ABSTRACT
May 1, 1917: Michigan approved a statewide prohibition of the sale of beer, liquor, and wine, which started on this day.
1936: J. Edgar Hoover, as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, arrested Alvin “Creepy” Karpis in New Orleans. After Karpis, a criminal who began his criminal career at age 10 in Topeka, Kansas, where he was raised, got out of prison in 1931, he teamed up with the Ma Barker gang, which became one of the most formidable criminal gangs of the 1930s. They did not hesitate to kill anyone who got in their way, even innocent bystanders. On December 19, 1931, Karpis and Fred Barker killed Sheriff C. Roy Kelley, who was investigating their robbery of a store in West Plains, Missouri. They engaged in kidnappings, and in 1933 kidnapped William Hamm, a millionaire Minnesota brewer. They netted a ransom of $100,000 and soon after this abducted Minnesota banker Edward Bremer, whose ransom brought them $200,000. Meanwhile, the FBI was looking for the Karpis-Barker gang. But the FBI had other problems. The personal low point for J. Edgar Hoover came at an April 1936 U.S. Senate hearing. Senator Kenneth McKellar of Tennessee criticized Hoover for the performance of the FBI and the fact that Hoover himself had never personally arrested anyone. After the hearing, Hoover vowed he would capture Karpis personally. A matter of a few short weeks later, the FBI located Karpis in New Orleans, and Hoover flew there to be in charge of the arrest. As a dozen or so agents swarmed over Karpis’s car, Hoover announced to Karpis that he was under arrest. A couple of versions of the arrest are reported. Karpis’s version of the story, told in his memoirs, was that Hoover came out only after all the other agents had him seized. Only then did the agents call to Hoover that it was safe to approach the car. The official FBI version states that Hoover reached into the car and grabbed Karpis before he could reach a rifle in the back seat. The scene was further confused when Hoover told his men to “put the cuffs on him,” but no agent had brought handcuffs. Karpis was reportedly tied up with the necktie worn by one of the agents. The capture of Karpis helped
to catapult Hoover into the public eye, and made his name synonymous with law enforcement. Karpis went to prison after he was convicted and spent the longest time of any federal prisoner in Alcatraz prison-26 years (Figure 5.1).
