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SPEAKER_00: Hi, it's Jenny. We're currently gearing up for season three of Encyclopedia Wamanica. In the meantime, we're mixing things up, bringing back some of our favorite episodes in many week-longish themes. Our current theme is troublemakers. Stay tuned for a brand new season coming in September. Thanks for listening. Hello, from Wonder Media Network, I'm Jenny Kaplan, and this is Encyclopedia Wamanica. Today we're heading back to the 1920s in the Midwestern United States to talk about a woman who J. Edgar Hoover probably unfairly described as the most vicious, dangerous, and resourceful criminal brain of the last decade. Let's talk about Ma Barker. Arizona Donnie Clark was born in Ash Grove, Missouri, an Ozark mountain town, in 1872. Her family and early neighbors were poor and well-versed in the outlaw mentality necessary to survive in what was then the Wild West. From an early age, Arizona was familiar with crime. Arizona would become known by many names throughout her life. The second that she used frequently was Kate. Kate married a man named George Barker who held a variety of low-skilled jobs. The couple had four sons, giving rise to Arizona's most famous nickname, Ma Barker. The Barkers paid little to no attention to their son's education, leaving them largely illiterate. What they did develop was a penchant for crime. Three of the sons, Herman, Arthur, and Fred, became known as the Bloody Barkers and formed one of the most notorious gangs of the era, the Barker-Carpus Gang. The fourth brother, Lloyd, was a loner, but didn't stay out of trouble any better than the rest. He spent 25 years in prison, and after a long time he spent 25 years in prison and after release was killed by his wife. The Barker sons began committing crimes at least as early as 1910. That year, Herman was arrested for highway robbery after running over a child with the getaway car. That was just the beginning. In subsequent years, the brothers were involved in crimes of increasing seriousness. Their activities spanned throughout the Midwest, from Minnesota to Texas. Ma's contribution to the gang's robberies and kidnappings was well documented. Many believe her role was as motherly support to her villainous sons while they traveled around the country. There's no proof that Ma killed anyone herself. In 1927, Ma split up with her husband, George Barker, who wasn't part of the criminal gang. Some accounts say she abandoned him, and others say he left because living with his criminal family became intolerable. The FBI claimed that George left Ma because she had become loose in her moral life. That same year, 1927, Ma and George's eldest son, Herman, died in Wichita, Kansas, after a robbery and confrontation with police in which he shot and killed an officer. Herman killed himself to avoid prosecution after getting seriously wounded crashing his car. The following year, all three other sons were imprisoned in different locations. By 1930, she'd shacked up with a jobless man named Arthur Dunlop. That ended up not being great news for Arthur. Things improved for Ma when one of her sons, Fred, was released in 1931. He joined forces with the former prison mate, Alvin Karpis, to form the Barker-Karpis gang. The duo committed a series of robberies. Then, in December of that year, they killed Sheriff C. Roy Kelly in West Plains, Missouri, and were forced to flee the territory. Ma and Arthur Dunlop traveled with them. But Arthur had a problem. The gang believed he was loose-lipped once he had a couple of drinks, and they blamed him for almost getting caught by the police. As a consequence, the gang murdered him with a single bullet wound to the head. The gang continued their activities in Wisconsin. Fred Barker hid his mother in a variety of hotels and hideouts to keep her from learning much about the gang's crimes, and also to separate her from the crew's girlfriends. The FBI later claimed that Ma would try to break up any relationships, so women in the gang avoided her. In 1933, they carried out kidnappings of two wealthy businessmen in St. Paul, obtaining a total of $300,000 in ransom. But the FBI was closing in. With a new method of latent fingerprint identification, the FBI got word of the gang's location. When they arrived, however, they found just Fred and Ma in the house. Fred opened fire, and he and Ma were both killed by federal agents after an intense, hours-long shootout. The ordeal took so long that locals supposedly came to watch and even had picnics during the shootout. Ma Barker is often portrayed as the gang's leader and mastermind in films such as Ma Barker's Killer Brood, Bloody Mama, and Public Enemies.
SPEAKER_06: How come I gotta swipe the money? Because that's the way Ma planned it.
SPEAKER_00: In reality, that's likely not true. One gang member, Alvin Karpis, suggested that J. Edgar Hoover and the fledgling FBI encouraged that story to justify the fact that they had killed an old woman. Alvin Karpis described Ma Barker as an old-fashioned homebody from the Ozarks, superstitious, gullible, simple, cantankerous, and, well, generally law-abiding. As always, we're taking a break for the weekend, but we'll be back on Monday with the story of another fascinating villainess. We'll be heading back to 16th-century Hungary. Special thanks to the one and only Liz Kaplan, my sister and the genius researcher behind this collection of women. Talk to you on Monday.
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