FBI summary of the Bremer kidnaping (19 November 1936), page 1: the Bureau's account of Arizona "Kate" Barker
The opening page of the FBI's 1936 narrative history of the Karpis-Barker gang. It identifies the mother of the Barker brothers as "Arizona Barker, commonly known as Kate Barker," born near Ash Grove, Missouri, and married there in 1892 to George E. Barker.
- Date
- 1936-11-19
- Kind
- case-file
- Source
- FBI Records: The Vault
- Retrieved
- 2026-10-12
- Docket
- I.C. #7-576
- Rights
- A record of the Federal Bureau of Investigation released under FOIA. A work of the United States government, public domain under 17 U.S.C. § 105.
Page 1 of the FBI Vault’s “Bremer Investigation Summary Part 01 (Final),” a typed Bureau document headed “The Kidnaping of Edward George Bremer, St. Paul, Minnesota” and “History and Early Association of the Karpis-Barker Gang Prior to the Abduction of Mr. Bremer,” dated November 19, 1936, I.C. #7-576. It was read from the stored page image.
It states: “The mother of the Barker brothers, Herman, Lloyd, Fred and Arthur, was Arizona Barker, commonly known as Kate Barker and many of her friends called her Arrie Barker, but to her sons and their associates she was affectionately known as “Ma” or “Mother.”” It says she “was born in the vicinity of Ash Grove, Missouri,” and that “On September 14, 1892, as Arrie Clark, Kate was married to George E. Barker, at Ash Grove,” and traces the family to Aurora and Webb City, Missouri, and Tulsa, Oklahoma. The page ends: “Ma Barker in the formative period of her sons’ lives was probably just an average mother of a family.”
This is the Bureau’s own narrative, written after the events. A hearsay remark on the page about her ancestry is not repeated here. The page does not give her a role in the gang; it calls the Barkers, meaning her sons, “the nucleus of this ruthless band.”
