"Creepy" Alvin Karpis -- Public Enemy No. 1
When gangsters flourished in the Middle America during the Great Depression, none was more cold-blooded than Alvin "Creepy" Karpis. Public Enemy No. 1, Karpis is briefly profiled in the movie of the same name, starring Johnny Depp, as John Dillinger.*Born in Montreal on Aug. 10, 1907, Karpis grew up in Topeka, Kansas -- America's Heartland.
After he joined up with Fred and Doc Barker of the Ma Barker gang, Karpis became a notorious killer and kidnapper -- on top of being a bank robber.
In all, Karpis was believed responsible for 10 killings and a half dozen kidnappings between 1931 and 1936.
In 1936, Creepy was sentenced to life for kidnapping William Hamm, of Hamm's Brewery.
The FBI's own head, J. Edgar Hoover took credit for arresting Karpis, although in his biography, Karpis said he was surrounded by a team of agents who alerted Hoover when the scene was secure.
Karpis ended up in Alcatraz for 25 years. When the Rock finally was shut down, Karpis spent time in a state of Washington federal prison. There ol' "Creepy" met someone even creepier -- Charlie Manson. Karpis takes credit for teaching Manson how to play guitar.
There's some interesting Web pages about Karpis and more photos.
Here's some links:
FBI summary of the Barker-Karpis gang's activities
True Crime Library -- story of Alvin Karpis
Google timeline search -- pretty interesting way to look at Karpis biography.
AP article on Karpis 1979 death from the Toledo Blade
Photos of Karpis in Spain in late 1970s
(FYI: between now and Friday I'll run profiles of 1930s gangsters including Bonnie and Clyde, John Dillinger, "Machine Gun" Kelly and others. I think there are some interesting parallels between that era and our own)
12 Comments
Leave a comment
CONTRIBUTORS
|
| Frank Girardot, Metro Editor for the San Gabriel Valley Newspapers, brings you behind the yellow tape with takes on true crime, cold cases and more. This is also your forum to discuss crime, its impact on your neighborhood and how we cover it. Have any questions or tips? You can leave a comment here or e-mail Frank. |
|
|
Brian Day is the crime reporter for the San Gabriel Valley Newspaper group. E-mail Brian. |
Frank: The new Johnny Depp movie is about John Dillinger, not Alvin Karpis. From what I can tell, he is not mentioned in the movie.
The next few weeks should be very interesting in the World of Bank Take-Over Robberies. We'll see how many wannabes jump in on this one like all the gang slice & dice movies in the past.
Dillinger & Crew, by FBI accounts, are credited with the first "jumping over the counter M.O), using military auto rifles and murdering anyone in the way. Now it's called Bank Robbery Terrorism.
But sadly the Banks still regard it "Cost of doing business', no security improvements in 70 years, teller still presses 'Alarm Button', but now they get great digital picture of gun in tellers face.
Pull-up bank robbery websites for great photos, videos & audio: www.scorpio-security.com and bank211s-mike.blogspot.com of our real world.
karpis is mentioned in the movie; dillinger meets with kreepy right before he gets up to talk to billie frechette. the actor playing kreepy is giovanni ribsi.
Also, before Dillinger returns home, before he goes to the theater, he meets with Karpis on the roof who is planning to cut him in on the job to rob the train.
Thousands of girls in America are gathering UGG Boots in various colors, shapes, and sizes, and Ugg Boots Salewhy shouldn’t they when these UGG Knightsbridge boots are extremely cutesy and comfortable?
Agree with fashion, unique technology, new product at the fair variety, emerge in endlessly, will be all love shoes people chase focus.
You know,Christian Louboutin Shoes is very fashio,you can not miss it.In this Christian Louboutin Sales season, you deserve to have a pair of beautiful shoes with Christian Louboutin, to see http://www.christianlouboutinforshoes.com it.
Thanks your wonderful answer, it is a good idea. It contains a lot of good idea.
WoW Mobile is awesome! I get free mobile service with t-mobile because I refered 3 people to wow. You can too!
A real lot of useful info here!These are all great comments here. Very cool article.
Fine and well written article. I like it a much. hollister online shop I hope that you can still provide in the future articles like that. I will subscribe in case you do.
Some people give the duty to qualified writers because they miss the skill to write a respectable paper about this post so that the cause why students need to use plagiarism checker, but such people like writer don't do that. Thanks a lot for the topic