"The Kidnaping of Edward George Bremer, St. Paul, Minnesota": FBI investigation summary, I.C. #7-576 (19 November 1936)

The Vault’s Barker-Karpis collection holds this single-part summary. Page 1, stored here, is headed “John Edgar Hoover, Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation,” dated “November 19, 1936,” numbered “I.C. #7-576,” and titled “The Kidnaping of Edward George Bremer, St. Paul, Minnesota,” with the section heading “History and Early Association of the Karpis-Barker Gang Prior to the Abduction of Mr. Bremer.” It says the Barkers’ mother “was Arizona Barker, commonly known as Kate Barker,” that as Arrie Clark she married George E. Barker at Ash Grove, Missouri on September 14, 1892, and that the family later moved to Webb City, Missouri and Tulsa. The summary is written in the Bureau’s own voice (“this ruthless band of criminals”) and is quoted here only for its facts.

Summary page 39 (viewer page 40) describes the morning of January 16, 1935 at the cottage “located on Lake Weir” near Oklawaha, Florida: “At about 5:30 o’clock on the morning of January 16, 1935 Special Agents surrounded the Barker ‘hang out’”; after the Special Agent in Charge “commanded that Kate and Fred Barker surrender,” the answer “was a blast of machine gun fire from the house.” “When the house was entered later in the morning, Special Agents found the bodies of Fred Barker and Kate Barker.” The page lists the weapons found, among them “2 Thompson submachine guns” and pistols and shotguns, and $14,000 in $1,000 bills it ties to Bremer ransom money exchanged in Havana. The research also records from other pages that Herman Barker, cornered by police at Wichita on August 29, 1927, “committed suicide rather than submit to arrest” (page 9), and that Fred and Kate Barker were buried at Williams Cemetery, Welch, Oklahoma on October 1, 1935 (page 41).

Summary page 53 (viewer page 59) states that on the afternoon of May 1, 1936 Alvin Karpis, with Fred Hunter and Connie Morris, “were located in Apartment 1, 3343 Canal Street, New Orleans, Louisiana,” that the building was surrounded at about 5:30 p.m., and that when Karpis and Hunter came out to a Plymouth coupe “Special Agents commanded Karpis and Hunter to surrender and they complied peacefully.” The third digit of the house number is faint in the scan. The page also names an apartment Karpis kept at 3300 Saint Charles Street, New Orleans, and the arrest of Harry Campbell on May 7, 1936 at Apartment 1, 2132 Monroe Street, Toledo, Ohio.