Alvin Karpis

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Alvin Karpis (August 10,1907-August 26,1979) (Born Alvin Karpowicz) nickname "Creepy" was a noted public enemey in the United States, known for his alliance with the Barker gang in the 1930's. He was the last "Public Enemy Number 1" to be taken, a capture which elevated J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI to national prominence. His stay at Alcatraz, a little over 25 years, was longer than any other inmate interred there.

Karpis was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and was raised in Topeka, Kansas. He started in crime at about age 10, running around with gamblers, bootleggers, and pimps. In 1924, he was sentencted to 10 years at the State Industial Reformatory in Hutchinson, Kansas for an attempted burglary. He escaped and lived with his parents for a time in Chicago. After moving to Kansas City, Missouri, he was caught stealing a car, and sent back to the Reformatory. Transferred to the Kansas State Penitentiary in Langsing, Kansas, he met Fred Barker, who was in prison for killing a policeman during a car theft. Barker was one of the notorius members of the "Bloody Barker's", as the newpapers of the time called them. The Barker family included the brothers Herman, Lloyd, Arthur or "Doc", and Fred, the sons of Ma Barker. Growing up impovershed in a sharecropping family, all the boys soon turned into hardened criminals, robbing banks and killing without provocation. Doc, the leader, was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1920 after murdering a night watchman. Herman committed suicide in 1927 after being badly injured in a shootout with police following a robbery. Lloyd was sentenced to 25 years in 1932 for mail theft. Ma did her part to help her sons, but in her lifetime she wa never charged with any crime. Nevertheless, she badgered the parole boards, wardens, and governor's to the point where she got Fred releases in 1931, and even managed to get Doc released on a governor's pardon. After Karpis was released in 1931, he joined up with Fred Barker in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and soon they started to put together the Karpis-Barker gang.

The Karpis-Barker gang became one of the most formidable criminal gangs of the 1930's. They didn't hesitate to kill anyone who got in their way, even innocent bystanders. They robbed a number of banks, hijacked mail deliveries, and soon turned to the lucrative field of kidnapping. in 1933, they kidnapped William Hamm, a millionaire Minnesota brewer. A ransom of him netted them $100,000. Shortly later, another ransom got them $200,000, after adducting Minnesota banker Edward Bremer, Jr. The group was led by Alvin, who had a photographic memory and described as "super-smart" by fellow member Fred Hunter. The other leaders were Doc and Fred, now both out of prison, and included about 25 others. At this time, a myth was stared theat Ma Barker was the mastermind of the group, but no facts ever supported these claims. Karpis would later write about this subject in his memoirs:

"Ma was always somebody in our lives. Love didn't enter into it really. She was somebody wer looked after and took with us when we moved city to city, hideout ot hideout. It's no insult to Ma's memory that she just didn't have the know-how to direct us on a robbery. It would't have occured 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 were arranging a job, or we'd send her to a movie. Ma saw a lot of movies."

The kidnappings however would lead to the gangs end. The father of the kidnapped Edward Bremer, Jr, was a friend of president Franklin Roosevelt (FDR had even mentioned the kidnapping in one of his fireside chats), and, fueled also by the Lindbergh Kidnapping, the FBI and local police bureaus greatly stepped up their pursuit of those engaged in these type of crimes. The FBI has 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 Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, "Pretty Boy" Floyd, and "Baby Face" Nelson. With these big name hoodlums out of the way, the FBI stepped up one of the most persistant manhunts of the time for the Karpis-Barker members. One incident that aided the FBI greatly was when the gang shot and killed one of their own members, George "Shotgun" Ziegler. Ziegler has been one of the masterminds of the Bremer kidnapping, but after the collection of the ransom money, which he cached most of it, he began loudly bragging to underworld associates that he was the genius behind the kidnapping. It appeared the one-time hitman for Al Capone, and lead gunmen suspect in the St. Valentine's Day Massaxre, had lost his senses, and the gang knew it couldn't risk possible information he might spill. On March 22, 1934, members of the gang shot four slugs into Ziegler as he was coming out of his favorite restaurant in Cicero, Illinois, blasts that nearly decapitated him. However the corpse was left, and subsequently FBI agents found names, aliases, and addresses and other valuable information on the gang in Ziegler's clothes pockets. Armed with this information, the FBI used it to pick them off one by one, and soon they began getting the big names. Doc was captured on January 8, 1935 by Melvin Purvis, who nearly 6 months earlier had hunted down John Dillinger. (Sent to Alcatraz, Doc was shot and killed by guards during an attempted escape in 1939.) Just one week later, agents tracked down Ma and Fred at a cottage in Lake Weir, Florida. On January 16, Ma and Fred were shot to death after a 4-hour gun battle. Just after this, Karpis nearly met his own violent end as the FBI had located him in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Karpis and a couple other partners managed to shoot their way to an escape, although Karpis's eight-month pregnant girlfriend Dolores Delaney was shot in thigh. 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 Number 1 left (the previous three had been killed). He did manage to pull off a crime that echoed times of the "old west", a train robbery in Garretsvilles, Ohio which netted $27,000. After the death of Ma and Fred, Karpis sent word to J. Edgar Hoover that he intented to kill Hoover the way he killed Ma and Fred.

The FBI had come a long way since it's reorganization and renaming in 1924 (from the Bureau of Investigation, created in 1908). Appointed to head it that same year was J. Edgar Hoover, who completely transformed the agency. Despite it's recent successes, the agency had many problems. In these days, where science and technology tools were still in their infancy in the application to fighting crime, the agency was at the mercy of public citizens for information. Often, agents were sent off remote locales that turned out to be red herrings due to bad information, wasting much money and time. The personal nadir for Hoover came at an April, 1936 Senate hearing. Tennessee Senator Kenneth D. McKellar lambasted Hoover for the performance of the FBI, and the fact the Hoover himself had personally never 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. Hoover flew in to be in charge of the arrest. As a dozen or so agents swarmed over Karpis's car, Hoover announced to Karpis he was under arrest. A couple of versions of the arrest are reported. One told by Karpis in his memoirs, said that Hoover only came out after all the other agents had him seized, and the agents called to Hoover that it was safe to approach the car. The official FBI version states Hoover reached in 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 whole fiasco was further enhanced when after Hoover told his men to "put the handcuffs on him", not one agent had brought andy handcuffs, and Karpis was tied up with the necktie an agent had to pull off his neck. What ever the real story, the capture of Karpis catapulted Hoover's name into the public eye, and his name would be synonymous with law enforcement to his death, ad death with incidentally occured 36 years to the day of Karpis. Hoover was proclaimed a hero in the press and given an 11% raise, to a $10,000 year salary.