S1 Ep5: Prohibition Murderers: The Karpis/Barker Gang

Crimes of the Centuries

Amber Hunt and Audioboom

History, Documentary, Society & Culture, True Crime

4.7 • 4K Ratings

🗓️ 16 November 2020

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Thanks to Prohibition, criminal gangs were a dime a dozen in the 1920s and '30s, but the Karpis/Barker Gang became one of the era's longest lived, highest profile, and most consequential. During the Depression, their exploits not only burnished the reputation of the FBI and its director J. Edgar Hoover, but also inadvertently triggered the end to rampant corruption in St. Paul Minnesota.

While its body count was hefty -- and included lawmen like a sheriff gunned down in cold blood -- its enduring reputation hinges on its supposed matriarch, Ma Barker, who would go on to be depicted in movies and TV shows as a gun-toting criminal mastermind. There's no question three of her sons, and plenty of their friends, were stone-cold killers, but was Ma really pulling all the strings?

"Crimes of the Centuries" is a podcast from Grab Bag Collab exploring forgotten crimes from times past that made a mark and helped change history.

Follow us on Instagram and Twitter: @centuriespod

Transcript

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0:00.0	We interrupt this track to inform you about selling your car the Motoway way.
0:10.0	Oh, what's the Motoway way?
0:11.5	It's the Sell Your Car from Homeway.
0:13.7	Whilst dealers compete to give you their best price way, your car is even collected for free.
0:19.7	Way.
0:20.7	No way.
0:21.7	Yes way.
0:22.7	Now where were we?
0:24.7	Motoway.
0:25.7	Motoway.
0:26.7	The way to Sell Your Car.
0:27.7	The Tizen sees visit motoway.co.uk.
0:36.7	Some crimes are so heartbreaking or shocking that they earn the label crime of the century.
0:44.8	But the stories that made headlines in decades past aren't necessarily remembered today.
0:52.6	I'm Amber Hunt, a journalist and author.
0:56.4	And in each episode of this show, I'll examine a case that's maybe lesser known today,
1:02.1	but was huge when it happened.
1:05.5	This is crimes of the centuries.
1:23.6	C.R. Kelly was loving his still relatively new life as Sheriff in West Plains, Missouri,
1:30.8	as Christmas neared in 1931.
1:33.3	Kelly and his wife Lulu had moved to the town from Mountain View, Missouri just three
1:37.8	years earlier.
	...

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