A wild bunch, the boys grew up in extreme poverty and soon fell into constant trouble with the law. Barker’s loyalty to her children and the fierceness with which she protected them from the consequences of their delinquent behavior, became something of a legend itself in the Ozark Mountains where they lived.
As a historical figure, Barker is something of a puzzle. Never arrested for committing a crime, she was nevertheless suspected of being the leader of a gang that J. Edgar Hoover (1895-1972), director of the FBI, considered to be one of the deadliest of the era. Hoover portrayed Ma Barker as a cold-blooded woman. He once wrote that she was:
… [the] most vicious, dangerous, and resourceful criminal brain of the last decade.… The eyes of Arizona Clark Barker always fascinated me. They were queerly direct, penetrating, hot with some strangely smoldering flame, yet as hypnotically cold as the muzzle of a gun. That same dark, mysterious brilliance was in the eyes of her four sons.
—Persons in Hiding, published in 1938.
But not everyone saw Ma Barker as the evil mastermind behind her sons’ criminal activities.
This page contains 191 words.
Ma Barker article
Read the rest of this article.
This article contains 2,204 words
(approx. 7 pages at 300 words per page).
Order our Ma Barker Article
