The Barker Boys

The final revisions for the Sixkiller book has been sent to the editor and the second chapter of the book about outlaw women of the Old West is complete. I’m a little less behind than I was but still running to catch up. On Monday I’ll start working on the changes for the second edition of Hearts West which is due by the end of November. I seem to forever be facing an outrageous deadline. The message in the history of the subjects I’m fortunate enough to write about is not lost in the busyness however. Ma Barker is the subject of the outlaw book. I know she and her four sons were criminals but their loyalty to one another fascinates me. Ma lived in a small home north of the railroad tracks in Tulsa and acted as a “front” for her boys with the law. She took them in when they came home to “cool off” after the robberies and her home became a key point for making contact with other members of the Barker gang and its interlocking membership with other gangs; such as the one run by John Dillinger. Ma made spurious bond once or twice to free her sons so they could “jump bail” and disappear. Officers were unable to prove anything against her. With the criminals who visited her flitting out of town before law enforcement could arrive – due to the communication system of the underworld – it was impossible to obtain necessary evidence. No matter what the police did they couldn’t get her to squeal on her sons and they couldn’t get the Barker brothers to “rat out” one another. Ma’s final hours were spent defending her boys – the youngest one in particular. At 6:50 in the morning on January 16, 1935, Special Agents surrounding the home she and her son Fred were living in near Lake Weir in Florida. The police demanded that everyone inside the home “come out with their hands up.” For a few minutes there was no response then a voice from inside the cottage called out “all right go ahead.” Thinking the comment was an indication that the people in the house were going to surrender, the police waited anxiously for the criminals to exit. The front door slowly opened and the muzzle of a machine gun appeared. Without warning a fuselage of shots ripped into the Agents standing nearest the home. The authorities answered the gun fire with tear gas bombs, rifle fire and machine gun fire. When the gunfire ceased at 11 a.m., authorities cautiously entered the home. More than 1,500 rounds of ammunition had struck the building. Fred’s body was found sprawled on the floor with eleven machine gun slugs in his shoulder and three in his head. Ma Barker was lying dead in a heap by the front door with a machine gun in her hand. A portion of the drum of ammunition in her weapon had been exhausted. She had been hit only once by a bullet. Ma Barker was fifty-five years old when she was killed. She laid down her life for her loved ones. I can appreciate that. I’d do the same for my brothers. Sometimes I’m convinced that’s what it’s going to come to.