1935 - Crime

Crime

Federal agents kill Kate "Ma" Barker (née Arizona Donnie Clark), 61, and her husband, Fred, of the notorious Karpis-Barker gang January 16 outside Ocklawaha, Fla., in a 6-hour shootout. Fred Barker is a filling-station operator who has no record of any criminal activity; his wife has allegedly masterminded a series of robberies, kidnappings, and murders, but she may merely have lived off the proceeds of the crimes that her sons Lloyd, 38, Arthur, 35, and Fred committed (Fred was killed in 1927 at age 31). Her death ends a 20-month crime spree that has gripped the nation's attention.

The Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum revolver introduced April 8 can be ordered with barrels ranging from 3½ to 8 3/8 inches in length and with the longest barrel fires a 158-grain semiwadcutter bullet at 1,515 feet per second (see 1908).

Manhattan district attorney Thomas E. Dewey, 33, raids Polly Adler's brothel as part of a crackdown on an alleged prostitution syndicate (see 1924). Adler is convicted on charges of possessing pornographic films and serves 24 days under the alias "Joan Martin" (see 1943).

Newark, N.J., mobster Dutch Schulz (Arthur Flegenheimer), 33, is mortally wounded October 23 by gunmen from a newly organized New York crime syndicate who walk into his saloon headquarters and shoot him down along with his three companions. A major figure in liquor bootlegging during Prohibition, Flegenheimer has twice in the last 2 years been tried and acquitted on charges of having evaded income taxes on the proceeds of his various rackets.

Cleveland's mayor Harold H. Burton vows to shut down his city's gambling clubs and hires Chicago gangbuster Eliot Ness in December (see Capone, 1931). Now 32, Ness will close the region's largest gambling joint within a few months, personally fire police officers for drunkenness or sleeping on the job, reorganize the police department, plan the city's first police academy, and cope with a series of grisly murders.