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Arizona Donnie Barker (née Clark; October 8, 1873 – January 16, 1935) better known as Ma Barker, and sometimes as Kate Barker, was the mother of several criminals who ran the Barker gang during the "public enemy era", when the exploits of gangs of criminals in the U.S. Midwest gripped the American people and press. She traveled with her sons during their criminal careers. After Barker was killed during a shoot-out with the FBI, she gained a reputation as a ruthless crime matriarch who controlled and organized her sons' crimes. J. Edgar Hoover described her as "the most vicious, dangerous and resourceful criminal brain of the last decade". Ma Barker has been presented as a monstrous mother in films, songs and literature. However, those who knew her insisted she had no criminal role. ==Family life== Born Arizona Clark in Ash Grove, Missouri, her family called her "Arrie". In 1892 she married George Barker, in Lawrence County, Missouri. The couple had four sons - Herman (1893–1927), Lloyd (1897–1949), Arthur (1899–1939) and Fred (1901–1935). The 1910 to 1930 censuses and the Tulsa City Directories from 1916 to 1928 show that George Barker worked in a variety of generally low-skilled jobs. From 1916 to 1919, he was at the Crystal Springs Water Co. In the 1920s, he was employed as a farmer, watchman, station engineer, and clerk. An FBI document describes him as "shiftless" and says the Barkers paid no attention to their sons' education. As a result, they were all "more or less illiterate".〔(Hoover, J. Edgar, "The Kidnapping of Edward Bremer", November 19, 1936 )〕 Barker's sons committed crimes as early as 1910, when Herman Barker was arrested for highway robbery after running over a child in the getaway car. Over the next few years, Herman and his brothers Lloyd, Fred and Arthur were repeatedly involved in crimes of increasing seriousness, including robbery and murder. They were inducted into major crime by the Central Park gang. Herman died on August 29, 1927, in Wichita, Kansas, after a robbery and confrontation with police that left one officer dead. He shot the officer at point blank range in the mouth. He killed himself to avoid capture when he was seriously wounded after crashing his car. In 1928, Lloyd Barker was incarcerated in the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kansas, Arthur "Doc" Barker was in the Oklahoma State Prison, and Fred was in the Kansas State Prison. George is last listed living with his wife in the 1928 Tulsa city directory. He was either thrown out by Arrie, as some say, or he left when life with his criminal family became intolerable. According to writer Miriam Allen deFord, after Herman's death and the imprisonment of his other sons, George "gave up completely and quietly removed himself from the scene."〔eFord, Miriam Allen, ''The Real Ma Barker: Mastermind of a Whole Family of Killers'', 1970 Ace, New York〕 The FBI claimed that George left Ma for other reasons: because she had become "loose in her moral life" and was "having outside dates with other men". They noted that though George was not a criminal, he was willing to "profit" from his son's crimes after their deaths by claiming their assets as next of kin.〔 However, a family friend recalled that George and Arrie argued about their children's "dissolute life". While Arrie "countenenced their wrongdoings", George refused to accept them. The crunch came when George refused to support Lloyd after his arrest, insisting he should be punished for his crime. Arrie did everything she could to get her sons off, no matter what they had done.〔Mahoney, Tim, ''Secret Partners'', p.15.〕 From 1928 to 1931 Ma lived in "miserable poverty" in a "dirt-floor shack" with no husband and no job, while all her sons were in jail. This may have been when she became "loose" with local men, as the FBI suggested.〔 By 1930 Arrie was living with a jobless man named Arthur W. Dunlop (sometimes spelled "Dunlap"). She is described as his wife on the 1930 census of Tulsa, Tulsa County, Oklahoma. Things improved for her in 1931 after her son Fred was released from jail. He joined former prison-mate Alvin Karpis to form the Barker-Karpis gang. After a series of robberies, Fred and Karpis killed sheriff C. Roy Kelly in December 1931, an act that forced them to flee the territory. Ma and her lover Dunlop traveled with them, using various false names during their itinerant crime career. A wanted poster issued at this time offers $100 reward for the capture of "Old Lady Arrie Barker" as an accomplice.〔Claire Bond Potter, ''War on Crime: Bandits, G-Men, and the Politics of Mass Culture'', Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, 1998, p.175〕 After this, she was usually known to gang members as "Kate". 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Ma Barker」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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