East Side Of Ma Barkers House
by D Hackett
Title
East Side Of Ma Barkers House
Artist
D Hackett
Medium
Photograph - Digital
Description
East Side Of Ma Barkers House by D Hackett
This image was taken at the when the home was on the original location on Lake Weir. It has since been moved to county owned property where it will be repaired and remain as a historical landmark.
The historic home, built in 1930, has four bedrooms and two baths: 2,016 square feet. The house, a wooden two-story with a wide screened porch, is mostly unchanged since Ma Barker rented it under an alias in November 1934. The shattered windows have been repaired; plaster masks hundreds of bullet holes. Inside, the beds, the refrigerator, even the blue china tea cups are the same ones the gangsters used the day they died. Things were moved around a little, to match the FBI photos. Everything is still here, just like it was then. It's like a time capsule.
Inside, the living room looks exactly like the FBI's evidence photo: scrolled, wooden shelves with a Bible on top; a writing desk; a crimson couch. The chandelier dangles over the dining room table, its lower crystals shot off. Through a wide arch, up 13 stairs, the second story bears even deeper wounds. Bullet holes pepper the door frame and every wall of the back bedroom.
Ma Barker, Freddie, and some of the gang spent Christmas in the secluded lake house. Neighbors saw them buying groceries, having picnics, even going to church. At sundown, Freddie and his friends would take out the motor boat to search for a 15-foot gator locals called Old Joe.
Over the years, there has been predictable talk that Ma Barker still haunts this place. Her blood has been scrubbed from the pine floorboards. But in the back of a bedside chair, one spent bullet remains. Lights are said to go on mysteriously, and a psychic from Cassadega once performed an exorcism. She said she got Freddie to scram but Ma wouldn't budge.
History Of Ma Barker
Ma Barker was the matriarch of the Barker-Karpis Gang, whose spree of kidnappings, murderers and bank robberies led to her and its members' violent deaths.
Ma Barker was born Arizona Donnie Clark on October 8, 1873, to a poor family in Ash Grove, Missouri. In 1892, Clark married a poor, soft-spoken tenant farmer named George Barker. Over the next decade, the couple had four sons: Herman, Lloyd, Arthur (nicknamed Doc) and Fred.
As the Barker boys aged, they were constantly in trouble with the law. Herman, the oldest, was arrested in 1910 for petty thievery. By the time Barker's two youngest, Doc and Fred, had reached their teen years, all four sons were repeatedly landing themselves in prisons and reformatories. But Kate Barker refused to discipline her boys and would fly into a rage at anyone, including her husband, who tried to scold them.
In the spring of 1931, Ma Barker's youngest son, Fred, was unexpectedly paroled from Lansing Prison, in Kansas. Fred brought with him a fellow parolee named Alvin Karpis. He and Fred agreed to become partners in crime. Ma approved of the newly formed Barker-Karpis Gang and let them use her Tulsa shack as a hideout. Living vicariously through the exploits of her boys offered Ma the adventure she had always craved.
Fred and Alvin quickly went to work, committing a series of burglaries and small time bank robberies. In December 1931, they robbed a department store in West Plains, Missouri. The next day, they shot and murdered the town's Sheriff, C. R. Kelly, at point blank range. Kelly's murder started a pattern of excessive violence and thoughtless killing that soon became the trademark of the Karpis-Barker Gang. For the first time, Ma Barker became a wanted woman.
On March 29, 1932, Fred, Alvin and three accomplices robbed the Northwestern National Bank in Minneapolis and made a clean getaway. The Barker-Karpis Gang got away with more than a quarter of a million dollars in cash and bonds.
In September of 1932, Ma's son Doc was paroled from a murder sentence at the same time that his brothers were free. The Barker gang was back at full strength and more menacing than ever. With Ma's blessing, they quickly plotted another bank job for December, at the Third Northwestern National Bank in Minneapolis. This time, however, they failed to adequately think the job through. The consequence was a violent shoot�out with the police, which only served to solidify their reputation as the most vicious criminal gang in America.
In 1933 the gang staged their first kidnapping � a millionaire Minnesota brewer. They received $100,000 in ransom and let the man go unharmed. The next year, they captured St. Paul banker Edward George Bremer, doubled their asking price, and got the nation's attention.
Bremer was a friend of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who talked about the kidnapping during a fireside chat. The FBI's first director, J. Edgar Hoover, set a $1,200 bounty on the Barker Gang and declared them "the worst criminals in the entire country." Ma Barker became the only woman to ever top the FBI's most wanted list. She may not have been a killer, but she was the mama of four killers � and that was enough.
With $200,000 from the ransom, and who knows how much else from the banks, the Barkers had enough cash to go into hiding. Arthur, known as "Doc," moved to Chicago with some of his henchmen. And Ma and Freddie headed to Miami.
In Miami Ma registered at the posh El Commodore Hotel as Mrs. T.C. Blackburn and son, Myron Quimby wrote in 1969 in The Devil's Emissaries. She seemed like a gracious lady with wealth seeking a quiet and remote spot for a long vacation from the cold of the north. Someone introduced her to an associate of Carson Bradford, a wealthy furniture maker. Bradford owned such a place on the banks of Lake Weir.
Relatives say Bradford's wife didn't want to rent their pretty white cottage near Ocala. But Mrs. Blackburn seemed sweet and matronly, and she had enough cash to cover the whole winter. So just before Thanksgiving 1934, Freddie drove Ma in his shiny new Buick to the tiny town of Ocklawaha, population 600, with a general store and a single telephone. They turned onto a dirt lane leading to the water, steered between live oaks laced with Spanish moss, and parked beside the hideout that would become their first real home in decades, and their last.
FBI agents discovered the hideout of Barker and her son, Fred, after Arthur Doc Barker was arrested in Chicago on January 8, 1935. A map found in his possession indicated that other gang members were in Ocklawaha, Florida. The FBI soon located the house where the gang was staying after identifying references to a local alligator named Gator Joe, mentioned in a letter sent to Doc. They had rented the property under the name Blackburn, claiming to be a mother and sons wanting to vacation in a country retreat.
Another shootout between the Barkers and the authorities would occur on the morning of January 16, 1935, when the FBI raided the house in Ocklawaha, Florida, where Ma and Fred were staying. Heavily armed FBI agents surrounded the house and ordered the pair to surrender. With no reply, the agents threw tear gas canisters at the windows. Fred fired a machine gun and a shootout began that left the house riddled with bullets. Fred and Ma fought for their lives, shooting back with everything they had. During the melee, about a dozen federal agents fired more than 2,000 rounds of ammunition over the course of a morning. Finally, after four hours, the federal agents began to run out of ammunition and the scene became deathly quiet. After gunfire ceased coming from the house, the FBI ordered local estate handyman Willie Woodbury to enter the house wearing a bulletproof vest. Woodbury reported that there was no one inside alive.
Both bodies were found in the same front bedroom. Fred's body was riddled with bullets, but Ma appeared to have died from a single bullet wound. According to the FBI's account, a Tommy gun was found lying in her hands. Other sources say it was lying between the bodies of Ma and Fred. Their bodies were put on public display, and then stored unclaimed, until October 1, 1935, when relatives had them buried at Williams Timberhill Cemetery in Welch, Oklahoma, next to the body of Herman Barker.
Uploaded
September 3rd, 2016
Statistics
Viewed 1,075 Times - Last Visitor from New York, NY on 03/25/2024 at 12:33 PM
Embed
Share
Sales Sheet
Comments
There are no comments for East Side Of Ma Barkers House. Click here to post the first comment.