“As I approached, I saw this little dumpy old woman standing on a box, wearing a pair of bib overalls over a man’s sweater,” Karpis remembered years later. She was trying to fix a window screen. He introduced himself and she invited him inside. Karpis was appalled. There was no electricity, no running water. In the backyard was an outhouse. Flies buzzed everywhere. Ma volunteered to send a telegram to Fred in Joplin, and in the ensuing days she and Karpis became friends. In time she all but adopted him. Fred said she preferred Karpis to her own sons. “You don’t get on her nerves the way I do,” her son said.3

  Barker and Karpis began pulling nighttime burglaries around Tulsa. Before long both were arrested. Karpis was released, but Barker was detained and forced to escape. Fleeing the authorities, they took Ma and her boyfriend, an old drunk named Albert Dunlop, to southern Missouri, where they robbed their first bank and used the proceeds to buy Ma a farm. All went well until the week before Christmas, 1931, when the sheriff in the town of West Plains approached them at a gas station for questioning. Karpis panicked and shot the sheriff dead.

  They fled one step ahead of a posse, grabbing Ma and racing to the home of a Barker family friend, a worldly confidence man named Herbert “Deafy” Farmer, who operated a kind of safe house for outlaws from across the region at his farm five miles south of Joplin. It was Farmer who suggested that Karpis and Barker take refuge in St. Paul, Minnesota, whose corrupt police force had transformed the quiet river city into the crime capital of the Midwest. And so a few days after Christmas, the two aspiring bank men walked into St. Paul’s Green Lantern tavern—and entered the major leagues of Midwestern crime.

  The Green Lantern, run by a roly-poly Orthodox Jew named Harry Sawyer, was St. Paul’s criminal headquarters, a clubhouse that drew every major bank man in the Midwest. The Jazz Age yeggs Harvey Bailey and Frank Nash were regulars, as were vacationing gunmen from Chicago and scores of wannabes, including George Barnes, later known as Machine Gun Kelly. Karpis was dazzled. He and Freddie moved Ma and Albert Dunlop into a house on the south side and went to work guarding cigarette shipments and pulling burglaries. In March 1932 they were invited on their first major bank job, in downtown Minneapolis.

  Just days afterward, their landlady’s son saw their pictures in a detective magazine. The corrupt detectives who took the call delayed long enough for everyone to get away, but Karpis and Barker blamed the drunken Albert Dunlop for their exposure, dragged him to a lake outside town, and shot him dead. Relocating to Kansas City, they robbed a bank that June in Fort Scott, Kansas, alongside Harvey Bailey. When Bailey was subsequently arrested, they struck out on their own, robbing a series of banks across the Upper Midwest. By autumn Fred had enough money to bribe his brother Dock and one of Dock’s Tulsa friends, Volney Davis, out of prison.c Dock and Davis became the gang’s newest members.

  Drawing from the most desperate of the St. Paul yeggs, the Barker-Karpis Gang had few qualms about gunplay. In a robbery that December, they machine-gunned two Minneapolis cops; when they stopped to change cars during the getaway, a bystander glanced at Fred Barker a moment too long and Fred shot him dead. After a winter vacation in Reno, where Karpis befriended a gangland chauffeur named Jimmy Burnell, whom he would later introduce around St. Paul, the gang robbed a Nebraska bank in a hail of gunfire. One gang member was killed, and Karpis began thinking of safer ways to make money. It made him open to the idea of the kidnapping that Harry Sawyer brought to him that spring.

  As Karpis watched, William Hamm, the brewery’s thirty-eight-year-old chairman, stepped out a backdoor into the noon sun. Turning left, he began walking up the hill toward the mansion for lunch. Across the way, Dock Barker raised his arm, giving the signal. As Hamm stepped onto the sidewalk, another gang member, Charley Fitzgerald, wearing a homburg and a dark suit, walked up to him and offered his right hand.

  “You are Mr. Hamm, are you not?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Hamm said, shaking the stranger’s hand. Suddenly Fitzgerald tightened his grip, put his left hand onto Hamm’s elbow, and guided him toward the curb. At that point Dock ran up, taking Hamm’s other elbow. “What is it you want?” Hamm asked, confused.

  Just then Karpis pulled the Hudson up to the curb, and Hamm was shoved into the backseat. Dock Barker followed, slipped a pillowcase over Hamm’s head, and pushed him down onto the floorboards.

  “I don’t like to do this,” Fitzgerald said to Hamm. “But I’m going to have to ask you to get down on the floor because I don’t want you to see where you’re going. I hope you don’t mind.”

  They drove east. Thirty miles outside of St. Paul, the car pulled alongside a Chevrolet. Inside sat Freddie and a smooth Chicago gangster named “Shotgun George Ziegler” (whose real name was Fred Goetz), who had been brought in with his partner Bryan Bolton to help on the job.d Ziegler shoved a typewritten ransom note into Hamm’s hands. “I guess you know what this is all about,” he said. “Sign these papers and sign them quick.”

  Hamm, on his knees, did as he was told. “Who do you want as a contact man?” Ziegler asked.

  Hamm named William Dunn, the brewery’s vice president of sales.

  Karpis suppressed a smile. It was exactly what they wanted him to say. Billy Dunn was a bagman for the St. Paul mob, a friend of Harry Sawyer’s, and a man the gang members knew they could count on.

  At 2:40 that afternoon, Billy Dunn was sitting in his office at the brewery when his phone rang.

  “Is this W. W. Dunn?” a voice asked. It was Karpis.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I want to talk to you and I don’t want you to say anything until I get all through. We have Mr. Hamm. We want you to get one hundred thousand dollars in twenties, tens, and fives.”

  Dunn would later say he thought someone was playing a joke on him. “Hey, hey, what the hell is going on here?” he said.

  “Now shut up and listen to what I have to say,” Karpis went on. He gave Dunn instructions on how the ransom should be delivered. “If you tell a soul about this,” Karpis said, “it’ll be just too bad for Hamm—and you.”

  Dunn started to ask how he could raise $100,000, but before he could spit out the thought, the line went dead. He phoned Hamm’s office and the family mansion; Hamm was nowhere to be found. Dunn began calling Hamm’s brothers. Around five they met Dunn at the mansion to break the news to their elderly mother. Mrs. Hamm insisted on bringing in the police. A meeting was arranged at the Lowry Hotel. There Dunn briefed St. Paul’s police chief, Thomas Dahill, an honest man who was frustrated by the corruption on his force.

  Dahill contacted the head of the local FBI office, Werner Hanni, who sent a man to Dunn’s home at 1916 Summit Avenue to install a recording device on his telephone in preparation for the kidnappers’ next call. Two members of the St. Paul Police Department’s new kidnap squad were summoned as well. One was Tom Brown, a former St. Paul chief of police whom the gang was paying for inside information.e

  As the police and FBI gathered at Dunn’s home, William Hamm was driven across Wisconsin into northern Illinois. Karpis did the driving; Fred Barker and Shotgun George Ziegler stayed behind to deal with the ransom negotiations. Around midnight Karpis pulled up beside a two-story house in the northwest Chicago suburb of Bensonville. It was owned by the local postmaster, a friend of Ziegler’s. They guided Hamm into a bedroom whose window had been boarded shut. Karpis gave him some magazines and a beer, and left him alone. Hamm sat, stared, and waited.

  Midnight

  Billy Dunn was waiting in his home when the phone rang. “Well, Dunn, you’re following instructions very well so far,” a voice said. “Now, I have given you time to recover from the shock of the telephone call this afternoon and you must realize that the call was not a joke as you thought. All you’ve got to do is follow instructions.”

  Dunn was struck by the caller’s tone; it intimated that he knew precisely what Dunn had been doing all day and didn’t appear upset that the police had been brought in. Dunn phoned Tom Brown, who had run home for a late dinner. Around two, as Brown returned, he saw a taxi cruising by, throwing a spotlight on the quiet homes, obviously looking for an address. Brown walked up to the taxi, and the cabbie gave him a note for Dunn. He said a man—later identified as Shotgun George Ziegler—had handed it to him outside of a downtown garage. You know your boyfriend is out of circulation, the note read. You are to pay off $100,000 in the manner explained to you this afternoon . . . If you fail to comply with our demands, you will never see Hamm Jr. again.

  Brown took the note inside to Dunn. Everything was on schedule.

  Near Boliver, Missouri Friday, June 16 Dawn

  The next morning, Pretty Boy Floyd and his sidekick Adam Richetti said good-bye to their family and friends and headed to Kansas City. At dawn, they were driving north on Highway 16, a rough road heading out of Springfield, Missouri, when the Pontiac they had stolen from Joe Hudiberg’s garage coughed, sputtered, and died. Irritated, Floyd flagged down a passing farmer, who agreed to tow them into nearby Boliver, where, as it happened, Richetti’s brother Joe worked as a mechanic. The two men piled into the farmer’s truck and thanked him for his trouble.

  The drowsy town was still slumbering that morning when the farmer’s truck pulled into the driveway of the Bitzer Chevrolet dealership about ten minutes past seven. Floyd gave the old man a few bills and watched as a group of mechanics pushed the Pontiac into the garage. There was nothing to do but wait, so Floyd paced the garage as Joe Richetti opened the hood. Adam unscrewed a Mason jar of moonshine and began drinking. Floyd eyed him with disgust. He had repeatedly warned Richetti to watch his drinking. It made him sloppy.

  Before long a group of car salesmen, freshly scrubbed in saddle shoes and khaki suits, gathered to admire Floyd’s big new Pontiac. No one appeared to recognize Floyd. Around eleven, as Joe Richetti continued working on the car, Ernest Bitzer, the dealership’s owner, wandered in, sat on a bench beside Floyd, and shook his hand. “That car looks as if it could go pretty fast,” Bitzer remarked.

  “It’ll hit eighty-five,” said Floyd.

  It took Bitzer a moment, but this was a face he had seen in the newspapers—and then he realized who his customer was. Before Bitzer could do anything, another man entered the garage. “Looks like it’s been traveling pretty fast,” said the man, motioning toward the Pontiac. Floyd looked up at the stranger. It was the new county sheriff, Jack Killingsworth. A former Bitzer salesman in his sixth month as Polk County Sheriff, Killingsworth often dropped by his old dealership for coffee. That morning he was wearing neither uniform, badge, nor gun. As Killingsworth’s eyes fixed on Floyd’s face, he recognized him from the Wanted posters in his office.

  But Adam Richetti recognized Killingsworth, too, from trips to Boliver to visit his brother. He stepped to the Pontiac, opened the backdoor, and grabbed a submachine gun hidden under a blanket. He whipped out the gun and trained it on Killingsworth. “That’s the law!” Richetti barked to Floyd. To the half-dozen salesmen and mechanics milling about in the garage, Richetti shouted, “Line up against the wall! If you try to get away, we will kill you!”

  Joe Richetti stepped in front of Killingsworth as his brother turned the machine gun toward the sheriff. “If you’re going to shoot the sheriff, you’ll have to shoot me first,” he said.

  Adam, who had now been swilling moonshine for three hours, appeared confused. “All right, get him out of here, then,” he said, motioning to the sheriff. Killingsworth walked toward the garage door, Richetti poking the machine gun in his back. Killingsworth reached the door, opened it, and then felt the cold touch of a pistol against his temple. “Take one more step and I’ll kill you,” said Floyd.

  Inexplicably, Richetti began cursing at the sheriff, urging him out the door. Floyd cut him off. “That liquor is getting the best of you,” he snapped. Floyd maneuvered the sheriff inside, where he joined the employees against the garage wall. Floyd apologized. “This is life and death for us. We had to do [this].”

  Floyd had to move fast before the situation spun out of control. While Richetti covered the hostages, he stuck his head out of the garage door. There were no signs of additional lawmen or alarm. Stepping back inside, Floyd covered the hostages while Richetti stepped to his brother Joe’s new Chevrolet sedan. Inside, Floyd motioned for Killingsworth to come with him.

  “Why take me?” the sheriff asked.

  “You know all the roads and can keep me off the highways,” Floyd said.

  The two outlaws, assuming a posse would soon be on their tails, loaded their guns into the Chevrolet. Floyd and Killingsworth slipped into the backseat while Richetti slid behind the wheel. As they drove off, Floyd hollered out the window to Richetti’s brother: “You can have my car, Joe!”

  Richetti steered the sedan west, streaking out of town. “You know the roads,” he yelled at Killingsworth. “Get us out of here!”

  “Where do you want to go?” the sheriff asked.

  “Kansas City.”

  Hot Springs, Arkansas 11:30 A.M.

  That same Friday morning, as Pretty Boy Floyd raced toward Kansas City, two agents of the Bureau of Investigation cruised the downtown streets of Hot Springs, Arkansas, looking for a fugitive. The Roman-nosed agent behind the wheel was Joe Lackey; beside him sat a white-haired, grand-fatherly Cowboy named Frank Smith, a former Dallas police officer. They had driven from their office in Oklahoma City to check a tip that the old yegg Frank Nash was in town. The information was dead-on: though close to Karpis and the Barkers, Nash had chosen an Arkansas vacation over a role in the Hamm kidnapping.

  In the summer of 1933, Hot Springs was a corrupt resort town famed for the red carpet it rolled out for vacationing gangsters who came from across the country to enjoy its mineral baths and freewheeling casinos: Al Capone and a long line of New York crime lords were among its infamous guests. The town’s main thoroughfare, Central Avenue, cut between two wooded hills. On one side stretched seven ornate bathhouses. On the other were a line of pool halls and taverns that ended at two casinos, the Belvedere and the Southern Club. Brothels and cabarets dotted the surrounding houses. It was all illegal, but everyone, from the governor of Arkansas on down, looked the other way. The mayor and the local police ran it all like a corporation, taking their cut from every whore, blackjack dealer, and pool shark.

  Agent Lackey slowed the car when he spotted Otto Reed on the sidewalk across from the White Front Cigar Store. The two men had brought Reed, police chief in the Oklahoma town of McAlester, because he had followed Nash’s career and knew him on sight. Reed leaned down to talk as Lackey pulled to the curb. “That’s Nash,” Reed said, motioning toward a man standing inside the White Front’s door.

  “I’m not so sure, Otto,” Smith said. “That fella’s got a mustache and he’s got a full head of hair. Nash is bald.”

  “He’s heavier than the description,” Lackey said.

  “That’s Nash,” Reed repeated. “I know him too well.”

  They decided to take Nash themselves. Reed climbed into the car and Lackey made a U-turn, drawing up to the White Front. The store sold cigars and 3.2 beer up front; in back was a poolroom. Run by a gambler named Dick Galatas, the White Front was a hangout for visiting gangsters. All three men checked their pistols, then stepped out onto the sidewalk. Though carrying guns violated FBI regulations, the Bureau had a “look away” policy for certain veteran agents.

  First through the door, Agent Lackey stepped to the counter and asked to buy a cigar. There was no sign of Nash. The others followed. A dozen customers were clustered around a set of café tables; more men appeared to be in back, by the pool tables. Lackey noticed a double-barreled shotgun leaning against a wall. Otto Reed saw it, too.

  Just then Nash stepped out of the poolroom, holding a glass of beer. He walked toward the front door as if to leave. Lackey and Smith drew their guns and took a step toward Nash. Reed produced a pistol and pointed it toward the other customers. Everyone froze.

  “Frank Nash,” Smith announced. “Stick up your hands.”

  No one identified themselves as FBI; no one said anything about an arrest. Nash didn’t recognize Reed; he thought he was being murdered. “Don’t shoot,” he yelped. He was frisked, then hustled out to the waiting car. Outside, Reed shoved Nash into the front seat then ducked in behind him. Agent Lackey slid behind the wheel and drove east out of town, toward the road to Little Rock.

  After a moment, Agent Smith leaned forward, told Nash to raise his hands, and snapped on a pair of handcuffs. He then tugged lightly at Nash’s toupee. It came off. “Take it easy with the hairpiece,” Nash protested. “It set me back a hundred bucks.”

  Smith reached for Nash’s mustache, but the prisoner raised his hands. “It’s mine,” he said.

  The White Front’s owner, Dick Galatas, was inside the café when Nash was taken. The moment the lawmen left, he was on the phone to Herbert “Dutch” Akers, the town’s corrupt chief of detectives. Galatas said a Chicago businessman named George Miller had just been kidnapped by three men in a black sedan. “Stop ’em! Now!” he hollered. Akers, who knew Miller’s real identity, began phoning nearby police departments.f

  Akers’s calls produced fast results. Twenty miles east of Hot Springs, at the town of Benton, the FBI agents rounded a turn and were stunned to see a group of armed men lined up across the highway. Agent Lackey had no choice but to stop. A man stepped forward and introduced himself as the local sheriff. He explained he was looking for the kidnappers of a “Mr. Miller,” out of Hot Springs. The agents flashed their identification cards and explained who their prisoner was. After a few tense moments, the sheriff waved them on.