Last Podcast On The Left - Episode 481: Ma Barker Part III - Mother of the Year

Episode Date: January 29, 2022

This week we close out our series on the Barker-Karpis Gang, who after taking the logical next step from Bank Robbing to Kidnapping, found themselves in one final bloody shootout that took the lives of Ma Barker and the rest of her Murderous Brood.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?

Oh, yes! May I see? May I? Yeah, you see, we have nobodies right now. We're gonna go all the way to the top, see? All the finest clothes, all the finest, all the finest jewels. Give me a time to go and see. I've been watching film noir movies for the past two days. Good.

Oh, good. How do you feel? Was that the era you should have been? I could have seen a Bugsy Zabrowski. This is my favorite. I could have seen it. You would have been good in that era. James Cagney, this is my favorite. Him going, yeah, you were with your wishing, huh? I wish you were a wishing well.

And I could tie a bucket to you so you could sing. Wait, what? Wait a second. It's a Don Rickles. You want to tie a bucket to me? He's tying a bucket to the wishing well. You can't really put a wishing well inside the bucket. Bugsy Zabrowski, can you translate for us?

Things have changed. He was small and he was threatening looking. He was scary. He was very scary. James Cagney was very scary, but he was also a song and dance man. He was. That's true. That's true. But it's so weird to watch all the film noir movies and understand that every Looney Tunes

character was built on them. Absolutely. They're all Looney Tunes characters. They all look like Dick Tracy villains as people, which I know that is like what they did on purpose. Of course. Yeah. But yeah, Ma Barker's movie, Ma Barker and Her Killer Brood, my favorite scene is the

very top because Herbert's trying to play the violin, right? And he's going, he's bad at it. Why is Herbert trying to play the violin? They try to show them at the very top being like, no, you see, they were a normal family until Ma Barker is like, the violin's for limp noodles. She came in and knocked. She destroys the violin with a karate chop in his hands. And he's like, but ma, ma, I want to play the violin.

And she's like, you got to learn how to fight. You got to learn how to fight. And then the father's like, I think it's actually normal for him to play the violin. She's like, that's the problem with all of you. You don't know how to fight for nothing. You don't know how to go around and get what you want from life. And I was like, for a second, I was like, that's actually very motivational. Kind of.

But what if you wanted to be a very fancy violinist? To look at Tiger Woods's father. Yes. You always bring up Tiger Woods. It was awful, awful childhood. Terrible, terrible. Incredible golfer. Yeah.

But at what cost? I mean, I don't know. Honestly, I don't know. This seems fucking miserable. You barely remember your childhood. I don't, I don't remember a single moment of my childhood. I thought a lot of it. Because you blocked out, you blocked both of you, blacked out your entire childhoods,

and it all manifests itself in horrible ways. Redacted. Redacted. Redacted. Welcome to the last podcast on the left, everyone. I am Ben, hanging out with Marcus and hanging out with Bugsy Zabrowski. See, it's me. See, you're going straight to the top.

See, I'm a man with breasts. I'm enjoying myself. See. Yes, you are a man with a solid rack. Nothing wrong with being a wet noodle, by the way. Yeah. Nope. Isn't it better to be a wet noodle than a hard, dry noodle?

Let's move on. I'm just saying. Would you rather have a bag of hard noodles or a bag of wet noodles, which is called spaghetti? A bag of hard noodles is potential. Soft noodles are how you eat it. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is encourage your kids to be in the arts. Okay. So today's episode, we are on to part three of Ma Barker and her devilish gang.

So when we last left the Barker-Karpus gang, they'd just come off a pair of disappointing robberies that had respectively resulted in the death of gang member Earl Christman and a worthless haul of government checks that couldn't be cashed. Aw, man. You know, I know we just robbed that bank, but I can't help but feel a little empty inside. Yeah. I think it's all the crime and the murder. Yeah.

As a result, the gang decided to put a pause on robbery to focus on the newest criminal trend of the early 30s. Crypto. No, that's the newest one of the 2020s. Oh, I see. Yep. The newest one in the 1930s, that was the kidnapping of wealthy people and demanding exorbitance ransoms for their return.

Get them. Get them. They're worth it. All right. Now, the decision the Barker gang made to get into kidnapping just happened to coincide with the rise of a little organization we now know as the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Oh, I felt the chill. Although back then, they were just called the Bureau of Investigation.

The Bureau. The Bureau. Yeah. And when James Cagney was in the G-man, everyone's like, oh, look, the world's ultimate gangsters now a cop. And you know what he did in that? What? He talked just like a gangster.

Oh, wow. Undercover maybe. No, he just didn't know how to talk any other way. Maybe not a good actor. See, the 1920s had been, as we discussed at length in our Bonnie and Clyde series, the golden age of bank robbing, unparalleled in our country's history before or since. Mostly, this was because local law enforcement had pistols and Model T's while bank robbers had V-8 engines and Tommy guns.

That's called business competition. It is competition. And in America, you win or you die. Game of Thrones. Game of Thrones. Sure. This sort of crime reached its absolute height in 1933, just after Franklin D. Roosevelt took office.

And to combat this wave, the Roosevelt administration elevated a weird little sociopath who already wormed his way to the top of the Bureau of Investigation. That weird little worm was J. Edgar Hoover. Nothing weird about me. I'm fun and free. I don't know. Can you see my frills are coming over my belt? It seems like you have a lot of hidden sexual tension, which maybe comes out in aggressive

ways. Can you say that closer to the vase, you communist? Before Hoover, law enforcement in the United States was a decentralized hodgepodge of county sheriffs and urban police departments that rarely even talked to each other, much less work together on cases. They seem more like clubs. Yeah. Indeed.

Yeah. But with the emergence of increasingly mobile and heavily armed gangs like the Barkers, a centralized, efficient, and professional federal police force became a necessary evil. Now, the push to create the FBI actually came from a close advisor of Franklin Roosevelt named Louis Howe, who was one of the unsung architects of modern America. Louis Howe is a fucking amazing, amazing American. It's very interesting to see how many of these architects are unsung. In our next series, we will find out a lot about how America was, especially modern America,

was put together by a bunch of people that you would never know. You don't know their names. Sure. Because they didn't want their names to be known, and then it turns out those guys are always the worst guys. Yeah. I can't wait for that new podcast series that we're going to have all about unsung. Villains of American architecture?

Yeah. Unsung architects. Yeah. That'll be exciting to really get into the world of lesser known architects. Yeah. Like, guys, you make slides at a metal so that when you're a child, you scald your tiny little portly legs and go down in the summertime. The kids are always talking about their mainstream architects, but it'll be really good to put

a focus on the lesser known ones. People love podcasts about architecture, a visual medium. Yeah. You joke, but 99% Invisible is one of the most popular podcasts that exist. Is that all about architects? It's about architecture. Holy fucking shit, we're stupid. Why would I want to listen to that?

People love it. I guess. It's actually very good. I'm just saying I don't wake up and be like, today I want to learn about architecture. Am I in a building? Am I, is it collapsing? That's all I want to know. You have Opie's haircut and you have Long John Buckingham's body.

Oh, Lindsay Buckingham, perhaps. No, Louis Howe was actually a very good person. He was one of the architects of the New Deal, actually, but he was in one of the guys who got FDR actually elected to higher office after FDR got polio. And also the guy who pushed Eleanor Roosevelt into the public eye for the first time. I thought you were going to say into the pool or on the tracks. That would be kind of funny. He was very encouraging.

Well, Howe could see that there was a need for a federal police force. But because this was right in the middle of the Great Depression and at the beginning of FDR's first term, securing funds was going to be a problem. So Howe tapped Jaya Gehoover and told him that if Hoover could provide the headlines, Howe could provide the money. Now, Hoover believes that the biggest threat to America was communists. Always. But his previous Red Scare efforts have mostly been met by scandal because he'd gained

a reputation for arresting people without cause. It seems like this weird slippery slope. It's weird because it's not a pattern here in America. But like arresting people for an ideology, it seems to like not do a heck of a lot. Can't do it. For like a little fun little idea or like a car or economic concept such as communists. And what's more communist than a potluck every Sunday at an old church? Whoa.

Nice. Wow. So Hoover reluctantly switched his organization's focus from people like Marcus Garvey to bank robbers, the most infamous criminals of the day, because that's how he's going to get headlines. Okay. Okay. The elevation of the bureau also coincided with the kidnapping of the Lindberg baby.

Yep. The world's sexiest baby. The reason why they stole it, they said it was the first baby born with full sea breasts. And it had to be stolen. It belongs in a museum. The baby does, huh? Lindberg, isn't that a cheese? Okay.

He was a Nazi. Oh. Yeah. In 1932, the baby, Charles Lindberg, senior, was a Nazi, not the baby. No, I'm pretty sure I saw that baby. But Charles Lindberg was a Nazi. That's why the baby needed to be kidnapped. Immediately.

They always start hiling. And then you have to say, put that arm down. That's why, yeah, that's why we've taped the right arm of hero and Winnie to the sides. Yes, our last podcast, Babies. Well, in 1932, persons unknown kidnapped and successfully ransomed the son of famed pilot Charles Lindberg. Although the baby was killed in the process, and that somewhat takes a little of the success out of the deal.

They got the money, but the baby was killed with a blow to the head. They found him decomposing on the side of the road a few days later. You got that good. Come on. It wasn't like Casey Anthony, honestly. It sounds like they were playing hot potato. Oh my. But all the criminals paid attention to, though, was the fact that the $50,000 ransom had been

paid, and the perps had gotten away with it, because the guy who had been fingered for the crime, he obviously had not done it. He was just taking the fall out of rage. So after the Lindberg case, kidnappings of wealthy citizens skyrocketed in the following year. 27 people were kidnapped for ransom, 27 wealthy people, by the way, were kidnapped for ransom by the end of 1933. Damn.

Fat person alert, fat person alert, you're going to want to gain some weight if you're rich. That is a very, that's so much harder to get it out. It's so hard to get to pick up a big person. This is a John Panette bit. I'm pretty certain this is a John Panette bit from back in the day. R.I.P. Missed him very much.

Oh, he was funny. Yeah. If you didn't like being, I think maybe Fluffy said it like, being fat means you're hard to kidnap. Oh Fluffy, I love you Fluffy. This rash of kidnappings actually came in defiance of the Federal Kidnapping Act of 1932, also known as the Little Lindberg Act, and that made transporting. You ever fucking call me that again?

I will. To the moon. The Little Lindberg Act made transporting a kidnapping victim across state lines a federal crime. And as it turned out, many of the people doing the kidnapping were also the same sorts of people who robbed banks. So Hoover's mission dovetailed nicely with the emerging criminal trends. Yeah, it's going to be great.

It's going to be great. I'm going to be able to use so many goddamn bullets in this fucking game. Mr. Hoover, you know what else is dovetailing your balls in those parents? I'm glad you noticed. Well, basically the Federal Kidnapping Act gave the FBI its first foothold into the St. Paul criminal scene, which had previously been all but impenetrable, and it was in St. Paul that the Barker-Karpus gang began their kidnapping career. Now, after the death of Earl Christman and the deaths of all those police officers and

previous robberies, the Barker-Karpus gang and their more connected associates began to contemplate a safer way of illegally making money. Okay, how about this? Listen, guys, what if, say, we got a thing where we print out t-shirts with funny things on it, right? That says, like, I'm with stupid. Oh, that's funny. And if it points, an arrow points to the side, so then it's like you're saying, hey, the

guy I'm standing next to is stupid, and this country is just chock full of fucking big-ass morons. That is ideal for how dumb everyone is in this country. Guys, grab the keys. Oh, you're gonna stick a gun in my fucking mouth. Whoa. See, this was 1933, FDR's first year in office. And since Franklin D. Roosevelt had run partly on repealing prohibition, because, you know,

he wanted to both create jobs in the Great Depression, and also prohibition had been a really, really, really fucking dumb idea. Yeah, it was horrible. And it created the entire criminal underground of modern America. Man, I wish that I could have ran, oh, booze. Yeah. His platform was booze. Yeah.

That's ill-easy. You don't want- We'll give you booze. All right, fine. You got my vote. Grandpa Joe. Grandpa Joe. Weed.

Weed. Weed. So easy. Yeah, but he wasn't the first one, though. It was only after Hoover had fucked everything up so bad, because there had been a guy that ran against Hoover in 1928, his name was Smith. He was a New Yorker. He had run on a plank of, yeah, I'll bring booze back, prohibition fucking sucks, but

he lost because he was Catholic, and the KKK were very powerful in the Democratic Party then. Oh, they didn't like the Catholics. Interesting. They hated the Catholics. And the KKK were also one of the biggest supporters of prohibition, huge supporters of it. Really?

Because they made money on the element? Yeah. No, it was because it was a good scapegoat for them. Oh, those fucking pieces. Yeah, because the KKK was not, they were not a criminal, they were not a criminal enterprise per se, they were just murderers and, you know, general horrible psychopaths. They weren't the mafia. They were a group of serial killers that chose to hang out.

It is important to recognize progress, though, as a country. We do have legal weed in many states. That's a good thing. Criminal justice is in the right direction. Whatever. And even the KKK. Grandpa Joe's got that big fucking pen, full of the blood of Native Americans, that he could sign and just make weed free and legal.

Yes, that's true. But let's give the KKK some credit, because now that you accept Catholics. Oh, that's so nice growth and change. That's progress. And if we don't recognize when progress is being made, then how do we know if we're following? Wow. Well, because FDR was in office, because everyone knew prohibition was a bad idea, every criminal

knew that the biggest cash cow of the last 13 years was about to be fucking slaughtered. So the St. Paul goons, who had made so much money on illegal liquor, they needed a new source of revenue and kidnapping, at the very least, partly covered the profits they were all about to lose from the end of mass bootlegging. It's all business. It's so interesting to see in this world. I know that for us, it's the quote, unquote, most boring of the criminal motivations is the business motivation, but it is really interesting to see how it's about diversifying.

And that's what it is. And that's what it's all about. They're like, we need to really figure out. We got a zig where other people are zagging here. Right. Well, the thing about prohibition is that when prohibition came, all of these petty criminals that could barely rub two dimes together, they suddenly got very, very fucking rich real fast and spent 13 years being rich off of prohibition and all the things that came

from prohibition. But then once prohibition came to a close, all those guys were starting to see their bottom line dropping and they're still criminals. Oh yeah. Stop being criminals. And if you've been a criminal, you've been a professional criminal for 13 years. I've been a professional comedian for 15 years, I am incapable of doing a single other thing. Absolutely.

I am done. I'm fucked. I don't know who skills are coming in. No. I'm remembering. I'm forgetting old skills. I'm bringing parts of the comedy job that I used to be good at. I think you're shedding a lot of the stuff you learned along the way.

Yes. Yeah. Absolutely. The proposal for kidnapping came from Harry Sawyer, owner of the Green Lantern Tavern, one of those guys who was about to lose money on bootlegging. He'd cooked up the idea with casino owner Jack Piper and corrupt St. Paul police chief Big Tom Brown, who both had a little experience in the kidnapping game. So we got a saloon owner, a casino owner, and a policeman, all of the scariest people

in the world. Yeah. Funky little room that must have been. Two years earlier, Big Tom Brown and Jack Piper had masterminded the kidnapping of a celebrity gangster named Leon Glackman. Glackman. Glackman. Who'd been known as the Al Capone of St. Paul, Minnesota.

Now, we don't need to go and throw names around. Okay. I'm the Leon Glackman of St. Paul. That's right. An Al Capone, of course, known as the Glackman of Chicago. Don't you dare, dare, dare, on the fucking Glackman of Chicago. That's your Al Capone impression. Yeah.

Wow. We're getting there in five years. Yeah. It's not about. I can't wait. Oh, yeah. That's going to be our prohibition series. Can't fucking wait for it.

Okay. Now, after the $75,000 ransom had been paid, Brown and Piper cleverly placed the blame for the kidnapping on a man named Frank LaPrae. Then they killed LaPrae with three shots to the head to make sure he couldn't disagree. Yep. That's a great way to do it. It happened a lot in the probation times. So with past experience as a guide, Piper tapped the Barker-Karpus gang to kidnap William

Hamm Jr., the president of Hamm's Brewing Company, and they were going to ask a $100,000 ransom worth $3 million in today's money. I said this on this week's episodes of Side Stories. All right. And if you're a beer magnate, especially if you're a beer magnate, if you're a podcast magnate, if you're one of these people and runs around and people like you got to do, you got to keep your head in a swivel. If you're just a normal, nice person who's able to be kidnapped, you got to change up

the way you go places. You got to fucking mix it up. Yeah. You have to be scared. I don't think. You can't go to the office the same way every day. You need to fucking, again, zig where other people's at. Well, always fucking be on the lookout.

Yeah, but Henry, you're always going to the same office. That's the only way the people just waiting for you at the office. I go all the way around. You're all over the place, but they just stay there. Because Fernando technically will be there to intercept, and Fernando now knows now that Fernando's where Travis is. Travis's first job was to take a bullet for us. You're going to kill one of my co-hosts.

I don't want to kill him. I need the man. No, I don't want him to die. Okay. I'm sorry, Fernando. I'm sorry, Fernando. I apologize. You sacrifice one of our employees at a cone.

From New York City, I apologize to you, Fernando, for Henry to just spring the bullet claws on you when we were supposed to have a meeting about it. We were supposed to have a meeting about it. We were supposed to have a meeting about it. Get it in the arm. Get in the leg. No, William Ham, Jr. was not chosen solely because he came from a fantastically wealthy family.

Ham, like many other brewers during Prohibition, had brewed near a beer and malt extract for home brewing in the public eye while brewing real beer for the black market in private. I mean, it's still Ham's. It's the most obvious thing in the world. It's the most obvious crime in existence. Of course, he still has some brewery company and he's got all the vats and he's got all the shit. He's like, yep, I'm not making beer.

Certainly not making beer here where all the beer is made. No, definitely not. Don't go in that room by the way, officer. Hearing all the bubbling and shit. What they did is they said that they were still brewing beer, but they were brewing near beer. They tried to remarket it as a health drink. Yeah, of course it is.

It's like drinking a loaf of bread. I am so over it. It's the same thing with the Heineken ads where it's like, you can get pulled over now, but don't worry, officer. It's not alcoholic. Meanwhile, just cut to you getting your fucking brains bashed in for some other reason. Your head just spiked against the fucking hood. Well, since Ham was running a racket, selling real beer on the bootleg side, he paid one

St. Paul mob $8,000 a year in protection money through a fence named Frisco Dutch to keep other mobs from robbing his stock. But once prohibition ended, Ham felt like he didn't need to pay protection anymore. Oh, okay, Mr. Ham. In this, he was wrong. And this is another... Could you get a hand, baby? Seriously, this is another last podcast and left teaching moment here.

If you're currently paying protection, if you're paying a Vig to somebody, it don't end. No, you actually have to because then they're the reason you were paying for them not to attack you. Not to kill you. Yeah. But also to protecting you against the other gangs, but you were also paying them to not kill you. It's a double...

It's kind of a double thing. It's hard. We're a winner. Yeah. On June 15th, 1933, Fred Barker and Alvin Karpus snatched William Ham off the street outside his office. They put a hood on his head. Very good.

Very good. Very good. That's my impression of the vape. That's very good. I wasn't asked to be a ham, but this is just a normal man. This is a grown-up man. Oh, this is amazing. Okay, I got it.

I thought it was more pork-related. Just the name. Oh, I see. I get it now. Not everyone's pigs. No. Am I a pig to you? Yeah.

They put a hood over his head, shoved him inside a black coop and drove him to the home of a postmaster in Bensonville, Illinois, who just happened to be in on the job. Can you stop winking back there? I'm breathing. I'm breathing. When the car stopped, Ham later recalled that he was gently pulled out by the icy, cold, small hand of what he thinks was a woman implicating Ma Barker. Come on.

You're going to be my new chair. Come on. Get in there. I'm going to ride you like a seal in the circus. Come on. You stinky little boy. Stinky pig. Yeah.

But considering the small stature of the Barker boys, that tiny little hand might have also been Fred or Doc. Oh. It might be. Now, early speculation printed in the Oshkosh Daily Northwestern. What? Do you know the Oshkosh Daily Northwestern? I know Oshkosh.

Yeah. Okay. Well, they said that Ham was probably- Thanks, Dad. Okay. Good job, Ben. You do know Oshkosh. Yes. They said that Ham was probably being held by a gambler and liquor runner named Vern

Sanky. And on this speculation alone, police had orders to shoot Sanky on site. Geez. Well, we're at the point now in prohibition and especially like in the war on crime and all that, like where the police and federal authorities, everyone's done fucking around. So many people have died, especially in the Midwest because Chicago at this point has become an absolute fucking murder hole. It's all just- It's a battleground between gangsters and cops and everybody- In a lot

of innocents, people are getting shot in the middle of it. And these gangsters, like the Chicago beer wars, like we're talking like hundreds of people killed, hundreds of gang members killed and innocent bystanders getting hit all the fucking time. Now, this confusion as to who actually fucking did the kidnapping, that was just fine with the Barker-Karpus gang and the investigative waters were only muddied further by the Barker's man on the inside, Big Tom Brown. For a share of the ransom, Big Tom kept the outlaws updated on the activities of law enforcement

and in turn misdirected authorities when they got too close to the Barker's. Case in point was in the delivery of the ransom. The aforementioned shotgun George Ziegler acted as the ransom negotiator and demanded that a Ham's brewery truck deliver the money, presumably to make the vehicle easy to recognize. That using a truck meant that the detectives could play games of their own. St. Paul detective Charles Tierney convinced authorities to let him hide in the back of the brewery truck and pop out with a machine gun once the kidnappers arrived, not so he could take them alive, but so he could just fucking mow them down on site.

That's brutal, that's like, say hello to my little friend, that's what every one of these gangster movies I watched, every one of those gangster movies I watched were all just people spraying and everybody with Tommy guns, it's awesome. But just before the plan was put in motion, Big Tom Brown contacted the Barker Carpus gang and told them that the St. Paul police were basically planning to murder them at the handoff. So the gang told the police to forget the delivery truck and instead deliver the cash in an equally conspicuous vehicle with the doors and trunk removed so no one, armed or

otherwise, could hide inside. Totally inconspicuous. I don't know how that doesn't point. They wanted it to be conspicuous, they wanted to see it coming a mile away. But I don't know how that doesn't point to the fact that they had a man on the inside of the police department to tell them that somebody was hiding inside of the truck. It was understood at this point that every gang had a man on the inside in almost every single operation that you're ever gonna fucking do, you just had no idea who the man on the

inside was gonna be, so you just kind of had to try whatever you fucking could and hope that maybe the man on the inside wasn't in the room when you made that plan. Man, well, so the fucking federal investigations systems, all of them, have had to deal with this problem since the fucking 19, since the beginning, since the very beginning of them. Well, at this point this wasn't federal, this was still local, this was St. Paul because no one had broken a federal crime yet. They didn't know that the kidnapping victim had been taken to Illinois, so the federal government, the federal bro couldn't come into it yet.

This is just still St. Paul bumbling around trying to take care of it themselves. But while the negotiations for the new drop were being made, William Hems' mother, who had been involved in the negotiations from the beginning, she collapsed. Hi, Mrs. Ham. Hey, Mrs. Ham. I'm just breathing. I'm just breathing. I'm just breathing.

I'm here for their massage. Oh, yeah, okay. She died, Henry. She died. She died. No, she died. 100 years ago. 100 years ago.

She's fucking dead. What did she have? She collapsed from worry and died of heart failure. Oh. A pig's death. No, most of the time a pig's death is a fucking bolt to the back of their skull. But they're very nervous. Yeah, they are.

Poor pig. Well, by June 30th, the ransom was paid and Ham was released unharmed. He told reporters that he couldn't identify the kidnappers because they had goggles taped to his face the entire time. They did it right. Yeah. They did it. However, very nice.

Oh. And the meals, while not elaborate, were obviously well done. This is true. This is where Ma Barker came in. Truly, Ma Barker catered the criminal revolution of the 1930s. There is something classy about treating your, because it's not about the victim. They don't care about this person. They want the money.

They're like, you're fine. Again, Ma Barker was not the general. She did not make them the moves. She did not raise them by the rod in order to make criminals. She didn't train them how to be criminals. She can't help you with insurance. But she is fully a part of the system. And she is much closer to Scorsese's mom and good fellas when they're done dumping the

body. And she goes, you guys want some food? And she goes, she's making everybody food. That's what Ma Barker did. I think more, I always thought of her more as a Billy Crystal's mom and throw a mama from the train. Oh, it loves his mom. She and mama Fratelli from the Goonies is also very much so based on Ma Barkley.

That makes sense. Yeah. And of course, the mother of the Beagle Brothers. Oh, yes. We've talked about it. Dogs. Ma Barker. Ma Barker.

Get it. Dogs. Can you just, can you please buy a fucking clue, please? Yeah. This is the general. You missed my insurance reference. I remember. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, and well, the reason why they never roughed them up is because there was no angle to roughing them up. If you roughed up a kidnap victim and you brought them back all fucked up, then it was even more likely for the cops to come that much harder at you because if someone's kidnapped for 20, 30 days, they might come back and say, please fucking God, it's over. Let's just put it all behind us. Right.

I don't want to think about it ever again. But if you're coming back with a couple of broken limbs, you're going to want revenge. You want revenge. And it is interesting to see. This is also the concept of criminal as businessman, right? So they are trying to, to them, they're like, this is business. Bonafide. This is what some people do, you know, we're just trying to hear what are on this organization.

Right. You give us the money and then you got, you fucking pig man back. You get him back. You should have let him go. It's on you. So once William Ham was returned safely, the hunt to catch those responsible began. And big Tom Brown did his best to steer the investigation away from the Barker-Karpus gang and therefore away from himself.

Others launched a raid on a cabin at Lake Mini Tonka, seemingly chosen by Tom Brown at random. But that produced nothing more than a badly frightened couple on vacation. That's a Chevy Chase movie we haven't seen. Yeah. Leave them alone. It's a beautiful area. If it was the summertime, got a nice lake out there, little clearly, little barbecue, little kids.

It's fine. It's fine. It's nice. J. Edgar Hoover, meanwhile, had his own ideas about who was behind the kidnapping. But he was also very wrong. It's a goddamn Fidel Castro. It's Fidel Castro. Fidel Castro.

Fidel Castro stole the ham, baby. Through a top operative named Melvin Purvis. This guy. This guy is fucking war. He is a big deal. Melvin Purvis. Melvin Purvis. Yep.

Hoover put all his stock into the word of a Chicago detective named Dan Gilbert, a.k.a. Tubbo. Okay, guys. I know we're passing out nicknames today. Is it possible that we can alter mine? Tubbo. No. Man, I just don't want to be Tubbo anymore.

We already got Fatso. Yeah. We got Blimpy. We got Dumbo. You're a Tubbo. All right. Nobody's got a good. Me?

Look at me. They called me fucking Tiny Dick. Tiny Dick. That's it. That's what I got. Whoa. Tubbo maintained that Chicago bootlegger Roger Toohy was responsible for the kidnapping. Our guess it's Toohy.

Roger Toohy was responsible for the kidnapping. And Big Tom did his best to encourage that line of thinking. Have you one of these characters feel like the corrupt cop from Batman 1989? Oh, yeah. That guy. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, God.

That's his name. Eckhart. Eckhart. Take in the future. Yeah. Breeds like that. Yeah. Well, eventually, Roger Toohy and members of his gang would be arrested and charged with

the kidnapping of William Hanne. A few years later, it was revealed that Tubbo was actually an operative of Al Capone. Why do you think he had a nickname? Tubbo. This is the thing, man. If a cop has a nickname, he's a gangster. Only the gangsters have nicknames. I guess so.

Good point. Roger Toohy was another Chicago rival and Al Capone took him off the board by playing one of his oper- And by the way, Al Capone did this from jail in Atlanta. With syphilis. Yeah. It looked like nearly deranged from syphilis. Yeah. So that's a good reminder.

You get out of bed today. Al Capone did all of this with syphilis in prison. Yeah, obviously. Yeah. And he always shoot the villain in the head. Yeah. However, while Roger Toohy was arrested and charged with the crime, it soon became obvious that others were responsible, even though prosecutors went ahead and pursued a conviction

against Toohy anyway. This revelation that someone else was involved had come from a technique new to the FBI called latent fingerprint identification. And by the way, at this point, the FBI didn't become the FBI until like 1935. But just for simplification purposes, I'm referring to the B.O.I. The group? Yes. Become the FBI.

They're called the B.O.I. At this point, they're not the FBI till 35, but just to make everything simple. We'll just call it the FBI. Yeah. Basically, latent fingerprints are fingerprint impressions left on objects from the scene of the crime, which, while not obvious at first, become clear after chemical powders are applied. So a whole Dustin for Fingerprints thing comes from us.

And when the Ham Ransom notes were dusted, they found not Roger Toohy's fingerprints, but Alvin Karpus and Doc Barker's. And also, Tubbo, come over here. Look at this. Barbecue sauce to you, man, you ate the fucking evidence, Tubbo. I need to eat before coming to crime scenes. Well, incidentally, while Toohy and his men were acquitted of the ham kidnapping, they were found guilty of abducting a market speculator named John Factor for $70,000.

And John Toohy, quote unquote, committed suicide in his cell by necktie hanging, courtesy of Al Capone. Really? Jail cells are not the safe place you think they'd be. I don't think they are. No. When did you ever think that they were? I don't know, actually.

No, jail's prison seems like some of the most dangerous, in town, the most dangerous place is usually jail or prison. I want to be at the comic book shop. I want to be at the barbecue restaurant. No, a kidnapping was easier and just as profitable as bank robbing. It was also extremely time consuming. Even the ransom usually took 20, 30 days, maybe more. Not to mention the fact that it was nowhere near as exciting as shoving a gun in a stranger's

face and fleeing from the cops afterward. No, you're really just getting paid to babysit. Yeah. Technically, it's like investing in good stocks. You were just sitting there and you got to wait. You just got to wait. You just got to let it mature. So the Barker-Karpus gang temporarily returned to their original vocation.

In September of 1933, the Barker-Karpus gang robbed two Railway Express employees and escaped with two cash boxes containing somewhere between $60,000 and $100,000. And look at that, man. I mean, because that's the thing, out of the ham kidnapping, they only got a fraction of that. Big Tom Brown got a cut. Who else? Everybody who's everybody?

Who else? Who else? Everybody who's everybody? Who else? Who else? Who else? Who else? I think there was like nine or 10 people involved beginning to end.

I think the Barker-Karpus gang came away with like $7,800 each. Oh, there's no money in that at all then. Very little. Yeah. But they could, and then it also took a month. But hey, man, you're robbing a fucking Railway Express employee. You can make $100,000 in about 15 minutes. Yeah.

Two days later, they robbed a bank in Wisconsin for $43,000. Oh, hey. Can you not? That's my impression of the bank teller, hey, no, can you not? Hey, can you not, what if we don't say we did? Hey. Now those two robberies had gone smoothly, but if you rob enough banks, something is going to go wrong eventually, and sometimes what goes wrong is entirely your fault.

Yeah. You're a criminal. By your fault, I mean you just fuck up, and you fuck up bad. This one here, this one's a real dumb, dumb robbery. You can't always be perfect. In 1933, the Barker-Karpus gang robbed a train station in South St. Paul, bending the no crime and city limits rule, and things went very south very quickly, all due to mistakes made by the gang.

Mercharies in retrograde. Is that what they said? At about nine in the morning, the Barker-Karpus gang waited in a black sedan at a railway depot in South St. Paul. There was a couple of messengers arriving with bags of cash for delivery to the Stockyards National Bank, and with those messengers were a couple of police escorts. So as the bag men, along with the police, entered the railway depot offices, Doc Barker jumped out of the gang's car and pointed a sawed-off shotgun officer Leo Pavlak.

Meanwhile, another gang member named Chuck Fitzgerald also leapt out and aimed a pistol at one of the messengers. Things at this point were under control, if a little tense, but when another officer named John Yeoman unexpectedly entered the scene after his coffee break, a jumpy Barker gang member named Bill Weaver drew his shotgun from the back seat of the Barker sedan and shot Yeoman in the head. This is such a scene from a movie, because it's the guy coming back, because beforehand it's them rolling in, and it's been like, I'm gonna go get some coffee, and you're

all like, Yeoman, you're supposed to have gotten coffee earlier, and it's been like, it's my break, give me a break, I'm new here, and then he goes and he gets the coffee, and he's just being like, me, my best girl, get married on Friday, and the guy's like, yeah, you got the look of a married man, it's like, see you soon. And then he goes back over there and his head just fucking exploded. And a Doc Barker assumed that the shot had come from the police, so he called Officer Pavlak a dirty rat son of a bitch, dirty rat son of a bitch, and pulled the trigger, nearly decapitating Pavlak with his sawed off.

Fred Barker then also opened fire, because he assumed a firefight with the cops had begun, and he hit Yeoman again in the head and the chest, finishing him off. I'll get this guy on the ground, thank you. Finally losing the plot, Fred then just started spinning around in a circle, firing his pistol at anything you can fucking see, and he accidentally hit fellow gang member, Chuck Fitzgerald. Chuck Fitzgerald yelled, I'm hit. Oh my God. And Doc assumed Chuck had been hit by the cops, so Doc pulled two 45s and started firing

bullets into the post office across the street, and then finally he grabbed the messenger's money bags and drove off. See, this is why we train our soldiers for so long, so they become machines, they become killing machines, so that they can just like, they can learn how to do it, because I do feel like if you put me in a combat situation right now, at first it'd be kind of interesting, but eventually I would be the guy in a circle going, they're everywhere, Charlie's everywhere, you've been like that, Vietnam was 50 years ago. I don't know, I actually think with your ability to transform, you would do very well.

I can see you just landing in Syria and just immediately having a deli cart. I definitely wouldn't just lay down and wait for someone to just send me back, like I literally would just, I would just lay down and be like, you can arrest me, like literally just put me in military jail, I'm not going out there. Oh no, they're not going to do, they'll do things with you. Now the Barkers came away from this robbery believing that they'd just survived another nasty gunfight with the cops, but when the story was reported later, the Barker-Karpus gang discovered that they'd only been battling each other, not a single shot had been fired

by the cops. It was all the Barker-Karpus gangs. Is there a more appropriate way of describing the American people in Twitter than this moment, where they all think they're all fighting, they're all fighting outside sources, but everybody's just fighting themselves. They're all shooting themselves, yeah. All right. Great.

Meanwhile, the FBI was getting more aggressive in its newly christened war on crime. Hoover was pushing his agents to learn the strategies and tactics of gunplay, which of course resulted in more civilian injuries and deaths, but also made the FBI more dangerous to tangle with. Perhaps the new aggressiveness on the part of the FBI was why the paranoia of the Barker-Karpus gang spread from Alvin Karpus and infected the rest of the crew. Honestly, it sounds like they're finally learning how to be professional criminals when they start to look at him, because Karpus, this whole time, has been like, I told you, we

got a plan for, and they're all used to flipping out, and now he's like, now we really have to figure out how do we thread this needle, because how long have they been active at this point? Five years. Or four years. Yeah, yeah. They've been together, yeah. They've been together for maybe five years.

Yeah, so they're out of criminal college, and they're supposed to be in criminal privacy. You've got to do a post-game review, and you have to, maybe you need a tendency breaker. You need a, yeah, you need a debrief. So you've got to say, guys, that last time when we shot each other, we got to learn from that. I'd call this an aha moment. Now, notice Alvin Karpus was not on that raid. No.

Yeah. Well, one day, Doc Barker and Alvin Karpus were driving in a Chevy when they noticed they were being followed by a car that they thought contained two police officers. So Doc and Alvin turned down an alley to trick the car into following them somewhat out of the way, somewhere quiet. Once they were in a tight spot, Karpus stepped out of his car holding a Tommy gun loaded with a 50 bullet drum while Doc pulled out his 45, and both men opened fire on the car behind them until the guns were emptied of bullets.

My name is Hubert. I'm your neighbor. Seriously. That's why I was following behind you. Well, as it turned out, the person following them was not a police officer, but was rather a Northwestern airline employee named Roy McCord, who thought that Karpus and Doc were a roving pair of peeping Tom's. You looking at me shit?

Are you the guys looking at me shit? I've already both thought like they're like those are cops and then the cops, the fake cops or the people who wore cops are like those are peepers. Yes. Everyone was wrong. Everyone assumed that everyone was disgusting. I guess follow the peepers, a fun game you can play in 1930s. I guess so.

So, after the disaster of the railway station, the Barker-Karpus gang decided to return to the much less exciting game of kidnapping, and plans were made to abduct corrupt St. Paul Bank President Edward Bremmer, mentioned before as a source of money laundering. See, Edward Bremmer was the son of Adolf Bremmer, owner of Schmidt beer-brilling, as well as the nephew of Otto Bremmer, chairman of American National Bank. The Bremmers were rich as fuck. Seems like it. The time was doubled to $200,000.

At this point we gotta make our money. Now we're gonna pull the Simon. On January 17th, 1934, Bremmer dropped off his daughter at school and was driving away when Alvin Karpus appeared at his driver's side window at a stop sign and shoved a gun in Bremmer's face, telling him to move over or die. And as Karpus opened the door and Bremmer slid over, Doc Barker leaned into the passenger side and knocked Bremmer out with a butt of his 45. Does that really happen?

Do you really knock somebody out like that? I see it in movies, but I don't know if it's really possible. I didn't know if it was possible to, like, pop a guy in the head and he falls over. Hold on a second. I have this new gun that I just bought. Let me check it out. Whoa! Cool gun!

It's actually much harder to knock somebody out. It's harder to knock somebody out completely. It's harder than you think it is. If someone has been knocked out by getting hit in the head, you've probably damaged their brain pretty badly. Yeah, they are in a coma. There is a, yeah, there is a very, very strong impulse in humans, like, even after you get knocked out.

People usually, like, you're like, why don't they just stay dead because instinct kicks in. Survival instinct kicks in and you're just like, I got to get out of here. Yeah, man. Yeah, that's me, bro. I keep coming, dude. Yeah. I keep on coming, bro.

He probably wasn't knocked out as much as he was just severely disoriented and stunned. Yeah. So Doc, again, taped a pair of goggles to Bremmer's face and then placed a gag in his mouth and secured it with a piece of rope. And while all this was happening, motorists behind them just honked their horns at what they felt was nothing more than an annoying delay. Yep. Wow.

Honk, honk. Once Bremmer regained consciousness, he was forced to sign three pre-written ransom notes that could be sent to his father. They then abandoned Bremmer's car for the police to find later, covered in Bremmer's blood so everyone would get nice and worried. Let's put some shit in there as well. Why not? Now Bremmer was taken, again, across state lines to a hideout in Illinois, just like

Ham was. But Alvin said that Bremmer was, quote, a pain in the ass, demanding a drink the moment they stopped his bleeding and insisting- I want some water. You're a fucking victim right now. I want some water. You don't get anything. Today is my day.

Oh my God. I'm the main character today. Why did we steal this entitled little bitch? Alvin insisted over and over again that his father would never pay two hundred thousand dollars. Jokes, I knew he'd rather me dead. That's actually really sad, man. I didn't realize being wealthy was so-

No, I'm glad he hates me. I pissed in his car once. You pissed in his car as a baby? No, it was last week. It was last week. Yeah, maybe you are. Because I needed candy. You needed candy so you're pissed in your dad's car.

Why did we get that? Take care of me. I'm your baby now. Dang it, man. This sucks. Now, when Bremmer's abandoned bloodstained car was found, the media concluded that Bremmer had been murdered and dumped. But because kidnapping had become such an epidemic, the Bremmer family was flooded with

fake ransom notes, all claiming to have kidnapped their son. You could just see the cheese-doodle residue, just be like, Henry, I think I got it, bro. Listen, we didn't even kidnap. We didn't even kidnap her. Wait, let me see that, man. God damn it, Tubbo, Tubbo, you eat the fucking fake ransom note, bro. I got to eat before our shoes. You have to eat.

On the third day after the kidnapping, though, the real perpetrators of the crime placed a fairly standard ransom note in a bottle and tossed it in the window of a longtime friend of the Bremmer family named Dr. H.T. Nipper. There you go. That's fun. But since there have been so many fakes, the first note wasn't taken seriously. So a day or two later, the Barker-Karpus gang slipped a somewhat more forceful follow-up under Dr. Nipper's door.

Dr. Nipper, we have this person, dot, dot, dot, for realsies. For realsies. That's how you know. For cereal. For cereal, please. Man, that might, 1934, big go-kart. This is what that note said. Bremmer, don't get back to his family, he has you to thank.

First of all, all coppers must be pulled off. Second, the doe must be ready. Third, we must have a new signal. When you are ready to meet our terms, place an NRA sticker in the center of each of your office windows. What? We'll know if the coppers are pulled or not. Remain in your office daily from now until 8 p.m.

Have the doe ready and where you can get it within 30 minutes. You will be instructed how to deliver it. The money must not be hacked as it will be examined before Bremmer is released. We'll try to be ready for any trickery if attempted. This is positively our last attempt. Don't duck it. It sounds kind of scary, but then also kind of fun. It is.

Because coppers. Yeah. And so, since this note had more of an air of authenticity, it was taken seriously. In 20 days after Bremmer was kidnapped, the $200,000 ransom was delivered to a spot in Farmington, Minnesota. The next night, Bremmer was released into the middle of the street in Rochester, Minnesota and told to count to 15 before finally removing the goggles that had been almost constantly taped to his face for three weeks.

Now, just a quick question. Do you want me to count down? To what? Or count up to 15? I'm going to count out loud, one, two, can I now? So fucking happy. Can I now? I'm the baby.

You're not the baby. They actually scared him a little bit. They dropped him off and he started counting to 15 and once he got to about like seven, they said, we're still here. Start again. Yeah, nice. Well, technically that means I'm going to be counting to 30. You said 15.

You said 15. That's 30. Now, the FBI was very interested in what sort of information Bremmer could remember about the kidnappers, but all he could give was a clear memory of a piece of wallpaper he briefly saw and a vague memory of an older woman maybe saying, now you're thinking, boys, now you're thinking, now you're using your noodle. Well, it seems like they did something real stupid, but yeah, yeah, now you thinking taping the goggles to his face.

That's smart. Let me go over here now. Pull his pants down. Show me his ball. Oh, wow. That's even worse. Come on. Let me sit on him.

Wow. And once the money was collected, the gang split the earnings and scattered. Shotgun George Ziegler, on the other hand, was the only member of the gang who couldn't keep his fucking mouth shut. Just shut up. There's so many other things to talk about than the felony you just committed. But how does everybody know that you did the cool job of doing these felonies if you don't tell people that you're the one who did it?

Ego. Totally. One of his associates in Chicago that he'd been involved in the Brimmer kidnapping, Shotgun George was gunned down outside a restaurant in Cicero, and his body was left in the street until the next day. Carpus later claimed that the kidnapping syndicate was responsible. I think Capone was responsible. I think it's a lot of shit.

There's a lot of people that could have been there to fucking kill him. Well, nothing happened in Cicero without Capone say so. So I'm sure Capone, so that meant that maybe Capone had something to do with the Brimmer kidnapping at the very least, had a little bit of his finger on the pie because after all he was taken to Chicago and it was said, like I think Carpus said that Capone told them, like, if you're in Illinois, you're paying rent. Oh yes. That makes total sense because he was like that and they did have a quote unquote good

relationship with him, which means you give him the Vig. You basically go and I just think Capone, any heist of this size at this time period in the middle corridor of America, Capone had to at least have heard about it or he would want to shut it down. Sure. Now by 1933, high profile kidnappings, murders and bank robberies were just as prevalent as ever, if not more so. Therefore, the FBI were under a lot of pressure to have any sort of success in their so-called

war on crime. They'd actually given it a name. It was now called the Great Crime Wave of 1933 and 1934. Public Enemy Error. But the Barker Carpus gang, Pretty Boy Floyd and John Dillinger were all still at large. And Bonnie and Clyde, yeah, they'd been killed, but they'd been killed in an operation led by a former Texas Ranger, Frank Hamer. And that had absolutely nothing to do with the FBI.

That was one man's vendetta. And concerning Dillinger, the FBI had also completely botched a raid on the Dillinger gang in Wisconsin at the Little Bohemia Lounge. Oh yes. Whenever I think of Wisconsin, I think Little Bohemia Lounge. Always. Well, at the restaurant of the Little Bohemia Lounge, the FBI had killed one innocent civilian customer who was only there for the Sunday dollar dinner special.

Oh, no. And you know that it was like bad, but great. It was just thick. Oh yeah. And they wounded two other civilians and it was one of those completely, it was one of those like jitters things where these people were like leaving the restaurant. There was like 75 people there that night. They were leaving the restaurant.

The FBI was out there waiting for the Dillinger gang. They told the car to stop. The car didn't stop. So the FBI fucking opened fire and killed someone instantly and wounded the other two. Had nothing to do with it. It was just because they were in Wisconsin. You know, they had a couple of Manhattan's at dinner, they were just like, honey, we are drunk.

Yeah. We better drive home now. We better drive home. Because we want to get the full drunk on the road. And the FBI also lost an agent to boot, but worst of all, they hadn't captured even one member of the Dillinger gang. Come on. They caught like one guy's wife and a couple of girlfriends and they convicted all them

on harboring charges, but those, all those ladies were released on parole soon after. And for this shit, Hoover almost lost his job, but that would have been good. That would have been great, but he barely managed to hold on. Now, even though the FBI was not even coming close to doing the job they've been hired to do, Alvin Carpus was just as cautious and paranoid as ever. And this general mood was starting to rub off on Fred Barker. Do you think if Hoover was ever, like if he was ever upset and then someone was like, Hey, Jay, don't get your panties in a bunch.

And then he was just like, how did it know? I think that, I think at the time, it might have come from that. Yeah. You know why I went as Jay Edgar Hoover? Why? Because around that time, like there was a guy somewhere in America that had been convicted of writing like $600 in bad checks and his name was John Edgar Hoover. And Jay Edgar Hoover didn't want to get confused with the other, with the criminal John Edgar

Hoover. So he changed it to Jay Edgar Hoover. That's how fucking weird this guy was. Wow. Well, looking to avoid future entanglements with the FBI in at least the investigative realm, Alvin Karpus and Fred Barker began floating inquiries as to how they could get their fingerprints altered or removed altogether. This is fucking sweet.

Not as easy as you might think it is. I bet it's very traumatic to the body. It seems like it would be, although it's also put them on a hot plate. Would they burn off? You'll see. They come back. They come back. They come back.

Well, eventually Fred and Doc were given the name of an underworld doctor named Dr. Joseph Moran, who had already been to prison for performing illegal abortions and was now a surgeon for hire amongst criminals on par with the doctor in the 1989 Batman movie. This is like an example of why people don't trust doctors and shit. Like this is one of these guys who's like, yeah, I'll fucking do anything for money. I'll do anything for money, which means I'll also experiment with 1930s plastic surgery on you to figure out what we could do. That was an un-pioneered area of medicine at the time.

And he really was kind of digging in and just figuring shit out on these guys. So when Fred and Alvin arrived at Moran's office, Moran began by wrapping rubber bands around the first joints on Fred's fingers. Okay. He then mixed a batch of antiseptic liquid and swapped it over his fingerprints. That's how it's clean. And when Barker's fingers started going a little bit numb, Moran injected each finger with cocaine to numb them more.

Yeah. And why is this happening again, doctor? You'll see. This is good. Oh, you'll see. Okay. Okay. Having done that, Moran slowly began to whittle the meat off the end of Barker's fingers

as if he was sharpening a pencil. I mean, to be fair, that's how you do it. Yeah, I guess. I don't know how else to get rid of fingerprints. Cover it with glue. You know, gloves would have been a smart idea. This is after 10 fingertips of cocaine. So this guy is, yeah.

Yeah, fuck yeah, man, fuck yeah, man, fuck it, man, fuck it, give me the scowl, fuck it, give me the fucking scowl. After 10 minutes of slicing, Moran wrapped the fingers and bandages and gave Barker a shot of morphine, telling him that he was, quote, going to start hurting in a few hours. Yeah, I am hurting now. Now Moran did the same to Alvin Karpus, but with Alvin, Moran also added facial surgery. He told Karpus, hey, your face is kind of lopsided, I can straighten that up for you if you want.

What the fuck did you just tell me? I'm a gangster. You're going to tell me my face is lopsided? Every minute I go, hey, I wonder how I got the name fucking creepy. Yeah, of course my fucking face is lopsided. But this is actually, Cena, because Navi's brother is a plastic surgeon, and he does say stuff like this, where he goes like, I could fix that. He grabs a chunk of meat in your face, he's like, we can get rid of this.

And he's like, no, it's there. I thought I needed that. So Moran shot Karpus' face full of cocaine. That was the only anesthetic he had, is to shoot and kill Cain people. And he made incisions on Karpus' face that kind of sort of hit his facial scars but didn't really do much else. He was still very much all creepy. It seems like it gave him different scars.

Yeah, man, it just makes you, this is all like, dumber experimentation. Right. Yeah. Well, afterward, both Fred Barker and Alan Karpus were in so much pain, mostly from having every finger on their hands mutilated, they fell in and out of consciousness for three full days. Okay. And maybe all the cocaine, maybe going up and down.

I need a break. Yeah. Take a breather. I'm going to need a cat after that. Well, like George Ziegler, Dr. Moran just couldn't keep his goddamn mouth shut. Hey, man. What are you bragging about? Who's going to know?

You fucking... You're an unlicensed doctor. You want to know how fucking crazy I am? I cut the fingerprints off a creepy Karpus last night. You fucking piece of shit. She... You paid for pizza. What about patient client privilege, doc?

He was telling sex workers that he was a very important guy in the Chicago underworld. I'm a very important man. Okay. So... Please take a shower before you come and have sex with me. Thank you. So, Karpus and Barker shot him in the head and dumped his ass in a hole in Michigan. Yeah.

Oh, also, that happened. That escalated. That escalated very quickly, also, again, I mean, just tell them about the invention of gloves. Yeah. Well, speaking of the fingerprints, other sources say specifically the FBI said that Dr. Moran's corpse was not dumped in a hole, but that it actually washed up on the shores of Lake Erie a year later, missing its hands and feet.

Yeah, man. Oh, they got revenge. Yeah, they did. I think that he'd legitimately... Karpus would do shit like that. They were very... They were very violent. Yeah.

That's why we're... Yeah. Yeah, we are covering them. Unfortunately for Fred and Karpus, however, they'd gone through all that pain for nothing. The damage had already been done. In February of 1934, FBI agents traced money from the Brimmer kidnapping to a gas station. From there, they found a gas canister that had been used to refuel the car that had kidnapped Brimmer.

Okay. And on that gas canister were the fingerprints of Doc Barker. With that, the FBI had enough evidence to fully pursue the Barker-Karpus gang wherever they went because it was now a federal matter. Now the Barker brothers and Ma have been keeping low profiles in Chicago since the ransom for Edward Brimmer had been paid. To fill their days, the Barker sometimes went to the movies and which to their surprise, they were soon seeing their own faces on the screen.

That's fun. Was this fun or was that a fucking wakey nightmare? Probably a little of both. Because I'd be like, oh, we're on the big screen now, okay. In April of 1934, Ma, Fred and Alvin went to the pictures and caught a universal international newsreel featuring an update on the FBI's war against crime. And amongst the pictures of America's public enemies, including John Dilliger and Babyface Nelson, were Alvin Karpus and Fred Barker.

It's just nice to be recognized. Yep. And from what Karpus later wrote, when the lights went on in the theater, Ma just smiled at Fred and Alvin with the first real confirmation that her boys were more than just ordinary crooks. You did good, sons. You did good. We did?

Yeah. Yeah, because that's the funny thing about it. They said when the lights went up, like everyone, because it ends with, one of them could be sitting next to you, right? I highly doubt that. Oh my fucking lord. Yeah, because they were, and like giggled, like is it you, is it you, and then they were fucking there, man.

They were in it. Jesus. That's creepy. That's fun. That is scary. But while the Barker-Karpus gang were doing their best to avoid police attention, their girlfriends were not showing the same caution. One evening, the main squeezes of Fred, Doc, and Alvin had a bit too much to drink and

caused a disruption at the local tavern. Oh my god. It's like what Wendy does. Wendy starts to fight, and then she's like, oh, don't worry, my father will fix it. Yeah, I'm sure. The disturbance drew the attention of the police, and one of the girlfriends floated the names of a gang member or two that she might be involved with and implied that the officer's lives might be in danger if they don't let the girls go.

The girls were arrested, and this disturbance marked the beginning of the end of the Barker-Karpus gang. Now, while the rest of the gang fled to Chicago and other places down south, Doc Barker refused to leave his girlfriend. As a result, on January 8th, 1935, Doc became the first of the Barker-Karpus gang to go down for his crimes since they had officially formed five years before. Federal agents raided Doc's apartment and found not only money from the Brimmer ransom, but an arsenal of weapons, including two pistols, two automatic rifles, one 351 rifle with a

front-machine gun grip, a shotgun, and enough ammunition to take on half the FBI himself. This is my collection, see? All this year, this is just about me celebrating the history of guns, see? Well, it's your new guns. Oh, yeah, but that's the idea, contemporary museum of guns. That is what this is, it's not a stockpile, it's just a pile. After they arrested Doc, the FBI then found a clue as to where their investigation should take them next.

It was a postcard from Ocala, Florida. Not Ocala, no! Why would you go to Ocala? I've heard that. Ocala? Is it Ocala? Ocala, yeah. Ocala.

Love you, Florida. Ocala is the worst place in the world. Why? It's very bad. They don't have an Applebee's? It is. Oh, no, they... Well, it's like all they have.

That's all they have. You know Applebee's is not as good as it used to be, Kissel. I know. Well, they all started fucking having the same kitchen and all the same recipes and the same food. So you immediately went from celebrating to denigrating, and that shows that you're a flip-flopper, which is why eventually you're going to go back to the Senate. I'm on Ben's side here.

He accessed his memories of how good Applebee's used to be first, and then once you actually pointed out his folly, he was big enough to say that he would change his mind. You say flip-flop, and I say that's a good American. Certainly big enough. Oh, no. His tears. His tears. His swift boat me, man, you're going to try to swift boat me, bro?

Nah, man, you ain't got Carrie face. Even though names hadn't been signed to this postcard, it became obvious that Ma, Barker, and Fred Barker had fled to Ocala. Love your mother. I think this is from your mother. Yeah, I do love that they did what all of our parents did, which is at least mine. They just went to Florida. They're like, what do you do?

Basically, what are you going to do with Ma Barker needed to be? You look at her. She was bored. She's a Florida girl. Especially West Coast Florida, Gulf Coast Florida, she's got Sarasota written all over her. Now, by 1934, Bonnie and Clyde, Pretty Boy Floyd, and John Dillinger were all dead, so the FBI and J. Edgar Hoover were able to concentrate the full force of their organization

on capturing or killing the remaining members of the Barker-Karpus gang. The first to go down was Russell Gibson, who'd taken part in the Brimmer kidnapping. Federal agents surrounded his building and hurled tear gas into his apartment before opening fire. Gibson tried running out fire in his pistol, but his gun jammed, and agents filled him full of lead. Don't worry, in 55 years, we're going to use the same technique in Waco, Texas. Next was gang member William Harrison, apparently named after the president.

Oh, didn't he die like 17 days or so? William Henry Harrison, he died in 30 days. Best president we ever had. Honestly, every president should have that timeline. Sure. But when they found William Harrison, just after they killed Russell Gibson, all that was left was a charred corpse, because Doc Barker had probably killed him and burned his body to keep him quiet.

I mean, then he's very quiet. I guess. Now, Ma, Fred, and Alvin had been staying in Lake Weir in Florida under the name of Blackburn, but they had not kept a low profile. You guys, we're Disney people now. You're Disney people now. We're Disney people. We're Disney kids.

You want to go to Epcot, Ma? Yeah, we're going to Epcot. I just feel like their personalities, they could not be hid under a bushel, could they? It's hard. No, they are peacocks. They are peacocks. From what residents of Lake Weir said, the people they knew as the Blackburns paid for everything in large bills and wouldn't take change.

Here you go. It's like a $1,000 bill. Yeah. Keep the change. For the Wrigley's gum? Oh, just don't know. That's yes, yes, yes. It's actually a lot of work for me to do this.

Yeah, you just keep the change. You want me to keep the change. You keep yourself. And honestly, all those stains on it. That's jelly. Okay. Thank you, Ma Barker. No.

Okay. Mother Blackburn. Oh. One time, a local barber said that three of these Blackburns got haircuts and they tipped him 50 bucks. You know how much that is today? It's like going to the barbershop and tippin $1,200. Gizzles done it.

Not that much. No. That's a lot. What finally caught the attention of the agents, however, was the fact that Fred and Alvin had been seen piloting a boat on the lake, pulling a live pig behind them so they could lure out an alligator named Old Joe and shoot him to death with their machine guns. This is the movie I want to see.

This is the movie. I feel like there's a slice of life movie about the Barker Carpus Gang in Florida and then it's been like, we got to get that gator. Oh, man, babe. We got to get him. He's out there. He's taunting us. We got to get him.

I just feel bad for the pork. The little piggy. He's just like, babe in Florida. You should kill him first. You shouldn't do it. You shouldn't fucking just carry or drown a live pig. They're having fun. I guess.

Well, this just shows who they are. They are adrenaline junkies at this point. They have to do something, but they know they can't rob banks. The best idea they can come up with is baiting an alligator named Old Joe so they can kill it with their machine guns. I like the concept of some degree, but I feel like maybe they were too kind to kill the pig. It's very interesting.

I mean, just the idea of all of these Florida people, because it's a mixture of people coming from Cuba and all these places, and it's very Florida people. And then looking on the lake at these men in full suits with Tommy guns, with their pig struggling in the water, they're like, we're going to get the gator. We're going to get that gator. With this, the agents are like, yeah, the Barkers are at Lake Weir, so by then that's exactly where they are. By the time agents arrived at Lake Weir on January 16th, Alvin Karpus and many of the

other gang members had left, but Ma and Fred Barker had stayed behind. But accounts vary as to whether anyone stayed behind with them. I couldn't really figure out whether it was just the two of them or like one other guy or two other guys. But what we do know is that at 5.30 a.m., FBI agents knocked on the door and announced themselves as Department of Justice men and demanded that the Barkers come quietly. After some time, the FBI claimed that they heard Ma Barker yell, all right, go ahead. Now they claimed, the FBI claimed, that they took this as a sign that the Barkers were

surrendering. But suddenly, Fred appeared in one of the windows firing a machine gun, all while Ma yelled, let him have it, let him have it, mother of the year. The ensuing gunfight continued for hours, long enough for a crowd to gather outside. But at noon, the gunfire inside the house ceased. You're going to want to stand right here. This is still within bullet range, so you might actually get shot. It is kind of interesting.

This is nice. You're going to want to wear a poncho. Yeah. When agents edged inside the house, they said they found Ma Barker with her arm around her youngest boy, both of them dead. This is, I think, how my mom used wheel die. You know what I mean, like in her head, she's just been like, that's what they'll do, Henry Thomas.

The police will put his town because they'll never understand a Zabrowski way of love. Fred had been shot 11 times before he went down, but Ma had been killed by just one shot to the head. It was reported that her pudgy hands still clashed an empty machine gun, implying that she'd participated in the gunfight, but that's just what the FBI wanted people to believe. Are they lying? I know. I can't believe we'd ever accuse them.

No way. Ma Barker probably never yelled, get him. Ma Barker definitely never fired a machine gun, and there were some very good reasons why the FBI wanted people to believe this to be true. Yes. See, much of the general public was clamoring for the death or capture of Fred Barker. So there weren't really any problems with the FBI shooting him 11 times. No, they loved it.

Okay. The problem the FBI had was that they'd just blown the head off an old lady with no criminal record. And after the disaster of the aforementioned little Bohemia raid in which one in the civilian was killed, Hoover knew he would probably lose his job if the press turned negative. Put a fucking gun in her hands. Put a gun in her hands. So Hoover took the offensive, taking advantage of the fact that out of all the public enemies

out there, pretty boy Floyd, John Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, people knew the least about the Barker-Karpus gang. People pretty much just knew their names, and that was it. And remember, that was by design of the Barker-Karpus gang. Yes, because they were genuinely like, I honestly, in terms of like all of the criminals that we have covered on last podcast on the left, they are actually some of the most higher functioning in terms of like understanding what they needed to do, understanding like the idea of like, we can't always be bragging, especially the Barker boys, specifically the

Barker boys and Karpus, because it seemed like they always were very tight-lipped. And it was the ancillary guys. It was all the other people that would join up that always would talk a big game. Those guys knew how to be criminals. Yeah. Well, J. Edgar Hoover very quickly announced that Ma Barker had been the brains of the operation the entire time, a criminal mastermind who had planned everything from escape routes to kidnapping targets, and had done it all with a cigar chopped between her teeth.

She probably had her cigar, maybe, although I don't know if she did. She might have liked the cigar too. I could see her being a fancy lady. In the public, trusting as they were, they bought it. Because it was such a compelling tale, the newspapers, in collaboration with the FBI, they created a new Ma Barker that was far more dangerous and capable than the simple horny fiddle-playing dollar that she'd really been. She was an accomplice at best.

She was the cook. So they gave her the Manson treatment to some degree. A little bit, yes. They painted her as far more of a villain, because, yeah, far more of a villain than she would be because, yeah, again, they killed an old lady. But still, she was there. She was an accessory. She definitely helped.

A supportive mother. She was the mascot. Yeah. Exactly. And this story called her the Deadly Spider Woman, writing the quote, the withered fingers of spidery, crafty Ma Barker, like satanic tentacles, controlled the skeens on which dangled the fate of death parado. Cool.

I mean, I don't know. I think she's a little chubbier than that. No, she's just a... Okay. Once the narrative was established, Hoover doubled down, saying that the Barker-Karpus gang were the smartest outlaws he'd ever encountered, and in that, he was telling the truth. But he also said that Ma Barker was the smartest of them all, so smart that they never got anything on her, which is why she was never mentioned in a single FBI file until she was

killed. Ma Barker was the Riddler. Interesting. Yeah, it was her. She's definitely like, Trixie, Trixie's. Meanwhile, the whole time, she's just pining for fucking dick. Yeah. The Riddler, Trixie, Trixie's.

I don't know. That's Ma Barker doing it. But she was hounding for dick, and she liked dresses. Yeah. So she was like... She's loud. She was like the rest of us. Absolutely.

Yeah, she liked being somebody, and she liked that her boys were somebody, and she liked going to all these criminals, and she liked going to Al Capone's house, she liked hanging out with Pretty Boy Floyd. Must have been freaking awesome, dude. Well, I guess they didn't hang out with Pretty Boy Floyd, but she loved hanging out with Babyface Nelson. She loved it. And Natalie and I were talking about last night about this idea of status in America,

and how specifically, how important it is, economic status, and what it does, and how some people are willing to do whatever it takes to not backslide. So this is the type of thing. They made a very good living being criminals, and at some point, you just don't want to give it up, no matter what. This is who we are now. This is our role. We'd rather die than give it up.

American royalty, perhaps. True crime royalty, anyone. The mom Barker story also gave J. Edgar Hoover the opportunity to trot out one of his favorite lines. He said that the Barker story proved that the root causes of crime were not poverty or economic disparity, but the widespread deterioration of family value. Fuck you. Fuck you.

Let me just adjust my girdle. You ever get a dingleberry stuck in one of your panties? The nicest part of him was the panties. I know. That was the best part. But the sad thing is that also made him horrible. Of course. That's the problem.

I wish he could have just been... Because he made it illegal to wear panties. Exactly. It made him a hypocrite. And isn't that the worst crime of all? It truly is the worst. Yes. Meanwhile, the FBI still had one more big fish to catch if they wanted to wrap up their

war on crime, and that fish was Alvin Carpus. The manhunt, however, was said to have an air of lethargy and anti-climax. All of the biggest villains were dead. The Barkers were dead. Marty Boy Floyd was dead. Bonnie and Clyde were dead. And agents were none too keen on risking their lives in a war that had already been won. Especially with the fucking master of them, like one of the best criminals of the time

period. It's like drinking off a loan in the bathroom after the orgy. You know? Yeah. There's a lot of good times there. Well, now it's time to come and see the glaring light of reality and go home. And so Alvin Carpus was public enemy number one for an entire year, fleeing from city to city, hijacking cars, hiding in brothels, and stealing payrolls when he could.

Finally though, the FBI caught up to Carpus in New Orleans in the spring of 1936. On May 2nd, a raiding party surrounded the house where Carpus was known to be staying. But Carpus and his cohorts were actually out at the grocery store, satisfying a sudden craving they'd just gotten for strawberries. It kind of looks like some strawberries. It's the accident. Okay. When they returned, however, Carpus felt that something was off.

And when he rolled down his car window, an agent recognized him and raced his car to block Carpus in. According to J.A. Gerhoover, Hoover himself then jumped out of his car and rushed to Carpus, grabbing him by the collar before Carpus could reach for his gun. No, yes. No, we didn't. No, we definitely didn't.

No, we definitely didn't. No, we definitely didn't. No, we definitely didn't. No, we definitely didn't. No, we definitely didn't. Actually, J.A. Gerhoover was like almost exactly your size. I ain't man.

Leader size. Scary person size. Isn't it funny? Isn't it funny how when I say he's your size, all of a sudden he switches to being a leader? Leader size. Like your L.R. Rod Hubbard love affair.

Yes. Anyone that looks like you. The body. You and the like. Of a philosopher king. J.A. Gerhoover. When Carpus, who I'm actually much more inclined to trust, J.A.

Gerhoover was nowhere to be found in the actual moment of Carpus's arrest and only swooped in to reap the glory after the coast was cleared. Of course. My job is to organize. Yeah. Okay, I oversee. God, you're going to ruin this whole country. You know that, right?

Yes. Thank you. Nevertheless, the New York Times front page headline the next day said, Carpus captured in New Orleans by Hoover himself. Oh, fucking bullshit. I can't. It was easier to escape back then, right? Why don't they just go to the middle of nowhere?

Why don't you just go to South Carolina in the woods? This is a time period where there's very also, there's very few methods of communication. So your face has been blasted. The only place that people see mass communication, the movie theater and like a lot of people in New Orleans. I just feel like they could have hid, but whatever. You can, but it's also, you know, do you want to live that life? Like do you really want to just go every day to be just disconnected?

It sounds really refreshing. You can do it, but you'd also, you'd get bored and commit a crime. Yeah. Now, after a short stay in Leavenworth, Doc Barker was sent to Alcatraz. Oh. Hey, did you know? Don't even do it. Did you know?

Don't even do it. It's been ruined. No, I can't. I can't. I can't. I can't. I'll wait till later. I'll wait.

It's going to come back. I'll wait until it rests. Well, eventually, Doc Barker, what did that, what did you say? It means talking. Let's just move on. Okay. Fine. Let's just move on.

Yeah. Well, Doc Barker, if you listen to our Alcatraz series, you know that he was killed in an escape attempt many years later. And if you want to hear that full story, please go listen to our series on Alcatraz's Penitentiary. As far as the fates of Ma and Fred Barker went, they were subjected to a final indignity after death for eight months, their bullet-ridden bodies were iced and put on display in Florida as a tourist attraction.

But Marcus, Marcus, wait a second. Why true crime now? Why true crime now? People are so obsessed with true crime now. Why now? Why is it? Why now? Why now?

You think this is, obviously, it is because of the plaque that says, look at these two dumb bastards. We killed them. But there is also something kind of nice in memorial to be frozen in time for eight months. As people can go. As people were not frozen in time, they just decomposed slower. Yeah.

I see. Honestly, that's fine. That's a fun day in Florida. This is how criminals should be treated. I honestly think that this is exactly how it should have been done. Manson was wrong. When that hot chick told him, and he flipped out saying, you're not going to use my body for your fucking side show, I'm not a side show, I mean, like you literally are a side

show, Charles Manson. Yeah. Like they should have chucked your body all over this fucking country, we'd have opened for him. Yeah. Seriously. Yeah. The Edgene death truck should still be on display.

Yeah. Yeah. COVID casualty. Yeah. Well, partly these bodies were made a tourist attraction because they could be. Nobody wanted to claim the bodies after the media firestorm mythologized Ma Barker. Right. Mostly though, this was another FBI plot.

The FBI wanted the bodies of Ma and Fred Barker on display because they thought that maybe it would lure the remaining Barker Carpus gang members out of hiding. Also hear me out. Let's put a, let's put a wick in their shoes, right? Call him a shoe bomber. And then every time you go to the fucking airport, they'll take off their goddamn shoes just to feel like a bunch of assholes. Wait till next week.

This shit is fucking, they had a lot of crackpot ideas inside of the US government. Okay. Eventually though, George Barker, Ma's estranged husband and father of all three Barker boys arranged for the transportation of the bodies of Ma and Fred to Oklahoma for burial. And both were laid to rest in Welch beside the eldest Barker, Herman, actually looked up their graves on Find a Grave, uh, Barker, Herman, uh, find a grave.com. You know it. You know.

Most people look for love on the internet, but that's where you find love. You find it at the grave. Yeah. You do. Uh, Herman actually got a really nice headstone. It says Barker. It says Herman, it's very much in the 1920s style, uh, but with Ma and Fred, they just put them in the ground and you can tell years later, someone just paid for a single marble

block that just said Ma, Kate Ma Barker and Fred Barker. Wow. Because I think they were tired out at people asking in Welch. Yeah. Where is it? Yeah. As far as Alvin Karpus went, he was sent to Alcatraz as well and spent 25 years as a troublemaker, earning write-ups for fighting, refusing to work, possession of contraband,

and insolence to officers. In 1969 though, Alvin Karpus was paroled and deported to his native Canada. He soon moved to Spain where he wrote two completely unrepentant autobiographies and died happy in 1972 as the last surviving member of the infamous Barker-Karpus gang. Wow. By earning J. Edgar Hoover, the end of the Barker-Karpus gang's reign gave him the final push he needed to make the FBI legitimate in the public eye. His powers after Alvin Karpus was captured were broadened and he was therefore able to

refocus the FBI from the waste of time that was bank robbery to Hoover's true passion, Communist subversion. And that, my friends, will segue nicely into the gigantic series we have planned next week when we once again go wide on all platforms. This is here to hear first, ladies and gentlemen, crime doesn't pay, but it does for a while. And then you just kind of have to get out before you get murdered, but just know that for a while crime does pay. But in the end...

It doesn't pay that much though, Freakin'omics, that book, it's an old book now. They broke down crime and it doesn't really pay that much, you should just go get a job too. Well, crime pays as much as the entertainment industry pays. Most people don't make any money in the entertainment industry, but man, if you do, boy, you're doing good. Crimes the same way. Some people can do really well.

We have discovered the way to make middle-class entertainment work, I don't know how, but it's like literally like it is interesting to see the fact that you put all of these extra hours into becoming a comedian or an entertainer. It's the same thing as a criminal, where it's like, it's a hard work to organize all of this bullshit. What does it say? 10th? Is that...

What is it? Malcolm Madwell? I'm glad, well... Yeah, his podcast, speaking of podcasts, I listen to it. He talks real slow. Like, all slow. I don't like him. Well, I don't know.

But anyway, what is it, 10,000 hours you're gonna do? It's yeah, whatever. He just made shit up. Well, yeah, that's all of us. He just... But yeah, he definitely... Malcolm Madwell just made shit up. People think he's smart because he's kind of unattractive, but also kind of attractive.

He just named a number. He's a skinny, so people think he's smart, but if he was fat, people would think he's not. Okay, everyone. Interesting. That's really interesting. Yeah, I like the look of Marcus's face. Yeah, it's...

I don't know if that's true. I don't know. Malcolm Madwell. Many fat men, many fat men are smart and are considered smart. Stand free, man. Stand free who wasn't that fat. He was that smart. And then...

Wait. Who else? Who else is big? None. And smart. Who? Fuckin' Norman Mailer was fat. He was considered very smart.

Oh, yeah? He's kind of always been bad. Yeah. I don't know what the rules are when it comes to... But no, he like shot somebody. I don't know what's going on all right, everyone. Well, thank you so much for listening. As Marcus said, we can't wait to be wide on all the platforms, and we really hope that

we are making Neil Young happy because we don't want... We don't want the rage of Neil Young coming up. Because I can hear the choo-choo. Because Neil Young's going to send his trains after Spotify. You're going to be really careful if you're on Spotify right now. So next time, just to show you know, Soul Plumber 4 is already a go. It's out there. You can fucking get out.

It's out there. We got... I think we got three weeks to the next one. It's out there. Go get it. If they don't get you your copy of Soul Plumber, just throw a trash can through the fucking... Don't do that. The front of the comic book store.

Civil disobedience. Make them give it to you. This is... Sad tires. Do not attack your local comic book store. They are run by very hardworking people that are trying to live their dream. Do not throw a trash can through their window. They're loaded with cash.

They're not loaded with money. No, it's not about stealing the money. It's about getting the comic book. You got to get the comic no matter what. Like your life depends on it. Okay. Well, that's fine out there. If you're in West Texas and you want to copy, be sure to go to Starbucks and Comics.

They got plenty there. Yeah, you can just... You're here at Greenpoint. Go to... You can just order it. If you're here in New York, go to Action City Comics. They got all the issues there. So go check them out.

Go support those fine stores. Yeah, sure. Absolutely. We got the coffee. Get some Offman coffee. It's very good. Spring Hill Jack. I don't know if you can tell.

Yeah, you want people to vandalize buildings for them too? I mean, it just helps move the coffee. That's it. All right, everyone. Thank you all so much for supporting all the weird little ventures we're getting into. Also on a totally opposite level than coffee is weed. So we have that and we're going to be getting into the flower soon because we're adults. God damn it.

We want our choice. Interesting. It's adults. Interesting. The study that I just found, it's very provocative. It said that larger people have less gray and white matter in the brain. What does that mean? And that's why they make bad food choices.

What? What? You're telling me I'm stupid? Fucking what? What? Get the fuck? Fuck. Wow.

Your brain is literally baloney. That's what baloney is. All right. Thank you all so much for listening. I hope you're doing well out there. Hail yourselves. Hail Satan. Hail again.

We'll see you on the road, we can't wait to be in Richmond, Washington, and Philadelphia. I can't wait to get some of that Philadelphia fever.