Infamous America - BARKER GANG Ep. 3 | “I Shot The Sheriff”

Episode Date: July 29, 2026

With Herman Barker gone, and Lloyd Barker and Doc Barker in prison, Fred Barker restarts the Barker Gang with the help of his friend, Alvin Karpis. The Barker clan creates a safe house in southern Missouri, but they are forced to flee after Fred commits two notorious murders similar to those of his older brother, Herman. Thanks to our sponsor, Quince! Use this link for Free Shipping and 365-day returns: Quince.com/infamousamerica Thanks to our sponsor, Mood! For 20% off of your first order, use the promo code INFAMOUS at Mood.com Join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join   Apple users join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes, bingeable seasons and bonus episodes. Click the Black Barrel+ banner on Apple to get started with a 3-day free trial.   On YouTube, subscribe to INFAMOUS+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: hit “Join” on the Legends YouTube homepage.   For more details, please visit www.blackbarrelmedia.com or @blackbarrelmedia on Instagram. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Albin Francis Carpovicius was an exceptionally difficult name for Americans to say. Albin's parents were from Lithuania, and they tried changing their surname to Carpovich, but that wasn't much better. Albin was born in Canada, but his family moved to Topeka, Kansas when he was an infant. When he started school, his teacher couldn't pronounce his name, so she called him Alvin Carpus, and the name stuck. Alvin was seven years younger than the youngest Barker brother, Fred, but he followed a similar path to all the Barker Boys. Alvin's family scraped by on railroad wages from Alvin's father.

The family of six, mother, father, Alvin and his three sisters teetered on the edge of financial ruin, and Alvin was desperate to help. He quickly realized that Topeka's underbelly, gamblers, bootleggers, pimps and prostitutes paid far better than legitimate businesses. So instead of delivering newspapers, he carried contraband from one person to another. Alvin's parents, parents never knew the source of his money, or if they suspected, they knew better than to ask. While other boys his age earned pennies running errands, Alvin brought in one or two dollars a day. A dollar or two in the 19 teens would be earning $30 to $60 in today's money. That was pretty good for a youngster.

And like the Barker boys, Alvin graduated to real crime when he was 10 years old. One night, an 18-year-old named Arthur Witchie persuaded Alvin to help with the burglary of a grocery store. Despite the harsh punishments Alvin's father doled out for breaking curfew, the adrenaline rush of the heist proved addictive. In Alvin's mind, the crime was justified. He was stealing to build a better life for his struggling family. Stealing was fun and fast, and Alvin had a natural gift for it. But as soon as he became comfortable stealing from Topeka stores, his family moved to Chicago. In 1923, at 15 years old, Alvin entered the sprawling, mesmerizing, and violent world of one of America's bootlegging capitals during Prohibition.

Chicago's Italian mob, known as the outfit, led by Johnny Torio and his right-hand man, Al Capone, was warring with the Irish mob called the Northside gang, led by Dean O'Bannon. The war would escalate dramatically over the next few years, though teenager Alvin Carpus wouldn't stay in Chicago long enough to see the worst of it. Alvin attempted to walk the straight and narrow, taking a job as a shipping clerk in a factory warehouse. It was honest work, but it was suffocatingly dull. After two years, Alvin's health began to fail. A doctor blamed the decline on strenuous labor and ordered Alvin to find a less physically demanding occupation. To Alvin, the prescription was clear. Return to the work he enjoyed most.

He needed to go back to stealing. And to do that properly, he needed to return to Topeka, the city he knew like the back of his hand. At 17, Alvin went back to the city he considered home. Alvin's teachers had dismissed him as an average student, but they underestimated him. Alvin possessed a sharp, calculating intellect that shone only when he applied himself to his true passion. Unlike most criminals, Alvin loved planning a burglary as much as committing the crime, Selecting the target, devising the entry, and mapping the escape route provided a thrill equal to the loot itself. He was good at it, but at some point everyone's luck runs out.

He had hardly been back in Topeka before he was caught riding a train without a ticket. He was sentenced to 30 days of hard labor and shackled to other inmates on a chain gang. The experience was understandably miserable. When his time was done, he reasoned that if he stayed off trains, he could get back to building his career as a thief. Later that year, police caught him in the middle of a burglary. Unlike the Barker boys, who often found ways to get out of trouble, usually thanks to Ma Barker, Alvin could not wiggle his way out of the charges. In 1926, with no mother to plead for his innocence in court, Alvin Carpus received a sentence of five to ten years in prison at the Kansas State Industrial

Reformatory. Within two years, with some excitement in between, he would be transferred to the state prison in Lansing, Kansas, where he would meet Fred Barker and form the partnership which became the foundation of one of the most feared gangs of the 1930s. From Black Barrel Media, this is Infamous America. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer, and this season we're telling the story of the Barker Carpus gang, the longest running and deadliest group of Depression-era outlaws. This is episode three. I shot the sheriff. When Alvin Carpus was one year into his prison sentence at the Kansas State Reformatory, Herman Barker took his own life to avoid capture.

Herman had spent the first eight months of 1927 on the run after he escaped prison in Arkansas, where he had briefly started serving time for bank robbery. Herman and his wife Carol had fled to the west coast to lay low. But on their way back east, Herman ended up killing a deputy sheriff near Cheyenne, Wyoming. 28 days later, on August 29, 1927, Herman and two associates robbed a factory that made ice in Newton, Kansas. Two hours later, in Wichita, Herman was cornered by police, and he made good on his promise to never be taken alive. At that time, August of 1927, Alvin Carpus was in prison 35 miles up the road in Hutchinson, Kansas. Carpus didn't know the barkers at that time, but it's possible he would have heard.

heard about Herman's death. The news filtered through prisons in Kansas and Oklahoma to the three remaining Barker Boys. Lloyd was six years into a 25-year stretch in Leavenworth, Kansas. Fred Barker had just started five to ten years at the Kansas State Prison in Lansing near Kansas City, and Arthur Doc Barker was doing life at Big Mac, the Oklahoma State Prison in McAllister, Oklahoma. That left Ma Barker all alone in Tulsa, Oklahoma. and her task in September of 1927 was to bring Herman home. The authorities in Wichita, Kansas, refused to release Herman's body without a guaranteed burial plot, but cemeteries all over Oklahoma were likewise refusing to bury the career thief and

two-time cop killer. Finally, a corrupt lawyer named Q. P. McGee, who had helped the Barker boys in the past, stepped in to perform one last service for the family. He convinced the Williams' Timber Hill Cemetery to accept Herman's remains. The small rural cemetery sits five miles outside of the tiny town of Welch, Oklahoma, just south of the Kansas Oklahoma border. Herman's funeral was a desolate affair. His three brothers were locked up, and his criminal associates were either on the run or also in jail, and that included his wife Carol. Herman had left Carol at a hiding spot in Arkansas before he committed the robbery in Newton, Kansas, which led to his death in Wichita. She was wanted for accessory to a host of crimes, the most serious of which was the murder of

Deputy Sheriff Arthur Osborne in Wyoming. Carol couldn't participate in her husband's funeral, but she watched from some distance away as his coffin was lowered into the ground. Over the next few days, Carol visited Herman's grave at night to avoid being seen, but her time was running out. In mid-September 1927, she surrendered to lawmen in Oklahoma without a fight. She told her story to the police with a sense of relief. She admitted to being with Herman when he killed Deputy Osborne,

and she had knowledge of some of Herman's other crimes, but she had not participated in any of them. Later, when she faced a jury in Wyoming, guilt consumed her. She begged them for the death penalty. The jury refused to grant her wish. She hadn't pulled the trigger, and Wyoming had no other female prisoners at the time, so Carol received a light sentence. She was transferred down to Colorado to serve two to four years in state prison.

By the end of 1927, everyone in the immediate orbit of Ma Barker was dead or on the run or in prison, with the exception of her husband, George Barker. He had left the family five years earlier when he could no longer tolerate the criminal behavior of his wife and sons. But just before Herman had died, Ma brought a new man into her life, Arthur Dunlop. Ma Barker was in limbo between feeling alone, but not lonely. Arthur had no problem with the criminal lifestyle, but other than that, he didn't bring much to the table. Arthur was a heavy drinker who scraped by with sporadic work as a billboard painter. He and Ma hold up in a dirt floor shack, plunging Ma into the deepest poverty she had ever endured.

And worst of all, though Ma didn't know it, she was blind to her own hypocrisy. She had been furious when Herman married Carol. She warned her sons repeatedly against having wives or serious girlfriends. She felt wives and girlfriends were distractions and liabilities. She knew her sons would never turn on her or each other to save themselves, but she didn't believe that deep sense of loyalty applied to significant others. And yet, here was Ma with a no-account boyfriend who, added nothing to the Barker criminal enterprise. She would regret her hypocrisy in the future,

but for the moment, she rode out the lean years with Arthur until her youngest son Fred got out of prison. While Ma Barker buried her eldest son Herman, and while Herman's wife Carol went to prison, Alvin Carpus was slowly but surely planning his exit from prison. By 1928, he had been at the Kansas State Industrial Reformatory in Hutchinson, Kansas for two years. His sentencing, could last for another three years or as long as eight more years. Neither was acceptable. Luckily for a 20-year-old Alvin Carpus, he found a mentor. Lawrence DeVall was a seasoned criminal who was six years older than Carpus. He had committed some small crimes with the Barker Boys in Tulsa, Oklahoma during their earliest years. Doc Barker had helped form the Central Park

gang when they were all teenagers in the 19-teens. By the 1920s, Larry DeVall had earned a reputation as a safecracker, though he had eventually been caught like everyone else in the gang. And like Carpus, Deval was eager for an early exit from prison. Carpus, Deval, and two other friends worked in the prison workshop. In the spring of 1929, they smuggled saw blades out of the workshop. They sawed through the bars in the windows of their cells, crawled outside, and vanished into the night. Carpice and Deval went on a crime spree through Kansas, stealing cars, swiping guns and robbing clothing stores until they eventually split up. A short time later, DeVall was caught in Chicago.

He was taken back to Kansas and sent to the Kansas State Prison at Lansing, where Fred Barker was doing his time. Larry DeVall made friends with some of the inmates at Lansing, though it didn't seem like he interacted with Fred Barker during his brief stint at the prison. DeVall soon learned that the prison had an agreement with a nearby coal mine. If prisoners volunteered to work at the mine, they received reduced sentences as compensation. Devalh immediately volunteered for the mining program, and he earned some time off of his sentence.

In relatively short order, he was released, and he reunited with Alvin Carpice. When Deval and Carpice got back together, Deval talked about the guys on the coal mining crew. Many of them were wearing worn-out rags as shirts, and they had no way to replace them. So Deval and Carpus broke into a clothing store, looted the place, and shipped boxes of shirts to the volunteer coal miners at the Kansas State Prison at Lansing. The inmates were extremely grateful, and as a result, Carpus had lots of new friends when he arrived a few months later. In March of 1930, Alvin Carpus was caught while robbing a pool hall in Kansas City, Missouri. During what he later claimed was a rough interrogation, the police realized he was a fugitive from the Kansas State. industrial reformatory. They returned Carpus to the reformatory, but he soon received a transfer

to the state prison at Lansing. He knew about the coal mining program from Larry DeVall, and he quickly volunteered. When the other men on the crew learned that he was one of the guys responsible for sending them new shirts, his status elevated to that of a moderate hero. Carpus had a new group of friends, and through them, he met Fred Barker. Carpus and Barker were only at Lansing together for one year, but they became close friends. According to the legend, Fred Barker gave Alvin Carpice the nickname Old Creepy because of Carpice's apparently sinister smile. There are no easily available photos of Carpus smiling in his younger years, so it's hard to know what his smile looked like. But in the early 1970s, one year before Carpus died, he gave a television interview to promote the release of his autobiography.

During the interview, he smiled, and his facial features were very similar to those of legendary Hollywood actor Jack Nicholson. If you picture Jack Nicholson's smile when he played the Joker in the Batman movie from 1989, that's probably what Carpus's smile looked like. With a proper slant to his gaze, Carpus would indeed have looked sinister. And likely by the time Fred Barker was released from prison in March of 1931, Carpus is soon to be famous. nickname was shortened to, simply, creepy. Fred Barker served four years of his five to ten stretch. When he was released, he headed home to Tulsa to see Maugh, but the reunion quickly soured. Fred instantly disliked Maugh's boyfriend, Arthur Dunlop. Fred dismissed Arthur as a

worthless drunk, and their constant bickering proved too volatile to sustain. In less than a month, Fred made a move which would have seemed crazy, maybe unthinkable, a few years earlier. He left Ma and went to Joplin, Missouri to crash with his father, George. But before leaving, he told Ma that his new best friend, Alvin Carpus, would show up soon. In May of 1931, two months after Fred was released, Alvin Carpus walked out of the state prison at Lansing. Shortly thereafter, Ma Barker watched a tall, lanky man step out of a car in front of her run-down shack. The man was sharply dressed, and he carried a single bag which contained all of his worldly possessions. Ma was guarded as the stranger approached and asked for Freddy.

But when the stranger introduced himself as Alvin Carpus, Ma relaxed. She invited him in, and he explained his life's story. His childhood in Topeka, his crimes in Topeka and Chicago, his crime spree with friend of the family Larry DeVall, his time at the reformatory and his escape, and his time at the state prison with Fred. Ma Barker was genuinely thrilled for the first time in four years. Even though Fred's homecoming had been rocky, she had one of her sons back,

and now she felt like she had gained another. She believed Fred and Alvin would make a wonderful team. By the end of the afternoon, Ma considered Alvin to be family, a status she rarely granted, certainly not to the boys' wives or girlfriends. Alvin felt the kinship too. He looked past the squalor of her ramshackle home and saw a woman who was fiercely protective of her sons. He understood why Fred held her so close. Ma telegrammed Fred in Joplin and notified him of Alvin's arrival. Fred wired back instructions to send Alvin to Missouri. In late May of 1931, the Barker

Carpus gang was born. Fred Barker was 29 years old. Alvin Carpus was 24. Fred Fred possessed a lethal combination of cleverness and charm. Alvin was the strategist who had both the intellect to plan the jobs and the guts to carry them out, up to a point. Alvin shied away from killing, though not out of morality. His only concern was that murder carried the heaviest legal penalty. Fred's older brother, Doc, was currently learning that lesson the hard way while serving life in prison for murder.

But before the Barker Carpus gang launched its four-year run as one of America's scariest criminal outfits, Fred had to take care of Ma. Before Fred had gone to prison, he had hidden the cash he and Herman had stolen from jewelry stores. Now he retrieved it and used it to move Ma Barker out of her run-down shack in Tulsa to a nice farmhouse in Thayer, Missouri, on the border between Missouri and Arkansas. The house sat on 10 acres of land, and Ma arrived in style wearing a fur coat and a new hat. Ma Barker was back, though to Fred's chagrin, she brought Arthur Dunlop with her. Fred just had to hope that the perks of having Ma happy in a new home outweighed Arthur's

worthlessness. As they settled in, Ma was in high spirits. She loved the farm, she had money for groceries, and she loved to cook for the boys. She rarely left the kitchen, and she was often joined by Alvin Carpus, who had honed his cooking skills in prison. In addition to simply making Ma happy, the farm doubled as the gang's headquarters. While Ma and Alvin worked the stove, Fred secured the gang's new hideout. He surrounded the property with a barbed wire fence and rigged an alarm system. A cable stretched from the front gate all the way to the bell at the farmhouse door. If the gate opened, everyone inside would know it. After six months of work, the safe house was done. With Ma settled and the headquarters secure, Fred was ready to pick up

where Herman left off. Simple burglaries were still options for easy money, but the Barker Carpus gang was going to focus on banks. My name is Peter Parker, but I'm also Spider-Man. This Thursday, we're faced with a threat. That can be anyone. The world may have forgotten Peter Parker. I'm just a neighbor, friendly neighbor.

But he hasn't forgotten them. Sometimes Spider-Man has to do the hard thing. That's my responsibility. Talk to Banner? I didn't know you could get that big. Spider-Man, brand-new day in theaters Thursday. Pocahontas, Arkansas was a town of fewer than 2,000 people in 1931. It sat and still does, about 15 miles south of the Missouri-Aransas border.

For those who might be familiar with the area, it's about 30 miles north of Jonesboro. On today's roads, it would take about an hour to drive from the Barker Farm in Thayer, Missouri to Pocahontas, Arkansas. In 1931, it would have taken longer, but the town was still pretty close to the Barker headquarters. The chief of police of Pocahontas was 32-year-old Manly Jackson. He was 32, but looked younger. His department probably had no more than three or four officers, including himself. They took turns working the night shift, and on November 8, 1931, it was Chief Jackson's turn. The officer who worked the night shift was called the night marshal, so on November 8th,

Chief Jackson became Night Marshal Jackson. As Jackson patrolled his tiny town in the dark hours just before dawn, it's doubtful anything moved, which was why he was drawn to a car with three men inside, which seemed to be prowling the town. Chief Jackson would not have known that the three occupants were Fred Barker, Alvin Carpice, and their new recruit William Weaver, or that they were scouting the local bank to rob.

But Jackson was suspicious nonetheless, and he approached the vehicle on foot to write down the license plate number. As Jackson drew near, Fred Barker jumped out of the car with a pistol in his hand and ordered Jackson to get into the back seat. Jackson did as instructed. Fred climbed back into the driver's seat and sped out of town. Fred drove to a remote spot in the Arkansas countryside, ordered Jackson out, and told him to start walking. Jackson may have thought they were letting him go, but Fred shot John.

Chief Manly Jackson four times in the back as the young officer walked away. Jackson had seen their faces, their car, and their license plate number. In Fred's mind, there was no way he could let Jackson live. Unfazed by the murder, Fred was more concerned that Jackson had interrupted the robbery planning, and now they would have to find a new target. They abandoned Arkansas and headed back up to Missouri. Over the next six weeks, they made Howell County, Missouri their playground. Howell County was a rural area with a few small towns straight north of the Barker Farm in Thayer, Missouri. The crew robbed a bank in Mountain View and stole $7,000. They committed a string of burglaries in the area of the town of West Plains,

20 miles down the road from Mountain View. They were running Howell County Sheriff Roy Kelly Ragged, and they weren't the only crew operating in the area. By December of 1931, the Great Depression had been growing worse for two. years. The fallout from the stock market collapse of October 1929 was still spreading across the country, and as a result, lawlessness was rising everywhere, from big cities like Chicago to tiny towns like West Blains, Missouri. For Fred Barker and Alvin Carpus, Southern Missouri was ripe for the picking. They could hit a store or a bank and quickly escape to

the farm in Thayer. After the Mountain View bank job, they drew up plans to hit the first National Bank in West Plains. But while they hammered out the logistics, they decided to pull an easy job. Barker and Carpus snuck into C.C. McCowan's clothing store overnight between December 17th and December 18th and stole $2,000 worth of the finest suits in West Plains. But as they sped back toward their safe house, their getaway car blew two tires. They limped back to the farm, but it was clear they would need a professional to fix the tires. On December 19th, one full day after the burglary, they returned to West Plains and took the car to the Davidson Motor Company for repair. This time, there were three men in the group, Fred, Alvin, and William Weaver, and they were

all wearing nice suits. The mechanic who started to work on the car noticed that the quality of the expensive suits didn't seem to match the relatively poor quality of the car, and the mechanic, like almost everyone else in town, had read about the burglary at McCallin's clothing store in the newspaper. Two of the three men in suits, Fred and Alvin, appeared to pay more attention to the car repairs than normal customers did. While the mechanic worked on the tires, he studied the men's suits as closely as possible without arousing suspicion, until he decided he was right, and he made a phone call. Under the guise of finishing the order, the mechanic at Davidson Motor Company stepped away from the vehicle and separated himself from the men in suits.

He used the phone to call Mr. McCallon, the owner of the clothing store. The mechanic told McCallon to hurry to the auto garage. The mechanic was pretty sure three guys who were there right now were wearing McCallon's stolen suits. McCallon hustled out of his shop and walked toward the garage. On the way, he spotted County Sheriff Roy Kelly. McCallon explained the situation to Kelly and asked the sheriff to come along. Kelly reached into his car, grabbed his revolver, and slipped it under his winter coat.

At the garage, Fred Barker, Alvin Carpus, and William Weaver were in the car waiting for the mechanic to return from finishing the order. The mechanic came back and handed the car keys to Fred, as McCallin and Sheriff Kelly walked across the street toward the garage. When Fred and Alvin noticed the mechanic's nervous energy, they knew something was up. Their instincts for danger were sharp, even though their common sense was sometimes lacking. You didn't need to have Albert Einstein's IQ to know it was a bad idea to wear stolen suits when you returned to the town where you had just stolen them. Now the suits were going to lead to far worse trouble than simple burglary. Despite the public setting, Fred Barker and Alvin Carpus drew their guns.

When they saw Sheriff Kelly walk into the garage, Fred opened fire from the driver's seat, while Alvin leapt out and fired at the sheriff from a different angle. As Sheriff Kelly collapsed to the ground, Fred stomped on the gas, swerved around the sheriff, and sped through the streets of West Plains in a frantic bid to escape. Carpus ran down an alley, made it out of town on foot, and eventually reunited with Barker. Medics arrived at Davidson Motor Company, but Sheriff Kelly was dead before he hit the ground. He had been shot twice in the chest and twice in the right arm. For the killers, it was bad enough that the crime happened in broad daylight,

but they had spent plenty of time with the mechanic before the shooting. The mechanic didn't know their real names, but he provided crystal clear descriptions of Barker and Carpus and then identified them from mugshots without hesitation. By the next morning, wanted posters plastered the town, offering $1,200 rewards for Fred Barker and Alvin Carpus. Despite Alvin's later denials, claiming it was Fred and Will, William Weaver who pulled the triggers, eyewitnesses like the mechanic were certain that

Carpus was one of the shooters. After the killing, the gang retreated to the farm in Thayer, but now the farm was not safe. Thayer was only 20 miles down the road from West Plains. The farm had been a near-perfect sanctuary on 10 acres, with a farmhouse Ma Barker loved, but the gang had to abandon it less than a year after moving in. Fred, Alvin, Ma, and Arthur Dunlop packed up and hurried west to their old stomping grounds of Joplin, Missouri. They hid with Herbert Farmer, a family friend from the old days who had been Fred's criminal mentor after Fred's brothers went to prison. Herbert used his farm as a fugitive hideout, and he was thrilled to see his old friends, but his smile faded when he learned why they

were on the run. The 170 miles of distance between Thayer and Joplin wasn't enough. Herbert advised them to keep moving. Trusting Herbert's instincts, the group piled back into the car. Like Ma's idol Jesse James, when a manhunt in Missouri threatened the James gang 55 years earlier, the Barker Gang ran north to Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, where their bank robberies in 1932 would vault them into the national spotlight. Next time on Infamous America, the Barker Gang learns that Minneapolis-St. Paul is run by corrupt politicians, and is a safe haven for criminals.

The gang goes on a spree of bank robberies, which rivals any of the other infamous gangsters of the era. The one member of the group will not live to see the action. The worst thing to be in a criminal outfit is a liability. That's next week on Infamous America. Members of our Black Barrel Plus program received the entire season to binge all at once with no commercials, and they also receive exclusive bonus episodes.

Sign up now through the link in the show notes. or on our website, blackbarrelmedia.com. This series was researched and written by Mandy Wimmer, additional research in writing by me, Chris Wimmer. Original music by Rob Valier. Thanks for listening.