The family eventually moved to Tulsa Oklahoma where the Barker boys quickly became community nuisances, engaging in petty thefts and forming a youth crime group dubbed the “Central Park Gang.” During his adolescence Doc would form strongly bonded relationships with these town hoodlums, including Volney Davis and Harry Campbell, who years later would also find their way to Alcatraz. Another gang associate, William Green, would conspire in a 1931 mass escape from Leavenworth Prison, and would ultimately commit suicide to avoid recapture.
Volney Davis
The eldest Barker son, Herman, was arrested on March 5, 1915 for highway robbery in Joplin, Missouri, and this would mark the beginning of the family’s private crime wave. It is documented that Ma Barker liked to live well and purchased expensive clothing, furniture, and other necessities from the spoils of her sons’ depredations. FBI records disclosed that Ma was exceptionally jealous of her sons’ girlfriends, and would purposely attempt to sever their relationships. Her personality would be sharply described as that of a “gutty old girl with a fantastic loyalty to her sons, who wouldn’t tell cops or G-Men the time of day and backed her boys to the hilt, right or wrong.”
Herman left the Barker household and continued his criminal antics while traveling through the Midwestern States. He was arrested several times and ultimately landed himself in prison, serving moderate terms for grand larceny and robbery. Fred Barker would also leave the family homestead, and venture out to pursue his own career in crime. He would eventually join forces with Herbert Farmer, who owned a renowned chicken ranch with his wife near Joplin, Missouri, and over the years they would harbor several fugitives, including Bonnie and Clyde. Farmer would later find himself sentenced to serve time on Alcatraz after being convicted as a conspirator in the famous 1933 Kansas City Union Station Massacre, an event which had a profound impact on the image of the American gangster. As Hoover described it, the Massacre was a “turning point in the nation's fight against crime.” The savageness of the attack had stripped away the glamour and romantic mystique of the early gangster era, and U.S. Attorney General Homer Cummings had used the Massacre as a pretext for proclaiming the Federal government’s “war against crime.”
The Fourth of July would seem an ironic date for Doc Barker to establish his role as a public enemy of the nation, but as fate would have it, on July 4, 1918 he stole a government vehicle in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and was quickly apprehended. Doc somehow managed to escape from the county jail and then for nearly two years he maintained a low profile, working as a glass blower and later on a labor detail. On February 19, 1920 Doc was captured and charged in connection with the escape. He pleaded guilty, and was released less than a year later. On January 21, 1921 Doc and his longtime friend Ray Terrill were arrested for the attempted armed robbery of a bank firm in Muskogee – Doc under the alias Claud Dale and Ray under the alias G.R. Patton. Surprisingly, Doc was released in June of 1921 without any formal charges being brought against him. Only two months later, on August 26 th, Doc and his old companion Volney Davis allegedly murdered James J. Sherrill, a security watchman at Tulsa’s St. John’s Hospital, during a break-in. On February 10, 1922 Doc and Volney were given life sentences for this crime, and were sent to serve their time at the State Penitentiary in McAlester, Oklahoma. Volney would escape in 1925, and he quickly started building his resume for Alcatraz. It was rumored that Doc was innocent of the murder and another criminal would claim responsibility several years later.
Despite the raging criminal activity of her young sons, Ma Barker continued to defend them vehemently, with unrelenting requests for their release. However, Ma did not extend the same loyalty to her husband George, whom she had married when she was only fifteen. In 1927 Ma Barker left her husband for a man known as Arthur Dunlop. He carried a low reputation in the community as a drunkard and an arrogant and illiterate nomad. It was further rumored that the Barker Boys were resentful of Dunlop, who apparently did little more than freeload and boast about the criminal escapades of his youth.
Herman Barker had also found himself deep in the criminal life, roaming the Southwest with the Kimes-Terril Gang, robbing banks, stores, and other establishments. In late January of 1928, Herman and several accomplices broke into an Oklahoma bank, and under the cover of night, made off with a cash safe containing nearly $45,000. On a tip from a witness, police quickly raided their hideout in Carterville, Missouri. A fierce gun battle ensued and Herman and the others were forced to surrender. Herman was sent to Arkansas to stand trial for another robbery and he later managed to escape by sawing through the bars of his jail cell.
In early August, Herman and his wife were pulled over by Deputy Sheriff Arthur Osborne and before the officer was able to draw his gun, Herman fatally shot him. Less than a month later Herman engaged in another gun battle with police while attempting to escape a roadblock, and he was severely wounded. Bleeding profusely from his bullet wounds and with no hope of escape, Herman turned the gun on himself and committed suicide. Herman likely had pondered the certain fate of death by electrocution that would await him if he surrendered to police. His wife would later be convicted as an accomplice to Osborne’s murder, but was released only a few years later. She subsequently became a prostitute and the mistress of Alvin Karpis, another notorious Alcatraz inmate.
Alvin “Creepy” Karpis
Alvin “Creepy” Karpis became known in the 1930’s as America’s “Public Enemy Number One.” Karpis would spend twenty-five hard years at Alcatraz.
Alvin Karpowicz was born in Montreal, Canada in 1908, and his father moved the family to Topeka, Kansas when Alvin was still a young boy. It was an elementary school teacher who decided to shorten his name to simply Alvin Karpis and he would later be given the nicknames “Creepy Karpis” and “Old Creepy” by fellow inmates. Alvin would have the unique distinction of enduring a twenty-five year residence at Alcatraz (the longest term served on the Rock by any inmate) and he was designated as “Public Enemy Number One” by J. Edgar Hoover himself. He would live a quarter of a century in a place where he would never be allowed to walk astray and would never see many areas that were only a few yards from his cell. In his memoir published in Canada in 1980, Karpis claimed that his first encounter with crime had occurred when he stole a gun at only ten years of age. Like many other criminals of his day, his first arrest was for illegally hopping trains. He was sentenced to a Florida chain gang and after release he was again arrested for robbery. He subsequently escaped from prison and returned to his fugitive status.
Karpis joined the Barker gang after meeting Fred Barker in 1930 at the Kansas State Penitentiary in Lansing. Karpis and Fred had formed a close relationship in prison while working together in the coalmines. Karpis had made arrangements to buy himself an early release. Prisoners who worked in the mines were required to dig a specified amount of coal, and each day that they dug over their quota, they were given special “good time” credits that they could apply toward their release. Karpis paid other inmates to turn over their coal to him, which helped him to secure an early release in May of 1931. Only a month later, Karpis and Fred Barker were arrested for robbing a jewelry store. Both managed to pay restitution and were paroled.
Continuing their escapades in crime, on December 18, 1931 Karpis and Fred Barker robbed another store using a new 1931 DeSoto as their getaway car, and several witnesses were able to identify the vehicle. The following day an officer named C.R. Kelly was sent to investigate a sighting of the car at the Division Motor Company in West Plains, Missouri. Alvin and Fred had stopped there to have a flat tire repaired. When the officer approached the car to question the two occupants, Karpis opened fire on him, inflicting fatal gunshot wounds to the chest. Not long after the murder the two were identified, and on a tip from a witness Dunlop’s cottage in Thayer, Missouri was raided by the police. The fugitives had already fled, but the police discovered stolen merchandise from other robberies, and thus were able to identify the players.