If you were to ask the FBI in the 1930s who is the most dangerous mobster in all of America, the answer would be extremely simple: Ma Barker.
In fact, if you address him its dark director, Edgar Hoover, he would tell you that he is "the most vicious, dangerous and inventive criminal brain of the last decade".
But who was the mother of the infamous Barker-Carpis conspiracy that oversaw the entire operation as her sons robbed banks, snatched people, murdered atrocities and terrorized the United States in the 1920s and 1930s?
A gangster mom who managed to do something else, just as great: to become beloved by the general public, playing on her fingers all the clichés of dramatizing marginalization.
Ma stole America's collective fantasy, making people love and hate her at the same time. He was one of the most temperamental figures in American society, a vicious mobster who went so far as to become a popular hero.
Maybe it's his fault that it was a traditional American family that the unfortunate circumstances just turned into a crime syndicate. But the mum always there, to dominate the affairs of the family. Dad couldn't stand it and left…
Arizona Clark was born in 1873 in a Missouri town to a woman who would live in the black crime scene as Ma Barker. She was the daughter of a family with Scottish and Irish roots and, as the FBI report tells us, nothing remarkable characterized her childhood ("ordinary").
The legend wants her to see him as a young girl Wild West legend, Jesse James, and his gang to pass through the city, instilling in her childish soul a mood for adventure and illegality.
No one knows the truth or lies, but we know that he actually fell in love with a petty bastard, a George Barker. The FBI describes him as "more or less useless".
In 1892 she married him and began to use "Kate" as a small name. They rented a house in another Missouri county and had 4 children. Herman, Lloyd, Arthur and Clark named them and they all lived in poverty. The father changed jobs, legal jobs now, like shirts and did not land anywhere.
Between 1903-1904 they even moved from house to house. By the time Herman finished elementary school, they lived in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And by primary school they all had to go to school, as the parents did not care to teach the children letters, as his document tells us FBI, which characterizes them as "more or less illiterate";
Growing up, one by one Kate's children turned to lawlessness and crime. Which was getting bigger and bigger. The first conviction of her eldest son, Herman, came in 1915, when he was arrested for armed robbery.
For the next few years, all of the Herman brothers were regular gang members. They operated in their own neighborhood of Tulsa and began gaining a first name in the local crime syndicate.
Barker had no moral problems with the path her sons had taken. He neither quarreled with them nor tried to rebuke them. Everyone had heard her mourn her permanent return if someone complained to her about her pride: "If the good people of this city do not appreciate my boys, then these good people know what to do."
The incident that changed everything came on August 29, 1927. Herman committed suicide to avoid arrest. Police had launched a manhunt against him because he had shot a police officer in the mouth.
By next year, the other three Barkers were in prison. Lloyd is in Kansas, Arthur is in Oklahoma, and Fred is in another Kansas penitentiary.
Ma badly expels her husband from the house and for the next three years (1928-1931), until her son came out of the strait, she lived in tragic conditions of misery.
Some researchers agree that George left home voluntarily because he could not stand the life his children had chosen, always with the consent of his wife…
But things would suddenly change for Ma in the spring of 1931, when Fred was unexpectedly released from prison. He brought with him to his paternal home one of his inmates, an Alvin Karpis, not by chance.
The two inmates had decided to expand their criminal activities and their mother's house was a first-class hideout. Before turning into the headquarters of a very productive gang Prohibition of liquor for the next five years.
The FBI even described her as even more ruthless than John Dillinger's conspiracy, since Ma's children did not only commit thefts and robberies. Their burden was the abductions.
The kidnappings were also considered much worse than the bank robberies, as the crime was now directed against defenseless citizens. And not omnipotent financial institutions.
On December 18, 1931, Fred and Alvin robbed a department store in Missouri. The next day they went to a workshop to change the two flat tires. There he found them sheriff Roy Kelly, who was shot four times by Fred. Two bullets found him in the heart.
As police killers, they knew they did not have much time ahead of them. It was indeed this event that triggered a frantic whirlwind of crime, which included robberies, kidnappings and murders.
This time, the mom is described for the first time as an "accomplice" by the law enforcement authorities. And now she is wanted, with the state offering a $ 100 reward for her arrest.
In September 1932, upon their release from prison, Arthur and Lloyd immediately joined the family union. They move to Chicago and continue their criminal activity, but they have someone against them… Al Capone.
The "Marked" proposed peace and alliance to the gang, but Alvin did not want to cooperate with anything. And so they leave the city at night.
They move to a small town in Minnesota, known for the lawlessness and paradise it offered to all kinds of criminals. This is where the Barker-Carpis spiral will gain all its notoriety, with a host of bank robberies and kidnappings.
They see you unharmed and are not afraid of anyone, having secured the protection, but also the cooperation, of the corrupt police commander of the city.
In December 1932, the spiral robbed another bank in Minneapolis, but this time the incident ended in a bloodbath. Two police officers and a civilian were killed. The criminals managed to escape and no one would get back on their feet.
After all, they have now turned to an even more lucrative and safer job: kidnappings. The kidnappings of two well-known businessmen in the city bring a rich ransom of 100.000 and 200.000 dollars, respectively.
The only one who spoils their sugar is the FBI. With a new marking technique he had just recruited, where he could say he could now identify criminals with his fingerprints, the FBI linked them to the kidnapping of businessmen.
What the criminals did not expect was the personal friendship of one of the victims with the American president Roosevelt, who made so much noise that the FBI threw them all behind them.
Feeling the federalists on their necks, the 25-year-old Barker-Carpis nomads leave their little paradise and return to Chicago, wanting to launder the ransom money.
In January 1935, Arthur was arrested by FBI agents in Chicago. From a map they found on it they learned about the new hideout of the spiral, lost somewhere in the deserts of Florida.
Federalists surrounded the house and called in special police forces. At dawn on January 16, 1935, shortly after 5:30 a.m., the FBI asked them to surrender. What the agents did not know was that the other members of the ring had left two days earlier, leaving only the mother and son inside the house.
A quarter of an hour later, the delivery order was heard again and a few minutes later someone shouted from inside the house: "Okay, go ahead." The Special Forces they realized that the tenants were ready to surrender. A few minutes later, however, they were gassed with machine guns!
And it was a real battle. It took four whole hours of exchanging fire to calm the situation in the house. A funeral silence had now spread over the house. When the federalists rushed in, they found both dead.
But Fred also carried bullets in his body and the automatic cannon still in their hands.
The head of the family in all FBI documents, but also of the local police departments, is said to be the mother.
However, this may not be entirely true. Hoover had launched a campaign to discredit his mother, who to some seemed to be synonymous with a popular heroine. The FBI propaganda may have been aimed at justifying, in the eyes of the world, the murder of an elderly woman. Hoover wanted her dead, not behind bars.
Where once Ma's capital role in the family's dark businesses was undeniable, researchers nowadays hold a smaller basket.
Karpis himself had once stated that Barker was "just a traditional housewife; a simple woman." In fact, adding that she was "precautionary, trustworthy, stern and, you see, generally law-abiding. It was not made for a place in the Carpis-Barker gang. "
Later in his autobiography, he returned to the subject, emphasizing: "The most ridiculous story in the history of crime is that Ma Barker was the mastermind behind the Carpis-Barker gang."
She continues: "She was not a criminal boss, not even a criminal herself… She knew we were criminals, but her involvement in our careers was limited to one simple function: when we traveled together, we traveled as a mom with her children. What could seem more innocent?
Was it just a mother who was unhappy to see her children take the wrong path? A mom who accepted the situation and went with their waters? Or was it the morbid brain behind a terrifying crime syndicate, America's "smartest and most dangerous gang," as Hoover wanted it?