BARKER GANG Ep. 6 | “Out of Time”

In 1934, time runs out for all the high-profile outlaws of the era. The Barker-Karpis Gang commits two more violent robberies – one disastrous – and their most lucrative kidnapping to date, but the FBI is closing in. The gang suffers major losses during a shootout in Florida. One by one, gang members fall until only Alvin Karpis remains. When his time runs out, he becomes one of the celebrity inmates at notorious Alcatraz prison. Thanks to our sponsor, Quince! Use this link for Free Shipping and 365-day returns: Quince.com/infamousamerica Thanks to our sponsor, Mood! For 20% off of your first order, use the promo code INFAMOUS at Mood.com Join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join Apple users join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes, bingeable seasons and bonus episodes. Click the Black Barrel+ banner on Apple to get started with a 3-day free trial. On YouTube, subscribe to INFAMOUS+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: hit “Join” on the Legends YouTube homepage. For more details, please visit www.blackbarrelmedia.com or @blackbarrelmedia on Instagram. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:05Speaker 01

  The surprisingly easy kidnapping of Ham's Brewery President William Hamm Jr. in mid-June of 1933, which had netted the Barker-Karpis gang about $70,000, allowed the gang to rest for a couple of months. And those two months were an explosion of gangster activity. On June 10th, five days before the gang kidnapped William Jr., John Dillinger and his new gang robbed their first bank and started their epic crime spree.

• 1:34Speaker 01

  In the middle of the Hamm kidnapping, notorious Chicago bank robber Frank Nash was killed. Nash had worked with the Barker gang on a small-town bank robbery in April 1933. While the Barker gang held William Hamm outside Chicago, Frank Nash was captured in Hot Springs, Arkansas, and then shot and killed in Kansas City along with a police chief, two detectives, and an FBI agent. The assassination became known as the Kansas City Massacre. The next month, in July, Bonnie and Clyde got into multiple shootouts with law enforcement, during which Clyde's brother was killed. At the end of the month, George Machine Gun Kelly kidnapped and ransomed Oklahoma oil tycoon Charles Herschel.

• 2:19Speaker 01

  One month later, at the end of August 1933, the Barker gang committed the first of two blood-soaked robberies in the space of three weeks.

• 2:33Speaker 01

  On August 30th, 1933, the crew who had committed the kidnapping—Fred Barker, Doc Barker, Alvin Karpis, Fred Getz, Byron Bolton, and Charlie Fitzgerald—reassembled to rob a payroll truck in St. Paul. That day, the Swift Meat Packing Company sent two employees and one policeman guard in a truck to a St. Paul post office. The trio picked up cash to pay the employees and began to drive it back to the Swift offices. The gang hijacked the truck and stole $33,000 in cash. But in the process, Doc Barker shot and killed the police guard, and the gang shot and severely wounded a responding officer.

• 3:15Speaker 01

  After that robbery, the gang's time in the criminal sanctuary of St. Paul was done. They had committed too many high-profile violent crimes in the area, and no amount of bribes could save them if they stayed. They went to Chicago and, three weeks later, committed a truly crazy heist. On the night of September 22nd, in the middle of downtown Chicago, the gang robbed a truck that was headed from a post office to the Federal Reserve Bank. The robbery was easy, but the getaway was a disaster. Five robbers with tommy guns quickly overpowered four guards and took the bags that were in the back of the Federal Reserve truck. But when the robbers fled in their getaway car, they crashed into another car a few blocks away.

• 4:00Speaker 01

  The accident happened right in front of a Chicago police officer. While the gang transferred the moneybags from the wrecked car to another one they were planning to steal, the officer ran up to the scene. He didn't know about the robbery; he thought he was helping victims of a car crash. When the officer approached, Doc Barker and Byron Bolton opened fire. Officer Miles Cunningham was killed instantly. The gang scrambled into the new getaway car and fled the scene. Later, when the gang was safe, the robbery went from bad to worse. When the robbers opened the bags from the truck, they found only canceled checks—no money. The job had been high-risk, poorly planned, and poorly executed.

• 4:43Speaker 01

  And the next morning, the headline in the Chicago Tribune newspaper blared, "10,000 Police Officers Are Hunting the Cop Killers." Planning was supposed to be Alvin Karpis's specialty, but the Federal Reserve heist was his darkest hour. He said to his friend Fred Barker, "Freddy, we just don't have much time left."

• 5:21Speaker 01

  From Black Barrel Media, this is Infamous America. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer. In this season, we're telling the story of the Barker-Karpis gang, the longest-running and deadliest group of Depression-era outlaws. This is episode 6, "Out of Time."

• 5:46Speaker 01

  By the end of September 1933, after two years and three months in business, the Barker-Karpis gang had killed six lawmen and one civilian during robberies, and had wounded more than a dozen others. After their worst performance to date—stealing no money from the Federal Reserve Transport and killing a police officer in the process—they were desperate and tense. They were low on cash, everyone was irritated, and they were playing the blame game. The gang had been forced to leave behind weapons and ammunition during the car crash, and they were on edge as they worried that the small arsenal could link them to the robbery and the murder. They needed to hide, but hiding was expensive.

• 6:29Speaker 01

  Whether they liked it or not, they had to pull another job. The best of a bunch of bad options was to go back to St. Paul, Minnesota, where they had burned nearly all their bridges after committing multiple major crimes in and around the city over the past year. Harry Sawyer, the St. Paul fixer who had helped them many times in the past, proposed the same idea that had worked so well back in June. He wanted them to kidnap 34-year-old Edward Bremer, the president of Commercial State Bank, whose family also owned Schmidt's Brewery in St. Paul. The kidnapping of William Hamm Jr. had worked out beautifully, so why not do it again?

• 7:08Speaker 01

  Alvin Karpis had two good reasons why not—the FBI and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The FBI had become increasingly involved in high-profile kidnapping cases, and Edward Bremer's father was a close supporter of Roosevelt. The Bremer family political connections could turn a kidnapping into a nightmare. But after George Machine Gun Kelly had successfully extorted $200,000 from the family of oil baron Charles Herschel, the reward might be worth the risk. If the gang demanded and received $200,000, equal to nearly $5 million today, they could disappear. Karpis said he was in, and they went to work.

• 7:55Speaker 01

  Most of the crew was regulars—Fred Barker, Doc Barker, Alvin Karpis, Fred Getz, Byron Bolton, Volney Davis, and William Weaver. They finished the roster by adding Harry Campbell, who had occasionally worked as muscle. But the most crucial man in the operation was Detective Tom Brown, who was the head of the kidnapping squad for the St. Paul Police Department. Brown was the corrupt former chief of the department who had been demoted by the mayor. Luckily for the gang, his demotion landed him in the perfect job. Brown had steered the investigation of the William Hamm kidnapping toward a gang from Chicago. Incidentally, that gang, the Roger Tuohy Gang, had been arrested and put on trial for the

• 8:38Speaker 01

  kidnapping in November 1933, but the case collapsed due to lack of evidence. This time, Detective Brown wouldn't just be the cleanup man, he would be an architect of the crime. With kidnappings skyrocketing during the Depression, his squad had proactively identified wealthy targets. Brown already had a file on Edward Bremer, which included Bremer's daily routine. Brown gave the file to the gang, and the gang started planning the kidnapping. But frayed nerves were still a problem. Alvin Karpis remained agitated, and he became prone to overreacting. When Karpis caught a man peeking into the St. Paul apartment where he and Fred Barker

• 9:22Speaker 01

  strategized, Karpis snapped. He ran after the stranger and caught him as the man entered an apartment with another man. Both strangers wore uniforms. Assuming they were cops, Karpis fired shots through the windows. The next day, the newspaper revealed the truth. Both men were airline employees, and one had simply gone out looking for a peeping Tom who had worried his wife. One of the two had been seriously injured, but he survived. With the kidnapping just three days away, Karpis wanted to push it back. Clearly, he was struggling. But they were too close to postpone it. The trap was set, and the operation was moving forward whether Karpis liked it or not.

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• 11:35Speaker 01

  On January 17th, 1934, a freezing cold morning in St. Paul, Minnesota, members of the gang rolled toward the kidnapping spot in two cars. Alvin Karpis drove one car with Doc Barker and Volney Davis as passengers, and Fred Barker drove the other with Harry Campbell as his passenger. The two cars shadowed Edward Bremer's car closely as he dropped his daughter at school and headed toward his office at Commercial State Bank. As Edward slowed for a stoplight, the gang's cars pinned him in. Doc Barker jumped out of car number one. He yanked open Bremer's door, leveled a gun at his head, and ordered him to move into the backseat.

• 12:16Speaker 01

  Unlike William Hamm, who had been as calm and compliant as could be, Edward Bremer fought back. Doc whacked him over the head with the butt of his gun. One blow would have sufficed, but Doc flew into a rage and kept beating him. Now bleeding profusely from head wounds, Edward Bremer was easier to handle. Doc, joined by Volney Davis, pushed Bremer onto the backseat floorboards. Doc climbed into the back to supervise the prisoner while Volney slid into the driver's seat and took control of Edward's vehicle. Despite the struggle, it was all over in seconds. The three cars drove out of St. Paul, and the gang dumped Edward's car near a golf course.

• 12:58Speaker 01

  They forced Bremer to sign ransom notes and then transferred him to yet another car for the long drive to the stash house. The gang took Bremer to a farmhouse in Illinois where Alvin Karpis took on the role of babysitter like he had with William Hamm. Unfortunately for Karpis, Edward Bremer was not William Hamm. William Hamm had not complained or asked questions or made any fuss whatsoever. Edward Bremer was a pain in the ass. He complained about everything. He made it loudly known that the room temperature wasn't comfortable and the food was garbage. He whined about his headache, which was fair. But since he argued with Karpis about everything, including his own identity, when he claimed

• 13:43Speaker 01

  he was not Edward Bremer, Karpis had little sympathy for Bremer's pains. Bremer annoyed Karpis to the point where Karpis was nearly ready to pay money to get rid of Bremer. The problem was excruciating because the kidnapping dragged on far longer than the gang members dreamed it would. The William Hamm operation had been done in four days. The Bremer kidnapping blew past the four day mark with no end in sight. Fred Getz, Doc Barker, and Volney Davis basically lived in their cars as they drove ransom notes and communications back and forth between the Illinois farmhouse and Bremer's family in St. Paul. It became clear that Edward Bremer inherited his stubbornness from his father Adolf.

• 14:27Speaker 01

  When Adolf received the first ransom note with the demand for $200,000, he scoffed. He demanded proof of life and tried to cut the ransom in half to $100,000. Negotiations, demands, and counterdemands stretched the first couple days into a week, and then one week into two, and then two weeks into three. The FBI was involved from the start, as expected, and it was possible that agents started suspecting Detective Tom Brown as an ally of the gang because he suddenly went dark. Brown had secretly informed the gang of the inner workings of the investigation, and at some point, the involvement of an inside man likely became apparent to the FBI.

• 15:11Speaker 01

  Brown stopped communicating with the gang. The stalemate in the negotiating process finally broke when investigators discovered Bremer's car caked in blood. Convinced he was dead and the kidnappers were acting in bad faith, the authorities forced the gang to provide reliable proof that Edward was alive. Adolf Bremer finally believed the proof of life notes the gang kept delivering, and he complied with the $200,000 demand. After 21 days, during which Alvin Karpis felt he had suffered nearly as much as Edward Bremer, the gang received the ransom money. To avoid fingerprint detection, the gang burned the clothes Edward wore during the kidnapping.

• 15:53Speaker 01

  They dressed him in fresh gear and drove him to Minnesota on February 7th, 1934. The gang dumped him by a snowdrift near a train station and didn't bother to tell his family he'd been released. The Barker-Karpis gang was thoroughly sick of Edward Bremer. Edward Bremer made his way home and reunited with his family. Similar to William Hamm, Bremer was not able to provide the FBI with many details about his captors. The FBI would need to rely on tracking the ransom money to find them. The Barker gang worried that the money could be marked in some way, so they hired a man to clean it.

• 16:36Speaker 01

  The details of the plan are sketchy, but the man was supposed to take some or all of it to Mexico City. Unfortunately for the gang, their laundry man didn't tell him he planned to make a stop in Havana, Cuba before going to Mexico. The decision was seemingly innocent at the time, but it would cause trouble for Alvin Karpis in a few months. So while Edward Bremer tried to settle back into his old life and the man with the money started his international trip to launder it, the gang convened in Chicago. After committing yet another major crime in St. Paul, and with the loss of their inside man Detective Brown, they were not welcome or safe in the city. But they would soon realize they weren't safe anywhere.

• 17:19Speaker 01

  The Barker-Karpis gang had no way of knowing it, but the Bremer kidnapping would be their last crime together as a group. 1933 had been the year of the gangster. Infamous celebrity criminals ran wild all over the country. In 1934, they started to fall, one way or another. Fred Getz was the first to fall who was connected to the Barker gang. He was shot and killed on March 21st, 1934 in front of a tavern in Chicago. Rumor was that Frank Nitti, who took over the Italian mob in Chicago from Al Capone, ordered the hit. 10 days later, lawmen raided John Dillinger's apartment in Chicago. Dillinger escaped, but his accomplice Eddie Green did not.

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  Green had worked with the Barker gang on a robbery in Fairbury, Nebraska one year earlier. Green had been shot during the raid on the Chicago apartment, and while he was doped up on pain meds in the hospital, he rambled about the Barker-Karpis gang. Eddie Green died a few days later, and then his wife took over. She spilled even more details and confirmed the Barker-Karpis gang had committed the Edward Bremer kidnapping. With that information, the FBI worked backward and started connecting members of the gang to crimes dating all the way back to the murder of Sheriff Roy Kelly in Howell County, Missouri in 1931. Fred Barker and Alvin Karpis had no idea the net was closing so quickly.

• 18:49Speaker 01

  But they found out in a scary way. In April 1934, Ma, Fred, and Alvin went to a movie in Chicago. Suddenly, the faces of Fred and Alvin popped up on the big screen alongside John Dillinger and babyface Nelson. They were called public enemies, and they were wanted by the FBI. When Ma, Fred, and Alvin left the theater, they knew it was time to split up. Doc Barker had started dating a woman in Chicago, and he refused to leave. Byron Bolton stayed behind as well. Volney Davis, William Weaver, and Harry Campbell went their separate ways. And Ma Barker, Fred Barker, and Alvin Karpis headed east to Cleveland, Ohio.

• 19:32Speaker 01

  One month later, they learned Bonnie and Clyde had been ambushed and killed by law enforcement in Louisiana. In Ohio, Alvin Karpis started dating a woman named Dolores. And at the end of July 1934, Alvin and Dolores were at a movie theater in Cleveland when they saw a newsreel that said John Dillinger, public enemy number one, had been killed in Chicago, coincidentally, after leaving a movie theater. At that point, the gang members accelerated their plans to run and hide. Ma and Fred hustled south to Lake Weir outside Ocala, Florida, on the road between Ocala and Orlando. Alvin Karpis and Dolores went all the way to Cuba, which was where they were staying

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  when they learned that the second public enemy number one, Pretty Boy Floyd, had been killed in October, and the third, Baby Face Nelson, had been killed in November. And with the fall of Nelson, Alvin Karpis had been elevated to the fourth and final public enemy number one. Worst of all, Karpis then learned that the FBI had tracked some of the Bremer ransom money to Cuba. FBI agents were prowling the island, not because they had tracked Karpis, but because the man they had paid to launder the money had made a secret detour. In December 1934, Karpis and Dolores, who was seven months pregnant, abandoned Cuba and headed for Florida to see Ma and Fred Barker.

• 20:57Speaker 01

  Karpis set Dolores up in Miami, and then he bought a car and drove five hours north to Lake Weir. Ma, using the name Mrs. Blackburn, had rented a nice two-story cottage on the lake, and they had a happy reunion in the last couple weeks of December. The group fished during the day and hosted parties in the evenings. Harry Campbell, who had been part of the Bremer kidnapping, joined them in Florida. Doc Barker drove down from Chicago to celebrate the New Year, without realizing, of course, it would be the last peaceful gathering of the Barker-Karpis gang. In the first week of January 1935, Alvin Karpis drove back down to Miami to be with Dolores, who was now eight months pregnant.

• 21:39Speaker 01

  And Doc Barker drove up to Chicago to be with his girlfriend, just in time for the FBI to come knocking.

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• 23:15Speaker 01

  On January 8, 1935, the FBI raided the Chicago apartment of Doc Barker's girlfriend and arrested Doc and Byron Bolton. Doc endured a relentless 24-hour interrogation without wavering, but Byron Bolton broke. He spilled everything, all the way back to his role in the St. Valentine's Day massacre in Chicago in 1929, where he was a lookout, then to the robberies and kidnappings he committed with the Barker gang. He told the FBI he'd heard Ma and Fred were hiding at a lake in Florida, though he'd never been there himself. The Florida story initially seemed far-fetched, but during a search of Doc's apartment, agents

• 23:56Speaker 01

  found a map of Lake Weir, with the area where Ma and Fred lived circled in red. The FBI descended on Florida, teaming up with local law enforcement to tighten the net around Lake Weir. Agents kept Ma and Fred under surveillance for days and eventually confirmed that the mother and son who lived at the cottage were Ma and Fred Barker. At nightfall on January 15, 1935, a squad of FBI agents surrounded the house. They hoped to take Ma and Fred alive, as they had with Doc and Byron, but they also brought machine guns in case it went the other way. The agents spent all night guarding the perimeter and then moved in at 5:30 the next morning.

• 24:39Speaker 01

  Dawn was just beginning to break behind them when an agent pounded on the front door and shouted, "We're the Department of Justice. Come on out. Your house is surrounded." For a moment, there was silence. Then Ma Barker shouted, "Go ahead." Standing in a doorway in the front of the house, Fred Barker opened fire with a tommy gun at the agents outside. For nearly six hours, Ma and Fred sustained a gun battle with the FBI. Close to 2,000 rounds shredded the house, interspersed with volleys of tear gas from the agents. Between bursts of gunfire, agents shouted commands to surrender. Each one was answered with a barrage from inside the house.

• 25:24Speaker 01

  But at 11:30 a.m., the house fell silent. As noon approached, the lack of return fire suggested the siege had ended. But the FBI remained cautious. Willie Woodbury and his wife were caretakers who lived in a shack on the property. They had huddled in their home during the firefight, and now, agents demanded Willie enter the main house to check for survivors. Willie was terrified, but he obeyed. The FBI and Willie were banking on the hope that the Barkers wouldn't shoot a friend. Willie crept into a bedroom and found Ma and Fred lying together. Both were dead. Fred's head rested on Ma's lap, and it appeared she had been tending to his wounds when a

• 26:08Speaker 01

  bullet struck her in the head. The official police report painted a grittier picture. It said Fred was found face down, riddled with bullets, with a gun in his hand. Ma lay nearby, barefoot in a nightgown, still gripping a tommy gun. The polar opposite accounts suggest they were both exaggerated for effect. One in the direction of the tragic martyrs, mother and son, and the other toward two hardened criminals who went down in a blaze of glory and tried to take as many with them as possible. Fred Barker was 33 years old. Ma Barker, who was born Arizona Clark before adopting the name Kate near the time she married George Barker, was 61.

• 26:50Speaker 01

  That afternoon in Miami, Harry Campbell and Alvin Karpis returned from a fishing trip to find Alvin's girlfriend Dolores hysterical. She broke the news that Alvin's best friend and the woman he viewed as a second mother were gone. Grief and sadness overwhelmed Karpis. Harry was devastated but relieved. He had been scheduled to return to Lake Weir the previous night, while he knew now the FBI had been surrounding the cottage. Luckily, he had stayed in Miami for one last day of fishing. That decision saved his life. But the relief didn't last. Knowing they were next, Alvin and Harry grabbed Dolores and Harry's girlfriend Wynona and ran north to Atlantic City, New Jersey.

• 27:35Speaker 01

  The FBI was hot on their heels. Agents tracked the gangsters and their girlfriends and nearly captured public enemy number one. The day before the outlaws planned to leave Atlantic City, agents found them at their hotel. In an alley on the side of the building, Campbell and Karpis traded gunshots with lawmen as the outlaws rushed toward the parking garage to get their car. Campbell and Karpis made it to the car and sped back toward the hotel to pick up their girlfriends, but the women were gone. The FBI had captured Wynona and Dolores, who was now nine months pregnant. Days later, while deep in hiding, Alvin Karpis read the news that his son had been born.

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  On the run and desperate for cash, Alvin Karpis and Harry Campbell went on a crime spree for the rest of 1935, culminating in the eerie railroad train robbery in Garrettsville, Ohio on November 7. Working with a small crew, Karpis and Campbell executed the heist flawlessly. They escaped with $46,000 in cash and bonds, more than a million dollars today. It would go down as the last great train robbery in American history. After the heist, Harry Campbell hid in Toledo, Ohio, while Alvin Karpis went south. For months, the Bureau shadowed Karpis, and finally, on May 1, 1936, they sprung the trap.

• 29:04Speaker 01

  In the evening, Karpis was cruising through New Orleans when a car swerved in front of him and forced him to make a hard stop. Agents swarmed Karpis's vehicle and took the longest-running Public Enemy Number One into custody. Karpis had held the title for 18 months, far longer than Dillinger, Floyd, or Nelson. Harry Campbell was arrested six days later in Toledo. Karpis faced the music first in Minnesota for the kidnappings of William Hamm and Edward Bremer, and then in Missouri for the murder of Sheriff Roy Kelly. After the convictions, he was sent to the relatively new federal prison on an island in San Francisco Bay.

• 29:44Speaker 01

  Alcatraz, the new home for the worst of the worst, opened in August of 1934. Alvin Karpis arrived in August of 1936, where he joined other celebrity inmates like Al Capone. After Doc Barker had been arrested in Chicago a week before Ma and Fred died, he had been convicted of the Bremer kidnapping, and he joined Karpis at Alcatraz, though Doc didn't stay nearly as long as Karpis. In January 1939, Doc and four other inmates sawed through the bars of their cells and made it out of their cell blocks, but they could not escape the island. Doc Barker was shot by prison guards and died of his wounds, and the other four inmates were recaptured.

• 30:29Speaker 01

  Arthur "Doc" Barker was 39 years old, and he was buried in Olivet Memorial Park in Colma, California. By that time, Lloyd Barker, one of the middle brothers, was the only Barker left. George Barker, the father who had left the family in 1922 after it became clear that Ma and the four boys would spend their lives as unrepentant outlaws, had lived a quiet life of solitude. On January 18, 1935, two days after Ma and Fred died in Florida, George learned along with the rest of the world that Doc had been arrested 10 days before the shootout at Lake Weir. Ma and Fred went to their graves never knowing that Doc had gone to prison, or that the

• 31:13Speaker 01

  Lake Weir map in his possession led the feds right to their cottage. But George knew. His eldest son Herman had taken his own life in 1927 when he was cornered by police after he killed two lawmen. George's middle sons Lloyd and Doc were in prison, and his youngest son Fred and his wife Kate were dead. George fought the FBI to reclaim personal belongings from the cottage, but he was only awarded their bodies, after they had been displayed at a funeral home like carnival attractions. After legal fees, he could only afford unremarkable plaques at their gravesites. On September 25, 1935, George stood alone at Williams Timber Hills Cemetery in Oklahoma,

• 31:57Speaker 01

  where Herman was buried. Fred and Ma were buried in the same ground, with Ma's simple plaque reading, "The darkest night shall end in a bright day." Four years later, in 1939, Doc Barker was killed while trying to escape from Alcatraz, and that made three of four sons dead. George Barker died of natural causes two years later, in 1941. And then there was one. Lloyd Barker, the brother who was least involved in the family's crimes because of a brief stint in the Army in World War I, and a much longer stint at Leavenworth Prison after robbing a mail carrier in Kansas in 1921, finally earned his freedom long after his

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  family was dead. He served every day of his 25-year prison sentence, and he was released from Leavenworth in 1947. He drifted to Chicago to start over, and for a brief time, he succeeded. He found work at a restaurant, made friends, bought a home, and married a woman named Jenny. But he was destined for a similar fate as his brothers, though more tragic. On March 18, 1949, Lloyd left work early to help his wife, who was suffering a mental health episode. As he walked through the door, Jenny shot him in the head. Lloyd was buried in an unmarked grave in Brighton, Colorado, by coworkers who had no idea they were burying a member of the infamous Barker clan.

• 33:27Speaker 01

  By that time, Alvin "Creepy" Karpis had been at Alcatraz for 13 years, and he would serve a total of 25 years, only leaving when the prison closed in 1963. In addition to his honor as the gangster who held the title of Public Enemy Number One the longest, Karpis was also the longest-serving prisoner in Alcatraz history. He was transferred to McNeil Island in Washington State and finally paroled in 1969 after 33 years behind bars. In prison, he was known as sharp, polite, and an engaging storyteller, which contrasted with a list of crimes so long it would take an hour to read it. He was deported to Canada and then moved to Spain, and he spent much of his time writing

• 34:11Speaker 01

  two books about his unique life story. He was one of very few criminals who had survived prohibition in the roaring 20s, the Great Depression in the heyday of the American gangster in the 1930s, and lived to old age. And he was the only man who had survived 25 years at Alcatraz. But on August 29, 1979, just before the release of his second book, Alvin Karpis was found dead in his apartment at 71 years old. A bottle of sleeping pills near his body fueled rumors of suicide. But those who knew Karpis didn't buy it. They all made some version of the statement, "You don't survive 33 years in a cage, mostly

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  at Alcatraz, just to kill yourself after 10 years of freedom." The death certificate ultimately ruled it a heart attack, but the stigma lingered. The Barker/Karpis gang stole roughly $3 million and is credited with killing 30 people. They amassed more money than any other bank robber of the era, and killed more people than John Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, Babyface Nelson, and Bonnie and Clyde combined.

• 35:19Speaker 01

  FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover said it best, "They were the toughest gang we ever cracked." Next time on Infamous America, it's one of the darkest and wildest stories we've ever told, and remarkably few have ever heard it. While Attica receives most of the attention, it was nowhere near the most violent prison riot in American history. The destructive uprising at New Mexico State Prison in Santa Fe in 1980 is the worst by a country mile.

• 36:02Speaker 01

  You'll understand what I mean, and the story is not for the faint of heart. Next time on Infamous America. 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.

• 36:46Speaker 00

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