missouri, about 25 miles south of her hometown.
6:27 Speaker 00 George was a mild-tempered man, who earned a meager living as a tenant farmer. In 1893, one year into their marriage, Kate Barker had their first son, Herman. Over the next eight years, the family welcomed three more sons: Lloyd, Arthur, and Fred.
6:48 Speaker 00 During that time, they moved to Webb City, Missouri, a zinc-mining town just north of Joplin, near the Kansas border. George Barker maintained his hard-working, mild-mannered ways. He farmed and worked in the mines, but he couldn't earn enough to upgrade the family home beyond their dilapidated shack. Kate Barker was a spitfire homemaker, who was determined to have the finer things in life by any means necessary, and she passed on her obsession with Jesse James to her oldest boy Herman. As Herman and his younger brothers grew, Ma Barker guided them toward lives of crime. During their formative years, she pushed her boys to steal from drugstores and small
7:29 Speaker 00 businesses, but she was also something of a paradox. She marched the boys to church on Sundays, but let them skip school without consequence. By age 10, every Barker boy had a record for petty crimes. George tried to discipline his sons, but his words fell on deaf ears. They were their mother's boys. Kate defended her sons to George's face and encouraged them behind his back. In 1910, when the oldest Herman was 17 and the youngest Fred was nine, Herman took the Barker Criminal Enterprise, which mostly involved petty theft, to the next level. He started committing literal highway robbery.
8:12 Speaker 00 Like the highwaymen of the Old West, Herman and some cronies stopped cars and wagons at gunpoint on roads outside of town. They stole valuables from the travelers, then jumped in their automobile and sped away. Herman's first major run-in with the law happened after he and his crew frantically escaped a robbery. He apparently struck a child with his car. Accounts differ on the fate of the child, but Herman was arrested and taken to jail in Webb City. Kate raced to the rescue. Ma Barker was already a fixture at the police station, and she oscillated between a screaming banshee and a sobbing mother. In Herman's case, she demanded they release her innocent son.
8:55 Speaker 00 Whether the police lacked hard evidence or simply couldn't stomach another minute of her theatrics, they folded. After committing highway robbery and hitting a kid with a car, 17-year-old Herman Barker walked out of the Webb City jail after only a few days.
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9:46 Speaker 00 By 1915, the Barker boys had grown into a formidable pack of trouble. Herman was 22, Lloyd was 18, Arthur was 16, and Fred was 14. Even though they were in the spotlight after Herman's arrest for highway robbery, they doubled down on petty crimes like vandalism and pickpocketing. They felt emboldened by the knowledge that Kate, whom everyone now called Ma, would always come to their rescue. When their father, George, tried to reprimand them, Ma berated him and refused to let him punish her sons. She claimed boldly and continuously around town that the Web City police were harassing her boys, and she insisted they would be "just fine" if the law would only leave them alone.
10:30 Speaker 00 Of course, Ma's definition of "just fine" was different from everyone else's. On March 7, 1915, Herman struck again, and Ma Barker knew their time in Web City was done. Herman learned of a high-stakes poker game in the back of a Web City grocery store. He and a friend barged in, pointed guns at the five gamblers, and took all the cash on the table. Interviews with the gamblers led the police to Herman Barker within 24 hours. Herman was back in jail, and Ma was back in the police station pleading for her son's freedom. Once again, Herman walked free after only a few days due to lack of evidence. Herman didn't have the money or the guns when he was caught,
11:15 Speaker 00 and suddenly, the five gamblers were hesitant to testify, which led many to suspect Ma Barker had convinced them to have foggy memories. The Barkers won again, but it would be their last victory in Web City.
11:33 Speaker 00 After Herman's release, Ma Barker packed up the family and moved them to Tulsa, Oklahoma. By that time, George Barker had long since realized that he couldn't influence his wife or his sons. He went along, but his connection to his family was fraying. Ma Barker wanted a fresh start, but a fresh start didn't mean a clean slate. It just meant a new territory where they weren't on the police's radar. Tulsa was only two hours southwest of Webb City, but it felt like a different world. The city was in the throes of an oil boom, and it was home to more than 400 petroleum companies, which earned it the nickname "Oil Capital of the World."
12:14 Speaker 00 By the time the Barkers arrived in 1915, Tulsa was double the size of Webb City. Workers flocked there for livable wages, overwhelming the city and causing severe housing and food shortages. Disagreements turned violent, and Tulsa quickly devolved into a lawless frontier. Forty miles north of Tulsa, the Osage Nation was ground zero for the oil boom, which made them the richest people in the world per capita. That level of wealth made them targets, which led to a series of mysterious deaths. The investigation into the infamous Osage Murders became one of the FBI's earliest major cases. For the Barker family, the overflowing wealth and chaos of Tulsa was the perfect breeding
12:59 Speaker 00 ground for new criminal exploits. They blended seamlessly into the transient crowds, while the police remained distracted by gambling rings, prostitution, and the increasing violence between the white and black populations. No one was watching a group of teenage boys, so they ran with the opportunity. Sixteen-year-old Arthur and fourteen-year-old Fred quickly formed the Central Park Gang, with two more teenagers, Volney Davis and Harry Campbell. They learned the layout of their new city while executing a series of small-time robberies. As their confidence grew, they stole cars and burglarized jewelry stores. The teenage gang, which occasionally included the two oldest Barker boys, Herman and Lloyd,
13:44 Speaker 00 had a good run for three years. But Lloyd started to realize that his brothers and their friends were headed for serious trouble. Lloyd enlisted in the army as a cook during the tail end of World War I, and he escaped Tulsa. Shortly thereafter, the serious trouble started. On the 4th of July, 1918, 19-year-old Arthur Barker stole a government car right in front of a federal building. He was immediately arrested, quickly escaped jail, was caught again, and arrested again. As usual, Ma went to work. Somehow, before his trial date, the charges against him were dropped. The prevailing theory was that Ma had paid off the police to destroy the evidence.
14:29 Speaker 00 Whatever happened, Arthur was out, though that was one of the last times Ma's tactics worked. Soon, the crimes of her sons would be too big for her to handle. At some point, Arthur Barker supposedly expressed a fleeting interest in medicine, and that was a quick and easy way to earn the nickname "Doc." Less than a year after Ma Barker successfully got Doc released from jail, he stole a car in Missouri and ended up in jail in Joplin. On February 19th, 1920, Doc and 16 other inmates melted the bars of their cells with acid, sawed through the iron, and escaped the jail.
15:12 Speaker 00 No one ever proved how they smuggled in the acid, but everyone assumed Ma Barker was involved. Five days later, Doc was rearrested. The story after that was that Ma found the owner of the stolen car and played the role of the distraught mother to its fullest. She begged and pleaded until the owner withdrew the charges. Doc was free from the stolen car charge, and for whatever reason, he didn't face punishment for the jailbreak. So, he returned to Tulsa while his older brother Herman was bouncing from jail to jail in the northern part of the country. Herman Barker had drifted up to Montana where he used the name Bert Lavender.
15:54 Speaker 00 Bert Lavender ended up in jail in Yellowstone County for burglary. When he was released in 1920, he tried the straight life in Wyoming, scrubbing dishes in a roadside cafe. Boredom and tedium quickly overtook Herman. He swapped the alias Bert Lavender for Clarence Sharp and headed to Minnesota. In Minnesota, it only took a few months before Herman was caught again. Late in 1920, he was booked for robbing a jewelry store. He ended up in Stillwater Prison, the former home of the Younger brothers after their disastrous Northfield raid with Frank and Jesse James in 1876.
16:34 Speaker 00 Cole and Jim Younger had been released from Stillwater in 1901, and now, 20 years later, Herman was as close as he would ever get to rubbing shoulders with his idols. At the same time, the second oldest brother Lloyd Barker took an honorable discharge from the Army and returned to Tulsa. Lloyd had largely, but not entirely, stayed out of the criminal enterprises. But after a couple months of adjusting to civilian life, Lloyd wanted in on the action. He recruited William Green and Gregory O'Connell for a crime that was bigger than petty theft or stealing a car.
17:12 Speaker 00 On June 17, 1921, the three men stole $7,000 in liberty bonds from a mail carrier in Baxter Springs, Kansas. After that, Lloyd went into hiding to let the heat cool down. With the oldest Herman behind bars, and the next oldest Lloyd on the run, and the youngest Fred still cutting his teeth on small-time scores, the burden fell to Doc to try to make the bigger scores that Ma Barker wanted. In that same month, June 1921, Doc's best friend and Central Park gang member Volney Davis walked out of the Oklahoma State Penitentiary known as Big Mac. Two years earlier, Volney Davis had been sentenced to a short stint at Big Mac for
17:56 Speaker 00 stealing a pair of shoes. He served two years and was released in June 1921. As soon as Volney hit the pavement, he and Doc reunited in Tulsa. Volney was only 19 years old, but he was ready to get back into the game. Volney quickly secured a job at the St. John's Hospital construction site in Tulsa, and the timing was tragically fortuitous for Volney and his friend Doc. The construction project had recently stalled because of one of the darkest chapters in American history. On the evening of May 30, 1921, a young black man, 19-year-old Dick Rowland, stepped into
18:38 Speaker 00 an elevator operated by a 17-year-old white girl named Sarah Page. The most common story of what happened next is that Rowland stumbled as he entered the elevator. He stepped on Sarah's shoe, and he grabbed her arm to steady himself before he fell. She cried out in surprise. People nearby heard the shout and called the police. Rowland fled, but he was quickly caught and thrown in jail. The next day, June 1, a Tulsa newspaper ran a story saying Rowland had been arrested for sexually assaulting a white girl in an elevator. That night, the already volatile living situation in Tulsa exploded.
19:19 Speaker 00 Tulsa was a heavily segregated city with black neighborhoods and white neighborhoods. The most affluent black neighborhood was the Greenwood District on the north side of the city, known as Black Wall Street. As exaggerated stories of what transpired in the elevator flew through white neighborhoods on June 1, a mob estimated at 10,000 people formed. During the night of June 1, they marched into the Greenwood District and utterly destroyed it. The mob burned an estimated 1,200 homes, 23 churches, and nearly every business in the district. The mob killed at least 37 people, with estimates now ranging as high as 300, and left 6,000 to 8,000 homeless.
20:03 Speaker 00 Some of the black residents fought back, and it's estimated that 10 attackers died during the Night of Anarchy. Immediately afterward, the events were termed "The Tulsa Race Riot," but as more details were learned, it became known as "The Tulsa Race Massacre." Dick Rowland spent the night in the Tulsa jail. Sarah Page declined to press charges, and Rowland was released. He fled Tulsa and never returned. After the events of June 1st, the St. John's Hospital project stalled. Funding dried up, which forced Fuller Construction, the company building the hospital, to limp
20:44 Speaker 00 along with a skeleton crew and bottom-dollar wages. Volney Davis, a 19-year-old fresh out of prison, easily qualified for that kind of job. Volney didn't care about the small paycheck. He wasn't there to haul bricks for pennies, he was casing the joint. Expensive equipment sat exposed all over the large site, and a flimsy temporary shack housed a small safe with all the cash and payroll papers. During the day, the site operated with minimal workers. At night, there was only one guard who walked the grounds and used the payroll shack as a resting spot. The night watchman was 68-year-old Thomas Sherrill.
21:26 Speaker 00 At retirement age, Thomas and his wife had raised nine children, but he still worked nights to make what should have been easy money. It probably was, until mid-August. Volney Davis and Doc Barker hatched a simple plan to rob the safe in the small payroll building. They roped in two local teenagers to join them, and sourced firepower from a taxi driver friend named Sylvester Gillard. Gillard borrowed two pistols from his boss, a man named Bingley. Gillard swiped them from a leather bag while Bingley was out of his office. Gillard passed the weapons to Doc and Volney, and now the crew was armed and dangerous.
22:11 Speaker 00 On the warm summer night of August 16, 1921, the four robbers waited in Admiral Park across the street from the hospital construction site. The night watchman, Thomas Sherrill, made regular rounds about once every hour. He walked the site, made sure it was secure, and then pressed a button on a mechanical clock to register the fact that he had completed a round. Despite the regularity, Volney Davis and Doc Barker didn't seem to have recognized the pattern. They and their accomplices watched the construction site from Admiral Park. When they didn't see any sign of Sherrill, they hurried across the street and entered the site. Previous versions of the plan included robbing the night watchman and stealing the money from the safe in the shack.
22:56 Speaker 00 But that night, they didn't see the guard, so they headed straight for the shack. They rushed through the construction site and up the short set of stairs that led to the door of the shack. Doc, Volney, and the two accomplices slipped into the payroll building with no problem. They opened the safe and started to steal the money, though it's never been clear how they opened the safe or exactly how much money they found. But one thing was clear: they didn't time it well. Instead of entering the shack right after Sherrill started a round, they entered as he finished. Thomas Sherrill punched his clock at 11:00 PM and headed to the payroll building for a rest. As Thomas stepped onto the stairs to the open door, he noticed movement in the payroll building.
23:41 Speaker 00 At the same time, the boys noticed Thomas, and by most accounts, Doc and Volney were surprised. Despite their scouting, they didn't know the timing of Thomas's rounds. Volney, or Doc, or both, opened fire. Two bullets hit Thomas Sherrill, one in the stomach and one in the head, and he crumpled to the stairs. The four robbers rushed past him, ran out of the shack, and disappeared into the night. The next morning, workers for the Fuller Construction Company found 68-year-old Thomas Sherrill, husband and father of nine, sprawled in front of the payroll building. His revolver remained holstered; he never had a chance to reach for it. Detectives arrived at the scene.
24:23 Speaker 00 Given the two bullet wounds, the fact that Sherrill's gun was still in its holster, and the shell casings near Sherrill's body, the case was clearly murder. The investigation would take time, but the two shell casings turned out to be the key.
24:42 Speaker 00 For two months, Arthur, Doc Barker, and Volney Davis thought they were in the clear. But as investigators worked through the painstaking process of tracing shell casings in 1921, they learned the casings were somewhat unusual. The casings led investigators to a store that sold the ammunition to a registered gun owner, Mr. Bingley. Under questioning, Bingley admitted that the guns had been out of his possession for a period of time. Sylvester Gillard, who had taken the guns from Bingley and given them to Doc and Volney, had had a hard time getting the pistols back from the robbers. Bingley noticed the guns were gone, and he told investigators about his employee, Sylvester Gillard.
25:24 Speaker 00 Gillard led detectives to Doc, Volney, and the rest of the crew. Police rounded up three of the four, but Volney Davis managed to slip away just in time. In the courtroom, Sylvester and the two teenage accomplices testified against Doc Barker, and that was all she wrote. In a final desperate attempt to keep Doc out of prison, Doc’s girlfriend took the stand against Ma Barker’s wishes. The girlfriend attempted to provide an alibi, claiming Doc was with her on the night of the murder. The jury saw right through the lie and convicted Arthur Barker for the murder of Thomas Sherrill. The judge handed down a sentence of life in prison, and he ad-libbed from the bench,
26:05 Speaker 00 branding Doc a “cold-blooded murderer without conscience or remorse.” Ma Barker was granted only a fleeting moment with Doc before bailiffs hauled him away in handcuffs. Doc composed himself for long enough to say goodbye to Ma and his father George, but his veneer cracked as he was escorted out of the courtroom. He screamed to the gallery that the trial was rigged, and he proclaimed his innocence. Ma was beside herself. Her oldest, Herman, was in a Minnesota prison. Her second-oldest, Lloyd, was in a Kansas prison. Lloyd and his two associates had eventually been caught after robbing a mail carrier in Baxter Springs, Kansas.
26:50 Speaker 00 In Oklahoma, they got into a gun battle with police while trying to steal a getaway car. No one died, but they were all captured and taken back to Kansas for trial. Lloyd was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in Leavenworth Prison. And now, Doc was headed to Big Mac for life. By the end of 1921, only Ma's youngest son Fred was free to continue their criminal enterprise. And the fallout continued. The events of that year finally broke George Barker. Years ago, he had surrendered his role as a disciplinary force of the family. Ma ran the show, and George went along with it. But no more, and it would be for the best.
27:33 Speaker 00 Kate despised George's complacency. She knew his honest wages would never buy the luxuries she craved, nor could he provide the excitement she equally craved. Ma had turned their home into a boarding house for criminals. She accepted lavish gifts and joined them for nights on the town. At the end of 1921, with three sons in prison and his wife fully embedded in the criminal underworld, George Barker stepped away from the family. He moved to Joplin, Missouri, and worked at a filling station. When asked about his son's criminal exploits, his response was always the same: "You'll have to talk to their mother. She handles the boys."
28:26 Speaker 00 Next time on Infamous America, the youngest Barker's son Fred steps into the role of criminal breadwinner for the family. When Herman Barker returns home, he and Fred go on a crime spree which lands Fred in prison in Kansas. Meanwhile, Herman finds himself in a whirlwind romance, and then a deadly Bonnie and Clyde situation way out west. That's next week on Infamous America.
28:59 Speaker 00 Members of our Black Barrel Plus program receive the entire season to binge all at once with no commercials, and they also receive exclusive bonus episodes. Sign up now through the link in the show notes or on our website, blackbarrelmedia.com. This series was researched and written by Mandy Wimmer. Additional research and writing by me, Chris Wimmer. Original music by Rob Valier. Thanks for listening.
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