RUNNING HEAD: MA BARKER 1

Ma Barker: A Criminal Created by the Media

Heidi Guggisberg-Coners

Regent University

MA BARKER 2

On the Gangster Tour at Wabasha Street Caves in St. Paul, MN, the stories unfold about the

Barker-Karpis Gang as well as the destruction they caused throughout the city and the upper

Midwest. The tour takes sightseers past the sites of the Bremer Kidnapping, the Hamm

Kidnapping, the home in West St. Paul where the Barker’s lived, and the site of a bank robbery

gone wrong at Northwestern Bank (Down in History Tours, 2001). On this tour they will also

tell of a woman named Ma Barker. While other sources may tell you differently, the people of

Minnesota, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Florida who lived alongside her would explain that she is

not the mobster the media has made her out to be.

According to numerous sources, Arizona Donna (Donnie) Clark was born in Missouri. She was

later married to George Barker and went by the name Kate. Kate and George had four sons,

Herman, Lloyd, Arthur (Doc), and Freddie. The History Channel website states, “Ma Barker, as

Kate was known, was ostensibly responsible for discipline in the family, but she let her boys run

wild. She defended her children no matter what they did, saying, ‘If the good people of this town

don't like my boys, then the good people know what they can do’” (2013). It is the lack of

discipline they received from their mother and the lack of presence of their father that is often

blamed for the ruthlessness of Kate “Ma” Barker’s boys. Early on in their lives, the boys

developed a criminal record and criminal mentality. It would seem that in their young lives, the

Barker boys would transform into a non-fiction version of some of Flannery O’Connor’s

grotesque Southern characters. As O’Connor herself explains, "In these grotesque works, we

find that the writer has made alive some experience which we are not accustomed to observe

every day, or which the ordinary man may never experience in his ordinary life" (1969, loc. 374-

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376). Therefore, the experiences of the Barker’s were something many others would never and

could never experience in their daily lives. This made them something of a curiosity.

It is important to remember, however, that “Ma Barker in the formative period of her sons' lives

was probably just an average mother of a family which had no aspirations or evidenced no desire

to maintain any high plane socially” (Hoover, 1936, pp. 1-2). The Barker’s were impoverished

during the boys’ formative years. They likely learned their criminal activities from folks who

surrounded them in what was considered the Wild West/Old West (Missouri, Kansas, and

Oklahoma). While they were Christians, “the early religious training of the Barkers, as is the

case in families of this particular section, was influenced by evangelistic and sporadic revivals.

The parents of the Barkers and the other boys with whom they were associated did not reflect

any special interest in educational training and as a result their sons were more or less illiterate”

(Hoover, 1936, p. 2). Not only were the Barker boys more or less illiterate, but Hoover also

claims that Ma Barker was more educated than her sons. This is likely why she was blamed as

the mastermind behind the gang’s operations.

Information about Ma Barker is abundant, but the information does not always present the same

story. However, in two different instances, there is an indication that Ma liked Jesse James and

that she would never forget seeing him in Missouri. On the Crime and Investigation Network

website it states, “From an early age she was familiar with crime, particularly as one of her

greatest thrills was seeing the outlaw Jesse James as he rode past her. She was devastated when

he was shot and killed in 1882” (n.d.). Her fascination with lawlessness did not appear to stop

with Jesse James because her sons continued to be lawless throughout most of their lives. This

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fact about her sons never seemed to bother Ma, but she did not seem to pay much attention to it

either.

It is also true that Ma Barker liked to live the high life. She appreciated the opportunity to live

off the money provided by her son’s lifestyles. According to the J. Edgar Hoover, “Ma Barker

liked to live well. She purchased expensive clothing, furniture and other necessities from the

spoils of her sons’ depredations” (1936, p. 2). In many cases it is noted that she liked expensive

things, which is not surprising based on her upbringing and early years of marriage to George

Barker; when she had almost nothing. Ma Barker also despised women who would have been

girlfriends or molls of her sons and other gang members. She would often tell on the other

women, sharing their private conversations with her sons. Ma appeared to want to keep all of

her sons’ fortunes to herself. As a result the places where Ma rented a room or stayed are

referred to as posh including the “El Commodore Hotel in Miami” and “White Bear Lake resort”

(Potter, 1995, p. 50).

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) also describes Ma as morally questionable. J. Edgar

Hoover states, “It is possible that Kate became loose in her moral life. She was seen with a

neighbor of hers who was having outside dates with other men and was known to have been

generally in the company of other men in the vicinity of Tulsa, Oklahoma” (1936, p. 2). She also

had a lover who met his demise at the hands of her sons. It is believed this man, Ma’s boyfriend,

who had questionable morals was sharing too much information with just about anyone who

would listen. The information he was sharing could have led to the capture of the Barker-Karpis

Gang, so they seemed to no longer have any use for him.

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Although she may have been morally corrupt, Ma Barker always played the part of doting

mother for her boys. In J. Edgar Hoover’s documentation with the FBI, he explains that Ma tried

to set up housekeeping for her “sons” in an apartment, after they had vacated their home in St.

Paul, MN and had been relocated. With Ma serving in the motherly role, the Barker-Karpis

Gang had a much easier time blending in and looking like just one of the friendly neighbors. Ma

was often seen as a nice little old lady who attended church regularly. In fact, in the video on the

website created to sell the house where Ma was killed, the family representative Carson Good

says, “My Great Grandmother and Great Grandfather were contacted by an Ocala real estate

broker who had come across this family, a nice widow named Kate Blackburn and her sons they

were apparently trying to get away from it all.” “The real-estate broker was willing to vouch for

them; they seemed like very nice people, a very gentle woman and her nice sons” (Stirling

Sothebys International Realty, 2012).

According to Claire Potter’s work, living like a family was a good cover for molls and mobsters.

She said, “By claiming identity as a ‘family,’ a loosely organized group of young adults not only

diverted suspicion but also became invisible to a certain extent. At the posh White Bear Lake

Resort, Ma Barker, Fred Barker, and Alvin Karpis were known as the ‘Hunter family,’ and later

in Chicago as the ‘Anderson family’” (Potter, 1995, p. 50). Again, Potter explains, “Taking the

role of a housewife, a bandit woman would explain her "husband's" travel and odd hours by

alluding to the poor economy and the scarcity of decent jobs. ‘Ma’ Barker's most effective

disguise was to ‘pretend’ to be exactly who she was-an elderly lady keeping house for her boys”

(1995, p. 60)

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Ma is also known to have pleaded for her boys to be released from incarceration. “Ma Barker

worked tirelessly to get them out, which was an endless job, as the brothers were constantly in

and out of prison all of their short lives,” claims Oklahoma Historical Society (O’Dell, n.d.). She

was even helpful to them when they were young because she did not discipline them well and

allowed them to run wild. “Ma would often use her acting skills by playing the distraught

mother in order to get her sons out of jail,” according to the Crime and Investigation website

(n.d.). This indicates that either she was a great actress or the police at the time were gullible as

far as women were concerned. Ma Barker is described as not all that attractive, so her acting

skills may have come in handy when trying to get her boys released from prison, jail, or any

other type of incarceration.

In his autobiography, Alvin Karpis even explains that Ma Barker was someone that was always

in their lives and someone they looked after, but she was not the head of the gang. He explains

that she did not carry out any crimes and did not plan them either. In the forward to the book,

Sam Sloan states, “Ma did her part to help her sons. ‘Ma’ Barker was not herself a criminal, she

did nevertheless badger parole boards, wardens, and governors for the release of her boys when

they were incarcerated” (2011, p. ii). Karpis also claims that Ma was not smart enough to have

led the gang. Alvin Karpis explains in his book that he was the head of the gang because of his

photographic memory.

Contrary to popular belief by the FBI, one of the gang members claimed Ma Barker was not

smart enough to lead the gang. She was also never convicted of any crimes, then how does she

become the woman many have come to know as one of the worst female criminals of all time? It

MA BARKER 7

is an interesting thought, but nonetheless it is reality. There are clippings on newspapers which

can be found on website designed to sell the hideout where Ma Barker was killed that tell us

about this “criminal.” In one of the articles it states, “During the early years of her sons’ lives

she was a typically faithful and church-going mother. It wasn’t until Herman and Lloyd grew

old enough to get into trouble that she began her strange and still unexplained metamorphosis

into a mastermind of crime. Kate ‘Ma’ Barker started molding her four sons into robbers and

thieves and murderers” (Stirling Sothebys International Realty, 2012). Again in the same article,

it states, “It was here that Ma really began building the Barker-Karpis gang into the largest and

most dangerous in the country” (2012). This article also states, “Hoping to keep the gang

together and under her control, Ma decided to take the step into kidnaping” (Stirling Sothebys

International Realty, 2012). Finally, the article claims, “Drinking heavily, the gears in his

[Shotgun Ziegler] brain began slipping, and his tongue also began to wag, Ma made another of

her decisions, and on the morning of March 22, 1934, Ziegler stepped out of his favorite café in

Cicero and into history with his head blasted to a pulp by his own shotguns” (2012). It is very

unusual how this article, which appears to have been written shortly after the killing of Ma and

Fred Barker, casts Ma in such a negative light and casts her as the one who called all the shots in

the Barker-Karpis Gang.

It is as Neil Postman states on the Media Ecology website, “how media of communication affects

human perception, understanding, feeling, and value” (Postman, 1980). For Ma Barker, the

media made her into one of the country’s most violent criminals by playing on people’s feelings

and their values. At the time of the rise of the Barker-Karpis Gang, people across the United

States felt uneasy about their lives and the welfare of the entire country. They were in the

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middle of the Great Depression and perceived anything the media told them as the truth. Most

people did not venture far from home, after they were raised, so their understanding and

perception of things beyond their communities was limited to what the media presented. This is

likely one way Ma Barker gained such notoriety. The Associated Press shared via telegraph

information for major newspapers to publish. These articles included information from across

the country; information that people of the time were unable to track down themselves.

Information via the telegraph was not always the most reliable source because it could be

intercepted and interpreted however the recipient wished. As Czitrom indicates in “Media and

the American Mind,” just like many forms of mediated communication, it can be overheard and

misunderstood by eavesdroppers along the channel through which the message must travel.

At the time when the Barker-Karpis Gang hit its most dangerous point, the Associated Press and

Western Union seemed to have a monopoly over the telegraph. When the public expressed

unfairness toward this monopoly, the government implied that it was like an extension of the

Post Office, so it could come under governmental control. “Telegraphy became merely another

feature of modern industrial life requiring government regulation,” according to Czitrom (1982,

p. 29). This meant that the government, which was already upset with Ma Barker and her gang,

was also in charge of the most technologically advanced channel through which people

communicated. President Roosevelt was a close friend of the Bremers, family of one of the

Barker-Karpis Gang’s kidnapping victims, and he wanted gang members found at all costs.

While no one was hurt in the kidnapping, the FBI spent a great deal of time and effort in bringing

down the Barker-Karpis Gang. In order to communicate most of their information via the

MA BARKER 9

telegraph, they used coded messages to discuss issues needed to be kept from nosey telegraph

operators and others who might leak information to the gang.

While these coded messages between members of the FBI may have slowed down the

interpretation of the messages concerning the Baker-Karpis Gang, ideas about Ma Barker

continued to be over exaggerated. The person deemed most responsible for the exaggeration was

J. Edgar Hoover. So, shortly after Ma Barker’s death in the longest gun battle in FBI history,

other newspaper articles surfaced. Another article on the Ma Barker House website in the

“accent on florida” section by Hampton Dun, claims “the day in 1935 when Machine Gun Kate

(Ma) Barker, only woman ever to become ‘Public Enemy No. 1’ on the FBIs Most Wanted List,

met her Waterloo in this quiet little law-abiding community on Lake Weir, 20 miles from Ocala”

(1936). The article continues to explain that when the G-men knocked on the door, to ask if Fred

was there, it was Ma’s response to shoot at them with a machine gun. As well, the article talks

about the owner of the home, and his not knowing he was dealing with the toughest woman in all

the country. From all accounts, this information about Ma Barker seems a little exaggerated. She

is more likely to have done what another article states and allowed Fred to shoot at the FBI first.

When Innis states, “monopolies of knowledge develop and decline partly in relation to the

medium of communication on which they are built” (Czitrom, p. 156). This means that people

are likely to believe what they have read or heard. In the days of the Barker-Karpis Gang,

information was communicated frequently via the newspaper and the newspaper accounts which

monopolized the knowledge of the day depicted a Ma Barker who was the head of her gang.

Other articles in the Ma Barker House website scrapbook were released it seems, prior to the

MA BARKER 10

Associated Press having all of the information available. There is information about the FBI

using tear gas, the length of the battle lasting anywhere from forty-five minutes to 6 hours, and

there being more people present in the home than just Ma and Fred Barker. Although the

information is inaccurate, it is the story provided by newspapers for its readers. Newspapers did

then and currently do subscribe to and/or use articles on the “newswire” provided by the

Associated Press, so the newspapers which ran the inaccurate information about Ma Barker were

likely using the information provided to them. It is also likely that the newspapers did not

continue to cover the story, so the inaccurate information continued to exist as reality in the

minds of newspaper readers across the U.S. It is as Walter Ong says, “Though words are

grounded in oral speech, writing tyrannically locks them into a visual field forever” (2012, p.

12). Once the information was written down, it was difficult to change the perceptions of Ma

Barker as the “only woman ever to become ‘Public Enemy No. 1’ on the FBIs Most Wanted

List” (Dun, 1936).

The stories and the image of Ma Barker as a ruthless criminal never really seemed to dissipate.

It is the way that Crowley & Heyer explain it, “neither political, constitutional, ecclesiastical, and

economic events, nor sociological, philosophical, and literary movements can be fully

understood without taking into account the influence the printing press exerted upon them”

(2011, p. 79). The printed material and the image of Ma Barker were here to stay. It again

resurfaced in 1965 on the 30th anniversary of her death. There was even a caricature in the

Miami Herald Sunday Magazine depicting Ma and Fred shooting through the shattered windows

of the house on Lake Weir with the caption, “An alligator named Old Joe led the FBI to the

notorious gang’s Florida hideout” (Lamme, 1965). This caption is as a result of a story told by

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one of the members of the gang about Ma Barker’s son, Doc and another acquaintance who

returned to Chicago from a trip to Florida talking about an alligator who they tried to capture

with a pig as bait. The alligator was known to locals in Florida as Old Joe. Following the lead to

Florida, the FBI was able to locate two alligators called Old Joe. Then, they discovered Ma and

Freddie Barker living near one of those alligators.

Although it was the 30th anniversary year, most of the attention came from the fact that Edward

Bremer, the Barker-Karpis Gang’s second kidnapping victim, died in Fort Lauderdale, FL, not

far from the famous shootout. In articles from this era, it claims, “Karpis was a member of the

savage Barker-Karpis gangs [sic] that learned murder and pillage at the feet of Kate ‘Ma’

Barker, a woman so cruel that she even had her second husband taken for a ride” (Tucker, 1965,

p. 1A). With the idea of Ma Barker as a violent criminal growing larger, Tucker also mentions,

“And Ma Barker herself, Doc’s mother, and her favorite son, Freddie, reached the end of their

blood-drenched trail in Florida in a gory gun battle beside Lake Weir near Ocala. Both were slain

by police” (1965, p. 8A). This article and others like it provided a base for the new motion

picture, “Ma Barker’s Killer Brood” (Karn, 1960).

“Ma Barker’s Killer Brood” is listed on a variety of websites as a terrible, low budget film that

was shot with a home camera. Although the reviewers are likely expecting a film using today’s

standards, what they write about the historical accuracy of the film is correct. According to

IMDb (Internet Movie Database) the plot summary, “From dust-bowl days in Oklahoma to an

opulent Florida hideout under siege, Ma Barker (Lurene Tuttle of "Psycho"), leads her sons

astray while maintaining a consultation sideline for the likes of John Dillinger, Alvin 'Creepy'

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Karpis, Baby Face Nelson and Machine Gun Kelly” (n.d.). While watching the movie, the

audience is treated to another distorted image of Ma Barker. The movie depicts Ma teaching her

sons how to steal from the collection plate at church, killing her lover, ordering a doctor to alter

her son Fred’s finger prints, and providing sage advice for other notorious criminals.

Throughout the movie, Ma is also frequently wielding a gun. This movie definitely leaves a lot

to the imagination and strays greatly from the actual events in which the Barker-Karpis Gang

was involved. As one reviewer explains it, “Supposedly based upon the life of Ozark matriarch

Ma Barker and her four felonious public enemy sons, this meanly made low budget example of

drive-in movie schlock actually treats several incidents in the real-life career of the notorious

Barker/Karpis Gang which was very active during 1931/35 from the Midwest into Southeast

U.S., but so contorts the truth in order to create a lurid melodrama that a viewer is alienated from

the proceedings, especially in light of obvious cut-rate production values. Al Karpis was the

confirmed master hand behind the Gang's string of sinful successes whereas the factual Ma

Barker, although enjoying holding open house for various fugitives, only travelled with her

family and was patently incapable of organizing more than luncheons, whereas in this poorly

scripted travesty Lurene Tuttle as a tommygun wielding sadistic sociopath performs a raft of

maniacal actions, including running over a policeman twice, all while planning the Gang's

adventures and serving up heist advice to respectful triggermen such as John Dillinger, Machine

Gun Kelly and Baby Face Nelson” (rsoonsa: Vine Voice, 2005).

The inaccuracies continue to be promulgated by a second movie released in 1970, “Bloody

Mama” (Corman, 1970). This movie was even more distasteful than the last. It depicted Ma

being gang-raped as a child, leading her sons on a crime spree, and having sexual relations with

MA BARKER 13

her sons. The movie is so lurid that some of the bit players even quit the movie over nudity

(Warga, 1969). “A psychological gangster film based on fact. Machine gun totin' Ma Barker led

her family gang (her sons) on a crime spree in the Depression era. Her loyal brood have [sic]

every perversion imaginable. The sadistic Herman sleeps with his Ma. When Fred Barker is

released from prison, he brings home his cell mate/lover Kevin Dirkman, who also sleeps with

Ma, much to Fred's chagrin. Lloyd Barker is a spaced-out drug addict who sniffs glue if nothing

better is around. Ma kidnaps happy-go-lucky millionaire Sam Adams Pendlebury and holds him

for ransom. Arthur Barker - Ma's wallflower son - and Herman's hooker lady friend Mona

Gibson also figure in the story. The bloody finale is virtually choreographed and a visual stunner.

Filmed in the Ozarks,” reads the storyline on IMDb (2012). While some of this information is

rumored to be true, much of it has not been proven as reality.

It appears as though Ma Barker gained notoriety as a criminal, something she was not, at the

hands of something she did enjoy, motion pictures. It is frequently noted that Ma spent a great

deal of time at the movies, while Alvin Karpis and her sons carried out bank robberies,

kidnappings, and murders. According to Czitrom, “By the end of the Great War, the medium of

motion pictures had established a new popular culture: a postprint confluence of entertainment,

big business, art, and modern technology that catered to and drew its strength from popular taste”

(1982, p. 59). This new popular culture would have been reaching its time of influence when Ma

Barker’s boys were wreaking havoc on the U.S. Midwest and South. Motion pictures reached a

wide variety of audiences during Ma Barker’s lifetime and they continued to portray Ma Barker

in an inaccurate light. Czitrom also claims, “motion pictures thus proved a medium of

communication that touched everyday life far more viscerally and immediately than had the

MA BARKER 14

more heralded telegraph” (1982, p. 59). While his words seem accurate, the motion picture

portrayals of Ma Barker were not.

Not to be outdone, the popular culture of musicians also picked up on the idea of this machine

toting mother. In 1977, Boney M. released a song based on Ma Barker. Although the song was

called, “Ma Baker,” it has been referred to as based upon the real person, Kate Barker.

According to Songfacts, “Like many crime figures from this era – on both sides of the law – her

life has become legend” ("Ma Baker by Boney M.," n.d.). The song itself encourages more

inaccuracies about Ma. Boney M. describes her as the meanest cat in old Chicago town; she

mowed them down, and had no heart at all. He also claims she taught her four sons to handle

their guns and she would never cry, but she knew how to die. In the middle of the song there is

even a special bulletin that states, “Ma Baker is the FBI’s most wanted woman. Her photo is

hanging on every post office wall. If you have any information about this woman, please contact

the nearest police station…” (M., 1977). The inaccuracies continue with a bank robbery being

the last foray and they could not get away from the police, so they had to shoot it out with their

blazing guns. From all of the information available, Ma did not live in Chicago, she was not the

FBI’s most wanted, she did not teach her sons how to handle guns, and she did cry (at least

when she was trying to get them out of incarceration).

To wrap up all of the inaccurate depictions of Ma Barker, it is necessary to return to the

newspaper and the town where the shootout happened between Fred Barker, and supposedly Ma

Barker, and the FBI. The town of Ocala was low on funds because of a frozen orange crop and

they needed something to draw money as well as people to their community. They decided to

MA BARKER 15

host a 50th anniversary celebration of the shootout. The town had not wanted to relive that part

of its history. In fact, they tried to forget the shootout even happened there. However, the state

representative and senator from the area played the parts of Ma and Fred Barker and the local

police played the parts of the FBI. In an article from the Lake Sentinel, a story talks about the

reuniting of an FBI agent and the Barker’s cook, Willie Woodberry [sic]. It claims, “the last

time that Willie Woodberry saw John Madala was nearly 50 years ago at the end of the barrel of

a gun” (Ritchie, 1983). The accompanying picture shows to elderly men smiling in a joking

manner, in an effort to show they were again on the same side of the battle. This time when they

met the two witnesses were being depended upon to regale the community with details of that

fateful day.

Another article from the Miami Herald explains, “Gangster Ma Barker: The stories get bigger

and bigger” (Gyllenhaal, 1985, p. 12A). Gyllenhaal also discusses the t-shirts sold for the event,

“Ma Barker vs. the FBI” (1985, 12A). While Ma Barker may have taken on the FBI, it was not

at the end of a gun barrel as the story has come to be known. There were other articles in the

local and internationally read papers concerning the 50th anniversary event which was attended

by thousands of people. The family who continued to own the hideout opened the house to

visitors, something they had never done before, in order to help the local economy. One of those

people in attendance explains “it was an ‘eerie feeling’ to walk through the house and see the

bullet holes from the 1935 battle” (Kransdorf, 1985). It is an eerie feeling not only to walk

through the house where Ma and Fred Barker died, it is also an eerie feeling that the story of Ma

Barker has been so blown out of proportion that people believe her to have been Public Enemy

No. 1.

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It is as Gabler says, in his book, “Life: the Movie,” “Because pleasure was so pleasurable, this

attitude had lead in turn to an expectation that everything should provide pleasure if only because

anything that did not would very likely be shoved aside by something that did” (1998, p. 57).

The pleasure of the story of Ma Barker is more exciting than the reality and because pleasure is

so pleasurable, the story continues to be what most people know as reality. If this hyped-up

reality did not continue, Ma Barker would likely not continue to be discussed today. The Barker-

Karpis Gang is not only remembered by the people of Minnesota, Missouri, Oklahoma, Kansas,

and Missouri, but also by the country and the world as a whole. While most people believe Ma

was the person depicted in the media, there are those who acknowledge reality like they do on

the “Down in History Tours.” Ma Barker was just an elderly lady keeping house for her sons.

However, the story of Ma Barker has become so intense and so altered through the media that

she truly is a media created criminal.

MA BARKER 17

References:

Corman, R. (Director). (1970). Bloody Mama [Motion picture]. USA: American International

Pictures.

Crime & Investigation Network. (n.d.). Crime file - famous criminal: Ma Barker. Retrieved

November 19, 2013, from http://www.crimeandinvestigation.co.uk/crime-files/mabarker/

biography.html;jsessionid=352F726FD41EB6F7410D154A8F8265A2

Crowley, D., & Heyer, P. (2011). Communication in history: Technology, culture, society (6th

ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

Czitrom, Daniel (1982). Media and the American mind. University of North Carolina Press.

Down in History Tours. (2001). The Saint Paul gangster tour. Retrieved November 17, 2013,

from http://www.wabashastreetcaves.com/gangster.html (personally took tour in 2001,

tours continue to be offered today)

Dun, H. (1936, January 16). 'Ma' Barker met her demise in Florida.

http://www.mabarkerhouse.com/docs/MaBarkerScrapbook.pdf, accent on florida.

Gabler, N. (1998).  Life: The Movie. New York: Vintage Books.

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Gyllenhaal, A. (1985, January). Rattle of guns returns to sleepy Florida town where Ma Barker

died. Miami Herald, pp. 1A-12A.

Hoover, J. E. (1936, November 19). The Kidnapping of Edward George Bremer, St. Paul,

Minnesota. Retrieved November 17, 2013, from FBI Vault website:

http://vault.fbi.gov/barker-karpis-gang/bremer-investigation-summary/Barker

Karpis%20Gang%20Summary%20Part%201%20of%201

IMDb. (n.d.). Ma Barker's killer brood: Plot summary. Retrieved November 27, 2013, from

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054041/plotsummary?ref_=tt_stry_pl

Karn, B. (Director). (1960). Ma Barker's killer brood [Motion picture]. USA: Screen Classics

Kransdorf, L. (1985, January 20). Thousands attend Ma Barker day. Ocala Star.

Lamme, B. (1965, September 26). The death of Ma Barker [Cartoon]. Miami Herald, Sunday

Magazine.

M., B. (1977). Love for Sale/Ma Baker [Vinyl record]. Atco Records.

Ma Baker by Boney M. (n.d.). Retrieved November 27, 2013, from http://www.songfacts.com/

detail.php?id=22021

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O'Connor, Flannery; Fitzgerald, Sally; Fitzgerald, Robert (1969-01-01). Mystery and Manners:

Occasional Prose (Kindle Locations 374-376). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

O'Dell, L. (n.d.). Encyclopedia of Oklahoma history & culture: Barker gang. Retrieved

November 20, 2013, from Oklahoma Historical Society website:

http://digital.library.okstate.edu/encyclopedia/entries/b/ba038.html

Ong, W. (2012).  Orality and literacy.  New York, NY: Routledge.

Postman, N. (1980). What is Media Ecology? Retrieved November 26, 2013, from Media

Ecology Association website: http://www.media-ecology.org/

Potter, C. (1995). `I'll go the limit and then some': Gun molls, desire, and danger in the 1930s.

Feminist Studies, 21(1), 41.

Ritchie, L. (1983, August 12). Ma Barker documentary reunites agent, caretaker. The Orlando

Sentinel, Lake Sentinel.

rsoonsa: Vine Voice. (2005, July 15). Not in keeping with actual events, and sappy as well.

Retrieved November 27, 2013, from http://www.amazon.com/Barkers-Killer-Brood-

Lurene-Tuttle/dp/B00009NH8L

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Sloan, S. (1971). [Foreword]. In A. Karpis & F. Lowe (Authors), The Alvin Karpis story (pp. i-

iii). Bronx, NY: Ishi Press International.

Stirling Sothebys International Realty. (2012). Ma Barker gang hideout video. Retrieved

November 20, 2013, from http://www.mabarkerhouse.com/scrapbook1112.html

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