Alvin Karpis

Alvin Karpis

Alvin Karpis (born August 10, 1908 in Montreal , † August 26, 1979 in Torremolinos , Spain ), actually Albin Francis Karpaviecz (simplified to Karpowicz in the autobiography), was a Canadian-American criminal. Karpis became famous above all for the series of violent crimes he and the "Barker gang" committed, which in the 1930s temporarily gave him the "rank" of " Public Enemy No. 1 " on the list of the ten most wanted fugitives from the FBI .

Live and act

Earlier career

Karpis was born Albin Francis Karpaviecz on August 10, 1908 in Montreal ( Québec ) to a family from Lithuania ( John and Anna Karpaviecz ) and grew up in Topeka ( Kansas ) after his family moved to the United States . Karpis has been involved in criminal activities such as gambling, pimping and alcohol smuggling since he was ten . In 1924 he was sentenced to ten years in the state penitentiary in Hutchinson, Kansas, for attempted robbery . After he was able to escape from there, he lived with his parents in Chicago for a while . He later moved to Kansas City to live with his sister, Mrs. Bert Grooms, where he was caught stealing a car and taken back to the Hutchinson Penitentiary. After his transfer to Kansas State Prison in Lansing , while in custody he met Fred Barker , a member of the infamous Barker Gang, a criminal gang that was grouped around members of the Barker family of the same name. After Karpis and Barker had been dismissed in 1931 shortly after another from the prison, they joined in Tulsa ( Oklahoma ) for the Karpis-Barker Gang together.

The Karpis-Barker gang

The Karpis-Barker gang consisted at times of more than 25 men, including Karpis and Barker and Fred Hunter . The often rumored claim that Fred Barker's mother, Ma Barker , was the real head of the gang is - taking into account the tangible contemporary sources and the later reports of gang members - probably refer to the realm of legend. Karpis claims in his memoirs that she was never involved in the group's actions, but rather dragged along as an uninvolved "appendage" and "parked" before every coup in the cinema or other entertainment.

The Karpis-Barker gang soon became known nationwide for their brutality. Among other things, bank robberies, postal robberies and, most recently, a number of kidnappings were on her account. The gang was responsible for a total of 14 deaths.

In 1933 the gang kidnapped millionaire William Hamm, a Minnesota brewery owner, for whom they collected a ransom of $ 100,000. Their next victim, banker Edward Bremer Jr., also from Minnesota, made them $ 200,000. However, this kidnapping turned out to be a serious mistake, despite its initially successful implementation.

Since Bremer's father was a close friend of US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and since the American public reacted particularly sensitively to kidnappings after the so-called " Lindbergh kidnapping", the seizure of the gang around Karpis and Barker subsequently became a priority the law enforcement agencies, especially the FBI, a special place. On the FBI's list of the most wanted criminals, Karpis and Barker finally appeared together in first place, that of "Public Enemy Number 1".

The hunt for the Barker Karpis gang

After the FBI had been searching for the gang for a long time, it was finally able to trace them. When Chuck Ziegler had bragged several times to third parties about his role in the Bremen kidnapping and thus disturbed his accomplices, he was shot on the street in Cicero by members of his gang on March 22, 1934. In Ziegler's pocket, the FBI found addresses and aliases of several gang members, which it used to track down and arrest the individuals concerned: Cod was caught on January 8, 1935, and Ma and Fred Barker were arrested on January 16 in Ocala, Florida , killed during an exchange of fire. Alvin Karpis and Harry Campbell fled north to Atlantic City. Surrounded by the police at the Dan Mor Hotel, they shot their way free and initially escaped the FBI. Karpis 'pregnant wife Dolores Delaney and Campbells' wife Wynona Burdette were arrested there and later sentenced to five years in prison for sheltering fugitives. Dolores gave birth to a son in custody who was handed over to Karpis' parents in Chicago for custody. The successful raid on a train in Garrettsville, Ohio, in which Karpis looted $ 27,000, remained the focus of public attention. A threat of vengeance that he sent to FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover also directed his personal grudge against Karpis.

Hunting for carp

Karpis was the fourth and last man to be awarded the title of "Public Enemy Number 1" by the FBI (since then there have only been "rankings" on the FBI's wanted list). It has been noted on various occasions that Karpis received the negative reputation of public enemy number 1 only because of the personal dislike of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover succeeded, however, by the capture of Karpis - at which he was present and media-consciously staged - to gain national attention for himself and his authority.

In 1936, Hoover was severely attacked by Tennessee Senator McKellar during a hearing by the American Senate. He criticized Hoover's leadership style and questioned his suitability for the position, pointing out that Hoover had never carried out an arrest himself, even though he was head of the federal police. This means that Hoover does not know enough about the everyday "street reality" of the police profession to effectively fill his office. After this public exposure, which endangered his position, Hoover strove to achieve a prestigious success: the obvious coup to disarm his critics and silence them was to bring down Karpis as the most wanted criminals of the time with substantial personal participation .

On May 1, 1936, the FBI was able to locate Karpis in New Orleans . Hoover immediately rushed to the spot to direct the arrest himself. Karpis and his accomplice Fred Hunter were arrested by an FBI squad as they were about to leave town. Several reports are circulating about the arrest: The official FBI report says that Hoover himself seized Karpis when he was about to reach for a rifle in the back seat. However, it was later proven that Karpis' car (a Plymouth Coupé) had no back seat, so the arrest could not have expired. Accordingly, Karpis claims in his memoirs that Hoover only staged himself after Karpis and Hunter had already been disarmed by other agents and no longer threatened any danger from them. At the same time, Hoover gained national fame as the man who had arrested "Public Enemy Number 1". Until his death in 1972, his name was a synonym for sleek, thorough, "tidy" police work in the sense of law-and-order.

Years of imprisonment

Alvin Karpis in later years

After Karpis was sentenced to life imprisonment, he was taken to Alcatraz to serve his sentence , where he was held for more than twenty-five years from August 1936 to April 1962. This makes Karpis, who was assigned inmate number # 325-AZ in Alcatraz and who worked in the prison bakery , is the convict who spent the longest time in the infamous penitentiary on San Francisco Bay.

In Alcatraz, Karpis, nicknamed Creepy ("scary") by his fellow inmates , was particularly noticeable because of his frequent violent clashes with other inmates.

In April 1962, Karpis was transferred to McNeil Island State Prison in Washington State in the course of the evacuation of Alcatraz. Karpi's temporary cellmate was Charles Manson , whom he taught to play the guitar.

Late years

Karpis was released from custody in McNeil Island in 1969 and deported to Canada, although difficulties arose due to his fingerprints removed underground in 1934. In 1971 and 1979 he published two volumes of memoirs ("The Alvin Karpis Story") with MacClelland and Stewart. The second volume was written with the help of Robert Livesey. In 1973 (according to other information 1979) Karpis moved to Spain, where he died on August 26, 1979. The authorities originally declared his death a suicide after sleeping pills were found in his body. However, this statement was later revised and his death attributed to natural causes. Livesey later pointed out that Karpis' last girlfriend had made him use pills and narcotics, and suggested that Karpis might have accidentally overdosed.

family

Karpis was married to Dorothy Slayman until 1935. The marriage remained childless. A son, Raymond Karpis, was born from a illegitimate relationship with Dolores Delaney.

personality

As Karpis' most unusual ability most people who have known him highlight his photographic memory. In addition, many eyewitness accounts attribute a dry sense of humor and extraordinary intelligence to him.

Karpis in the media

Due to his status as public enemy number 1 and because of his cell cooperative with Manson, Karpis came into the focus of media interest on various occasions. Over time it became an object of popular culture legend. Among other things, it was assumed that as the inspirer and fatherly friend of the serial killer Manson, he taught him to play the guitar. In 1974, Marvin J. Chomsky shot the TV film “The FBI Versus Alvin Karpis, Public Enemy Number One” for the TV series “The FBI”, which takes up the hunt for Karpis and his arrest. Robert Foxworth starred in the role of Karpis . The staged arrest of Karpis is portrayed in Clint Eastwood's film J. Edgar about the life of J. Edgar Hoover. Karpis is played by Manu Intiraymi .

Works

• Alvin Karpis / Robert Livesey: On the Rock. Twenty-five Years at Alcatraz , 1980.
• Alvin Karpis: Public Enemy Number One: The Alvin Karpis Story , 1973.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Only in 1958 he left the island for six months when he was temporarily transferred to Leavenworth.