TWO YOUNG BROTHERS LEAVE

1/5/1932 - Escaping from the murders of the six law enforcement officers they have just killed that will come to be known as the Young Brothers Massacre (or the Brookline Shootout), Jennings and Harry Young avoid the fire of Motorcycle Officer Cecil McBride, newly arrived at the brothers' farm as part of a rescue team, as they run through a field of corn to safety.  Behind them they leave a scene of chaos and irate Missouri authorities who soon put together a huge manhunt of city police departments, constables, railroad detectives, the state police, the American Legion, the National Guard, and any citizen willing to take orders and hoist a weapon.


                            
                                                              McBride

Moving to the place they will least be expected, the pair make their way into the nearby town of Springfield and steal a Ford Coupe ... then they are off for Texas where they have been running a major car theft ring.  Driving at high speed, the killers go into a ditch and wreck their vehicle near the town of Streetman, Texas.  Helped by passerby H. D. Carroll in removing the car from the ditch, the men abandon their transportation to the farmer who makes several discovery which he soon relates to the police ... the car contains a shotgun and a rifle and is missing its license plates (soon discovered nearby - Missouri 363-662).  Information relayed to Springfield, soon all of Texas joins Missouri in being on the lookout for the criminal brothers.  It does not take long for the bandits to be located.  

        
            The escape vehicle and Carroll

Hitchhiking their way south, the brothers make Houston and rent a room, but there their escape ends.  

                
                          The criminal Young Brothers (Paul not involved in the shootings)

Reading his Tuesday morning paper, carpenter J. F. Tomlinson is horrified to discover that the two men he has gladly rented a room in his house to the day before are the fugitive Young Brothers.  Calling Percy F. Heard, the Houston Chief of Police with the information, a raiding party is rapidly put together and sent to Tomlinson's bungalow at 4710 Walker Avenue.  This time the Youngs will be confronted by officers carrying revolvers, shotguns, machine guns, rifles, grenades, tear gas bombs, and gas masks.  Shortly after 9:00 am, gas bombs are thrown into the room the outlaws are occupying ... then Lieutenant Claude Beverly and Officers Peyton and Bradshaw go into action.  Fired on from a back bathroom, the lawmen answer with their own bullets and shotgun blasts until eventually they hear a weak voice announce, "We're dead, come on in."  And indeed the brothers are, killing each other instead of dying from the wounds inflicted upon them by the Houston police ... a brief 72 hours after callously murdering six Missouri lawmen eight hundred miles away, Harry and Jennings Young are themselves killed, and only their immediate family mourn the deaths.

              
                   Harry being transported to the hospital ... and the house on Walker Avenue

                
                                                        Swiss cheesed Jennings
                    
                                   Harry                                                Jennings

MAYHEM AT THE YOUNG BROTHERS' FARM

1/2/1932 - Tragedy strikes outside of Brookline, Missouri when a group of ill prepared lawmen launch a raid on the family farm of the Young brothers, criminals with records for burglary, theft, stealing cars and murder.

       
                                                   The Young farmhouse

Believing that sisters Lorena and Vinita Young's attempt to sell a stolen car in the town of Springfield is evidence that their brothers might be in the area, Greene County Sheriff Marcell Hendrix puts together a small posse of nine police officers and one civilian and at 3:30 in the afternoon sets off for the Young Farm in two cars, armed with only pistols, limited ammunition, and a tear gas gun with two shells.  Fanning out around the farm house believed to be housing outlaw brothers Harry and Jennings Young, Hendrix's raiding party consists of Deputy Wiley Mashburn, Deputy Ollie Crosswhite, Springfield Chief Detective Tony Oliver, Officer Sid Meadows, Officer Charlie Houser, Officer Ben Bilyeu, Officer Owen Brown, Officer Virgil Johnson, Officer Frank Pike, and a local named R.G. Wegman ... none are prepared for the carnage that is about to come their way.

                                  
                                           Harry                         Jennings

Investigating whether the house is occupied or not, after knocking, shouting, and trying doors has provided no results, Hendrix and Mashburn kick in the kitchen door ... and are almost instantly greeted by two shotgun blasts fired from close range by Harry, one that hits Hendrix in the right shoulder and chest, killing the sheriff, and the other that blasts off most of the left side of Mashburn's face, mortally wounding the deputy.

                              
                                     Kitchen door where Hendrix and
                                               Mashburn perished

Gun battle ... in the shooting that ensues as Johnson, Bilyeu, and Wegman return to town for help and more bullets (leaving in a hail of fire that blows out the windows of the car they are driving and wounding Johnson and Pike), the pistols of the remaining lawmen prove no match for the marksmanship of Jennings, armed with a Remington repeating rifle, or for Harry's Winchester 12 gauge semi-automatic shotgun.  Seeking a target, Officer Houser is felled by a slug that hits him in the forehead as he peeks out from behind the tree he was hiding behind.  Officer Meadows suffers a similar fate when he is felled by a rifle round that plows through his brain just above his right eye.  Wounded by multiple shotgun pellets and a bullet through the shoulder, Detective Oliver stumbles into the open and is permanently put down by a bullet that destroys both his lungs.  Out of ammo, Officers Pike and Brown flee the scene and only Deputy Crosswhite remains to continue the fight ... but not for long.  Emptying his weapon into a window in the house, Crosswhite is eventually taken out too ... occupied by the rifle fire of Jennings, he is brutally killed when Harry creeps up behind him and shots him in the head from two feet away with his shotgun.

             
                                               Where Crosswhite was killed

                 
                                       The dead

No targets remaining alive, the brothers take weapons and money from the bodies scattered about the house, quickly pack bags, and then flee into the night ... just as help finally arrives from town.  The deaths are the worst single killing of lawmen in the 20th century and will not be topped until sixty New York City and Port Authority police officers perish in the utter madness of the terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001.  As for the killer brothers, Harry and Jennings Young have all of three short days left to live before fatal police retribution finds them. 

DOCK FORGETS HIS GUN

1/8/1935 - Using information provided by a doctor in Toledo, Ohio about the recent marriage of one of his patients, twenty-four-year-old Mildred Kuhlmann, the FBI, led by Special Agent Earl Connelley, closes in on two Chicago residences hoping to arrest members of the notorious Barker-Karpis Gang.  After a week of watching, a raiding party of twelve agents surround the Surf Lane Apartments, believing the Mr. Esser inside unit G-1 is really bank robber, kidnapper, and murderer, Arthur "Dock" Barker ... and they are right!

                                             
                                                   Dock Barker

Ready, instead of needing to kick in any doors, at 6:30 in the evening Barker and his wife emerge from the apartment building and begin walking up the street.  Immediately the agents closest to the pair move in.  Pistol in hand rookie agent Alexander Muzzey yells, "Stick 'em up. We're federal agents!" as his partner, former Oklahoma City cop Jerry Campbell, produces a Thompson machine gun from under his overcoat, while three other agents also draw their weapons and box in the couple.  Not the sharpest knife in the kitchen, though caught, Barker however decides to flee, but before he can be gunned down he slips on a patch of sidewalk ice and falls face first into a pool of muddy slush.  Drug to his feet and put in cuffs, as Barker is hustled to a car for transportation to FBI headquarters downtown he berates himself, "This is a helluva time to be caught without a gun."  Indeed it has been ... but at the Pine Grove Apartments, which federal agents are also watching, a lack of weaponry, or willingness to use it, will not be the case.

                             
                                                             Dock in custody

Agents, agents, and more agents, over twenty arrayed for action, with Barker under arrest, Connelley shifts operations to the apartment building at 3920 Pine Grove Avenue and at 11:00 uses the call button for Apartment One North to order the surrender of its occupants.  After a few minutes, Clara Gibson, holding a brown Chow in her arms named Rex, emerges, soon followed by the wife of outlaw Willie Harrison, and then by bank robber Bryan Bolton ... all are put in custody without incident.  The fourth resident of One North, bandit Russell "Slim Gray" Gibson, decides however that he is not surrendering.

                                           
                                                           Gibson

Armed with a Browning automatic rifle, a .32 caliber pistol, and wearing a bulletproof vest, Gibson quietly slips out of the apartment building, goes down a flight of wooden stairs and then flees into a dark alley at the back of the structure ... an alley where twelve agents are waiting. Ordered to stop by Special Agent Doc White, the outlaw responds by opening up with his BAR and a short gun battle begins which Gibson violently loses ... no agents are hit by his rifle fire, but the bank robber is himself struck multiple times in the chest (his protective vest proves no match for the high powered rounds the FBI is using), stomach, and head.  Taken to the emergency room at the American Hospital on Irving Park Boulevard, Gibson goes out like the outlaw he had been ... queried by agents as to the whereabouts of his bandit friends Freddy Barker and Alvin Karpis, the desperado snarls, "Tell you nothing!" and dies in silence at 1:40 in the morning.

Successful raids that have removed three major public menaces from circulation, a bonus is provided when agents discover a map in Barker's apartment with an area of the state of Florida stupidly circled in red ... that information is in turn used in the questioning of a singing Bolton (frightened by federal interrogation techniques that include phone books forcefully applied to outlaw craniums) and agents soon begin a search of the Lake Weir region for killer Freddy Barker and his mother, Kate "Ma" Barker.  Unlike his older brother Arthur, Freddy will be armed to the teeth when he has his confrontation with the FBI.

                       
                                        Ma                                          Freddy                                            

KRIS KRINGLE ROBS A BANK AND KILLS A PAIR OF COPS

12/23/1927 - One of the most infamous crimes in Texas history takes place in the town of Cisco, when local outlaw Marshall Ratliff and some of his bandit buddies decide to procure some spending money for the holidays by robbing the local bank.

                         
                                      Ratliff

Known to residents of Cisco, for a disguise, twenty-four-year-old Ratliff borrows a Santa Claus suit from Mrs. Midge Tellet, the woman who runs the Wichita Falls boarding house the outlaw has been living in, steals a getaway car in Fort Worth, and along with his robber partners, ex-cons Henry Helms (thirty-two), Robert Hill (twenty-one), and Helms' relative, Louis Davis (twenty-two), proceeds to the First National Bank for what is hoped to be a large cash withdrawal.

 
First National Bank of Cisco, Texas

Dropped off a few blocks from the bank, Ratliff walks the streets as Santa, amusing downtown shoppers and drawing a small crowd of children, several of whom eventually follow the outlaw into the bank, and inside with his partners, everyone quickly discovers the man inside the red and white costume is not a jolly St. Nick.  Pistols covering the patrons of the bank, Santa pulls out a large sack from beneath his disguise and begins stuffing it with cash from the teller stations and vault.  The costume both an excellent disguise but also a magnet for happy holiday celebrants, it proves to be a negative when Mrs. B. P. Blassengame and her six-year-old daughter enter the establishment in hopes of spending a few quality moments with Kris Kringle ... instead they discover that the bank is being robbed, and exiting from a side door in the bookkeeping office, Blassengame runs a block to the police department where she notifies Police Chief George Edward "Bit" Bedford that a crime is taking place in his town.

                                                       
                                                          Bedford

Grabbing weapons, six-foot-four, two-hundred-twenty-pound Bedford and officers R.T. Redies and George Carmichael make their way at a trot to the First National and take up positions around the bank.  Armed and ready, when one of the crooks inside fires through a window of the bank, a gun battle breaks out between the bandits, members of the police force, and locals who have run to a nearby hardware store and armed themselves with weapons seeking the $5,000 reward the Texas Bankers Association is offering to anyone who shoots and kills a bank robber.  Bullets flying everywhere (over two hundred are said to be fired during this portion of the robbery), in the hailstorm of slugs outlaw Davis is hit seriously several times and bandit Ratliff is wounded in the leg and jaw, while bank president Alex Spears is shot in the face, local grocer Oscar Clitt is hit in the foot, and Marlon Olson, a college student home on Christmas vacation from Harvard is struck in the thigh.  Sensing they will be turned into Swiss cheese if they step outside without cover, the gang gathers a group of hostages as shields, including twelve-year-old Laverne Corner and ten-year-old Emma May Robertson, and forces their way into the alley containing their getaway car, a dark blue Buick ... action that results in more woundings of outlaws and citizens alike.  And in the alley, lawmen Carmichael and Bedford both go down trying unsuccessfully to keep the outlaws away from their vehicle ... sixty-year-old Bedford, a peace officer for over twenty-five-years dies from five wounds, and though he fights for life, Carmichael dies of his wounds on January 17th.  They do not go to their graves alone though!

                                      
                                                            Carmichael

Fleeing in their car, which now sports a bullet punctured flat tire with a mob of angry citizens following them, on the edge of town the idiot crooks discover that the car they had stolen earlier is now almost out of gasoline (full when they left Fort Worth the night before, no one has refilled the vehicle upon reaching Cisco).  Stopping to find other transportation, the outlaws next commandeer the Oldsmobile of fourteen-year-old Woody Harris (who is accompanied by his Christmas shopping parents and grandparents).  Transferring money and weapons, the gang is ready to continue their escape, but discover young Harris has pulled a fast one, giving up his car, but keeping its keys when he and his family run off.  Back again in their original car as they begin taking fire from townspeople once more (Hill is hit in the arm during this exchange of bullets), the bandits leave behind in the Harris Oldsmobile their unconscious partner, Louis Davis ... and proving they are mental midgets, the loot they have taken from the bank ... $12,400 in cash and $150,000 in security bonds.  Captured a few moments later, Davis will die later that night at a local hospital.

                                             
                                              Davis about to adios

The outlaws' car soon breaks down and the men flee into the wilderness of the region ... and in a bit of good news for the town of Cisco, the two little girls are found unhurt in the backseat of the Buick and returned to their parents.  Outrage spreading like a wildfire, a huge manhunt for the murderers soon begins, the largest in Texas history.  In the following days of Christmas Eve, Christmas, and beyond, the flight and pursuit includes the outlaws' kidnapping of Carl Wylie, who they force to drive them around until his car breaks down, the theft of another car and its abandonment, the bandits walking through icy and sleeting conditions, a thwarted ambush of the men by Sheriff Foster of Young County as the group tries to flee across the Brazos River, another car chase, a shootout in a field orchestrated by future Texas Ranger Cy Bradford who repeatedly loading and firing a double-barrel shotgun, wounds all three crooks (Hill and Helms will escape into the brush) and brings down Ratliff ... and a finale in which the last two bank robbers, cold, tired, and starving, walk into the town of Graham on December 30th and give themselves up.     

                          
                           Posse outside the Graham jail celebrating the
                           capture of the Santa Claus bank robbers

Fugitives in custody, Hill will be sentenced to ninety-nine-years in prison, Helms will roast in the state's electric chair, and Ratliff, sentenced to death, will feign insanity, kill one of his guards trying to escape, and be lynched by the upset citizens of Eastland County in November of 1929.  


12/23/1927 - Cisco, Texas

With the human toll that the Santa Claus Bank Robbery and its aftermath take, it is little wonder that the crime is still remembered and considered one of the most infamous moments in the state of Texas' bloody history.

CRAZY LARRY GETS DRUNK

12/18/1932 - Celebrating his cut of the Third Northwestern National bank job that took place two days before in which he machine gunned to death two Minneapolis police officers, on Sunday morning Barker-Karpis gang member Larry DeVol is so stewed on the massive slugs of whiskey he has been drinking that he walks into the wrong unit at the Annbee Arms Apartments on 928 Grand Avenue in St. Paul.

                        
                              DeVol and Karpis after 1930 arrest

Instead of his own apartment, #206, the killer has entered the unit of Associated Press wire service telegraph operator Haskett Burton just as he is discussing the recent bloody robbery with friends around his bridge table.  Confronted by a disheveled stranger who stumbles about the apartment ranting and raving, Burton and friends manage to push the drunk outside, but not before DeVol pulls a pistol and waves it in the telegrapher's face, threatening to shoot him.  Not the type to allow himself to be cowed in his own abode, Burton calls the cops and reports the incident.  Sent to investigate, officers George Hammergren and Harley Kast arrest the man they find ... and then discover they've hooked a very big fish in the world of crime.

                        

Searching the apartment of the drunk, the officers find packages of money taken in the Third Northwestern National robbery and a .45 automatic used in the crime.  Fingerprinted and then questioned when he finally becomes sober, the St. Paul police have accidentally made a captive of kill crazy crook Larry DeVol ... a maniac wanted for the deaths of two businessmen in Oklahoma, the double murder of a sheriff and marshal in Iowa, a homicide in Tulsa, the killing of a Missouri policeman, and the two fatalities he had perpetrated only a couple of days before.

       

Caught, DeVol will plead guilty to the killings of officers Evans and Gorski and in January of 1933 the outlaw is sentenced to life in the Minnesota State Prison at Stillwater.  There his criminal career does not end however.  Conning the medical staff of the prison with ravings about guards trying to kill him with poison gas, DeVol will be transferred to the St. Peter Hospital for the Criminally Insane, where in 1936 he leads a breakout of fifteen other unstables, and when loose once more, quickly returns to his robbing and killing ways before being shot to death in a gun battle with police in Enid, Oklahoma.

                        Getting what he'd given so many times
                                 

NOT THE BRIGHTEST LIGHT BULBS

12/19/1931 - Lingering about town because they plan on robbing the local bank, not thinking properly, two days after robbing the C. C. McCallon clothing store of West Plains, Missouri of $2,000 in socks, ties, gloves, sweaters, and shirts of the latest fashions, now dapperly dressed bandits Freddy Barker and Alvin "Creepy" Karpis (Karpis will always claim "Lapland Willie" Weaver is the actual party involved, but the FBI fingers the creepy one) decide their blue Desoto sedan is in need of tire repairs (a car registered under Karpis' real name).

   

Pulling into the West Plains garage of the Davidson Motor Company at around 9:00 in the morning, Barker and Karpis request the repair of two leaky tires.  Unbeknownst to the outlaws, as the men await the fix, snoopy garage owner Carac Davidson has noticed that his newest customers are wearing clothing that looks like the description of the merchandise stolen from McCallon's on the 17th, and are driving a car that leaves tracks similar to the marks left behind McCallon's the night the robbery of the store occurred.  Junior Sherlock time, slipping quietly out of his place of business, Davidson finds Sheriff C. Roy Kelly just leaving the post office across the street and tries to convince the lawman that he should question the suspect men.  Grabbing his weapon from the back seat of his car, Kelly unfortunately decides the story McCallon is telling does warrant investigation and he crosses East Main Street and enters the garage.  Unaware he is about to encounter two budding public enemies, Kelly puts on a friendly smile and opens the Desoto's door to conduct his interview ... and is instantly welcomed by one of the men emptying his pistol at him, fatally so, at point-blank range.

                          
                                       Karpis

Kelly takes two rounds to the chest and is hit two more times in his left arm ... and is dead at the age of only forty-six, leaving behind a wife.

                                       
                                                          Barker

Vacating the scene of their latest crime, one gunman flees on foot, running out of the garage and vanishing down an alley next to the auto repair business (all that will be left behind from the killers' visit to West Plains will be a red scarf).  The other, still in the Desoto, roars onto the street, hitting a curb during his exit so hard that the back door pops open for a moment, then he too vanishes.  In the manhunt that takes place led by M. C. Stephens, the men are eventually tracked to a farm near Thayer, Missouri that has been rented by a Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Dunlop.  Arriving at the farm a posse finds the acreage abandoned and they also discover that while Arthur Dunlop is a real name of an elderly lovesick drunk, Mrs. Arthur Dunlop is an alias ... the latest alias of a woman born Arizona Donnie Clark, who upon getting married and birthing a murderous set of brothers, becomes known to history as the infamous "Ma" Barker.

                           
                                                     Dunlop and Ma

Gone, the killing of Kelly ends the group's use of the farm as a base for crimes in Missouri, Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas ... Karpis, Freddy, and the Dunlops have pulled up stakes and headed north for the more healthy climes to be found under the protection of the underworld figures and corrupt police force of St. Paul, Minnesota.  No more burglaries of clothing stores and Mom-and-Pop shops are in their future for in St. Paul the outlaws will meet master criminals Harvey Bailey, Frank Nash, Francis Keating, and Tommy Holden and enter the big leagues of armed robbery and kidnapping ... and there, in 1932, they will also murder Ma's paramour, Mr. Dunlop, when they think his drunken babblings have reached the wrong ears and resulted in a police raid on one of their hangouts.  But that is a story for another time ...

  

BANK ROBBING, BARKER STYLE

12/16/1932 - The state of Minnesota endures another bloody day in it's history thanks again to the exceeding itchy trigger fingers of the Barker-Karpis Gang.  Seeking a big payday and a jolt of outlaw adrenaline, the gang picks as it's target the Third Northwestern National Bank of Minneapolis ... an establishment most robbers would ignore due to its location on a busy downtown street, the fact that the building is a triangle with entrances on two different streets,  the structure has huge windows through which activities inside can be observed, the intersection in front is a regular stop for a streetcar, and the bank is alarm connected to a nearby police station.  Negatives all to a raid, none of the constraints to thievery will dissuade the bandits in the least.

 
                              The bank shortly after it's robbery

A band constantly in flux due to deaths, arrests, woundings, and the nature of each job, for the Third Northwestern National the raiding group of outlaws consists of master thief Alvin Karpis, recent parolee Doc Barker, Doc's murderous brother Freddy, another recent parolee and Doc prison buddy, Volney Davis, killer Larry "The Chopper" DeVol, lawman turned crook Verne Miller, Oklahoma State Penitentiary graduate William "Lapland Willie" Weaver, and bandit Jess Doyle.  All come to the heist armed with an array of machine guns and .45 automatic pistols modified to accept large-capacity ammo clips.

                        
                               Young punks - DeVol (l) and Karpis (r)

Responsibilities divided, part of the gang enters the bank from Central Avenue, another group goes inside by way of the Hennepin Avenue doors, the driver of the gang's getaway Lincoln waits in the car with it's engine running, and Larry Devol stands outside as a guard with his machine gun.  With the standard refrain "This is a stick-up!" the robbery begins and both bookkeeper Earl Patch and bank teller Paul Hesselroth quickly react by triggering silent alarms.  Hesselroth also tries to delay the robbery until the police arrive by claiming he can't open the door to the bank's vault ... a story he soon changes when Miller begins beating him about the head with his pistol.

             
                                                  Miller

Teller cages and vault looted, the gang grabs $22,000 in cash and $100,000 in securities, but the handful of minutes it takes to collect the booty is just long enough for the police to arrive.  On their way back to the station for their roll call and quitting time of 2:40 in the afternoon, officers Ira Evans and Leo Gorski rush to the bank down Central Avenue ... and from a distance of only fifteen feet are greeted by DeVol unleashing his full fifty slug machine gun drum into the men and their car (blowing out plate glass windows, the bandits inside the bank also open up on the policemen).  Neither officer gets out of the car or gets a shot off ... thirty-nine-year-old Evans, an eight year veteran of the Minneapolis Police Department is hit by ten rounds and killed instantly, while thirty-eight-year-old Gorski, also an eight year veteran of the force, despite the best medical help the city can offer, dies forty-eight hours later at a local hospital.

                            
                                               Evans                   Gorski
  
                                             Some of the damaged windows

For Devol, the murders are the fifth and sixth times he has killed since beginning his criminal car

Leaving the bank, the gang limps away in their getaway car (a tire and rim of the Lincoln are destroyed), a vehicle that they themselves have shot up accidentally firing wildly at the policemen that DeVol has killed, but damage to the Lincoln is a contingency they have planned for and they head for St. Paul's Como Park where they have alternate transportation awaiting in the form of a stolen green Chevrolet.  Arriving at the park around 3:00 in the afternoon they begin transferring into the other car, including changing its license plates, activities that unfortunately draw the attention of Oscar Erickson and his friend Arthur Zachman, two young men searching for customers for the Christmas wreaths they are selling from their car.  For Erickson, his first day at the new job will also be his last.

         
                                                       Como Park

Slowing as they come upon the bandits, Erickson's eyes linger on the group too long, and Freddy Barker, believing Erickson is trying to take down the license plate number of the gang's new ride to give to the police, shouts, "Get going or else!"  It is a warning Erickson never has a chance to respond to for only a second after it is given, Barker fires his machine gun into the Chevrolet coupe of the salesmen.  Struck in the head by a .45 slug, though the uninjured Zachman is able to drive his friend to a nearby police station for medical attention, Erickson dies of an acute cerebral hemorrhage the next morning.  One robbery, three deaths ... the Barker-Karpis gang in action, circa 1932 ... public enemies indeed!

                                     
                                  Fred Barker