Last Podcast On The Left - Episode 480: Ma Barker Part II - Mama's Boys

Episode Date: January 22, 2022

We continue our story of Ma Barker and the Barker-Karpis Gang, who's crimes begin to escalate and evolve with a series of merciless bank robberies.Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0 

A roast as dark as the night, perfect for fueling the cryptid research and mad ravings required for your podcasting. Don't mind the red eyes, he's just trying to warn you of the bridge! The bridge! Finally, from the caffeine-addled brains of Spring Hill Jack Coffee and Last Podcast on the left, we bring you Mothman's Red Eye Blend. Yes, delicious Panama beans, go to lastpodcastmerch.com to order yours today! Hey, what's up everyone? How you doing? Ben Kissel here with Henry Zabrowski. Yeah, it's me, man!

Yeah, bro, Henry Zabrowski is smoking some of that sweet last podcast on the left, babe. Go out there and purchase yourself some. I hope you enjoy it. We have sativa, we have indica, and we have a hybrid, and I have to tell you, from my personal experience, they are wonderful. Super tasty, live resin, you really get the delicious, weedy taste, which is what I like, and three different experiences. You go to your local vape store and get it! Absolutely, thank you all so much for supporting the show. We absolutely love you. Can't wait to see you on the road and get that vape, put it in your brain, and have a good time. And if you want to set your favorite weed store, give them a call and ask for them by name.

Last podcast on the left, it's weed. Hail yourselves, everyone. Hail Satan! There's no place to escape to. This is the last talk. On the left. That's when the cannibalism started. What was that?

What was that? Guarana. Guarana. Guarana. Guarana. Guarana. Naturally sourced Guarana. Chasta.

Featuring caffeine. And cola beans. Cola beans. You must get your naturally sourced Guarana. Guarana. It's always important when you start vocal exercises before the show, to slide into all of the accents that you know. So that you can really sort out where you sit as a person. So I always go to...

That's a person who cleans house. And then there's like... That is man who owns woman. Then you have... Don't do that one. I don't know what that is. You see, Marcus, you already jumped to conclusions about what that was. That could have been anything in anyone, anywhere.

That's my universal accent. But that is fantastic. But the only one that is important today is the... I do crimes in public. She, you like it. You see, now I'm ready to go. I'm ready for the episode. And this episode, man, like I went into full on like public anime era, like documentary series.

Next week, my goal is to have as many film noir movies pounded into my fucking the be-hole of my brain for the next episode. But man, just that idea that like everybody was killing everybody and everybody was famous for it. And it was happening in such a short period of time. As opposed to what happens right now, welcome to last podcast of the left everyone. I am Ben, hanging out with Marcus. Hi. And hanging out with Henry. Do you have something to say to Dogmeat?

Why? Do you have something to say to him? Are we supposed to see the thing about our episodes, they're evergreen. So do we want to put a time stamp on this? I think that it might be important for Marcus to experience his 39th birthday on the air. All right, Marcus. Well, happy birthday. It's your birthday.

It was only nine years ago that you were 30. Thank you. Can you think about that? That time that you ditched me so you could try and have sex with a woman and have sex with that woman. I did not ditch. And she would not have sex with his best friend's 30th birthday party. Oh my God. It didn't even show up in the first place.

Yep. It didn't show up. I was there boulevard. Yep. Whatever. Also, I didn't know it was going to be a big deal because I don't celebrate my birthday too much or at all. But you had a man who was. It didn't show up to my 30th birthday.

I didn't know we were in preschool still where we had to show up to all these events. I don't know why you need, I don't know why you need to insult me to feel better about your guilt. I'm not feeling guilty. I'm saying, oh, I think my voice sounds different. I think it is the guilt of a decade of avoiding connection with his friends and then creeps into your body slowly but surely and it will turn into Gilles' bar syndrome which Jenna Jameson was just cleared from. Yes. She's still in the hospital struggling. Well, anyway, I did not realize that my presence was so important to you nine years ago, Marcus.

And why? Because I'm too humble to understand something like that. I hate you. All right. So anyway, everyone. He's still depressed. Oh, humble, humble. All right.

Let's get on with it. My Barker part two. So when we last left the Barker gang, the year was 1927 and all four of the Barker brothers were out of commission. The eldest, Herman, had been killed in a shootout with the police. Lloyd, the second eldest, was serving a sentence of 25 years in Leavenworth. Doc was down for life on a murder charge in Oklahoma and Fred was doing five to ten at the Kansas State Penitentiary. The family that serves together slurves together. I think it's really important for everybody to be together and jail at the same time.

But you say Herman got killed at a shootout. Is that what you'd say that instead of him blowing his own brains out? I would say he got killed as a result of the shootout and technically it was within the confines of the shootout. So yeah, I would say he got killed in the shootout because he'd rather fucking shoot himself in the head and let the coppers take him alive. It really doesn't make a difference to the cops. Either way, you're dead. Well, it's just a different phone call.

As a matter of fact, if I was the cops, I would say thank you because now I don't have to carry the guilt of shooting somebody even if that person would be guilty. The fact that he committed suicide was kind of nice. I guess so. I would have liked prison though at the time. Well, Fred Barker's stretch at Kansas State, however, would transform the entire Barker gang from a small group of constantly caught miscreants into one of the most successful and dangerous criminal gaggles of the prohibition and depression eras. There was an incredible documentary I watched that was called The Secrets of Gangland.

That was really interesting talking about this time period. And the fact that, like, putting it into context, how successful the Barker-Carpus gang was. In the middle of all these other criminals, these guys made a fucking ton of money. And they were different, too, because there are other gangsters, people like Al Capone, which we'll cover in, like, season 25 of Last Podcast on the left. Ooh, that's when we're replaced. That's when we're replaced by new, young, just robots. It'll be teenage, bisexual robots.

I can't wait. Al Capone, he actually put all his money back into infrastructure and eventually wanted to become an actual politician. Like, he was really trying to angle for true power. Where somebody like the Barker-Carpus gang, they knew where they had it sweet, which was, get that fucking gang, gang, get that fucking money, put it in a pile, buy my fucking dress, because she looks like shit. Well, that'll be nice. And then you can have all that money in the pile there, which will be kind of fun to look at.

Al Capone, I think maybe he was too honest to be a politician. Hmm. Oh, my God. He's going to be, Al Kissel's going to be a fucking senator that someone's going to have to assassinate in 20 years. Whoa! I have a huge head. Yeah, I know. Big target.

No need for a scope. Well, it's in Leavenworth that Fred Barker met Alvin Carpus, a.k.a. Old Creepy. And it was Carpus who recognized- I thought that was Charlie Rose's nickname. You did that joke last week. Oh, did I? Well. And it was Carpus who recognized that the Barkers were just a pack of wild dogs that

could wreak all sorts of havoc across the Midwest if only they had the right guidance. I'm telling you, aren't you little girls and little boys needed some structure? And that's why we're going to talk about the A to Z-Rabbery. A, you're going to want to use your A tommy gun when you go into the bank. Your A. Always grab a BB and throw it at the cops. C, be the cat. Be a cat.

Okay, interesting. But Creepy really, he resented his nickname for years. He didn't like it, huh? No. No, it's a terrible nickname. Creepy? Yeah. Old Creepy.

Like, oh, here comes Old Creepy. You're not going to get many dates being called Old Creepy. That's creepy. I'm nice. I'm organized. Okay. You're spelled Beverly wrong. Oh, Robert.

Now Alvin Carpus did not follow the stereotype of what we imagine a prohibition gangster to be. Most people remarked on his dignity and manners, and said he seemed more like an accountant than a gangster. As far as his nickname goes, Alvin was called Old Creepy because his general appearance just kind of made people uncomfortable. I'll give you a massage. Thank you.

Use skinny with stooped shoulders, creepy eyes, and a wide, creepy smile. Yeah, I went to the orthodontist. Yeah? Yeah, what happened at the orthodontist, Old Creepy? He turned my teeth backwards. So please, and I just keep getting worse. I guess so. You're eating all wrong.

Basically, Alvin Carpus just wasn't put together quite right, a human that nonetheless set off Uncanny Valley alarm bells, warning you of some unknown danger. You know, it's weird, which I also learned from this Al Capone, this other Al Capone documentary I was ending up watching, just because I wanted to see context for the time period. Was it Al Capone and his partner, oh, I believe his name was Papa, his partner was Papa. I think all of these people just needed a father. Yes.

But Al Capone was the Barker gang. He was muscle. He was the guy that wasn't afraid to beat people to death, you know, like he always sent the message home personally, and he also understood that violence spoke a very wide series of languages. And he was a little guy. He was a little guy. No, he was the opposite.

He was huge. Was Al big? He was huge. I thought he was a tiny one. And Joe, his partner was like just like Carpus, where he was the organized one. He needed somebody, they always seemed the two polar opposites. You need somebody who was an enforcer, somebody who's going to bring the energy, and they need somebody who is the organizer.

You need somebody who actually has got his head in a swivel, and he's looking to figure out a way to hide your money. I love this e-harmony updated app. Alvin Carpus was born in Montreal in 1907 and began his life of crime at the age of 10, assisting an 18-year-old near-Duel in grocery and hardware store burglaries. Just before the law caught up to Alvin, though, the Carpus family moved to Chicago, where Alvin's behavior only got worse. By the time he was 18, Alvin and a friend were running a hamburger stand in Chicago

that doubled as an illegal liquor store by day. That's awesome. That's fucking awesome. It's so fucking sweet. Chicago is a hot dog town. They went in there, they have a hamburger stand in Chicago. That's how they knew they were criminals. Well, that is.

Al's got to be livid. He was against the rule. Yeah, this was before Al's rise, but it is really interesting. I love that idea of how much fun booze used to be, because nowadays, man, speakeasies suck. That physical time we go to a speakeasy, you can't find the door. It's $25 cocktails. So you want prohibition.

I'm just saying it was fun when it was like, ooh, not even. I think it was horrible, though, because then all the booze was bad, you never knew what you were going to get. The cocktail waitresses were all scared all the time. And then next thing, you know, they're flipping tables. What's real? What's not real? And you know half of the bar is made out of cake.

Oh, this cake thing. You're bringing it into this episode. Well, I just don't like that they had to have so much deception. It's fine. But I'm just talking about how speakeasies used to be fun. They used to be funder in the type of thing. Yeah, they used to be. I think the people spoke easy because they were very scared of being arrested.

Yeah, it's ironic name. Yeah. Well, by day, they ran the hamburger stand. By night, Alvin robbed warehouses, stealing whatever was stored inside, just random shit, like pocket knives and tires. He's a real criminal. Okay. Stealing anything.

Anything. Well, after that, Alvin rode the rails for a little while, traveling through the American Midwest by hopping on and off freight trains. But after a railroad bull caught him out, Alvin was sent to a reformatory on a five to ten year sentence. And that's where Alvin's true education and crime began. Another example of how prison is just a master's program for criminals. At the Hutchinson Correctional Facility, Alvin Karpus met another delinquent named Lawrence

DeVall. DeVall just happened to have been raised in Tulsa, where he'd been a member of the Central Park gang since the age of 12. Whoa, his old buddy. Yeah, sometimes he would be in the gang with the Barker boys. While DeVall had started off with larceny at 13, he'd graduated to bank robbery by the time he was 24 and had been sent to Hutchinson Correctional for committing two bank robberies in Iowa and Ohio, totaling almost $300,000 in stolen loot, and that's $300,000 in 1925

money. Man, that's insane. It's millions of dollars now. Swagged to the moon. That's fucking real ass money, dawg. Absolutely. That's what I like about all these fuckers, too, because again, when we covered Bonnie and Clyde, it was all just about their personalities and how engaging they were and how romantic

it was. And their stories were interesting, but man, they sucked. When you listen to these things, I mean, really, like, oh, these guys were the real hard asses. Yeah. All right. Now, since Alvin was a few years younger, he idolized DeVall not only for his daring criminal exploits, but also for the knowledge DeVall had amassed while breaking into banks.

Particularly, Alvin was impressed by how much DeVall knew about nitroglycerin, which was essential knowledge for any Yagworth assault, lest he blow himself to pieces like so many amateurs before. That's fucking awesome. Yeah. That's so fucking sweet. It's a cool thing to know about. Yeah, nitroglycerin, because you got to fucking break those.

You got to bust those vaults open with something, and if you don't have like a guy that goes tic, tic, tic, tic, tic, tic, tic, tic, with his hands next to it, a safe cracker. Yeah. If you don't got a safe cracker and you got to get through that vault fucking fast, boom, nitroglycerin, that fucker will blow across the street. But the thing is, is that you also probably lose half the money in the process because half of it gets burnt up. People will probably notice, too.

I mean, by then, what these guys used to do, and what we'll see as we cover, the thing that the Barker-Karpus gang, they did so good, was full-on like shock and awe. They would show, they would roll in as a group and fucking, it would happen so fast that you wouldn't even know that it was happening. It would happen, and then all of a sudden they're killing everybody and shooting everybody and they got fucking big old Tommy Guns. Whoa, mama, it's like the Apple dumpling gang. Sure.

Yeah, they were the buttercream gang. Oh, I love the buttercream gang, especially when they're all making love to me. Yes, you did. That's where the cream comes. Now, by 1929, both Alvin and DeVall were ready to leave prison, so they and two other inmates escaped and embarked on a crime spree that spread across three states. By the time they were caught, they claimed to have committed 40 robberies. Would you not say this is more difficult than getting a job?

Well, but to get a job, you got to show up somewhere on time, you got to be where someone else tells you to be, you got to do what someone else tells you to do. But if you're with Creepy Carpus, you got to be where he says you got to be. Yeah, but it's pretty relaxed. You got to do what Creepy Carpus has got to do, but it's actually not that relaxed because then if you fuck up, he'll shoot you in the back of the head. At this time, though, Carpus is not the leader, DeVall is the leader because DeVall is the older one, so DeVall is actually telling Carpus what to do.

And Carpus is doing whatever the fuck DeVall wants to do. DeVall, Lawrence DeVall is an absolute fucking psychopath. Wow. And I mean, Carpus is technically, this is his internship. Yeah, it is. Yeah. And if you get a regular job, you can't rob all those banks. Yes.

That's true. Stealing mostly from filling stations and small stores, the tiny gang had taken money, clothing, shoes, guns, and cars worth about $5,000 total. And please take my wife, please. Oh, yes. Very good. Very, very good. I liked it.

That's kidnapping. I enjoyed it. That next episode is kidnapping. We'll get to that. You guys are stealing all this stuff from this gas station, but take my wife, would you? And then that's again, please. It's a different crime. When they were caught, however, they only had $500 out of that $5,000 left because they'd

lost all the rest gambling. They did not double their money, Ben. Yeah, that's hard, man, because it would also come down to, it's like, then he gets you back into the game of needing money, which is really very important. Take my fucking daughter while you're at it. I mean, that's right. That's just more for the different crimes. That's not stealing.

Yeah, I went to the gas station and lost my entire family to this fucking gang. It's great. I don't know, sir. You sound like you're fine with it. Both Carpus and DeVall were sent to Kansas State Penitentiary in May of 1930. From how it seems, DeVall was the one who introduced Alvin Carpus to his old Central Park gang buddy, Fred Barker. Okay.

You might've done it and feel some good. Coca-cola. And once Fred and Alvin got to know each other, they found like mines, so they decided to work together after they both got out. Did they like speed date? Like how did they pull cards out of a hat to ask each other questions? I feel like you, how do you meet cute in prison? You sit down and you play Never Have I Ever.

Never Have I Ever. Never Have I Ever. Never Have I Ever. Stolen a large man's family. It's all of us. Dang it. Now back then, prisoners could actually work days off their prison sentence by choosing to do work, as opposed to today where prisoners are forced to do difficult and dangerous jobs

for dollars if not pennies. In Alvin Carpus's case, he worked a detail in the coal mines and by working out a commissary cash for time scam that I don't particularly understand with the long-term inmates, Carpus was out of prison in just one year. Man, this is just- Wow, he must've done a lot of work in that coal mine. He's a very good criminal. Yeah. Like this is the guy who is actually very good at being a criminal.

So he figures out like, because again, this is also a time period, would you say, people say corrupt, I would almost say pure. Everybody could be purchased during this time period. Every single person in the criminal justice system could be purchased. It's all just about money. Yeah, it is all about money. I would say that's the definition of corrupt. I know.

Yeah, everyone being purchased is like the most corrupt possible system you could be where people, you know, they break vows and promises and all that for the promise of money. That is corruption defined. For love of money. But you know what it's meant? Million Dollar Man, Ted D.B. Oz, he taught us that. True, but when it comes down to penitentiary life, does it matter?

You know what I mean? We're trying to get out of jail here. Yeah, but he was stealing from the banks, but the banks, they steal from us. That's what goes around in the fucking circle, dog. I would have rather been in my jail cell than in the coal mine, though. Very much so. Yeah, because you could all do the coal lung, probably die young. I mean, by the end of it, he got 108 days chopped off of the sentence.

Damn, all right. Well, once he was released, the first place Alvin Carpus went was Ma Barker's house in Oklahoma, looking for the already released Fred Barker. However, what Alvin didn't know was that Fred had gone for an extended stay with his father in Joplin, Missouri. And the dad's place in Joplin, Missouri, that seemed to be where the Barker boys would go when they needed a break from all that crime. Kind of a breather place.

Because remember, the father left when crime got to be too much. Yeah, the dad seems like a nice dude. The dad just seems like a neutral guy that got stuck in a criminal family and now understood that he couldn't control anything and he didn't want to do anything about it. He also couldn't figure out how to tell everybody to stop. So he was just like, I'm going to go on permanent vacation. Yeah. Nice dude.

So when Alvin showed up in Tulsa expecting Fred, he found nobody but Ma Barker. Hi. Oh, hi. Yeah, place for prison, huh? Yeah. You are not Fred. I tell you, no, I ain't. I'm a whole lot more than Fred.

I got these up top butts. I know that. I got downstairs butts and you got the creepy smile that will crawl all the way down into my little creepy smile. I've been around men for an entire year. I was so excited to see my first woman. Come on. Man, it's weird.

I kind of want to go back around the boys. People say I got stringy hair, but I say it looks like spaghetti. Get over here, you witch. Now Fred's first impressions of the Barker homestead and Ma herself for that matter weren't especially good. Later Alvin Carpus wrote in his autobiography that the Barker home was nothing more than a shack in a trash strewn lot beside a set of railroad tracks. Come on.

What's wrong with that? It's a fixer upper, but you know, it's a bungalow. It's nice. Alvin's first impression of Ma, upon first seeing her balancing herself on a box trying to fix a window screen. His first impression was that of a quote, a little dumpy old woman, since she was kind but still living in a sort of like primitive, unnecessary filth, but it's like, why are you living like this?

You don't need to live like this. Yeah, it sounds like some form of six foot seven podcast or lifestyle. Ma Barker and I live the same life. That's what you're saying? Yeah, you both watch each other. I don't have to stand in a freaking box to change a light bulb. No, you're six foot seven. Yeah.

So what are you talking about? The literally the story he just told was Ma Barker is on a box to change a light bulb. It's not about the teetering and tottering. It's not about the teetering and the light bulb. It's about the railroad track. It's about going and seeing, it's like, wow, you could really live a much nicer life than this. Why are you not doing that?

Yeah, I fucking fantasize about putting Jello in the pool. I could do that. You could. You could. Oh, and then Puffin could stand on it. Oh, then no, this is the tincture. Yeah. Then you think you're making a Jello iceberg and it doesn't work.

Enjoy the flavor now because my brain's going to be gone in 15 days, but like February. Once Ma invited Alvin inside, he found that the house had no electricity, no running water and no plumbing. And it had an old timey outhouse in the back, buzzing with flies that were no doubt attracted to the large pile of Ma Barker feces contained therein. Hey, listen, we dump the old fashioned way. We defecate straight from the butt to the earth, give it back in one long cycle. I'm Simba, my poops are Simba.

I think I'm scarring away because I'm delivering them back to the earth, but you know, it's the Lion King, it's an ancient African tale. I have to defend Ma. I'm sure she's a horrible person in many ways, but this is 1927, right? This is an old timey gal. I think she's trying to live her best life. I think right now you are being a West Coast elitist, Henry, and we have an East Coast elitist in the birthday boy Marcus.

What's wrong with pooping in an outhouse? I'm saying that, well, the problem is that Alvin Karpus said that the house was covered in flies because there was so much shit piled up in the outhouse out back. You got to clean it out. It was awful. It was highly unsanitary and you could smell the shit from outside, from inside the house. But what Karpus also saw, somebody could use a fixer upper here. Like he actually, I really do think he surveyed the land because the next thing that he saw

was the pile of fucking swag that they had inside of the house. Yeah. And I think that's what stood out to him, is that even though the house was like grim and dank, it was also filled with like fine clothes, new dishes, furs, jewelry, all the shit that the Barker brothers had stolen before they'd gone to prison. It's just such an American story. Maybe this is specifically American because how many times you see across this beautiful country of ours where you have like a dilapidated trailer with like a fucking full on outfitted

Ford Mustang like in front of it like that style where it says it's all about the clothes and the shoes and it's the drip and the ride and then nothing else matters. Yep. Yep. If you have the drip, don't forget to go to the doctor as well. That's also, it could be chlamydia. Yes, indeed. But while the Barker home and Ma Barker herself took some getting used to, Ma and Karpus became

friends in the ensuing days prior to Fred's return from Joplin. You know, it was day eight. I finally got used to that big pile of shit. I actually nearly, I just stopped smelling it. I kind of like it now. No, we were put googly eyes on it. It's kind of funny. It's my pet.

I get it. Like I couldn't tell you like what it is about it, but like I get why she has it back there. It's for my, it's part of my family. It's a memory. It is a memory. And in time, Fred even said that Ma Barker preferred Alvin Karpus to her own sons. Yeah.

Now before Henry launches into another accusation that Ma was an incestuous beast of a woman. She's got to prove me to me that she's not. Ma Barker was also at this time just starting to seriously date a 70 year old miserable buzzard named Arthur Dunlop. I think that she also does it just so like, I still got it. I can do people saying oh Ma Barker can't do, but I can do. I mean 70 probably doesn't have that long to live. This is maybe another scam all along.

She has more money than him. Yeah. Arthur Dunlop truly is just a hanger on. He's a leech. Nobody liked him. Ma Barker didn't even really like him. He drank too much. He got mean when he was drunk.

He sometimes got abusive towards Ma and he was just generally unpleasant to be around. Man, you know, she don't need that kind of arm candy. She needed like a 30 year old like Guadalupean man who can come around and only this is massage, her fucking haggard feet and the lick herb, the horrible shit filled butthole and just be there for her and support her. Yeah. Well, I don't know if anyone would like that position. They're new to this.

They don't know. They're new to the world. They think it's a part of it. All right. Eventually, however, Arthur would outstay his welcome. Now, when Fred returned to Tulsa to meet up with Alvin Carpus, he brought along another criminal named W.H. Greer's, aka James Edward Creighton.

You said the good fake names. Oh yeah, James at James Creighton. That's perfect. It's good. The three men left the Central Park gang behind and started a new gang that would strike fear into the hearts of law enforcement officials and bank tellers across the Midwest. But while Creighton was as much of a bank robber as the rest of them, he had a wife and a kid and therefore wanted to keep a low profile.

But since the gang had to call themselves something, James, Fred and Alvin decided on the Barker Carpus gang. Cool. They quickly got to the business of crime. That's a good thing they didn't go with prune brothers. Oh, the old prune brothers, you remember that video? I'm gonna shit. I'm gonna shit.

I'm gonna shit. He's fucking banging the goddamn frying pan on the ground. Look it up. Look it up. Look it up. Younger listeners. Yeah. Yeah.

Look it up. Spread it around. Have it like a retro return. Bring it back. Yeah. It needs to be rebooted. Yeah. With Kieran Culkin.

Wouldn't that be something? Now Alvin Carpus was, at this point, actually less experienced with crime than Fred Barker, but Carpus was always much more intelligent to the point of being paranoid. He fretted over every job and was tough to persuade, but his apprehension balanced the impulsiveness of the Barkers and made Alvin Carpus the de facto leader of the gang. Sometimes you got to make moves and fucking silence dog. Yeah. You got to roll in.

He's got the Barker brothers now. What you'll see is what they'll do is they come in, they do the whack-a-dewack. He sits back and does the sack-a-dewacks. Well, right now it's very small. Right now it's just Alvin Carpus and Fred Barker and sometimes James Creighton coming in, but really the only two permanent members of the gang. I mean, it's a gang of two, basically. Yeah.

All right. Now the Barker Carpus gang wasted no time and started their reign of terror by robbing a few jewelry stores in Oklahoma. But the Barkers were well-known to local law enforcement already. Remember, they'd been a problem their entire fucking lives. And when these stores got emptied out, the cops began harassing Ma. Come on. Don't go ask me.

You know you love my sons. So Fred used the money from the jewelry store robberies and moved Ma as well as her hated boyfriend Arthur Dunlop to a 10-acre farm outside of a small railroad town in Missouri called Thayer. Once they moved, the Barker boys set up this small plot of land as a full-on criminal hideout. This is really good. These guys really set up a compound. So they're moving on up.

They're getting organized. They're building all their shit. They're getting ready to really go super sand. May I say though, does Ma just love the sound of trains? It seems like every home is a train track adjacent. Or is that so they can escape easier? I feel like it's also just where nobody lived. Yeah.

Railroad towns are not super popular. They're usually fairly small, unless you're in a gigantic hub or something like that. Addling, Texas was a big railroad hub. The town that I grew up in was a railroad town. The only reason why it existed is because it was a stop on the railroad, but then once they took out the fucking depot and the tracks got torn up, that's when my town died. That's when it nicked the throat just a little bit. Then when the big conglomerations, the big corporations came in, that's when the throat

got slit and Rochester, Texas no longer exists. Well, I'm just glad it only happened there. Yeah. And it's not a part, it's not the American story for the small town. Let's see Marcus putting his lipstick on, his little dress to go by the train station and wave at the boys. I just need them to know that even he in Rochester, Texas, that there's a woman that needs to be married.

And then you fall to the shore and be like, I'm a dude. You're so modern. You're so modern. Not only am I a dude, I'm a little fucking boy. Rochester is crazy. We got to destroy these small towns. I guess so. Well, this full-on criminal hideout came complete with barbed wire strung around the property

and a long cable affixed to the front gate that was attached to a bell inside the front door that rang when anyone drove down the gravel road leading to the house. Ma, hear me out. What if we make it look like a criminal compound? You know what? I was just thinking that. Let's make it real suspicious. Yeah, no houses or nothing.

I'm going to sleep inside a horse's butt and I'm going to marry a gun. Oh, I'm just sick from all the poo-poo fumes. Oh, that's your right. The Barker-Karpus gang, like many gangs at the time, didn't necessarily have a dedicated membership. Often, they took in outlaws for a job or two before these freelance criminals moved on to the next gang, the next solo venture, or a violent death. On the first major robbery of the Barker-Karpus rampage, they brought two men named William

Weaver and Jimmy Wilson for a daring early morning ransack of a bank in Mountain View, Missouri. I feel like Jimmy Wilson, like he's a little Jimmy Wilson. Oh, a little Jimmy Wilson. Yeah, yeah. How are you doing? He looks like he's nine, but he's 45. Weaver and Wilson, I don't know about these guys, they sound like they would be good Major

League Baseball commentators, but I don't think they're going to be good criminals. The names don't really seem criminal to me. They haven't built it yet. Do these guys just show up and then just want to do that? How do they recruit the guys for all the robberies? I think these dudes find network, they have networks in prison, they meet guys in prison and then once they get out, they just find each other and like, oh yeah, let's go on this fucking job.

They meet in speakeasies, that's another way that they meet, they're just in there and they start talking, I'm a bank, oh shit, you're a bank robber, I'm a fucking bank robber, let's go around some banks. Do they just say bank robber? Do you think they just say it out loud or is there code? Well, I think they just say things like, what are their specialties? Like you're a gunman, you're a yag, you're a getaway driver, they put together a crew. Sure.

Yes. Maybe they meet over a plate of spaghetti and they both sucked on the same strand and then their noses kiss. It might be, honestly. On October 7th, 1931, Carpus and Weaver broke into the bank at 3 a.m. and hid for the next six hours, waiting for the bank employees to open up the place. Bro, do you hear me out? Do I look like a plant?

No. I'm not moving. No, dude, no, nice leaves. I can see your suit though in your hat, you're a man. Damn it. Once 9 a.m. came, Carpus and Weaver left out, catching the employees unawares. Unemployee, however, managed to hit the alarm just as the crew was stuffing the last of the cash into sacks.

Remember, there's only a two-man crew here and the cops showed up just as soon as Carpus and Weaver were hopping into the getaway car driven by Jimmy Wilson. I had to get yellow pages so I could reach the wheels. Come on, boys. Come on, boys. You're crushing it, buddy. The gang, however, had prepared for just such a possibility. As they sped away, they scattered a bucket full of two-inch roofing tax behind the car,

popping the tires of the police vehicles and enabling the crew to get away with $7,000 and minimal fuss. Whoa, they went deathmatch with it? They got no tax? Cool. What I love about this time period, too, is that there are so many things that I learned about from Looney Tunes cartoons, right? And I saw in Looney Tunes cartoons and saw in, like, old-timey movies, all this kind

of bullshit. You just kind of assumed, like, oh, that wasn't real. And then you really get into it and you were like, holy fucking shit. Like, the more you read about all of these gangland types, all of these personalities, everything, they were all Looney Tunes. They were all in Looney Tunes, which is really strange. And then they all, like, used shit like this. These were real tactics.

Yeah. Yeah. Meep, meep. Yeah. About two months later, though, Carpus and Fred robbed a clothing store stealing $2,000 in garments. And this robbery would lead to the gang's first pot of hot water. Yeah, see, I actually disagree with robbing the clothing store because you're just picking

up so much evidence. And then how many, how many, oh, yeah, man, anyway, okay, we're going to do it. They just got sick of just spending their money on it. They were, like, just figured, instead of buying clothes, we already stole all this money. We could just steal clothes. They should just buy the clothes with the money. No, but now they're like, now I have the money and the clothes. All right.

Yeah. And Ben, you make a good point. And since these were dudes in their 20s with not the most foresight, they were out and about wearing the clothes they'd stolen the very next day. So while Carpus, Fred, and William Weaver were having a tire fixed at an auto garage, the mechanic recognized the suits the outlaws were wearing as the same clothes that were reported stolen because I guess the mechanic had a keen eye for fashion. I just think that phones have ruined our span, our attention span.

And that the people used to be able to pay attention to things and remember things. You can just see all the die packs exploded and all their zips and shit. No. That's the way it's supposed to look. No, this fashion. This fashion. I'm high-pitched. Well, the mechanic called the cops and here's where things went south fast.

The first officer on the scene was Sheriff Roy Kelly and without a second thought, Alvin and Fred opened fire, shooting Kelly in the chest and the left arm twice each. Yeah, man. Uh-oh. They left him there to bleed out and Sheriff Kelly died before the ambulance could save him. Subsequently, the mechanic identified Fred Barker as the cop killer. And this makes them criminals for life.

Yeah. Like this is the same thing that we've seen before. We saw it with Billy the Kid. This type of thing happens. All of a sudden, now you have a murder rap. Now you're done. Now you are like, you have. Not just a murder rap, but you have killed a cop.

You have killed an elected, you have killed an elected official. You're fucked. No one that the cops were fast on their ass. The gang abandoned their hideout in Thayer and took Maud to a safe house for outlaws in Joplin, run by a man named Herbert Deffie Farmer. And I actually feel like the death community should take back the term Deffie. Sure. And the way of getting into it.

Absolutely. Now the Barker's were somewhat of a loss as to where to go next. So Deffie suggested that they go where all outlaws in the Midwest eventually went. A city so corrupt that criminals and city officials openly collaborated. New York City. Milwaukee. St. Paul, Minnesota. No shit.

Yeah, man. Really? You do some reading about St. Paul during this time period and it is hopping, bro. Okay. It sounds like a- It's a little cold. It's a little cold for gang violence. But guess what?

It keeps people inside. I guess. You get to hide inside. Yeah, but then if you, yeah, but you want to, you want to shoot people with your Tommy gun. No, not here. Not in St. Paul. You'll see.

Now during prohibition, St. Paul had become one of the three main hubs of liquor distribution in the United States, along with Cicero, Illinois and Hot Springs, Arkansas. The latter two cities were controlled by Al Capone, but for everyone else, there was St. Paul. Yep. St. Paul was in the perfect position to become a liquor hub. The Mississippi River was a rich source of water for making bootleg liquor. And by the way, 75% of St. Paul's citizens were said to make their own liquor at home.

That's awesome. And St. Paul's proximity to Canada made smuggling liquor across the border easy as pie. But while other cities actively fought against the criminal element, or at the very least pretended to fight, the police in St. Paul had a longstanding rule that if criminals didn't rob or kill anyone within city limits, those criminals would be left alone. Gentlemen's agreement. And this is a thing that also, you remember Billy the Kid, when we covered it, it was the same thing.

He lived in a criminal based town. And is there's a part of me that's, I find it, because I first asked the question, like, why they want to buy all these suits? Like what was the point of like looking fresh, right? It kind of, I guess Al Capone was sort of a person that became a style icon during the time period where he's wearing these big suits and it became a big thing for the quote-unquote public enemies to dress well and do all of this shit and party a lot and spend their money.

And there was a part of me that wonders like, why do they all get fascinated with that? And then you realize like, oh, in the wild west, those outlaws all did the same shit. It has been a part of this type of criminal DNA that has existed for forever. And I don't know if it's just because like you are living this rock and roll lifestyle and there's only a short period of time that you'd be able to live it. I think it's about attention. Yeah. And the money's got to go somewhere.

Yeah. Well, it's like it's bad behavior. Like usually when people commit bad behavior, like pet criminals and the like, you know, people who aren't just like full on psychopaths, like serial killers and shit like that. Criminals like this, a lot of times they do crave attention so fucking much. So they're going to buy flashy clothes. They're going to buy big flashy cars, loud cars, they're going to turn their fucking radios up so goddamn loud that it makes you want to fucking scream when you're trying

to sleep at three fucking a.m. Whoa. You don't know they're criminals, Marcus. Yeah, you don't know. Well, I don't know. Well, I know the guy who fucking blasts Phil Collins in my neighborhood all the time isn't a criminal, but I don't know about the right one. We actually don't know that.

It might be Phil Collins. It could be Phil. He might be a criminal. Yes, indeed. Well, as someone who's dabbled in the fine game of Jose Bank, it cannot be understated. How important a nice jacket can make you feel. Are you, are you about to do a push for your own the line that has made you an ambassador or fashion ambassador?

You should. Oh, one bone. Yeah, you should. That's the plug. I'm going to buy some pants from them. Yeah. I see. You got clothes on right now all from one bone.

No, I was thinking more Jose Bank. Well, this system of basically letting the criminals live in St. Paul, this began at the dawn of the 20th century with a police chief named John O'Connor, who had ties to New York City's Tammany Hall. Tammany Hall, of course, was one of the most infamously corrupt political machines in American history. Yep. See, O'Connor believed that he had the understanding that, quote, Americans were hypocrites who

publicly deplored vices they secretly enjoyed. What? Which is that's prohibition in a nutshell described decades before prohibition was enacted. It's absolutely true. Yeah. Wow. It's one of the defining features of our country. Yes.

But it was that attitude that led to what was known as the O'Connor system in St. Paul. The O'Connor system held that, quote, criminals could make their presence known to the chief of police and stay here with immunity, provided they committed no crimes within the city. Well, as such, gangsters used St. Paul as a city-sized safe house, buying police protection with watches, gold jewelry, or just gold hard cash. When a rival in town, a criminal of any kind, could check into a speakeasy, pay a fee to somebody affiliated with the police, and become immune from arrest, as long as they stayed within the St. Paul city limits.

Wow. It's pure. It's pure. All he has to do is show up, and he pays the no arrest ticket, he pays for the no arrest ticket, he gets it, and all of a sudden he doesn't have to be arrested anymore. That's it. It's what all these perverted Hollywood producers do with the Soho House. Honestly, what we do now truly is, they don't, it really does feel like, that's why I keep

saying like pure, they have like a system. Now it's all like unsaid, like the Al Capone was replaced by Amazon. Like they're just, it's the same mechanisms where they just, they bribe and they grease the wheels of everybody they come in contact with, but it's legal because they're a corporation and not just, even though they are, same thing, Al Capone was giving, he was serving goods to the people. He was giving bootlegs. He did a lot of crime.

He did not quite as good as Amazon. No, I know. I could get sanitary wipes and a treadmill all in one go. But wait till Amazon creates a private police force, which you know that they already do have their own things around their own facilities, and once they start like renting them to the government, we'll see how we all feel. Yeah. And by the way, in St. Paul, that being, you know, going and paying it a speakeasy, paying

the no arrest fee, that only kept you immune from arrest from the St. Paul Police Department. If Minneapolis decided to fuck you up, nothing doing. What are you doing? You did not matter at all. The craziest part about this, though, is that it actually worked. St. Paul was the safest city in America during Prohibition. As Chief O'Connor put it, the city was being pillaged and robbed before his tenure. So he brought peace to St. Paul by choosing the lesser of two evils.

We side with the evils. Yeah. Yeah. You just become evil. You just join the empire. You're like, I'm here. Yeah. So many criminals were coming into St. Paul, so too was their money coming with them.

St. Paul became a criminal boom town with cops, corrupt politicians and gangsters making profits hand over fist at the speakeasies, casinos and brothels that all operated without impunity just so long as the right people got paid. Oh, yeah. What a great day at the old St. Paul Brothel. Yep. Yep. Yep.

Yep. Yeah, it's interesting, I'm a janitor here. Oh, good. Yeah. And I actually worked in hair salons for a long time. Good. Yep. More hair on the floor at the brothel.

Isn't that weird? Yeah, it is weird. These women are German. They still serve hot dish? It does brothel. Oh, you got to serve hot dish. You got to. In between the sessions.

Yeah. Yeah. Just ladle it out into a big fucking trough for all the hogs. I can't think of a city I would rather not go to a brothel in than St. Paul. Yeah. Well, in addition, the banks in St. Paul were booming from all the money they laundered and the jewelry stores and car dealerships made so many sales that they couldn't keep inventory in stock.

And all this happened in the middle of the Great Depression. However, the downside to this is that it made being a bank teller in any town around St. Paul into one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. Yeah. Just don't do it. Maybe just don't show up for work that day. I would just move to St. Paul. I would just be like, all right, let's go, or we got to at least get out of the 20-mile

radius around St. Paul. Yeah. To commit robberies, gangsters would just drive outside of St. Paul city limits. Or if they were especially polite, they would drive outside of Minnesota altogether. Nice. That's nice. And once they were a safe distance away, they would hit whatever banks, trains, jewelry stores, or payroll trucks just happened to be lucky enough to grab the gangsters' attention.

Then the gangsters would return to St. Paul to fritter away their ill-gotten gains and the criminal economy that St. Paul had created. All right. Yeah, because I can imagine St. Paul just like, that must be such a sight too during the Depression. Yeah. And you know, we had the recession in 2008, but the Depression wiped out a chunk of American money.

People were fucking destitute. They destroyed the country. Well, the recession went to a month. It's nearly impossible to really picture what the Great Depression was really like. It's almost impossible for 21st century Americans to really picture it. And the fact that St. Paul was blasted was, obviously, it does eventually get to a point where all these cops are making their money, but eventually you're going to make somebody really upset.

Eventually this time period will end. Yeah. But they said during the 20s, or like during Prohibition, St. Paul had the best night life in all of America. Wow. Never to be like that ever again. Oh, Minnesota's got, they got some fun stuff happening there. St. Paul has one of my favorite record stores in America, Agarte Records.

Yeah, that's where almost gotta rest is for fucking weed. In St. Paul, not at the record store. Yeah. Not at the record store. But you had a snooty Minnesota man come and kick you out of your hotel room. The police are on their way. They are on their way, you mister. You slanderous mister.

No, he was a Midwest douchebag. Yes, he was. It's a hard thing to describe until you meet it. And to put into perspective, just how much the system fucked the rest of Minnesota, 20% of all nationwide bank robberies in the early 30s occurred within Minnesota. Out of 50 states, 20% were in Minnesota itself and not a single bank in St. Paul was ever robbed. Wow.

Yeah. So around the time that the Barker-Karpus gang rolled into town with Ma Barker in tow, O'Connor had retired as police chief but had been replaced with another man who managed to surpass him in corruption, Big Tom Brown. They're always named big. Could be. If he's big or little. I know.

Sometimes the smaller, they get the big nickname. Because it's cute. I guess. But why are guys named with the nickname big, always hyper-corrupt politicians? Well, yeah. I don't know. Yeah, I can't think of another accent. Big Dick Johnson.

I can't think of it. It's not that common of a nickname. Big, yeah. Big Tom. What was the name of the other super-corrupt politician throughout all of American history was it not Mayor Daly? Are you talking about Boss Tweed? Yeah, Boss Tweed.

That's it. Oh, yeah, Boss. Oh, yeah. Boss. Anytime you're a boss, you're fucking shit up. Big Tom Brown had joined the corruption game by heading up a police division in St. Paul called the Purity Squad. They were charged with half-heartedly enforcing laws against bootlegging, sex work, and gambling.

Here's a ticket for drinking your beer too fast. Okay? Enjoy it. Try to enjoy it. This is especially made. We got nice hops. Is that right? Yeah.

Big Tom quickly learned that there was a lot of money to be made in bribery, shakedowns, and especially selective enforcement. By 1930, Big Tom was allied with just about every powerful shady character in St. Paul. On the so-called legit side, he had Leon Gleckman, who had puppets on the city council, as well as Edward and Adolf Bremer, who laundered stolen cash from bank robberies at their own bank. That's fucking genius. You're really smart.

I used to steal all those chicken nuggets when I worked at Burger King. Oh, yeah, man. That's how you used to steal photographs from Eckerds. You have to write them off as damage, and then you can copy anybody's private photos as much as you wanted. You give them out to your friends. We should have worked at banks. Yeah, we really should have gotten more high-powered jobs.

It's also interesting to see the popularity of the name Adolf before the 1940s. I don't know what happened on the 1940s that stopped that name, but then it's like in Texas, we went by that one place that said it was called Adolfs. Yeah, and I remember when I was in college, there was a bar in Lubbock called Adolfs, but the funny thing is, you wouldn't expect it, karaoke bar. Was it in a train car? In a street mall next to the mall. If it's called Hitler's, it's a problem, but Adolf is still a name, although it's

a bad name to give your child because they're going to get called on first. People get upset. Yeah, never put them on the top of the album. Yes, it's annoying. On the criminal side, Big Tom's contacts were Jack Piper, owner of Holly Hawke's Casino, and Harry Sawyer, owner of the infamous Green Lantern Tavern, and through the Green Lantern and Harry Sawyer, Tom Brown became involved with the Barker-Karpus gang, who needed someone to help them launder all this dirty money.

For all of this individualism, it's really interesting to see how much infrastructure is needed, how much stuff is needed to keep a criminal enterprise going, again, slowly becoming a corporate hierarchy, but it's all about robbing banks. You know Tim Conway? Yeah, of course. You know Tim Conway? Yeah, how much does a Tim Conway, about 160 pounds? That's funny.

That's fun. That's fun. You know, he should have done something on Dorf on fascism, and he could have been Adolf. Have you been thinking about this this whole time, as we were talking about other things? He could have been Adolf Hitler. Yeah, honestly, that would be cute. You get it. No.

It's not how much is it. It's what's a Tim Conway? What's it? What's a Tim Conway? About 160 pounds. You already said the punchline. You said the punchline. He said a punchline five minutes too late.

We're all here, we're all here. Adorph on leadership. Adorph on leadership is really cute. Yeah. About 160 pounds. Wow. You just got, you just got the kiss on G. His little kiss on Gern went through the microphone into dog meat space.

I guess it's his birthday. It's his birthday. It's his birthday. Yeah. Now when Alvin Karpus and the Barkers arrived in St. Paul, and specifically when they arrived at the Green Lantern, they thought they'd found criminal heaven. It was. It sounds like it was, yeah.

Alvin described the Green Lantern Tavern as a perpetual party, the most complete gathering of criminals in one room as there ever was, filled with escapees from every major U.S. penitentiary. That's awesome. He was, in his words, dazzled. I just simply, this is just too much. Dazzled. Incredible.

I want to say that we would be welcomed, but at the same time I think we would have to go immediately on stage and start making people laugh. Absolutely. You ever hear the story about Richard Pryor getting kidnapped by the mafia? No. They basically scooped him up. He has a job that he was supposed to do. He got hired to do some job.

This is obviously very much the truncated version of it. He does a whole bit about it. It's hilarious. But he was supposed to do a job. They essentially kidnapped him for three days. And then he had to perform on stage for all of these guys that were all like, he was making fun of mobsters. There'd be a moment of silence.

They'll look at the godfather and go, this guy's funny. This guy's funny. They went and then eventually they left him someplace. I believe it's also Charlie Parker has the same story where he was kidnapped by mafiosos. They basically then they stuff his pockets with money and then they're like, get out of here. Comedians and the mafia and these types of criminal organizations have gone like, we've gone hand in hand for a long time.

But the only thing I, that's what I'm saying. Why won't MS13 ask us to do a live show for them? I feel like that's where the gangs are missing a little bit of this kind of class and this kind of type of stuff. Get a crooner in there. There's some barriers there. Yeah. Get a crooner.

Get a casino going. That'd be kind of fun. Danny Aiello. You know what? His nickname for me was Hollywood. What? Yeah. You knew Danny Aiello?

Yeah. He had the place out in Hoboken. Wow. Weird. Why'd he call you Hollywood? I thought he thought he was going to be successful. Oh, weird. He should have thought.

He should have helped you. He's Danny Aiello. He's not a scout. He was an actor. Yeah. He doesn't know what he's talking about. No, he doesn't. Not anymore.

No. He's dead. Well, soon, the Barker-Karpus gang met the owner of the Green Lantern, Harry Sawyer, who was described by Alvin Karpus as a, quote, roly-poly orthodox Jew, and once they showed they were on the level, the Barker-Karpus gang was welcomed into the St. Paul criminal world. All right. This is right.

I've got to confirm you. Okay. Listen, if you want to be a part of this here, you want to be here in the St. Paul scene, what you've got to do is be able to, can you make the shape of a butt with Tommy Hole bullet guns. That butt's so nice. I want to make love to it. That's a really good, whoa.

Nice job. Good work. Well, after establishing themselves, the Barker-Karpus gang moved Ma Barker and the hated Arthur Dunlop into a house in St. Paul and picked up right where they left off, robbing a bank in March of 1932 in downtown Minneapolis. Now that robbery went off without a hitch, but a few days later, the gang got word from corrupt police authorities in St. Paul that the Minneapolis police were on their way to arrest Fred and Alvin for the heist.

Whoa. Whoa. Okay. So Alvin and Fred took off and tried to figure out who had been stupid enough to bandy about the location of their secret hideout. After a very short conversation, they landed on Ma's boyfriend, Arthur Dunlop. It was me. Uh-oh.

It was me. It's been me this whole time. You know that. You guys, honestly, you didn't even have to ask yourself too long. It was me. It seems like even if it wasn't him, they have some aggression. They need to get out and maybe this is the person that should receive it. The Arthur Dunlop was not only an asshole, but a bad drunk as well.

Consequently, more than once, he'd had a few too many at the local speakeasy and bragged about being a confidant to the Barker-Karpus gang and probably bragged that he was fucking their mother as well. It didn't make them happy. I don't think it made them happy at all. Well, I think they were fine with that. It was more telling people about where they were living. But they never liked him.

They never liked him. They were all very close to their mother. And then Ma Barker, I guess, he must have had a huge hog or something. There must have been something he provided. Maybe it was just because he could be led around by the nose. Yeah, just companionship, probably. Yeah. See, by this point, Alvin and Fred had become somewhat famous in the odd true crime celebrity

scene that sprung up around Prohibition and Depression-era gangsters, and their pictures had been featured in the latest issue of True Detective magazine. And you know that that really must have like, because on one hand, they think it's awesome, right? Yeah, really nice. Because they got in all this coverage. But the thing about the Barker-Karpus gang is that they weren't like Bonnie and Clyde. No.

They didn't like too much publicity. They didn't want people to really know what was going on. So it must have been a really double-edged sword. But it is also really interesting to see how many people were pulling for these criminals. Because a lot of the times, they robbed banks, which is especially heading into the Depression-era, where everybody wanted to see the money. They wanted to see you rob a bank. Yeah.

And then the people, a lot of times, they murdered, were police, and that was another thing that people at the time were really excited to see you do, as long as it wasn't a bunch of innocent people. But the thing about all of these gangs, especially the Barker-Karpus gang, is that they were incredibly violent. And so eventually, it would go to a lot of people. A lot of people would get murdered by them, not just police officers, and then the tide starts to turn.

Yeah. The Barker-Karpus gang was incredibly violent, incredibly impulsive, and they would do anything to stay out of prison. Anything at all. Absolutely anything. And I think the only reason why they gave themselves a name, it's not for, you know, to get press or anything like that. It's just for rep in the criminal underworld.

So when they went to recruit guys, they could just say, yeah, we're the Barker-Karpus gang and do something like, oh, fuck yeah, like I want to be on your next fucking job. I mean, they wouldn't do anything to stay out of prison. I mean, because they kept on committing all those crimes. Well, yeah, they could have just got a job. Yeah, they'd be like a teacher. Oh, anything else? Most jobs, you don't end up in prison.

Most jobs. So they could have done something like that, like a chef. But anyway, when an unnamed snitch read about the Barker-Karpus crimes in True Detective Magazine and reported their location to the authorities, which, of course, that location had been relayed to the snitch on accident by a drunken Arthur Dunlop. You know, we're living up on the trench cracks, we got a whole system to make sure that nobody knows it gets in there. It's a gate.

You can look at the gate. Wow. Yep. Wow. I'm fucking their mother. I can't. It's fucking great. She's got a head full of spaghetti here and she's got, honestly, I've never seen a vagina,

but I've felt it. That's crazy. You told me all that. Now, when Alvin figured out what had transpired and confronted Dunlop about it, Arthur confessed and blamed his behavior on the drink. Kiss me. Kiss me. Get out of the problem.

It's just grains. I'm allergic to grain. Oh, is that the problem? The grain is the gluten. It's the gluten. I'm anemic. And this is all while he begged both Alvin and Ma to forgive him, please forgive him, because he knew what was going to happen if they didn't.

I think he knew what was going to happen, no matter what they said. The decision as to what should be done with Arthur fell to Alvin and Ma, because the two of them were oddly close. So close, in fact, that Dunlop would accuse them of having a sexual relationship anytime he wanted to get mean. Wait, that's the, but that's the mom and son. No, no, that's Carpus. Alvin Carpus.

Oh, okay. Carpus. They did want to have sexual relations. They could do it. They could. They could. And Alvin kind of hinted a couple of times in his autobiography that maybe him and Ma shared a couple of magical nights together.

Because you know what, people say a lot of things about Ma Barker, but I feel like you reach a certain age and you begin to know how to pleasure a man in a specific way. And yeah, maybe you don't got the same gam as it used to, and maybe you smell a dookie from the nearby outhouse. But if you really know how to hit that swerve, I mean Alvin Carpus did write about it in a way that he, it sounded like he knew something that everyone else didn't, that made Ma Barker I guess a special, special woman to him. Special woman.

Maybe he found the secret of the prostate. In the fucking dark, every hole is a glorious hole. I don't think that's true. You see, you better be careful. You should have picked your nose. Listen, you gotta finish your nose. You gotta be mostly blind and honestly, it really helps to drink a bottle of whiskey. Honestly, when it comes down to it, it doesn't fucking matter what happens in there.

Yep, pre-World War II. We didn't have an identity yet. No. No. So after driving around and talking for hours, Alvin convinced Ma that she and everyone else would be better off without Arthur Dunlop. Ma was sent to Chicago and while they told her that Arthur was quote unquote, going to Kansas City.

Wait a second. Why are you guys doing the quotation fingers? Yeah. Why are you guys doing quotation fingers? I thought that we were going to Kansas City. Yeah. Yeah. We're going to Kansas City.

Stop using the quotation fingers. No, no. My son is for not going. I think Ma had a pretty good idea of what, going to Kansas City really meant. Yes. It's the big wink. Yeah. It's the big wink.

It's the fact that nowhere near Kansas City. Yeah. Arthur Dunlop's dead body was found on the shores of Lake Fremsted in Wisconsin with his brains blown out, naked and obviously tortured prior to his death. On the coroner's report, his mustache had been partially severed and hung grotesquely from his face. They got Arthur good. They got Arthur good.

That's that untapped aggression you mentioned earlier, they took it out at that point. They just cut it off his fucking face and you know it was when he was fucking alive. Definitely. Now, nearby gas station workers said that they'd last seen Dunlop in the company of Alvin Karpus and Fred Barker, but Karpus maintained that it was actually Holly Hawke's owner, Jack Piper, who took care of Arthur as repayment for some unnamed distasteful jobs the Barkers had done for him. Hey.

Oh. Distasteful. Look at that, babe. Oh, fucking clean out my fucking butthole hair. Thank you, the Barkers. Yes, it's his birthday. It's Barker's birthday. He said butthole.

Yeah, just take that, just get a little comb, like the tiny like lice comb, and I want you to comb out all the fucking dingleberries on my butthole. Let's not be doing that. And if you fucking pull out one single hair, I'll shove it in your fucking mother's eye. Yeah, stick it up your head. Wow. Wow. And reportedly, Ma Barker was actually quite happy when she heard of Dunlop's gruesome

fate. What a day. And since big Tom Brown had tipped off Fred Barker and Alvin Karpus that they were the main suspects in this murder, the Barker-Karpus gang escaped retribution. From there, they only got more bold and more violent. And on September 29th, 1932, they participated in one of their most daring robberies at Citizens National Bank in Waupeeton, North Dakota. And 1932 is also about the time that bank robin starts getting real fucking hard.

Real hard. Yeah. The crew this time was Fred Barker, Alvin Karpus, Alvin's old buddy Lawrence DeVall. Remember the guy he was in the reformatory with? Mm-hmm. Famous Yegg, Harvey Bailey. Harvey Bailey's an interesting character too. I started doing a little research into him.

They call him the Dean of American Bank Robbery. He was one of the most successful bank robbers in the history of the world, but he did go to Alcatraz, but he died a peaceful death at 91 years old. In 91? Wow. And the last guy on the crew was Bernard Big Phil Courtney. All right, big Bernie was taken. Yeah, I guess so.

Bernard Big Phil. I was just like, well, some people keep telling me I look like a Phil, but I don't even know. Am I boring you? Big Phil, what's your name? It's Bernard. Listen again. It's Bernard. This is why I just call me Phil, even though it's not my name.

I barely answer to it because my name is Bernie. I just these nicknames. Everybody's got them now. Yes, indeed. Is it Phil F-I-L-L? No, I'm not an asshole. Okay. Wearing long overcoats and carrying Thompson machine guns, the Barker Karpus gang looked

to all the world minus the guns as bankers themselves, which gave them an edge of surprise. That's so cool. Just hanging out because you've got all these suits on and shit in the crew. But like the guns are just under the Tommy gun. They can't hide it that well. It's a huge thing. It was very quick. Yeah.

They weren't hanging out and eating. They weren't having for Farkin whatever the Swedish version of having a coffee in a pastry was. You say Farkin. No, no. I said a Swedish word. But these guys are all in a bank. They're just sitting there.

They're not there for a long time. Okay. The Barker Karpus gang had up to this point always been pretty small at times being comprised of only Alvin and Fred. As such, the robberies in the past were a little sneakier. But since they now had the criminal pool of St. Paul to choose from, they could go for a straightforward everybody on the fucking ground approach. And that's exactly how they burst into Citizens National Bank.

Yeah, man. Yeah. Using in the words of a later article, profane language. Pussy's up. Pussy's up. Suck this down. Pussy's up. Pussy's up.

How do you want me to lay? Put your pussy in the sky. Put your pussy in the sky. You don't know how to do that. Just get on the ground. Okay. I can do that. The crew ordered the victims to drop to the floor and while one gunman stood guard, the

others emptied the cash drawers and got to work on the vault. But as the bandits looted the bank, a cashier managed to hit the alarm. We hear again. Yeah. And for this one, they actually fucking bashed them in the head with their rifle butt when they saw they fucking done it. The cops showed up before the gang could finish and as the alarm screamed, Fred Barker and Lawrence DeVall grabbed hostages.

Using the women as human shields, Barker and DeVall charged out of the double doors of the banks and opened fire on the cops outside with two Tommy guns. And when reinforcements came, Alvin opened fire as well, forcing the cops to take cover while the hostages screamed and struggled to break free. Still firing, the gang loaded into their Hudson sedan with some hopping on the running boards outside, still holding the hostages to keep the cops from pumping too many bullets into their getaway vehicle. And as they drove away, the gang used their signature, scattering five gallon milk jars

full of roofing nails on the road to slow down the cops. Some police cars were able to swerve and miss the obstacles, but others blew tires and crashed, all while dodging constant machine gunfire from the sedan carrying the Barker-Karpus gang. Eventually, the robbers got away and dumped the hostages, all severely wounded and shot up with morphine. They actually did do that. They would like when if someone got hurt, they brought morphine with them and like shot

them and was like, oh, you're hurting, sorry. They shot them up and then dropped them off 20 miles outside of town. They never hurt the hostages. They always said like, no, no, no, we don't hurt the hostages. The cops hurt the hostages. That's where we got to illegally. They were being used as human shields. Yeah, but they were there.

Also, if these cops were good, like a RoboCop, shoot between the dress. It's very difficult. It's very difficult at the time. Well, you have a robot. But these guys were, this is where they realized this is their bread and butter. What we'll do is we're just going to fucking, we'll take hostages all the time. We're going to take them and we're going to use them because then everybody gets all upset because, oh, they got an old lady like strapped to the side of the car, but that's

how you make that money. It's kind of funny to think about like 10 people just duct taped to the side of the car. No, no one will hit us now. But even though the hostages slowed down the gunfire a little, the cops had still filled the gang's Hudson with bullets, popping two tires and puncturing the gas tank, abandoning their heap. The gang found a dilapidated farmhouse with an old Essex in the front yard.

They were soon greeted by a farmer and his family and Alvin Karpus, matter of factly told them that they just robbed the Wapeton Bank and they need to buy his car for further getaway purposes. Let me just level you. Okay. Okay, you can send me an invoice. You can vet home or Christ me, but this is how it is. We're just gonna fucking kill you.

They really feel like it comes down to, they will just fucking kill the family. Well, but they offered cash. I mean, this is actually a good way to get rid of a bad car. Yeah. The old man readily agreed, especially considering how big of a wad Alvin was offering. But the old man added, he didn't give a fuck if they robbed the bank because all banks ever do is foreclose on us farmers. Damn you.

Fuck you. Fuck the man. This man, it's hard. It's hard. That is like such a depression era idea. Like the farmer, like, you know, just like, fuck yeah, help you, of course. Fuck the bank. I hate the fucking bank.

I hate cops. I hate everyone, but I hate the bank. I've screamed I hate the bank. Of course. And with that, the gang loaded into the Essex and sped away with $7,000 in cash. And you know what's funny is that they actually spent, this one was such higher effort and so much more dangerous, they got the exact same amount of money as they got when they just hid in the bank and popped out.

It's like, you know, you never know. You know, you never know. You never know. I feel like you never know what you're gonna get. Well, they have a story to tell now, don't they? Yeah. Yes, indeed. It seems exciting.

But they have a new way of doing it, too. They get a new tactic. Now, while that robbery was a little rough, the other five robberies they committed in 1932 went a hell of a lot smoother. And by the end of the year, the Barker-Karpus gang had stolen the modern equivalent of $5 million. $7 million. Now, perhaps due to Alvin Karpus' paranoia, combined with the incident that led to the

killing of a sheriff in Oklahoma, the gang didn't actually flash too much money. For Mazpart, she rented a quaint home instead of buying one, temporarily settling into a cottage at White Bear Lake near St. Paul. At least she got a house. Yeah. You know what I mean? At least now she's inside and she can shit in the toilet. It's good.

It's nice. It's a beautiful area. Posing as a widow named Mrs. Hunter. My poor husband, he died of getting shot by my sons in the fucking head and I need to work on my bio. Is there anybody you could honestly help me with character development? You know, hon, I actually killed my husband, too. Whoa.

What we say is, you died of cancer. Oh, that's awesome. See how easy that is? Yeah. Too much just little bullets. Yeah. How'd your husband die, ma? God.

We shot him in the head. No. It's too fun to say. It's too fun to say. Oh. Ma brought along Fred and Alvin and the home became a lake house where criminals could come, relax, and hear Ma play the fiddle all night long. Okay, everybody gather around.

This song's called Heavy Door Opening in the Basement. This is great. Okay, and this is the house called Bunch of Spiders at the Square Dance. This is a really good one. You will sit and enjoy my hospitality. I just got it. I'm telling you, I think I'm just drunk enough to think this is good. The Barker Karpus gang had proved that the bigger the gang, the bigger the score, especially

if you have permanent members you could trust. And after all, who could you trust more than family? I don't know who you trust more than family, except for the fact that a lot of times when people like, if you make your brother, your financial manager, a lot of times they just take all your money. Actually, family is actually difficult to trust. Yeah, it can be. So using some of that big wad from the Wahpeton score, the Barker's hired a private investigator

and former police chief named Jack Glenn to negotiate the release of Doc Barker, who was still serving life in prison for the murder of a 68-year-old night watchman. Now, I really think it's interesting where they hired a police officer to quote-unquote negotiate with the prison, which just seemed to mean they gave him a big chunk of money. And then that man went and gave the prison money, and they just let the man go. You know, it seems to me like sometimes you should be sentenced to the amount of life that the person that you killed had left. That left.

You kill a baby, you've got life in prison. If you kill the 68-year-old, we'll say he lives and tells us, let's give him 80, 12-year sentence. You know? You might get the pushback. You just kind of assume 80 for everyone, so you just take someone's age, you subtract that, you take someone's age that they were killed and you subtract that from 80 and that's your sentence.

And if you kill a 90-year-old, you should get 10 years of UBI. Yes. And you actually get it for free on the government's dime. Absolutely. So anyway, it's a theory. Well, acting as a go-between, Jack talked corrupt officials at the Kansas State Pen into releasing Doc early, and after the Barkers put up an untold sum, Doc did indeed leave as a free man in September of 1932.

This is also important. If you, this almost as like they were building a little business, it's the same thing where you have to put money in to get money to come out. Yes, indeed. After that success, the gang figured they'd try the same thing with Lloyd Barker, who was doing 25 years for the much less serious crime of robbing a mail wagon. I pointed a gun to the envelope. I'm here in the worst place in the world.

That's a federal crime. And Lloyd Barker was at Leavenworth's penitentiary, and Leavenworth couldn't be bought, so Lloyd was left to rot. Now, any member of the Barker-Karpus gang would have expected this same treatment. And what was more is that the penalty for failure in springing a Barker-Karpus gang member was often death. Yeah. You're getting into an arrangement with a group of highly violent, unpredictable people,

unscrupulous. When a lawyer was unable to secure a not guilty verdict for Harvey Bailey, that lawyer was shot and killed by Fred Barker on a golf course the next day. In other words, the incentive to help the Barkers instead of hindering them was quite strong. Because the thing about these guys that show back up and they're like, you know, I'm so sorry, Mr. Barker, I did everything I could do, and they just think that everything's fine and dandy while you're dealing with the psychopath.

Yeah. They think they're living in the polite world, and they don't realize that as soon as you hook up with a Barker-Karpus gang, like you are in the animal world, and they will rip your throat out if they don't like the way you look. Oh, yeah. Well, then they're definitely going to want to go to men's warehouse. Because that's what you're going to like the way. You're going to like the way my cancerous throat says that you're going to like the

way you look. I think that he just liked his cigars. Did he die? I don't know. I think that guy might be dead. Maybe. I think that guy is back in the gang. He, Fred, Alvin Karpus, Lawrence Tavall, William Weaver, and a new guy named Vern Miller.

Hi. Hi, Alvin. Hey, Vern. Hey, Vern. When did you get here? You know what? I'm not even really sure. Okay.

Welcome. Well, they robbed the third Northwestern Bank of Minneapolis in December of 1932. Now, this job was a little riskier than the ones the gang usually pulled. This bank was nestled in a triangular manner on the corner of a busy street and had large glass windows exposed to the public on all three sides. But as Karpus put it, they sometimes did risky jobs deliberately to interject some extra excitement into their work. Man.

It's already pretty exciting. But it's like the people who like comedians who lose the audience on purpose. We're going to be like, we're going to try to get killed with this one. Come on, guys. Hey, Vern. Yeah? Why don't you do this one nude? Oh, you know what?

I am new. So if there's some kind of hazing ritual, I guess whatever you guys want me to do, because it seems to be if I don't, you might shoot me in the back of the head naked bank robbing. So once the crew busted in with Tommy Guns and Revolvers, they took the bank tellers to the vault, all while people easily watched everything happening from the outside. Distraction. Distraction. Look at my taint.

Look at me. I'm barking like a dog. I'm doing a ballerina dance. I'm doing a distraction. That's what I plan to do. You're the best. Now, this wasn't quite as foolhardy as it might seem, because even though they were taking a risk, they still operated as professionals.

See for daytime robberies, the gang tried to always do it on the afternoon shift change, you know, when the day cops were going in and the evening cops were coming out. And that would give them the minutes or even the seconds they needed to safely get away. But on this particular day, two officers named Ira Evans and Leo Gorski were running behind schedule just a mile away from the bank. And when an employee managed to hit the alarm, the two tardy officers came running. We coming. We coming.

Gorski. We coming. Gorski is, uh, Ed Larson's maiden name. Is that right? Huh. No kidding. Unfortunately for them though, they were just two keystone cops against a hardened gang of criminals with machine guns.

Hey, you got, you stop your crime. Oh man. You stop your crime. I will chase you around the stage wagon for a while, then we'll all fall down together in tandem. It's funny. Yeah, Gorski, I think we're in over our heads here, buddy. Yeah, I'm just another Polish police officer who's not good at it.

I know. By the end of it, Evans had been Swiss cheesed with 20 bullet wounds, while Gorski fell dead with five. And as the robbers ran to their getaway car following the murders of Evans and Gorski, reinforcements were just starting to show up, but Lawrence DeVall, while he was running to the car, he slipped, he fell, and he accidentally shot out one of the tires on the getaway car. Oh my God.

But you're going to get a demerit. You are so, so many demerits. Oh yeah. But this barely slowed down the gang, and when the rubber broke free on the tire, they got away driving only on the rim. This time though, they had a second getaway car waiting just in case the first one got shot up, which it had. But as they were transferring from the hot car to the new one, the situation spun out

of control again. Just as they were almost done transferring license plates on the side of the road, as an extra measure, two old men pulled up in a jalopy and asked if the boys needed help. Fred waved them on, telling, get going. Get out of here. Get out of here, but the driver just couldn't help but be curious. Oh, you know what you're going to want to do there? What you're going to want to do there?

I see how your car is not running. You're going to want to get the car running. Maybe just get out of this car. Get out of your road. Do you want some soup? Do you want some soup? I got my money. Tell me.

Do you want to listen to a record with me? Come on. Let's be nice. You've had your last Ruben sandwich, my friend. He stuck his head out to try and figure out what was really going on, and it was in that moment that Fred pulled out his gun and shot the old man in the face. The passenger, thinking quickly, moved the dead body from behind the wheel and sped away before Fred lost his patience even further and did the same to him.

In all, three people were dead and the only robbery, Alvin Carpus, truly regretted. He later wrote that the take was, quote, So, since the heat was higher than it had ever been following this debacle in Minneapolis, the gang split the money and went their separate ways, agreeing to meet up and re-know Nevada when the heat died down. That's where criminals go to relax. Absolutely. Everyone else left Minnesota, but Lawrence DeVall decided, fuck it, and he just went

back to St. Paul. There, he was arrested on a drunk and disorderly charge during a party at his own apartment. That's difficult. How do you do that? I don't know. Oh, yeah. I guess you have a really big party. The cops get called because you're too long.

Pay your fucking salary. As soon as you say the terms, my taxes, pay your salary, that's when the processing really starts. They put you in the car. It's not factual though. It's not factual. But it is a one-way ticket to prison or to jail. It's a one-way ticket to a night in jail.

It's how you do it. It's how you do it. If you want it, that's how you do it. But that's kind of nice to actually go to jail because our taxpayers' dollars also pay for that. Yeah, it's nice. Let's use it. Let's use all the stuff we have for you.

So after he got arrested on the drunk and disorderly charge, the cops searched his apartment. They found money from the third Northwestern robbery, and it's just like that fucking deli over on Graham Avenue in Brooklyn, they found a notebook containing the names and addresses of other bank robbers. I just feel like, why is it in writing? I don't know. Why is it in writing in any way, shape, or form? You deal in secrets.

So they pinched him for the robbery, and because they pinched him for the robbery, they also pinched him for the murders of those two cops. And for his part and the deaths of those two officers, DeVol pled guilty to second-degree murder in 1933 and was sentenced to life in prison. These were not, however, DeVol's only murders. Remember how I said Lawrence DeVol was a psychopath? Reportedly, before he was in the Barker gang, he had murdered eight other people, including three cops.

I imagine them fighting out after the fact in the newspaper and just being like, man, Larry wasn't fucking around. No, Larry was very serious. He was not laying low. He was quite loud with it. But that's not the end of Larry's story. Within four years of his sentence, DeVol was transferred to the St. Peter Hospital for the criminally insane.

But he only stayed there until 1936. In that year, this sounds fucking terrifying. He and 15 other inmates staged a mass breakout. Just imagine that 16 inmates escaped from the local hospital for the criminally insane, and you just don't know where the fuck they are. I mean, it's the start of every horror movie. It's the beginning of every new Batman arc. They all escaped.

Everybody escaped. They just got around and back up. I tried to find information on this. I couldn't find any information on this, but it's a fascinating guy. I want to get into that more about escapes or mental asylums. Yeah. Well, DeVol immediately robbed a bank and then fled to Oklahoma, where he was cornered by police in a bar in Enid.

They're asking the cops to let him finish his beer, DeVol pulled the revolver, killed one more cop instantly, and fled the typhoon on foot. Other cops soon caught up, and after a short gun battle, Lawrence DeVol was finally brought down by nine police bullets. That's how he wanted to go. It was. That was his dream. And he had that one last beer.

That feeling. Like, you know, you sit there being like, get out of this finish, my beer, and they're all like watching you like watch all the beads of condensation run down. For a second, you become that Miller light commercial. We're like, ah, nothing like the smooth, cold alpine waters that fuel the heart of Miller light. And then you get to go and fucking kill a bunch of cops and fucking get shot by the cops.

It's fucking wild. Alpine waters would probably infer it was Coors. Wow. That's true. And that's, that is the real. Miller light is more of a Wisconsin beverage. Coors. That is real experience.

And that's another Adolf right there. Whoa. What? Adolf Coors. The guy who found the Coors. Yes, Adolf. Yeah. Oh man.

That's not good. We should have changed it to like Rudolph or something. Yeah. Back in the day, all the beer companies, all the beer companies were owned by German men. Like beer in this country was all German immigrants. Yeah. Coors, Schlitz, Schaefer, all Miller. All German dudes.

Come Goozlers. You ever had Come Goozlers? Come Goozlers. Yeah. Pabst. Also another German. All Germans. Wow.

Reakin' Bach. Reakin' Bach. They're awful. Yeah. When they were making the fall for the Minneapolis job, the rest of the Barker-Karpus gang were celebrating their successful escape from justice in Reno with a Christmas Day shendig that featured infamous bank robber Babyface Nelson as a guest. Because all of them have become buddies in St. Paul.

And he just was there. It's the life of the party. He's, you know, he's bringing all the bull, yeah, Creepy's there. Babyface is there. And Babyface's like Goo Goo Gaga. What a nice time we're all having here, right? And they all get together. He's got a big rattle.

You know, this is funny. All of this is very funny. Goo Goo Gaga. He's there because he's a baby. I don't know. I know that he was a murderer as well. He was actually very dangerous. Maybe is that Babyface from, what was it, Happy Death Day?

Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Babyface Nelson was also an infamous bank robber. Also just like Alvin Creepy-Karpus, hate, like, if you called him Babyface Nelson, he'd fucking murder you. His real name was Lester Gillis. Well, maybe we should just normalize seeing Lester.

Yeah. No, man. No, he's Babyface. He gets. That's the one thing these gangsters get is that you get the nickname that is assigned to you. Okay. You don't get to choose.

All right. Well, soon after the party, Ma and Alvin traveled to California with Babyface Nelson, so Babyface could have throat surgery at a hospital that's specifically catered to gangsters on the run. If you fucking came to the hospital, they'd treat any gangster as long as the gangster gave a generous, quote unquote, donation to the hospital. You mean fair? Yes. Fair.

Yes. There, Ma had a brief but heavy affair with the hospital director. It just reminds me of the four-scump scene, just being like, your mother sure does want you to have an education. Man, just Chinese finger-trapping this guy? Well, I have fun with it. Afterward, Ma and Alvin returned the rest of the gang to commit the most daring and dangerous bank robbery of their career.

Now, by early February 1933, the gang had grown tired of Reno and were ready to commit more crimes, so they relocated to the Chicago area where they got to work planning their next heist. That must have been very difficult because that's Al Capone territory. Yeah. But I know that Capone knew them and liked them. Like he liked the Barker-Karpus gang. Well, I mean, it was fine if they were in the territory, it's just so long as they're

not operating in his territory, like they're not going to Cicero and holding up a bunch of banks in Cicero. That's fine. No. Capone's territory. Because he'll kill you. Yeah. He would kill you.

It was decided that the target would be the First National Bank in Fairbury, Nebraska. And on one gray Tuesday morning, the Barker-Karpus gang burst through the front door once more with Tommy guns demanding all the money in the vault. Pussies up, suckers down. Pussies up. Wait, what? Suckers down. What is the sucker?

Just get on the ground. Okay. In the first robbery, the crew was Fred and Doc Barker plus Alvin Karpus as the lead gunman, while veteran Yegg, Frank Jelly Nash, served as their backup inside the bank. I don't even want to know how a Yegg got the nickname Jelly. Yegg, you know? It's better than Jam, because Jam has got all the fruit chunks in it. Standing guard outside the entrance to the building was Volney Davis and Earl Christman,

while Eddie Green stood at the back door to keep any officers from surprising them. Finally, Jess Doyle waited outside across the street in a black Buick, ready to drive the whole crew far away just as soon as the job was done. Now, 16 people worked at First National and they were all, along with the patrons, told to get on the floor and quote, keep their faces buried in the pavement until the robbers were out of the door. Fred pulled a pistol and shoved it in the face of a cashier named RS Wilfley. That is the most cashier name I have ever heard.

And told him to get the bank president so he could open the vault. When the cashier said the bank president hadn't shown up to work yet though, Fred said, fine, you do it. You do it. And he's got, you know, he's got the little monocle, and he's that kind of like chubby guy, and he's got like the vest on, he's got a vest on, and like, I don't know, I don't know the combination, sir. I don't know it.

And he's been like, well, you're going to learn it, well, you're going to get it. Yeah. The cashier could barely keep his shit together as he turned the dial. So since he was moving a little slow, Fred gave him a little encouragement, announcing quote, I guess we'll have to kill someone around here if there isn't more speed. Yeah. Finally, Wilfley opened the vault. And while Doc and Jelly were stuffing money into bags, Fred and Alvin kept their guns

trained on the patrons and employees still laying on the floor. You keep those vulvas pointing towards the fans. Oh, well, vulva, quite an educated term, sir. Yes. But as it was in Minneapolis, people outside could see what was happening. And when just the right loudmouth saw the scene, he called out robbers. See? His voice carried across.

Robbers are in there. Once the call was sounded, Earl Christman standing guard outside, he just fucking opened fire on the crowd. And once again, shit slid downhill. The first men on the scene were Deputy Sheriff W.S. Davidson and a gun salesman named Glenn Johnson. Finally. Probably been waiting for this moment his whole fucking life.

These two rushed to the bank upon hearing the call and found Earl Christman and Volney Davis almost indiscriminately shooting at citizens on the street. Not hitting citizens, but just shooting at them. Making them dance. It's like GTA 5 stuff here. The Deputy Sheriff and Glenn Johnson returned fire, and as soon as they started firing, so too did Fred and Alvin, still inside the bank, open fire, shattering the windows with a storm of bullets from their Tommy guns.

Whoa. In as more cops began pulling up, Christman loaded another 50 bullet drum into his machine gun and opened fire on them, hitting one security guard, but also catching a bullet in the stomach himself, his first bullet of many. Now it was obvious to Fred and Alvin that they couldn't escape out the front door unscathed, so they grabbed two hostages and shot out the window along the entrance way. With the hostages in tow, Fred and Alvin stepped over the window frame while police fired. Police hit, not the robbers, but the hostages, one in the side and hitting the other five

times in the stomach, tossing the injured hostages aside, Fred and Alvin grabbed two fresh ones who were just coming out of a nearby medical clinic. Earl Christman, meanwhile, was being hit again and again, but all without falling down or stopping his hail of bullets. Finally getaway driver, Jess Doyle, I say Jess Doyle's fucking MVP here, he managed to pull up to the curb and slow down just long enough to get all six robbers, including the gravely wounded Earl Christman, either into the vehicle or onto the running boards. With the two hostages again held outside to discourage cops from firing, the robbers

sped away, again leaving a trail of roofing nails in their wake, and when Jess stopped 50 miles outside of town, they found no one had followed them. The women were then gently dropped off on the side of the road and once they were out, there was a couple of plunks for the bullets, you just enjoy the scenery here, okay? Also we're just going to apologize for what happened back there. Things got out of hand? That was a little crazy for us. It's more on me, a little.

And once the girls were out of sight, Jess stopped again so they could check on Earl. Earl was, needless to say, in pretty bad shape. I think I'm fucking dying here, man. I'm fucking dying here, bro. I'm talking no TV. I'm judging by all the blood. I'm fucking bleeding a lot here, man. Alvin, trying to do what he could, poured whiskey over the wounds and packed them with

towels. Oh, the fucking socks, man. What are you doing, man? Does your bullet wound want to get hammered? No, I am getting hammered, man. Finally they gave him a shot of morphine that had been brought along for just such an eventuality. From there, they managed to keep Earl alive until Kansas City, where they went to another medical safe house belonging to a man named Vern Miller.

Fred Alvin and Eddie Green traveled on to St. Paul with the stolen money from the robbery, but Doc, Volney, and Jess stayed with Earl, saying they'd join them in St. Paul once Earl stabilized. I don't think I'm fucking stabilizing you, man. I think I'm fucking sliding you, Doc. Yep, most likely. You look horrible. Don't insult me, man, I'm fucking dying, man.

Well, it's just all the blood, all the holes. Get me the makeup, man. Remember when you woke up today and you didn't have a bunch of holes in your body? Yeah, I only had the standard holes. Isn't that weird? But the wounds were too much, and Earl died in the early hours of April 5th, 1933. The three gang members who had stayed behind buried Earl in a secret location outside of town, then joined the rest back in St. Paul.

Now after the deadly debacle that was First National, the gang decided to go a little easier by robbing a Federal Reserve handcart in Chicago, as was suggested by Chicago gangster shotgun George Ziegler. This guy's also interesting. The way he figured, they believe that he, they think that he is the architect of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, that he is the one who did it. He was a gunman for Capone. Yeah, he was described as a quote, gentlemen monster, and was known as one of the most

sophisticated gangsters of the era, so his word had weight. But bad luck struck again, and when cops showed up sooner than expected, a new gang member named Monty Bolton shot Doc Barker's finger in the fray. God damn it, Montefur! I'm calling you by your full fucking name, you're Montefur now. I understand, sorry about that. Reportedly, Doc was actually less upset about the wound, and more pissed that Monty had blown a diamond off his favorite ring.

Yeah, that's a gangster attitude. It makes sense. Now, that was the totality of the casualties in the handcart heist, but when the gang got back to their hideout, they found that they'd stolen nothing but worthless checks, and had almost been killed in the process. Oh my goodness. See, in the seven years since they began pulling bank jobs, bank robbing had become a hell of a lot harder, and each job seemed to be bringing the Barker boys and Alvin Karpus

that much closer to a bloody end. Because people started to recognize bank robbers' tactics, and they started putting guys with guns in the banks. They started to understand, like, oh, we as a community also need to watch our banks. So like, we had a lot more people armed and ready, because the thing is, they're getting more and more publicity as bank robbers, again and again, it is becoming this huge deal, but then the bank itself is the center of a lot of these towns, so people are starting to understand, oh, we all need to police it as well.

It can't just be the two deputies, the two Barney Fife's we got here, we all have guns. Absolutely. Well, Barney Fife, he's got a fish, he's got to go fishing at the old watering hole. I've never seen that show. Which one? The fishin', that was Andy Griffith, that's how the show starts, Andy and Opie, they're going fishing. Yeah, but I mean Barney Fife definitely fished.

And then Anthony came in, and then they fuckin' said a bunch of horrible shit. Yeah, I don't know, yeah. Well additionally, the bankers laundering their money, and the officials in St. Paul getting kickbacks from the Barker-Karpus gang were getting nervous about all these dead and wounded cops. So inspired by the Lindbergh baby case. It's the Lindbergh baby. We'll do that story one day too, it's interesting.

What an inspiration. It was decided that it was time to get out of bank robbing and move on to the Barker-Karpus gang's most profitable venture, kidnapping. And that's where we'll pick back up for the conclusion to our series. And I am not going to spoil the ending here, but let's just say everybody dies. Not everybody. Not everybody. Not everybody.

Not everybody. Not everybody. No, no, no. One person in the story lives to a ripe old age. Yes, but... Not the Lindbergh baby. No, no, no, Lindbergh baby got turned into chum, I believe. But this story is really, I mean, we're going to wind down.

Next week I think we'll also talk a little bit more about, like, why Ma Barker was listed as the criminal mastermind of this group and we'll talk a little bit about that more detail. We'll talk about J. Edgar Hoover and his panties, a little bit, tiny bit. And then next week we'll see the end of, like, this is the most daring group to ever... To join the world of Banker-Ribbery. Banker-Ribbery, indeed, speaking of just the wonderful world, thank you everyone who came out to our shows in Texas. Oh, great.

That was Houston. Austin. We had a good ass show. Absolutely wonderful. We had a good ass show. Next week we're very excited. We're going to be in Ritton. We're going to be in Washington DC.

Washington DC. District of Columbia. Yes. The capital of this country. Philadelphia. Philadelphia. We're very excited to see all of you. Absolutely.

We're strong. We're long. We've got to get some friction on them. We're ready to be out there with you. Absolutely. All right, everyone. Well, thank you so much for supporting the show. Anything else to talk?

Hope you enjoyed this episode. Do we have... I'm just keeping supporting all the shows here on the Last Podcast Network. We've got Z2, the comic book coming out in the spring. We've got Soul Plumbers. Soul Plumbers. We'll be in Soul. We're not done with that yet.

We've got issue fives out. We've got six issues. We've got one issue left next month. And then, yeah, I guess that really is it. Yeah. You don't want to find us. Oh, make sure, yeah. Remember, February 1st, going wide to all of various platforms, staying on Spotify, moving

over to Ideal with Stitcher. Everybody's cool. Don't know when the series 6M show is going to be. We're going to get there. Watch the streams on Monday nights at 5 p.m. if you're a Patreon subscriber, buy one live until it's done. PST. PST.

PST. Yes, indeed. Time zones. Very strange, but yet very real. They're out there. So we got a lot of shit going. Oh, right, everyone. We don't even press for me, man.

Say that I don't grind enough. Say that I don't hustle enough. You have spoken yourself into this, Tizzy. I did. It's the Spring Hill Jack that's flowing through my veins. Yes, indeed. I just drank an entire 20 ounce mug of it. It's good, though.

I feel good. Better than Ford. All right. Better than you. I'm happy. You know it's his birthday. Yeah, happy birthday. You can't feel better than Marcus on his birthday.

Marcus. Take it. 39 means nothing. No. Well, it means something. It does mean it's definitely feeling the cold breath of death on the back of your neck. No, it's just your friends.

It's your friends. That's the warm death. You think warm? No. I would say death is a cold breath. See, Mike, you know where I felt the cold breath of death is when I found my first gray cube? Ah.

That's where I felt the shudder. The cold is for comedy, like Letterman's studio is cold. Yes. Because that keeps people vibrant. Death, I think it's a warm breath. Well, if you're being set on fire. Well, it just depends. Or when you're cremated.

It also depends on how much you're looking to embrace it. Oh, right. You're right. You're right. To hold death closely. If you want to. Okay, everyone. Thanks so much for listening.

Hail yourselves. Hail Satan. Hail game. Magustalations, everybody. Hail me. We did it again. Another perfect episode. Almost impossible to rob banks these days.

Yeah, it's like, ugh. You gotta use crypto. Crypto. Steal from the government. All these lazy bank robbers are sitting in their chairs. Not getting out and doing the real work. Oh, some kind of blockchain. What you gotta do.

What you gotta do. This show is made possible by listeners like you. Thanks to our ad sponsors, you can support our shows by supporting them. For more shows like the one you just listened to, go to lastpodcastnetwork.com.