National Affairs: Broken Backbone

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In Joplin, Mo. last week a toothless old man quavered to interviewers: "I'd like to be left out of all this. . . . They chose their path years ago, and I chose mine."

"They" were old George Barker's divorced wife and his four sons. He was sick, poor, alone but his path had been honest. Their path had led two to prison, three to violent Death.

Son Herman was killed some years ago after a jewel robbery. Son Lloyd was sent to Leavenworth. Son Arthur received a life sentence to Oklahoma State Penitentiary for murder, but his mother got him paroled. Then she and he and Son Fred joined Alvin Karpis in heading what the Department of Justice's J. Edgar Hoover called the brainiest, most dangerous gang in the U. S. Their brains, said the chief of the Federal Division of Investigation, were in the head of plump, thin-lipped, shrewish "Ma" Barker. Outstanding among their feats of killing, bank robbery and kidnapping was the abduction of Edward G. Bremer, St. Paul banker, for whom they collected $200,000 ransom (TIME, Feb. 19).

Two months ago a man named Blackburn and his mother rented a big, white, frame house at Oklawaha, scraggly little citrus town in central Florida. One dawn last week 15 Department of Justice agents tapped quietly at the doors of houses near the newcomers', warned residents to get out of range. Then they surrounded the big, white house and cried, "Come out!" For answer they got a spit of machine-gun fire. There followed an ear-splitting six hours which Oklawahans will long remember. "It was like war," one of them gasped afterwards. Furious firing from both sides for 15 minutes or so would be followed by a lull, then a fresh outburst. About 11 o'clock in the morning, when the house had been silent longer than usual, a Negro cook was sent in. He returned to say, "They's all dead." The Federal men, unscratched after firing 1,500 rounds of machine-gun bullets, found Fred Barker sprawled with eleven slugs in one shoulder, three in his head. "Ma" Barker lay with a single bullet in her body, a machine gun clutched in her hands. Its barrel was still hot.

In Washington next day the Department of Justice announced that Arthur Barker had been captured in Chicago week before. Exulted Director Hoover: "The backbone of the last major gang we've been seeking is broken."

In Atlantic City few days later police raided a small hotel, expecting to surprise two Florida automobile thieves in their beds. Surprised instead were police when they found the pair waiting with submachine guns in their hands. After the desperadoes had shot their way free, two women whom they had left behind confessed that one of the men was Alvin Karpis. Up & down the Atlantic seaboard flashed the order: "Shoot on sight."