Ma Barker and Her Sons: the 1935 FBI Shootout at Ocklawaha, Florida

Bylot · #1 ● 11-20-2009, 12:41 PM

Before daybreak on January 16, 1935, FBI agents commanded by Earl Connelly encircled a rented residence at Lake Weir in Ocklawaha, Florida, and demanded that its occupants give themselves up. A firefight then continued for roughly six hours. Estimates put the ammunition expended at 950 to 1,500 rounds, and the confrontation is still characterized as the longest gun battle in FBI history. Kate Barker, known as Ma Barker, and her son Fred were killed. Their bodies were located on the upper floor, with numerous bullet strikes on Fred and only one wound on his mother. The address had been traced through a Florida map marked around Lake Weir that agents found on her son Arthur when he was taken into custody in Chicago eight days before.

After embalming in an Ocala funeral home, Kate and Fred went unclaimed for approximately eight months. They were eventually interred in Oklahoma next to Herman, another of her sons. J. Edgar Hoover subsequently labeled her the decade's most vicious, dangerous and resourceful criminal brain, an assessment that has not endured. Alvin Karpis, the gang's actual co-leader, dismissed that portrayal as the most ridiculous story in the annals of crime, describing her instead as a gullible, superstitious Ozarks homebody. Harvey Bailey, a bank robber acquainted with the family, said she was incapable of planning breakfast. She was never arrested, had no arrest record and faced no criminal charge. It has never been resolved whether she discharged a gun during the confrontation. The FBI account says a submachine gun was in her hands; other versions say it lay on the floor between the bodies.