WOMEN MOBSTERS & THEIR GANG (1): KATE BARKER
She was born in Arizona. Her family called her “Arrie”. Her official name was Donnie Clark, eventually known as “Ma Barker” or “Arizona Barker”. She married George Barker in Lawrence County, Missouri and the couple had 4 sons: Herman, Lloyd, Arthur, and Fred. They were all illiterate, and the children were not provided with any formal education.
George Barker lived in Tulsa City with his wife until 1928. It was not known if she threw him out of the house, or if he decided to leave when life became intolerable with his criminal family. The FBI claimed that George left Ma because she had become “loose in her moral life” and was “having outside dates with other men”. They noted that George was not a criminal, but he profited from his sons’ crimes after their deaths, by claiming their assets as next of kin.
“Ma Barker” eventually became the matriarch of several American criminals who ran the Barker-Karpis Gang during the era that mobsters and gangs were referred to as “public enemies”, at the turn of the 20th century. She was “public enemy №1” because she actively participated in the activities of the gang traveling with her sons. Their notorious exploits gripped the press and the public in the Midwestern US. She gained the reputation of a ruthless criminal who organized and controlled her sons’ criminal activities.
“Ma Barker” (Kate), led her sons’ gang and rose to infamy in the FBI’s pursuits. She organized a slew of robberies, murders, and kidnappings throughout the American Midwest during the early 1930s. Their criminal activities started in 1910 with robberies and progressively increased to murders, gaining rapid notoriety and momentum over the following years. They were inducted into major crimes by the Central Park gang.
From 1928 to 1930, Ma lived in “miserable poverty” in a “dirt-floor shack” with no husband and no job, while all her sons were in jail. This may have been when she became “loose” with local men, as the FBI suggested. By 1930, she was living with a jobless man named Arthur W. Dunlop in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Things improved for her in 1931 after her son Fred was released from jail. He joined former prison-mate Alvin Karpis to form the Barker-Karpis Gang. After a series of robberies, Fred and Karpis killed a Sheriff on December 19, 1931, an act that forced them to flee the territory. Ma and Dunlop traveled with them, using various false names during their itinerant crime career. A wanted poster issued at this time offered a 100$ reward for the capture of “Old Lady Arrie Barker” as an accomplice. After this, she was usually known to gang members as “Kate”.
Ma’s common-law husband Arthur Dunlop was said to be loose-lipped when drunk, and he was not trusted by members of the gang; Arthur Karpis was released from prison in 1932 and joined Fred. Karpis described him as a “pain in the ass”. The gang believed that Dunlop’s loose lips had given them away, and they murdered him while traveling. His naked body was found near Webster, Wisconsin with a single bullet wound to the head.
The gang relocated to Menomonie, Wisconsin, and Fred Barker hid Ma in a variety of hotels and hideouts during their stay there. The purpose was to keep her from learning much about the gang’s crimes, as well as to separate her from their girlfriends, with whom she did not get along. The FBI later claimed that she would try to break up relationships, so that “other women in the gang” did their best to avoid her. By 1933, most of the gang were back in St. Paul where they carried out two kidnappings of wealthy businessmen.
The Director of the FBI J. Edgar Hoover, described her as, “the most vicious, dangerous, and resourceful criminal brain of the last decade” (circa 1935). He also claimed that she enjoyed the lifestyle that was the fruit of her sons’ crimes and supposedly had a string of lovers. Their Barker-Karpis Gang committed a spree of robberies, kidnappings, and other crimes between 1931 and 1935, but no conclusive proof that Ma was their leader could be found. Ironically, those who knew her allege that she had no criminal role and Hoover’s accusation was a cover-up to excuse her death by his agents at a shootout on January 16, 1935. She and her son Fred met their deaths in what was the “longest shootout in FBI history”, in a home they turned into their hideout in Florida.
FBI agents discovered the hideout of Barker and her son Fred after Arthur was arrested in Chicago on January 8, 1935. A map found in his possession indicated that other gang members were in Ocklawaha, Florida. The FBI soon located the house where the gang was staying after identifying references to a local restaurant.
Agents surrounded the house at 13250 East Highway C-25 on the morning of January 16, 1935. The FBI was not aware that Karpis and other gang members had left three days before, leaving only Fred and Ma in the house. The agents ordered them to surrender, but Fred opened fire; both he and his mother were killed by federal agents after an intense, hours-long shootout. Allegedly, many local people came to watch the events unfolding, even holding picnics during the gunfire. Gunfire from the house finally stopped, and the FBI ordered local estate handyman Willie Woodbury to enter the house wearing a bulletproof vest. Woodbury reported that there was no one inside alive.
Both bodies were found in the same front bedroom. Fred’s body was riddled with bullets, but Ma appeared to have died from a single bullet wound. According to the FBI’s account, a Tommy gun was found lying in her hands. Other sources say that it was lying between the bodies of Ma and Fred. Their bodies were put on public display, and then stored unclaimed until October 1, 1935, when relatives had them buried at Williams Timberhill Cemetery in Welch, Oklahoma, next to the body of Herman Barker.
Ma Barker’s children were murderers. She certainly knew of the gang’s activities and even helped them before and after they committed their crimes, and this made her an accomplice. Her role was taking care of gang members, who often sent her to the movies while they committed crimes. Alvin Karpis was probably the real leader of the gang, and he later said that Ma was just “an old-fashioned homebody from the Ozarks, superstitious, gullible, simple, cantankerous and, well, generally law abiding”.
Sammy RNAJ
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