Bloodletters and Badmen by Jay Robert Nash

Author:Jay Robert Nash
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781461704256
Publisher: M. Evans & Company

Hoover and several agents flew with Karpis to St. Paul where he would stand trial for the kidnapping of wealthy brewer William Hamm. During the trip, according to one report, Karpis took umbrage at Hoover calling him a hood.

“I’m no hood!” Karpis insisted. “And I don’t like to be called a hood. I’m a thief.”

Hoover refused to see the difference, declining to note that Karpis was a free-lance bandit rather than a member of organized crime, as well as declining to note that organized crime existed in the U.S. He continued to call Karpis a “hoodlum” throughout the air trip.

Karpis attempted to enlighten the FBI chief. “You don’t understand,” he stated. “I was offered a job as a hoodlum and I turned it down cold. A thief is anybody who gets out and works for his living, like robbing a bank or breaking into a place and stealing stuff, or kidnapping somebody. He really gives some effort to it. A hoodlum is a pretty lousy sort of scum. He works for gangsters and bumps guys off after they have been put on the spot. Why, after I’d made my rep, some of the Chicago Syndicate wanted me to go to work for them as a hood—you know, handling a machinegun. They offered me two hundred and fifty dollars a week and all the protection I needed. I was on the lam at the time and not able to work at my regular line. But I wouldn’t consider it. ‘I’m a thief,’ I said, ‘I’m no lousy hoodlum.’ ”

After five days and nights of interrogation in St. Paul, agents gave up trying to break Karpis; he wouldn’t talk about Harry Campbell or any other criminal associate at large or in prison. He was charged with the Bremer and Hamm kidnappings on May 6, 1936, and his bail was fixed at $500,000.

“Do you care to make this bond today?” a court clerk asked Karpis.

“Well, hardly,” he said. It was the largest amount of bail ever set for a criminal to that date.

There was no trial for Karpis. He pleaded guilty in hopes of drawing a sentence light enough to permit him to apply for parole years later. He was sentenced to a life term which he began serving in Alcatraz August 7, 1936. Karpis stayed on The Rock until 1962 when he was transferred to McNeil Island, the federal penitentiary in Puget Sound. He was finally paroled and deported to Canada in 1969 where he penned his bloody memoirs and presently resides.

Only months after Karpis went to prison, the remnants of the once powerful, well-protected maverick gangsters were rounded up, primarily through informants. Once the hideout masters and brothel owners were pressured, cracks in underworld secrecy developed into gigantic breaches.

Fred Hunter received a long jail term. Harry Campbell was caught and sent to prison. Larry DeVol was convicted of killing a policeman in Minneapolis and died in prison after receiving a life term. Ma and Freddie Barker, Earl Christman, and others of the Barker clan were felled by police bullets.

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