Alvin Karpis: The Last Public Enemy No. 1 Who Outlived Them All

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Alvin Karpis did not die young in a hail of bullets like most Depression era outlaws. Born in Montreal in 1907 to Lithuanian immigrant parents and raised in Topeka, Kansas, he was running with gamblers and bootleggers by about age 10. Prison introduced him to Fred Barker, and after his release in 1931 the two formed the Barker-Karpis gang. Nicknamed Creepy for his smile, Karpis was the planner with a near photographic memory for bank layouts, escape routes, and police patrols, working out of the bribed safe haven of St. Paul, Minnesota.

This episode follows the gang from bank jobs to the kidnappings of brewer William Hamm and banker Edward Bremer, a crime that drew the anger of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the full attention of the FBI. After 1934 wiped out Dillinger, Nelson, Floyd, and Bonnie and Clyde, Karpis was the last Public Enemy Number One. J. Edgar Hoover flew to New Orleans in May 1936 to claim the arrest. Karpis then spent 26 years on Alcatraz, met a young Charles Manson at McNeil Island, and died in Spain in August 1979 at 72.

• Karpis dismissed the legend of Ma Barker as a criminal mastermind, saying the gang sent her to the movies while they planned jobs. The FBI promoted the myth after agents killed her in a shootout.
• The Hamm kidnapping in 1933 brought a ransom of $100,000 and the Bremer kidnapping doubled it to $200,000, but Bremer's father was a personal friend of the president.
• In 1934 Karpis paid underworld doctor Joseph Moran to cut away his fingerprints, a mutilation that later made it hard for him to get a passport.
• Hoover claimed he grabbed Karpis before he could reach a rifle in the back seat of a car that had no back seat. None of the agents had handcuffs, so Karpis was tied with a necktie.
• At McNeil Island Karpis taught Charles Manson to play guitar, then refused when Manson begged for introductions to his contacts in Las Vegas.