Her name was Kate Barker, but she was notoriously known as “Ma” Barker, a Midwestern woman who became the FBI’s most wanted mother of the 1930s. J. Edgar Hoover called her “the most vicious, dangerous, and resourceful criminal brain of the last decade.”
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What did she do to deserve such a harrowing description? Well, she was said to be the mastermind of the Barker-Karpis gang. She orchestrated robberies, kidnappings, and murders, and helped her four sons commit the acts. What led her to lead such a life – one that would end in a four-hour gun battle with the FBI in Ocklawaha, Florida, in 1935?
This is the story of Ma Barker.