Alvin Francis Karpis nicknamed
"Creepy" for his sinister smile, was an American criminal known for his alliance with the
Barker gangKate "Ma" Barker was the mother of several criminals who ran the Barker gang from the "public enemy era", when the exploits of gangs of criminals in the U.S. Midwest gripped the American people and press...
in the 1930s. He was the last "
public enemyPublic Enemy is an American hip hop group consisting of Chuck D, Flavor Flav, Professor Griff and his S1W group, DJ Lord , and Music Director Khari Wynn...
" to be taken.
Early life
Karpis was born to Lithuanian immigrants in
MontrealMontreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
,
QuebecQuebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
,
CanadaCanada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, and was raised in
TopekaTopeka |Kansa]]: Tó Pee Kuh) is the capital city of the U.S. state of Kansas and the county seat of Shawnee County. It is situated along the Kansas River in the central part of Shawnee County, located in northeast Kansas, in the Central United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was...
,
KansasKansas is a US state located in the Midwestern United States. It is named after the Kansas River which flows through it, which in turn was named after the Kansa Native American tribe, which inhabited the area. The tribe's name is often said to mean "people of the wind" or "people of the south...
. He started in crime at about age 10 running around with gamblers, bootleggers, and pimps. In 1926, he was sentenced to 10 years at the State Industrial Reformatory in
HutchinsonHutchinson is the largest city in and the county seat of Reno County, Kansas, United States, northwest of Wichita, on the Arkansas River. It has been home to salt mines since 1887, thus its nickname of "Salt City", but locals call it "Hutch"...
, Kansas, for an attempted burglary. He escaped with another inmate Lawrence De Vol and went on a year-long crime spree interrupted briefly while he lived with his parents after De Vol was arrested. After moving to
Kansas CityKansas City, Missouri is the largest city in the U.S. state of Missouri and is the anchor city of the Kansas City Metropolitan Area, the second largest metropolitan area in Missouri. It encompasses in parts of Jackson, Clay, Cass, and Platte counties...
,
MissouriMissouri is a US state located in the Midwestern United States, bordered by Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. With a 2010 population of 5,988,927, Missouri is the 18th most populous state in the nation and the fifth most populous in the Midwest. It...
, he was caught stealing a car and sent back to the Reformatory. Transferred to the Kansas State Penitentiary in Lansing, Kansas, he met Fred Barker who was in prison for bank burglary. Barker was one of the notorious members of the "Bloody Barkers" as the newspapers of the time had called them. The Barker family included the brothers Herman, Lloyd, Arthur or "Doc," and Fred, the sons of
Ma BarkerKate "Ma" Barker was the mother of several criminals who ran the Barker gang from the "public enemy era", when the exploits of gangs of criminals in the U.S. Midwest gripped the American people and press...
. Growing up impoverished in a sharecropping family, all the boys soon turned into hardened criminals, robbing banks and killing without provocation. Doc was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1920 after murdering a night watchman. Herman committed suicide on August 29, 1927, after being badly injured in a shootout with police in Wichita, Kansas following the robbery of the Newton Ice Plant in Newton, KS with Charles Stalcup and Porter Meeks. Lloyd was sentenced to 25 years in 1922, for mail theft and released in 1938; he was a US Army Cook at a POW camp and then was murdered by his own wife in 1949. Ma did her part to help her sons. "Ma" Barker was not herself a criminal, she did nevertheless badger parole boards, wardens, and governors for the release of her boys when they were incarcerated. After Alvin was released in 1931, he joined up with Fred Barker in Tulsa,
OklahomaOklahoma is a state located in the South Central region of the United States of America. With an estimated 3,751,351 residents as of the 2010 census and a land area of 68,667 square miles , Oklahoma is the 28th most populous and 20th-largest state...
, and they soon put together the Karpis-Barker gang.
Alliance with Barkers
The Karpis-Barker gang became one of the most formidable criminal gangs of the 1930s. They did not hesitate to kill anyone who got in their way, even innocent bystanders. On December 19, 1931, Karpis and Fred Barker killed Sheriff C. Roy Kelley, who was investigating their robbery of a store in West Plains, Missouri. The gang, including Ma Barker and her paramour Arthur Dunlop, fled to St. Paul, Minnesota.
In 1933, they kidnapped William Hamm, a millionaire
MinnesotaMinnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...
brewer. His ransom netted them $100,000. Shortly after this, they abducted Minnesota banker Edward Bremer, Jr., whose ransom brought them $200,000. The group was led by Alvin, who had a
photographic memoryEidetic , commonly referred to as photographic memory, is a medical term, popularly defined as the ability to recall images, sounds, or objects in memory with extreme precision and in abundant volume. The word eidetic, referring to extraordinarily detailed and vivid recall not limited to, but...
and was described as "super-smart" by fellow gang member Fred Hunter. The other leaders were Doc and Fred, both now out of prison, and the gang included about 25 others. At this time a myth was started that Ma Barker ruled the gang with an iron fist, but the facts do not seem to support these claims. It is highly unlikely that criminals as adept as Karpis, and even Ma's sons for that matter, would have listened to her. Karpis later wrote about this subject in his memoirs:
- "Ma was always somebody in our lives. Love didn't enter into it really. She was somebody we looked after and took with us when we moved city to city, hideout to hideout. It is no insult to Ma's memory that she just didn't have the know-how to direct us on a robbery. It would not have occurred to her to get involved in our business, and we always made it a point of only discussing our scores when Ma wasn't around. We'd leave her at home when we were arranging a job, or we'd send her to a movie. Ma saw a lot of movies."
Harvey BaileyHarvey John Bailey , called "The Dean of American Bank Robbers", had a long criminal career. One of the most successful bank robbers during the 1920s, walking off with over $1 million during that time, Bailey is almost forgotten today.- His career :Born in West Virginia, Bailey robbed his first...
, another well-known bank robber of the era knew the Barker gang well, and in his autobiography published in the 1970s, he agreed with Karpis, observing that Ma Barker "couldn't plan breakfast", and was certainly no mastermind behind any gang activity.
It is purported that Ma Barker's entire reputation as a criminal mastermind was concocted by Hoover to protect the FBI's public image after federal agents discovered they had killed a 62 year old mother.
The
kidnappingIn criminal law, kidnapping is the taking away or transportation of a person against that person's will, usually to hold the person in false imprisonment, a confinement without legal authority...
s, however, would lead to the gang's end. The father of the kidnapped Edward Bremer Jr. was a friend of president
Franklin D. RooseveltFranklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...
. FDR had even mentioned the kidnapping in one of his
fireside chatsThe fireside chats were a series of thirty evening radio addresses given by United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt between 1933 and 1944.-Origin of radio address:...
and, fueled also by the
Lindbergh kidnappingThe kidnapping of Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr., was the abduction of the son of aviator Charles Lindbergh and Anne Morrow Lindbergh. The toddler, 18 months old at the time, was abducted from his family home in East Amwell, New Jersey, near the town of Hopewell, New Jersey, on the evening of...
, the FBI and local police bureaus greatly stepped up their pursuit of those engaged in these types of crimes. The FBI had by this time organized a group of highly skilled agents called the "flying squads" who specialized in hunting down the leading public enemies, and much progress was being made. The year 1934 alone saw the deaths of
John DillingerJohn Herbert Dillinger, Jr. was an American bank robber in Depression-era United States. He was charged with, but never convicted of, the murder of an East Chicago, Indiana police officer during a shoot-out. This was his only alleged homicide. His gang robbed two dozen banks and four police stations...
,
Bonnie and ClydeBonnie Elizabeth Parker and Clyde Chestnut Barrow were well-known outlaws, robbers, and criminals who traveled the Central United States with their gang during the Great Depression. Their exploits captured the attention of the American public during the "public enemy era" between 1931 and 1934...
,
Charles "Pretty Boy" FloydCharles Arthur "Pretty Boy" Floyd was an American bank robber. He operated in the West South Central States, and his criminal exploits gained heavy press coverage in the 1930s. Like most other prominent outlaws of that era, he was killed by law enforcement officers...
,
Lester "Baby Face Nelson" GillisLester Joseph Gillis , known under the pseudonym George Nelson, was a bank robber and murderer in the 1930s. Gillis was known as Baby Face Nelson, a name given to him due to his youthful appearance and small stature...
,
John "Red" HamiltonJohn "Red" Hamilton was a Canadian criminal and bank robber active in the early 20th century, most notably as a criminal associate of John Dillinger.-Prison break:...
,
Homer Van MeterHomer "Wayne" Van Meter was an American criminal and bank robber active in the early 20th century, most notably as a criminal associate of John Dillinger and Baby Face Nelson.-Early life:...
,
Tommy CarrollThomas Leonard "Tommy" Carroll was an American bank robber and Depression-era outlaw. A boxer-turned-criminal, he committed numerous robberies during the 1920s and 30s as well as being a longtime member of the Dillinger gang....
, and
Eddie GreenEugene "Eddie" Green was an American bank robber and Depression-era outlaw during the 1930s, best known as a member of the John Dillinger gang...
.
Just after Ma and Fred's death on January 16, 1935, Karpis nearly met his own violent end when the FBI located him in Atlantic City,
New JerseyNew Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
. Karpis and Harry Campbell managed to shoot their way to an escape, though Karpis's eight-month-pregnant girlfriend Dolores Delaney was hit in the thigh by a wild shot fired by Campbell. He continued his crimes with others, but had to be on the move more than ever as he was the fourth and last Public Enemy left (the previous three having been killed). He did manage to pull off a crime that echoed times of the "Old West," a train robbery in
Garrettsville, OhioGarrettsville is a village in Portage County, Ohio, United States. It was formed from portions of Hiram, Nelson, and Freedom townships in the Connecticut Western Reserve. The population was 2,262 at the 2000 census. On July 1, 2006, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated that 2,203 people resided in the...
, which netted $27,000. After the death of Ma and Fred, Karpis sent word to J. Edgar Hoover that he intended to kill Hoover the way Hoover had killed Ma and Fred, which turned out to be a rumor started by J. Edgar Hoover, which was told by Karpis in The Alvin Karpis Story.
Pursuit and capture by FBI
The FBI had come a long way since its reorganization and renaming in 1935 (from the Bureau of Investigation, created in 1908).
J. Edgar HooverJohn Edgar Hoover was the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the United States. Appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation—predecessor to the FBI—in 1924, he was instrumental in founding the FBI in 1935, where he remained director until his death in 1972...
was appointed as the acting head of the Bureau in 1924 and completely transformed the agency. Despite its successes, however, the agency had many problems. In those days, when the application of science and technology to fight crime was still in its infancy, the agency was at the mercy of public citizens for information. Often agents were sent off to remote locales that turned out to be red herrings due to bad information. The personal low point for Hoover came at an April 1936
United States SenateThe United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...
hearing. Senator
Kenneth McKellarKenneth Douglas McKellar was an American politician from Tennessee who served as a United States Representative from 1911 until 1917 and as a United States Senator from 1917 until 1953...
of
TennesseeTennessee is a U.S. state located in the Southeastern United States. It has a population of 6,346,105, making it the nation's 17th-largest state by population, and covers , making it the 36th-largest by total land area...
lambasted Hoover for the performance of the FBI and the fact that Hoover himself had never personally arrested anyone. After the hearing, a determined Hoover vowed he would capture Karpis personally.
Hoover would not have to wait long. On May 1, 1936, the FBI located Karpis in New Orleans, and Hoover flew there to be in charge of the arrest. As a dozen or so agents swarmed over Karpis' car, Hoover announced to Karpis that he was under arrest. A couple of versions of the arrest are reported. Karpis' version of the story, told in his memoirs, was that Hoover came out only after all the other agents had him seized. Only then did the agents call to Hoover that it was safe to approach the car. The official FBI version states that Hoover reached into the car and grabbed Karpis before he could reach a rifle in the back seat (in fact, the car, a Plymouth coupe, had no back seat). The scene was further confused when Hoover told his men to "put the handcuffs on him". Not one agent had brought handcuffs. Karpis was tied up with the necktie worn by one of the agents. The capture of Karpis catapulted Hoover into the public eye, and made his name synonymous with law enforcement until he died in 1972 at the age of 77.
The capture of Karpis essentially ended the age of the big-name
Depression-eraThe Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
criminals. In addition to those mentioned earlier, others killed violently in the 1930s were Jack "Legs" Diamond,
Vincent "Maddog" CollVincent "Mad Dog" Coll was an Irish mob hitman in 1920s New York City. Coll gained notoriety for the accidental killing of a young child during a mob kidnap attempt.-Early years:...
,
Frank "Jelly" NashFrank Nash has been called “the most successful bank robber in U.S. history,” but he is most noted for his violent death in what has become known as the Kansas City Massacre...
,
Dutch SchultzDutch Schultz was a New York City-area Jewish American gangster of the 1920s and 1930s who made his fortune in organized crime-related activities such as bootlegging alcohol and the numbers racket...
, and
John DillingerJohn Herbert Dillinger, Jr. was an American bank robber in Depression-era United States. He was charged with, but never convicted of, the murder of an East Chicago, Indiana police officer during a shoot-out. This was his only alleged homicide. His gang robbed two dozen banks and four police stations...
.
Al CaponeAlphonse Gabriel "Al" Capone was an American gangster who led a Prohibition-era crime syndicate. The Chicago Outfit, which subsequently became known as the "Capones", was dedicated to smuggling and bootlegging liquor, and other illegal activities such as prostitution, in Chicago from the early...
was in Alcatraz and slowly going insane from
syphilisSyphilis is a sexually transmitted infection caused by the spirochete bacterium Treponema pallidum subspecies pallidum. The primary route of transmission is through sexual contact; however, it may also be transmitted from mother to fetus during pregnancy or at birth, resulting in congenital syphilis...
. The country had gradually started to recover from the Depression, law enforcement agencies had improved as well.
Imprisonment
Sentenced to life imprisonment, Karpis was incarcerated at the recently formed Alcatraz federal penitentiary from August 1936 to April 1962. For six months in 1958, he had been transferred to the
Leavenworth federal penitentiaryThe United States Penitentiary , Leavenworth was the largest maximum security federal prison in the United States from 1903 until 2005. It became a medium security prison in 2005.It is located in Leavenworth, Kansas...
, but was then returned to Alcatraz. His main job at Alcatraz was working at the bakery. He was far from a model prisoner, frequently fighting with other inmates. Karpis served the longest sentence at Alcatraz. In April 1962, with Alcatraz in the process of being closed, he was transferred to McNeil Island Penitentiary in Washington state. While at McNeil, Karpis met a young
Charles MansonCharles Milles Manson is an American criminal who led what became known as the Manson Family, a quasi-commune that arose in California in the late 1960s. He was found guilty of conspiracy to commit the Tate/LaBianca murders carried out by members of the group at his instruction...
. Karpis wrote about Manson in his autobiography with Robert Livesey (1980):
After Manson had become somewhat proficient on the
guitarThe guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
, he asked Karpis for help in getting a job playing in
Las VegasLas Vegas is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Nevada and is also the county seat of Clark County, Nevada. Las Vegas is an internationally renowned major resort city for gambling, shopping, and fine dining. The city bills itself as The Entertainment Capital of the World, and is famous...
as Karpis had contacts with nightclub and
casinoIn modern English, a casino is a facility which houses and accommodates certain types of gambling activities. Casinos are most commonly built near or combined with hotels, restaurants, retail shopping, cruise ships or other tourist attractions...
owners there. Manson told him he would be bigger than the Beatles, but Karpis decided to leave Manson on his own regarding his music career.
Later years
Karpis was released on parole in 1969 and deported to
CanadaCanada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, although he initially had difficulty obtaining Canadian passport credentials, having had his
fingerprintA fingerprint in its narrow sense is an impression left by the friction ridges of a human finger. In a wider use of the term, fingerprints are the traces of an impression from the friction ridges of any part of a human hand. A print from the foot can also leave an impression of friction ridges...
s removed by underworld physician
Joseph MoranJoseph P. Moran was a doctor known for catering to the Depression-era criminal underworld in the early 20th century. He was also a peripheral member of the Barker-Karpis gang, and was possibly the last physician to see the mortally wounded John Hamilton, a member of the John Dillinger gang, whom...
in 1934.
He wrote his first memoirs in 1971 and published another memoir book in 1979 (v.s). During his first book tour across Canada for
Public Enemy Number One for McClelland & Stewart (published in the United States as
The Alvin Karpis Story), Karpis, looking more like an accountant than a gangster, still showed a wry sense of humor. In Edmonton, Alberta, while shuffling Karpis between various interviews with the media, M&S book rep Ruth Bertelsen made a stop at her bank. Asking Karpis if he wanted to come in with her, Karpis replied "No dear, you take care of the vault, I'll drive." He became a mentor to her young son until the
sociopathyAntisocial personality disorder is described by the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, fourth edition , as an Axis II personality disorder characterized by "...a pervasive pattern of disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others that begins in childhood...
of some of his advice to her child caused Miss Bertelsen anger.
He moved to
SpainSpain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
in 1973. On August 26, 1979 he died by what was originally ruled
suicideSuicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
by authorities, as
sleeping pillsSleeping pills may refer to:*Hypnotic, a drug used to induce sleep*Sleeping Pills , an American film by Michael Lauter...
were found by his body, but later it was ruled death from natural causes. Some closer to the scene say
foul playCrime is the breach of rules or laws for which some governing authority can ultimately prescribe a conviction...
may have been involved. Robert Livesey, who co-wrote Karpis's 1979 book, said Karpis was not the type to have committed suicide. Livesey said Karpis was a survivor, having served 33 years in prison, and also stated Karpis was anticipating the publication of the book. Livesey believed Karpis had been introduced to pills and alcohol by his last girlfriend Nancy, to give a relaxing high and perhaps Karpis accidentally over-indulged on one occasion, with fatal consequences. No
autopsyAn autopsy—also known as a post-mortem examination, necropsy , autopsia cadaverum, or obduction—is a highly specialized surgical procedure that consists of a thorough examination of a corpse to determine the cause and manner of death and to evaluate any disease or injury that may be present...
was done and Karpis was buried the next day in Spain.
Other sources
- Richard Kudish, CourtTV Crime Library
The Crime Library is a website documenting major crimes, criminals, and trials, forensics, and criminal profiling from books, police reports, crime television shows, and writers...
- Carl Sifakis, The Encyclopedia of American Crime, 1992
- Frank Girardot, Crime Scene Blog
External links