NIGHTMARE LAUGHTER

5/28/1998 - Once again the entertainment community falls victim to the madness that comes from mixing ambition and jealousy to liquor and drugs, a toxic stew that takes the life of beloved 49-year-old comedian Philip Edward "Phil" Hartman ... murdered in his Encino Boulevard home while he sleeps, by his own wife, 40-year-old aspiring actress (and mother of two), Brynn Omdahl.

Better Times

Born in Ontario, Canada, to a building materials salesman and his wife, Hartman is the fourth of eight children in the family ... he is 10-years-old when his parents move to the United States, first going to Connecticut, before finally settling in southern California where the future comedian becomes the class clown at Westchester High (one of the folks he entertains with his antics is future Manson Family maniac and would-be presidential assassin. Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme) and later studies art at Santa Monica City College and California State University, Northridge.  Exploring life beyond schooling, before becoming a comic, Hartman is a roadie that literally holds the bass drum of Buddy Miles down during an L.A. concert given by Jimi Hendrix, in his first TV appearance he wins an episode of the Dating Game (he will be stood up by the woman on the day of their planned date), running the graphic arts company he creates, Hartman comes up with the backdrop logo that Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young still use (Graham Nash will perform at the comedians funeral), and he creates over 40 album covers for bands that include Steely Dan, Poco, and America.

Hartman - 1978

Then in 1975, at the age of 27, Hartman is bit by his comedy bug during a performance of the improvisational jokers, The Groundlings ... a group he will be one of the stars of by 1979 (caught up in the energy and wit of The Groundlings, Hartman jumps on stage and joins in).  From there it is one comedy success after another for Hartman.  With his friend Paul Reubens, he creates the character of Pee-Wee Herman (he will appear on both The Pee-Wee Herman Show and Pee-Wee's Playhouse, and co-write the movie script for Pee-Wee's Big Adventure), he begins doing voice-overs for cartoons and commercials, in eight seasons on Saturday Night Live Hartman becomes one of the show's stars as he creates over 70 different characters (he will win a writing Emmy for his work on the show in 1989), making roughly $50,000 per episode, he will star as radio news anchor Bill McNeal on the NBC hit, Newsradio, for four years, and from 1991 to 1998, he will voice numerous characters (like Troy McClure) on The Simpsons (and in his spare time he enjoys driving race cars, sailing, target shooting, flying his plane, and playing the guitar).

As President Clinton on SNL

Sadly for the comedian, his comedy success does not carry over to Hartman's personal life.  Searching for his soul mate, he marries Gretchen Lewis in 1970 (they divorce in 1981), real estate agent Lisa Strain in 1982 (they last three years), and finally, former model and aspiring actress Brynn Omdahl in November of 1987. Omdahl gives Hartman two children, a boy and a girl, Sean and Birgen, but she also gives the comic a plethora of headaches to deal with on an almost daily basis as the pair grows apart over Hartman's many successes and Omdahl failure to find meaningful work, and the continuing drug and alcohol use of the actress. Tensions mounting, the couple's problems boil over when Hartman states he will dump Omdahl if she starts drinking and taking drugs again (at the time of her death she will have booze, cocaine, Zoloft, and a large portion of Buca di Beppo Italian food in her system), when his wife returns intoxicated from a dinner meeting with producer and writer, Christine Zander.

Omdahl the Model

Still stewing about the argument after her husband goes to bed, continuing to put pollutants into her body that horribly cloud her thinking, sometime after 2:00 in the morning, Omdahl makes her way into the couple's bedroom, grabs a hidden Smith & Wesson .38 pistol from the suite's bathroom, and from a distance of less than 18 inches, puts three bullets into her instantly dead husband (apparently in the middle of a good dream. Hartman's corpse seems to be smiling when authorities arrive in the morning).  One round enters Hartman's neck just below his chin, another pellet of lead hits the comic in the right forearm before lodging in his chest, and the kill shot enters Hartman's head just above the bridge of his nose before coming to rest in his brain.  Argument over for good, the widow then starts getting the word out that her husband is gone!

Happier Days

First to get the word is Omdahl's longtime friend, Ron Douglas. Not believed when she calls to tell Douglas she has killed Hartman, she also isn't at first believed when she shows up at his apartment twenty minutes later, intoxicated, hysterical, and attired in a long sleeve t-shirt, white pajama bottoms, and a set of lightly colored argyle socks with no shoes, clutching a Prada purse (while this is all going on, her two children are alone and still sleeping in their bedrooms).  Tears, passing out, and vomit bouts in the bathroom finally sober up Omdahl enough that she can drive home (with Douglas following).  Back at the crime scene, Douglas becomes a believer when he sees Hartman's bloody corpse spread out on his bed and calls 911 ... while Omdahl contacts three more disbelieving friends and her sister Kathy in Wisconsin with the news, before locking herself in the bedroom with her husband's body just as the police arrive.  Children safely escorted out of the house, police bang on the bedroom door but are met with only wails of sorrow from inside ... and then silence, after a hearing a single shot come from inside the room.  Settling into bed beside Hartman, Omdahl places the two-inch barrel of her Charter Arms .38-caliber 5-shot pistol in her mouth and pulls the trigger.

Clean-up 

In the aftermath of the tragedy, the couple's two children will be raised by Omdahl's sister and brother-in-law (not coming into any of the estate's $1.23 million in assets until they are 25), a wrongful death lawsuit against Pfizer (the manufacturer of Zoloft) and Omdahl's psychiatrist will be settled out of court, and Hartman is cremated at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, and his ashes are scattered at Catalina Island's Emerald Bay.  Widely mourned, in the years that follow Hartman receives a star on Canada's Walk of Fame in Toronto, and another on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

A Funny Man

A FIEND IS FOUND

5/14/1930 - A series of horrific crimes finally comes to an end in Dusseldorf, Germany, with the arrest of a seemingly normal married factory worker named Peter Kurten.  By the time his trial his over he will be known by a different sobriquet ... the Vampire of Dusseldorf.

Kurten - 1931

The first of 13 children born into a poverty stricken family in Mulheim am Rhein in May of 1883, growing up in a one-bedroom apartment, Kurten learns extreme deviancy from his alcoholic father, witnessing first hand the man sexually assault Kurten's mother and sister (in 1913 the man will be sentenced to three years in prison for raping his 13-year-old daughter).  Soon, Kurten is abusing his sisters too, along with participating in petty crimes, frequently running away from home, burglary, theft, arson, and when he is foolishly given a job as a dog catcher, torturing animals.  Murder inevitable as he shifts from animals to people, in his confession to authorities he will claim to have drowned two boys he was swimming with ... when he was only 9-years-old (there are no official records of this crime).  His first documented kill comes in 1913, when he strangles a 10-year-old girl, Christine Klein during the commission of a burglary.  Then his crimes stop for eight years ... while Kurten resides in prison for the crime of deserting the German Army during WWII.

Kurten

Freed after the war, a nut job already, Kurten manages to find another whack case to partner up with in 1925, marrying a former prostitute who has spent four years behind bars herself for shooting a man that jilted her at the altar.  The perfect home for a madman, the monster begins killing again when he waylays 8-year-old Rosa Ohliger on a Dusseldorf street, and has an orgasm stabbing the young girl to death.  Behavioral constraints gone (except not getting caught), Kurten attacks a variety of people over the course of two years ... a middle-aged mechanic is stabbed 20 times, two foster sisters, age 5 and 14, are stabbed to death on August 21st of 1929, two days later a woman is stabbed in a park, a servant girl will be taken to a forest, raped, and beaten to death with a hammer, in October of 1929, he attacks two more women with his hammer, November sees him raping and stabbing to death (36 times with a pair of scissors) a 5-year-old girl, Gertrude Albermann.  Different weapons and types of victims, the police are at first baffled by the crimes, thinking there are numerous madmen in their city until they catch a break in May of 1930.

Gertrude

Hunting again, Kurten meets Maria Budlick, an unemployed domestic servant from Cologne in Dusseldorf seeking a job.  Not planning for her to survive, knowing his wife is away, Kurten takes Budlick home under the premise of finding the girl a place in town to stay ... there he tries to have sex with her, but Budlick refuses.  Acting as if it is no big deal, Kurten maneuvers Budlick into the local Grafenberger Forest.  Rape and murder the standard modus operandi for Kurten, for some reason this time he stops at rape when the girls pleads for her life and promises not to breathe a word about the encounter to the police, and lets her go.  And go she does, straight to the police, disclosing Kurten's home.  Aware that time is running out when he sees police come to his house, Kurten at first goes into hiding, but weary of running and constantly keeping his true self masked, he confesses his crimes to his wife and then gives himself up to authorities outside the St. Rochus Church of Dusseldorf.

Kurten

In custody, Kurten confesses to 79 different offenses and is charged with nine murders and seven attempted killings.  Brought to trial in April of 1931, the monster first pleads not guilty, but soon changes his plea to guilty and is sentenced to death by guillotine.  And as he lived his life, so he leaves it, nuts to the end ... after a last meal of Wiener Schnitzel, fried potatoes, and white wine, asking his waiting executioner, "After my head has been chopped off, will I still be able to hear at least for a moment, the sound of my own blood gushing from the stump of my neck?  That would be the pleasure to end all pleasures!"

Kurten

On July 2, 1931, in Cologne he finds out about his hearing ... and the world is a better place for Kurten's leaving!

A BULLET FOR BIG JIM

5/11/1920 - The calm before the storm comes to an end for Chicago's criminal underworld when leading mob boss James "Big Jim" Colosimo is assassinated in the front vestibule of his own restaurant ... at the behest of the men he has brought from New York City to help run his organization, John "Papa John" Torrio and Al "Scarface" Capone.

Born in the town of Colosimi, Province of Cosenza, Italy, in 1878, Colosimo emigrates to Chicago at the age of 17.  Starting as a petty criminal, Colosimo comes under the tutelage of First Ward aldermen Michael "Hinky Dinky" Kenna and "Bathhouse" John Coughlin and learns how to mix crime and politics ... lessons the young man learns well as he grows a prostitution empire in the city of over 200 brothels (the first comes his way through marriage in 1902, when he hooks up with the madame of the establishment, Victoria Moresco) by the time of his death, becoming (along with "Big Jim") "Diamond Jim" for his like of wearing white suits accompanied by diamond pins, rings, and other sparkly jewelry.  With prostitution as the springboard, Colosimo also becomes involved in gambling and other underworld activities, doing so well that he needs help running the day-to-day racket business, and with protecting him from hostile takeovers and blackmail attempts (in 1920 he is headquartered in Colosimo's Cafe at 2126 South Wabash, a joint full of gilt and velvet featuring a world class chef, a finely stocked liquor cellar, top entertainers of the day and an orchestra, and gambling upstairs).  And so, the criminal nephew of his wife is brought out from New York City to become Colosimo's second-in-command, Johnny Torrio.

Torrio - 1936

Torrio in turn, a neighbor from their Brooklyn days, brings 20-year-old Al Capone to Chicago from his job working as a bouncer at mobster Frankie Yale's New York nightclub, The Harvard Inn (a decision made so that things can cool off for Capone in the Big Apple after he almost beats to death a member of William Lovett's White Hand Gang). Mind and muscle integrated into the organization (one day to be known by its current moniker, The Outfit), the cancer Colosimo has brought to Chicago does not fully metastasize until the advent of Prohibition.

Capone - 1930

Recognizing there are immense profits to made in bootleg liquor, in 1920 Torrio and Capone pitch their boss on entering the illegal alcohol business, but Colosimo is having none of it, claiming expansion into the racket will put his organization in the bulls eye of law enforcement and rival gangs (exactly what eventually does happen).  He does not want to spend the time, energy, and resources dealing with illicit booze ... not when it takes time away from naked noodling with his new wife, 26-year-old nightclub singer Dale Winter.

Winter & Colosimo

Love at first sight for Colosimo when Winter auditions for a singing position at the cafe, or lust fevered by going through a mid-life crisis, the gangster is soon spending most of his time with the young beauty, totally smitten (on stage she wears clingy white dresses set off by a single red rose worn over her heart) ... engaging Enrico Caruso and the Chicago Opera Company's maestro to hear her sing (they give her the thumbs up), enrolling her in the Chicago School of Music.  Divorcing Moresco, Colosimo and Winter elope to French Lick, Indiana, where the gangster hires a touring circus to entertain guests at his marriage reception, then after a honeymoon in the town of West Baden, Indianan, the couple return to set up housekeeping at the mobster's mansion at 3156 South Vernon.  Happy as a clam, his proteges will remind him that he can not escape his criminal roots.

The Hot Ticket

Convinced their boss has to go (and now with the divorce, Torrio is no longer related to him), Torrio and Capone get the approval of Colosimo Italian allies, the Genna Brothers and Joe Aiello, to take out the gangster.  Hit okayed, they then recruit the help of their closest New York criminal friend ... Frankie Yale will come to Chicago to rid the boys of their problem (there is also a theory that Capone actually does the trigger work).  Finally, Torrio sets up Colosimo by calling the man and telling him that the gang has lucked into a two-truck delivery of pre-Prohibition whiskey from local crook Jim O'Leary (the son of the family with the cow said to have started the Great Chicago Fire of 1871) that will be delivered to the cafe at 4:00 in the afternoon. Hands on when it comes to the cafe that bears his name, Colosimo states he will be there when the liquor shows up.

  

Aiello, "Bloody" Angelo Genna, Yale

On Tuesday, a little before the designated time, Colosimo arrives at the cafe and goes to his office in the back, saying hello to his bookkeeper, Frank Camilla, calling his lawyer, and talking to a few other employees in the back room.  Business there completed, he then goes up front to be await the arrival of the whiskey and moments later, sounding like a tire has blown out, two gunshots ring out.  While the cafe's chef checks to see if the noises are coming from the alley, Camilla goes to the front of the establishment and finds Colosimo on the ground, a pool of blood collecting on the floor.  Two shots fired, one puts a hole in the plaster wall twenty feet away near the cashier booth, and the other causes a fatal head wound to Colosimo behind the gangster's right ear; a deadly surprise, Colosimo's pearl-handled .38 revolver never leaves the dead man's pocket.

Colosimo's Cafe at 2126 South Wabash

Big Jim

Dead, Colosimo is honored by the men that ordered his execution and has one of the largest gangland funeral's in the history of Chicago, with several florists selling out on flowers.  Resting in a silver and mahogany casket worth $7,500, in a ceremony served by fifty-three pallbearers, the mobster is wished goodbye by his new bride, three municipal judges, aldermen from throughout the city, a congressman, an assistant state attorney, and an assortment of underworld characters that include Torrio and Capone (following an old country tradition, in mourning, Capone does not shave from the time of the murder until Colosimo is laid to rest).  The cortege that takes Colosimo to Oakwood Cemetary swells to 5,000 people and stretches over a mile, and includes a 10 minute stop in front of the dead man's cafe for two brass bands to play a dirge.   

The Funeral

Another homicide for the Chicago police not to solve, suspicion first falls on Colosimo's former wife and her not happy family, then attention is turned to Torrio and Capone (both provide alibis that are believed), and finally to Yale (a waiter who first identifies the New Yorker as the killer, but then negates his testimony when confronted by the gangster in person) ... but it is a crime that can never be proved.  Justice of a sort though does come to those involved ... a year after the murder the former wife drops out of sight and is never seen again, Torrio will almost be gunned down on his front lawn by members of Chicago's North Side Gang (deciding immediately afterwards to retire from the rackets, Torrio will spend two years in prison for income tax evasion and die as a legit businessman in Brooklyn at the age of 75), Capone will become infamous as the power running the Windy City until convicted of income tax evasion in 1931 (released from prison after he becomes a drooling moron from the effects of an untreated case of syphilis, Capone dies in Florida in 1947 at the age of 48), and Frankie Yale gets his in a hail of bullets in New York in 1928 at the age of 35 by Capone gunners (friendship frayed over the years, Capone turns on his former buddy when he discovers Yale has been hijacking booze belonging to Scarface making its way from Canada to Chicago).

Yale Death Scene

Free to run The Outfit as they now see fit, with Torrio in command and Capone as his right arm, the violent deaths in Chicago have just begun!

"COME UP AND GET ME COPPERS!"

5/7/1931 - Hoodlum punk, Francis "Two Gun" Crowley's brief criminal career comes to a violent end in New York City, compliments of 300 of the city's finest, armed with sub-machine guns, rifles, shot guns, pistols, and tear gas grenades ... an event witnessed by over 15,000 residents.

In Custody

Fueled by his mother (a single German immigrant working as a maid, there are rumors the father is a cop) abandoning him into New York's foster care system as an infant, feelings of inadequacy as a result of his diminutive stature (the killer is barely five feet tall and barely weighs over 100 pounds) and never getting beyond the 3rd Grade in school, and the raging hatred he harbors for all police officers after the shooting death of his psychotic 25-year-old step-brother, John Crowley (who kills 27-year-old Police Officer Maurice Harlow in a gun battle feud over a month old traffic ticket), Two Gun swiftly moves from a juvenile delinquent car thief to an unrepentant murderer (picking up his nickname for his instant inclination to go to his pistols at the slightest of provocations ... and the fact that he keeps an extra two guns strapped to his legs).  

Two Gun

Crowley's three month crime spree begins in February of 1931 with a bout of teenage wild in the form of simply crashing a dance (with two other men) in the Bronx sponsored by the American Legion.  Asked to leave by several Legionaires, Crowley instead goes to his guns and wounds two people before fleeing into the night. Identified and charged with murder, Two Gun is found by police on March 13, but not for long ... firing his weapons freely once more, Crowley eludes capture by escaping into an office building on Lexington Avenue, after first gravely wounding Detective Ferdinand Schaedel.  Hot already and getting hotter, two days later, with four others, Crowley robs a bank in New Rochelle, New York.

Two Gun's Two Guns

A month later Two Gun is in action again (with two confederates) during a home invasion of the West 90th Street apartment of wealthy real estate investor Rudolph Adler.  Not happy with the slim pickings he finds in the broker's abode, Crowley shoots the man five times, and is about to kill Adler with a bullet to the brain, but instead, flees the apartment when the real estate agent's dog Trixie goes berserk and attacks the gunman (both Adler and dog survive the encounter).  Crowley's next criminal stupidity is going for a joyride in a stolen vehicle with one of his partners, an imbecile almost twice Crowley's age named Rudolph "Fats" Duringer, and his date, Virginia Brannen, a hostess at local dance hall called the Primrose Dance Palace.  Out for a spin, the night turns evil when Brannen resists Duringer's advances, and angered, the outlaw rapes and then kills the woman (with Crowley driving and helping to dispose of the body).

Murder now on his resume, though he didn't do the shooting, Crowley soon earns his own gun notch. Spotted driving a green Chrysler sedan around the Bronx, Crowley engages in a running gun battle with police over the streets of the city and once more escapes, but doesn't go far.  On 5/6, he is at a deserted spot that young lovers use called Black Shirt Lane in north Long Island, kissing his 16-year-old girlfriend, Helen Walsh.  Unfortunately for all involved, the couple is then joined by a pair of policemen on routine patrol through the area, officers Frederick Hirsch and Peter Yodice.  Checking the occupants of the car, Hirsch turns his flashlight on Crowley and asks to see the young man's license ... instead of driving authorization though, Crowley suddenly slams the car door into Hirsch, knocking the officer off his feet ... and then keeping him down permanently by firing three bullets into his body (Hirsch is 31-years-old).  Then rubber burning, he vacates the scene in a hail of bullets sent his way by Yodice (both Crowley and Yodice are wounded in the exchange of lead).

Hirsch

Front page news, the next day an intrepid reporter with the New York Journal, seeking info on the young killer, tracks down a friend of Crowley's, a dance hall girl named Billie Dunn ... and she explodes when the killer's name is stated because Crowley, Duringer, and Walsh have kicked the woman out of her apartment on the fifth floor of West 91st Street and are using the place as a hideout.  Off in a flash to reel in his scoop (after briefly pausing to inform the authorities and to pick up a staff photographer for the story), the reporter arrives before the cops and knocks on the door of the apartment.  "Get out of here," Crowley responds with a growl.  "We don't want any!"  Seconds later as police arrive and yank the reporter and photographer out of the hall, the door flies open and Crowley steps out to do battle ... holding a pistol in each hand, another in a shoulder holster, and with his trousers rolled up, two more guns strapped to his legs.  Emptying his pistols down the hall, Crowley begins a battle with the authorities that will last over two hours and be witnessed by thousands (and recreated to some degree in the James Cagney movie, Angels With Dirty Faces).  Barricading the entry door, while Duringer and Walsh cower under beds, Crowley jumps from window to window, firing down at anything moving on the street, constantly reloading, picking up gas grenades and throwing them back into the street, and swearing at his housemates that both are "yellow" cowards.  And he yells at the police too, giving crime movies to come one of their classic lines ... "COME UP AND GET ME COPPERS!"  And eventually that is just what they do!

Cagney as Two Gun - Rocky Sullivan

in Angels With Dirty Faces

Wounded four times by police fire and choking from gas fumes, when the police finally break in to the apartment Crowley picks targets and pulls the triggers on his guns ... only to discover he has run out of ammunition.  Not given a chance to reload, Crowley (Duringer and Walsh are arrested too ... Duringer will be sentenced to death and executed for the murder of Brannen, while Walsh is released with a warning to pick her friends better in the future) is handcuffed, strapped to a medical gurney, and escorted to a nearby hospital by a police officer who keeps a gun to the outlaw's head until they arrive at the emergency room.

The News

Fast track to oblivion, in less than three weeks Crowley is patched up, put on trial, found guilty of murder, sentenced to death, and sent to Sing-Sing Prison to await execution.  Relishing the headlines his outlaw antics have garnered, in prison Crowley continues to play "tough guy" ... processing into the prison, a metal spoon is found that can be sharpened into a knife is found in one of his socks, he curses and throws food at his guards, jams his clothes into the cell toilet, makes a bludgeon out of a piece of wire and heavy magazine that he uses to beat a guard unconscious, using sugar from meals he doesn't throw at the guards, he captures flies that he tortures and then kills, and despite matches being forbidden, manages to light his cage on fire.  Eventually his cell is totally denuded and he is stripped naked ... at night a mattress is thrown in for Crowley to sleep on, and in the morning it is removed.  Like the Birdman of Alcatraz, only when a wayward starling makes the barred window of Crowley's cell its home does the killer calm down ... moderately.

Sing-Sing Prison

Time to pay the piper (over 2,000 people apply to witness the execution), on 1/21/1932, after a hearty meal and cigar, Crowley finishes walking his last mile in the prison's electric chair (25 reporters are on hand to document the event).  But before he sits he has a favor to ask of the warden and requests a rag.  "A rag!  What for?" the warden asks ... to which Two Gun responds, "I want to wipe the chair off after that rat sat in it," referring to his former partner Duringer's demise only minutes before.  Chair cleaned, strapped down, electrodes in place, Crowley calls the witnesses all "son-of-a-bitches" and then sarcastically growls, "Give my love to mother."

 Two Gun

Francis "Two Gun" Crowley is 19-years-old when New York state sends him bye-bye!

THE LAST DESPERADO

5/1/1936 - Bad luck, good investigating, stupidity and female betrayals have put all the major public enemies of the early 1930s behind bars ... or six feet under ... John Dillinger, Bonnie & Clyde, Machine Gun Kelly, Pretty Boy Floyd, Verne Miller, Ma Barker, Baby Face Nelson, Wilbur Underhill (no, he wasn't a long lost relative of Frodo Baggins), Harvey Bailey, Thomas Holden, Dock and Freddy Barker, Francis Keating, Eddie Bentz, Baron Lamm, Jelly Nash ... all gone save one ... the current Public Enemy #1 is still at large, Alvin Francis "Creepy" Karpis.
 
Bentz & Underhill

Not learning the Dillinger lesson to not hang around with prostitutes, between taking $72,000 from a mail truck in Toledo, Ohio, robbing a Garrettsville, Ohio, train of $27,000 (and becoming the first bank robbery known to have used a plane to escape the authorities), drinking, and bass fishing in the Gulf of Mexico, Karpis carouses from Hot Springs, Arkansas, to Florida in the company of his most recent criminal partner, Freddie Hunter (a former blackjack dealer turned thief from Toledo, Ohio), Hunter's girlfriend, a teenage runaway from Oklahoma turned prostitute named Connie Morris, and Morris' boss, the latest Karpis squeeze, 32-year-old Hot Springs madame, Jewel Laverne Grayson, now calling herself Grace Goldstein (she also uses the names Mrs. Helen Wood and Mrs. Helen Parker while traveling with the bandits).  The two women will eventually result in Karpis and Hunter both being sent to Alcatraz for life.

Grayson/Goldstein

Following bogus sightings (and a handful of true leads too) of Karpis that range from Grant's Pass, Oregon, to Sarasota Springs, Florida, eventually postal investigators connect the women to the men ... information that also finds its way to the FBI.  Hunt on, when Goldstein finally makes her way back to the Hot Springs in late April of 1936, Federal agents are waiting for her.  Placed in custody, Goldstein refuses to betray Karpis until she is blackmailed into providing his whereabouts (and the names of his traveling companions) with the threat that her entire family in Texas will charged with harboring the fugitives (her tongue is also loosened by a reward promised of $12,000).  And so it is that FBI agents flood into New Orleans, Louisiana, looking for Karpis, Hunter, and Morris (she is there being treated for a bad case of syphilis, while the men are casing a pair of potential jobs, a construction company payroll and a train that passes through Iuka, Mississippi).

Hunter

Setting up around the address Goldstein has provided, an apartment building on the busy corner of Canal Street and Jefferson Davis Parkway being used by Hunter, surveillance established, the Goldstein info is proved correct when a red Essex Terraplane pulls up in front of the apartment being watched and the most wanted man in the country gets out ... Karpis.  Minutes later both men leave to drop off the Karpis vehicle for servicing.  Unaware a raid is being planned on the apartment, the men exit again a few minutes later on another errand ... Morris wants them to pick up some strawberries to go with the dinner she is preparing.  Fruit procured, when the men return to the apartment Karpis decides to escape its muggy confines (the temperature is hovering just below 90 degrees at 4:30 in the afternoon) by taking a walk down to the local drugstore for a pack of Chesterfield cigarettes and the latest Reader's Digest ... the same store Federal agents have been using to telephone in their movement reports to headquarters.  Returning to the apartment he looks at faces and vehicles, making sure there is no lawmen wandering the neighborhood   5:00 and there is one more errand to run, the outlaw's ride is ready to be picked up.  Too hot to wear the sports coat that hides his pistol, Karpis puts the weapon under a sofa cushion, places a straw boater upon his head, and with Hunter, unarmed, steps out of the apartment and down to the street where his bandit buddy's Plymouth coupe is waiting.
 
Karpis

At the very same time, 20 Federal agents are finalizing their positioning to raid the apartment ... two groups of men will watch the back of the building, two agents will provide front support from the house across the street where they have been observing the movements of Karpis, Hunter, and Morris, and a fourth group of five men armed with Thompson sub-machine guns will kick in the apartment door and arrest, or kill, the apartment's occupants.  Four of the attack team are agents with outstanding records ... Earl Connelley (the special agent most responsible for ending the lives of Ma Barker and her son, Freddy), Dwight Brantley (a veteran of the hunt for Pretty Boy Floyd and the Kansas City Massacre killers), Clarence Hurt (his resume includes the death of the Tri-State Terror, Wilbur Underhill, and being one of the agents that fired on Dillinger at the Biograph Theater), and Buck Buchanan (a former Waco, Texas, detective that had chased Bonnie & Clyde all over the state).  The fifth man in the raid squad is the surprise for he is an over-weight, 59-year-old desk jockey that has never made an arrest in his career ... the head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover himself!

Hoover

A household name since his men eliminated John Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson, and the Barker Family, he is there to add "arrest" to his record after being embarrassed only days before during a Senate budget hearing being held by Senator Kenneth McKellar of Tennessee (an enemy of Hoover for years, dating back to the time McKellar recommended two men from Tennessee to Hoover for positions with the Bureau, and not only did he not hire the men, but when the senator complains, he fires three other agents already on board for the crime of being from the same state). Expecting his budget requests to fly through Congress, Hoover instead is verbally beaten up over the money being spent on advertising the Bureau to the public, with questions of whether his organization has writers and publicists on its payroll, the issue of the FBI not cooperating with local police departments, and the Bureau's director never personally arresting a single felon. Incensed, Hoover leaves the hearing vowing to stick an arrest in the senator's ear ... the biggest possible, once found, he will slap the cuffs on Alvin Karpis himself.

McKellar

A change in plans, as the two cars carrying the raiding team approach the apartment, they see the two outlaws get into Hunter's car and Connelley instantly reacts by swerving in front of the vehicle and locking it in place against the curb as the second car, carrying Hoover, does the same thing behind the Plymouth.  A heartbeat later there are agents all over the street pointing weapons into the faces of Hunter and Karpis.  Cornered and unarmed, both men raise their hands and surrender and Hoover gets his big arrest moment ... with a slight problem ... in the scurrying about that has taken place to bring down Karpis, not a single agent has remembered to bring a pair of handcuffs to the bust.  And so it is that Public Enemy #1 goes into incarceration under the restraint of a suit tie knotted around his wrists (and in another Keystone Cop moment, when the driver taking Karpis to the FBI headquarters in New Orleans gets lost, the outlaw is the one that gives the man directions on how to get to the post office where his holding cell is waiting).

Hunter's Plymouth

In Custody

Or there is the Karpis version of his arrest in which Hoover is no where to be seen until after Karpis is in custody (hiding to the side of the apartment building until he gets an "all-clear" signal from his agents).  Interestingly, there are holes in Hoover's story that might verify the bandit's tale (the same Hoover that will have agents make porno tapes of Martin Luther King, Jr. having sex with women other than his wife, break the law to enforce the law, kill civilians that unfortunately get in the way of taking down bad guys, has Dillinger shot from behind with no request for surrender coming first, lies about the criminal activities of Ma Barker, for years blackmails politicians, authorizes the murder of Eddie Green, claims there is no Mafia, gambles heavily on horse races, and is said to dress as a woman at certain special private Washington D.C. parties) ... Hoover claims Morris is in the car when the arrest goes down (she is still upstairs in a white halter top and shorts working on dinner) and that he sticks a gun in the outlaw's face before Karpis can grab a rifle from the backseat of the Plymouth (though there isn't a back seat).

Hoover at front, Karpis behind

Whatever happened during the arrest, it is the end of the Public Enemy Era and Hoover's position in the culture of the time as a national hero is solidified again.  

Arrested

Flown north in a special charter to face charges in the 1933 kidnapping of William Hamm, Jr., Karpis will plead guilty and receive a life sentence to serve for his criminal activities.  Arriving at Alcatraz on August 7, 1936, the bandit becomes AZ-325 ... and will serve more time on The Rock than any other convict in the history of the prison.  At various institutions for 33 years, Karpis will finally be let out of the federal prison on McNeil Island, Washington, in January of 1969 (while there he meets a young con that he teaches how to play guitar ... a budding maniac murderer named Charles Manson) and deported to the country of his birth, Canada.  Finally free once more, Karpis will settle in Montreal before eventually living his final years in Torremolinos, Spain (he has difficulty getting a passport because his fingerprints were removed in 1934 by shooting cocaine into the tip of each finger and then scrapping the digits bloody with a scalpel), writing two memoirs before dying from an accidental overdose of sleeping pills at the age of 72, on August 26, 1979.

Fingerprints

Early Alcatraz

In Canada

Before