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Ma Barker: America’s Most Wanted Mother
In a time when notorious Depression-era criminals were terrorizing the country, the Barker-Karpis Gang stole more money than mobsters John Dillinger, Vern Miller, and Bonnie and Clyde combined. Five of the most wanted thieves, murderers, and kidnappers by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the 1930s were from the same family. Authorities believed the woman behind the band of violent hoodlums that ravaged the Midwest was their mother, Kate “Ma” Barker.
Ma Barker removed a tattered handkerchief from the navy–blue pocketbook cradled in her lap and dabbed away a fake tear. The guards on duty at the Oklahoma prison were disinterested in her supposed grief. Their job was to make sure the inmates at the facility moved efficiently from the visitor’s area back to their cells. Ma watched a pale-faced, stupefied guard escort her son Arthur out of the room. It was mid-February 1920, and mother and son had concluded a short visit. A thick, long glass separated the convicts from the civilized world. Here, communication was done using plain, black phones minus a dial wheel, wired from one side of the glass to the other. Arthur and Ma each had their own receiver to talk through, as did several other families and friends visiting their loved ones through the glass partition.
The iron-barred doors clanged shut as the last prisoner was ushered out of the room. Ma sat stock-still until she heard the guard lock the door behind the inmates. As she turned to get up from her assigned seat, a heavyset guard approached her, and with flinty eyes, looked her up and down. She looked more frumpy than menacing. The coat she wore was big and bulky, frayed in spots, and a few buttons were missing. The tan, bell-shaped hat on her head had seen better days, and her hair underneath it was pinned back in a haphazard fashion. “My boys would be all right if the law would leave them alone,” she told the guard. He had no response and simply led her to the exit of the room, and she shuffled along as little old ladies do.
Two short siren blasts issued from the main building of the jail as Ma exited the complex. She glanced back at the other visitors following her and at the stone walls topped with snaky concertina wire overhead. Once every guest had left the jail, the heavy steel doors were closed behind them.
