Crimescribe

Lawrence ‘Larry the Chopper’ DeVol is less well-known than, say ‘Pretty Boy’ Floyd or ‘Baby Face’ Nelson, but was no less violent or vicious. Absolutely cold-blooded and criminally-minded, DeVol murdered at least eleven people, probably more. Not content with the murders of at least five citizenss, he murdered at least six law enforcement officers in Iowa, Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma. Any of those States would have happily executed him.

DeVol also worked with some of the most nnotorious felons of his time. At different points in his bloody career he robbed and killed beside Frank ‘Jelly’ Nash, Verne Miller, Harvey Bailey, the Barker brothers, Alvin ‘Old Creepy’ Karpis, Thomas Holden, Francis Keating, Bill ‘Lapland Willie’ Weaver, Earl Christman, Jess Doyle, Eddie Fitzgerald, Harry Morris and Al Johnson. Few of them survived the Crime Wave of the late 1920’s and early 1930’s. DeVol was no exception to that rule. He only lasted longer, stole less money and killed more people than most of them.

If he had been taken alive DeVol would have faced the gallows in Iowa, Missouri and Kansas and the electric chair in Oklahoma. If the Federal authorities had caught him, DeVol would likely have died by the rope or method of whichever State his trial was held. They did not take him alive, nor is that remotely surprising. DeVol was a committed gangster who fully accepted his eventual fate, which was probably a final shoot-out or a date with the hangman. As we shall see, neither prospect deterred him in the slightest.

He was born in Belpre, Ohio on November 17, 1903, spending much of his childhood in Oklahoma. By 1924 he had already earned a reputation as an incorrigible criminal and went to a reform school before his twelfth bithday. Segregation was still the order of the day, so the Oklahoma State Training School for White Boys became his temporary home. It did nothing to curb his criminal behaviour.

It’s often said that penal institutions can be ‘universites of crime’ where the bad get worse. Confined with other crooks, lesser offenders can learn new criminal trades and make criminal contacts they work with on their release. DeVol conformed to that stereotype. After his release he joined a gang of local crooks known in Tulsa as the ‘Central Park Gang.’ Before long he had graduated to major-league crime, specifically bank robbery.

Vinton, Iowa would play host to DeVol’s first bank robbery when he arrived with Eddie Fitzgerald, Harry Morris and Harvey Bailey. In time, Bailey would rise to become one of America’s most successful bank robbers and escape artists. Known as ‘The Dean of American Bank Robbers,’ Bailey robbed banks between 1921 and 1933, escaped from the Dallas County Jail in Texas, the Kansas State Penitentiary in Lansing, Kansas and the Federal penitentiary at Leavenworth.

Captured at the same location as kidnap victim Charles Urschel, Bailey said he had no idea George ‘Machine Gun’ Kelly was holding Urschel and hiding him at the same place after his escape from Dallas. Wounded during the escape, Bailey had simply wanted somewhere to hide while he recovered, at least according to Bailey. His being arrested there and his previious notoriety saw him sent to the feared maximum-security prison at Leavenworth. Bailey’s visit to Leavenworth in 1933 was only temporary, preceding twelve years on Alcatraz before returning to Leavenworth. He was finally paroled via a prison in Seagoville, Texas in 1964.

Fitzgerald and Morris were also professional criminals, though less notorious than Bailey or DeVol would become. Fitzgerald was well-known to law enforcement especially in Kansas. Morris was also well-known until he became the victim of a still-unsolved murder. Morris was found riddled with bullets on a country road near Red Wing, Minnesota in 1931. A racketeer and safe-cracker as well as a bank robber, he died a death typical for gangsters of his time.

Vinton would be DeVol’s first confirmed bank robbery. It wold also see him earn his first significant loot, a share of the $70,000 stolen from a town bank. Their next robbery, which saw Al Johnson join the gang, was one of the biggest of its time. $225,000 was stolen in a daylight raid on a bank in Washington Court House, Ohio in February, 1928. His career as a ‘yegg’ or ‘yeggman’ in the language of the time was well underway, but before long there would be a significant bump in the road.

DeVol was caught for another robbery and sent to the State Reformatory in Hutchinson, Kansas. While there he met and befriended a man who would become one of America’s criminal legend and one of the few Public Enemies to survive the era that made them infamous. Alvin ‘Old Creepy’ Karpis would join the legendary Barker-Karpis Gang, performing a lengthy string of armed robberies, kidnappings for ransom and many murders until his eventual capture in 1935.

By the time he died in Torremolinos, Spain in 1979 Karpis would have been officially listed as ‘Public Enemy Number One’ and served more time on Alcatraz than any other convict. He was probably the only American convict to personally know Al Capone, ‘Baby Face’ Nelson and a young criminal he taught to play guitar, a certain Charles Manson.

Every bit as violent and ruthless as Karpis and the rest of the Barker Gang, DeVol seems to have drifted more into obscurity compared to the likes of Karpis, Bailey, Dillinger, Nash and other big-league Depression desperadoes. Even Kelly, a second-string villain at best and called ‘Pop Gun Kelly’ by other Alcatraz convicts, has received more notice than DeVol. Then as now, Kelly’s reputation far exceeds his criminal ability. DeVol’s reputation, on the other hand was no mirage. Far from it.

Karpis and DeVol did not stay at Hutchinson for very long, certainly not long enough for the law’s liking, anyway. They escaped in March of 1929, heading for Oklahoma via Colorado in a stolen car. DeVol’s liberty lasted only until he was caught and returned to Hutchinson. When he was paroled he immediately re-joined Karpis and ther outlaws for a string of robberies in Oklahoma and Kansas where they were both arrested in Kansas City in March of 1930. Jumping bail, DeVol left Karpis behind bars and contined robbing his way around the MidWest. He would soon commit his first murders.

April, 1930 saw DeVol and new partner Jimmie Creighton accused of robbing and murdering two businessmen at the Severs Hotel in Muskogee, Oklahoma. His first confirmed murders came in Washington, Iowa on June 25, 1930 when Sheriff William Sweet and City Marshal Aaron Bailey fell in a hail of bullets. DeVol, ready for more big-time crime, then linked up with Harvey Bailey, Thomas Holden, Francis Keating, Verne Miller and Frank Nash for a $40,000 bank raid in Ottumwa, Ohio before taking one of the biggest scores of his career.

Before that he would commit another solo robbery in Hannibal, Missouri. The very next day he was in Kirksville, Missouri when two police officers challenged him. DeVol had no intention of coming, quietly or otherwise. He promptly murdered Officer John Rose and wounded Officer George Scriven. Another two shootings were to his discredit, one of them fatal.

By now, DeVol’s fate was sealed. He was almost certainly doomed to die young at the hands of the law, a posse or the executioner. There was no turning back and he knew it. Arriving in the notorious criminal haven of St. Paul, Minnesota in December of 1931, DeVol needed shelter and support. St. Paul provided sanctuary from the law. Support came from his new partners in crime, the terrifying Barker-Karpis Gang.

Seemingly, Old Creepy bore no grudges over DeVol’s bailing out on him in Kansas City. The gang could always use an extra gun and DeVol was, in criminal terms, utterly reliable. If any of the gang had any scruples about cold-blooded murder it certainly was not Larry the Chopper. With the Barkers and Old Creepy, DeVol was about to embark upon the most lucrative phase of his criminal career. It would also be the last.

The Barker-Karpis Gang was composed mainly of Karpis and the Barker Brothers. Arthur ‘Dock’ Barker, Fred Barker and Lloyd Barker often accompanied by Volney Davis. Their brother Herman was already dead, having shot himself in Wichita, Kansas in August, 1927 to evade capture. It was said (though never confirmed) that Herman and Lloyd has also been involved with Tulsa’s ‘Central Park Gang’ where DeVol had graduated from small-timer to majot-league gangster.

Fred had known Karpis since serving time with him at the Kansas State Prison. Before his untimely death, Herman had also been involved with the notorious Kimes-Terrill Gang and the roadblock where Herman died was set up to catch the Kimes-Terrill Gang after they murdered Wichita lawman J.E. Marshall. Herman was the first Barker to fall prey to law enforcement. It would be some years and many deaths later before the last Barker brother finally came to grief.

Aside from the regulars, others flitted in and out on an ad hoc basis. They included Harvey Bailey, Bill ‘Lapland Willie’ Weaver, Fred ‘Creepy’ Hunter, Jess Doyle, Earl Christman, former Capone triggerman George ‘Shotgun’ Ziegler AKA Fred Goetz, Verne Miller, William Harrison, Bryon Bolton and Russell Gibson. All told some twenty-five felons passed through the Barker Gang’s ranks in the few years of its existence. Some were killed by law enforcement, many ended up in prison and some were even murdered by the gang itself. Between them they accounted for far more than twenty-five murders and countless robberies and kidnappings.

1932 was a busy year for DeVol and his new playmates. In January, Lloyd Barker found himself in Leavenworth. ‘Ma’ Barker’s lover A.W. Dunlap was found dead at Lake Franstead, Minnesota. Fred Barker and Alvin Karpis murdered him for suspected informing. June 17 saw Karpis, Fred Barker, Harvey Bailey and two others rob a bank in Fort Scott, Arkansas and another at Concordia, Kansas the next month.

Their next job in Wahpeyon, North Dakota was disappointing by comparison, netting only $6,900. Caught and convicted for the Fort Scott robbery, Bailey drew a lengthy sentence and his defence lawyer J. Earl Smith was murdered by the gang in August. Having paid him well, the gang were less than pleased. Smith paid the price for failing to win an unwinnable case.

The Concordia bank was robbed again in August by DeVol, Karpis, Fred Barker, Jesss Doyle and Earl Christman, losing over $250,000 in cash and bonds. They had already robbed the Second National Bank in Beloit, Wisconsin once, but a second raid netted another $50,000 for the gang’s coffers. With Arthur ‘Dock’ Barker released from prison in August, December of 1932 saw a raid on the Third Northwestern National Bank in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Police officers Ira Leon Evans and Leo Gorski were murdered along with an innocent bystander.

Wounded in the shoot-out and captured at the scene, DeVol found himself serving a life sentence in the Minnesota State Prison at Stillwater. He was lucky, Minnesota had no death penalty and could have extradited him to a State that did, but chose not to. He was luckier still to be certified and transferred from Stillwater to the less-secure St. Peter Hospital for the Criminally Insane. His luck held there as well, joining fifteen other inmates in a successful mass escape on June 6, 1936.

The gang lay quiet until April of 1933 when a bank in Fairbury, Nebraska felt their fury. June saw one of the gang’s biggest crimes, the kidnapping of brewer William Hamm. The Hamm ransom totaled $100,000, but it’s said they only got to keep half of it. An unconfirmed story tells of Frank ‘The Enforcer’ Nitti and the Chicago Outfit demanding half of it as a ransom for the gang hiding out on their turf, ‘rent’ as they called it. The Barker-Karpis Gang were among the most feared outlaws in the country, but taking on the Outfit would have resulted in their destruction. On balance, it’s quite possible that the Outfit made as much from the Hamm kidnapping as the kidnappers themselves.

The kiling and robbing conttined regardless. Policeman Leo Pavlik died and another officer was crippled for life when the gang robbed a payroll at the Stockyards National Bank in South St. Paul, Minnesota at the end of August. Four weeks later two bank messengers lost their cargo in Chicago. Patrolman Miles Cunningham was less fortunate, he lost his life.

1933 had beeen a busy year. 1934 saw the gang’s most notorious crime yet. The kidnapping of banker and businessman Edward Bremer would also be the gang’s downfall. Ordered by St. Paul crook Harry Sawyer, allegedly out of a personal grudge against Bremer, the ransom was a cool $200,000. It was also the beginning of the end for the Barker-Karpis Gang. The FBI now regularly took over kidnap cases, especially high-profile ones, and Federal laws amended in 1934 were steadily making life harder and more dangerous for men like DeVol. The irony was that, for all the crimes he had committed, DeVol was not part of the Bremer affair. It was done by Karpis, Fred and Arthur Barker, George ‘Shotgun’ Ziegler and Volney Davis.

The FBI was in its infancy and Director J. Edgar Hoover knew the best way to install it as a permanent fixture was by quick resolutions to high-profile cases. Catching the Barker-Karpis Gang became one of Hoover’s major priorities and that put DeVol squarely in the Bureau’s sights as well. Seriously wounding M.C. McCord of the Northwest Airways Company after mistaking his uniform for a police tunic only two days after kidnapping Hamm only increased the pressure and disquieting news quickly followed from the underworld itself.

There had been tensions between racketeers and robbers for some time. City gangsters ran daily rackets often raking in more cash in a day than bank robbers took in a month. They were seldom pleased when men like Kerpis and his friends passed through their turf, bringing with them local, State and Federal law enforcement. Under such circumstances even the most corrupt police and officials had to be seen to do their jobs, often cramping any racketeer’s style and cutting their profits.

The Chicago Outfit and the Barker-Karpis gang were no exceptions to that rule, especially after Karpis had gone out of his way to anger them. Notorious felon ‘Baby Face’ Nelson and hus gang had been targeted by the Outfit to be wiped out in a mooonlight raid on their Chicago hide-out. Liking Nelson for some strange reason, Karpis had tipped them off and they escaped the Outfit’s intended attack. Unsurprisingly, the Outfit were not happy and it’s possible that Barker-Karpis Gang member Ziegler paid the price.

George ‘Shotgun’ Ziegler, a former Outfit gunman and suspect in the St. Valentine’s Day Massace of 1929, was found dead in Cicero, Illinois in March, 1934. He had just left the Minerva Cafe when he was blasted in the facce with a shotgun by an unknown shooter. Cicero had been part of Capone’s empire, remaining under Outfit control even after Capone had gone to prison for income tax evasion.

The gang, though were unsympathetic. Ziegler had liked to drink and when drunk he also liked to brag. Word of the gang’s crimes and precisely who committed them often reached police and underworld ears via Ziegler’s slurred spech and loose tongue. It may have been his own gang or the Outfit or, according to Outfit figure Louis Campaagna, Harry Sawyer’s gang from St. Paul. We will probably never know, but it certainly cast an even darker cloud over the gang and worse was soon to come.

Gang members and associates fell like dominoes over the course of the next year, some to capture, some to death. Underworld doctor Joseph Moran had been employed by the gang to do some plastic surgery on a couple of its members. When his handiwork failed to noticeably change their appearances the gang were unhappy and Moran vanished in July, 1934. His body (or a body, according to Karpis later) was fished out of Lake Erie in September, 1935.

William Harrison was killed by unknown criminals at Ontarioville, Illinois on January 6, 1935. Two days after Harrison’s death Arthur ‘Dock’ Barker was caught in Chicago, Russell Gibson was killed and Bryon Bolton captured elsewhere. The gang’s numbers (and members) were dropping fast and it was obvious that law enforcement was hell-bent on destroying the Barker-Karpis Gang once and for all.

Only eights days after Gibson’s death and the capture of Barker and Bolton, worse news arrived. ‘Ma’ Barker and son Fred had died in a shoot-out after being ddiscovered at the hide-out on Lake Weir in Florida. Karpis had only recently left Florida for Cuba, hoing to oversee the laundering of their ill-gotten gains. Short of funds and believing the money would not be laundered, he took several gang members to rob a mail train at Garretsville, Ohio on November 7, 1935. The gang had previously robbed a payroll delivered by that train, but not the train itself. Karpis saw it as his swan song, one last, huge job before retiring.

The raid netted over $35,000 in cash and bonds but, to Karpis, was a failure. He had expected at least six times as much, enough to permanently retire and vanish safely outside US jurisdiction. The dubious cachet of performing one of America’s last major train robberies did nothing to appease the infuriated Karpis, whose retirement plans were now undone. When Karpis himself was caught, finally run to earth by the FBI in New Orleans, Louisiana on May 1, 1936 with Fred ‘Creepy’ Hunter, the Barker-Karpis Gang had finally been destroyed once and for all. DeVol, though, would not live to see it happen.

Lawrence ‘Larry the Chopper’ DeVol had lived a violent life and it would come to an all-too-predictable end. Shorn of his largem professional gang and the ricch pickings it had brought him, DeVol was now a shadow of the gangster he had once been, spending more time hiding or fleeing than robbing and killing. His end was violent as most of his career. The Chopper would swing his axe in one final fling before the hail of law enforcement lead he had so long expected.

It was in Enid, Oklahoma that the Chopper finally met his fate. He had led there after robbing a bank in Turon, Kansas with Don Reeder, a fellow-escapee from St. Peter’s only two days earlier. Urgently needing funds, the bank in Turon had been his first port of call, Enid his second, and an Enid bar called the German Village Tavern his third. Ther, his luck and time finally ran out. The bar’s owner was a former local policeman. When Patrolmen Cal Palmer and Ralph Knarr walked in and asked him to come with them, DeVol killed Palmer and seriously wounded Knarr with the same pistol he had used to rob the bank in Turon the previous day.

Running out of the bar and jumping aboard a trolleybus, DeVol intended another successful escape. Two local lawmen thought otherwise. True to form, DeVol wounded one of them, Officer Lelon Coyle, but only lightly. Coyle and his partner shot straighter. Having taken nine bullets, Lawrence DeVol staggered and slumped to the pavement. His last stand was over.

His story finally ends with his burial in the Oakland Cemetery in St. Paul, Minnesota shortly after his final shoot-out. It was no surprise to those who knew him that he had died violently. By then the rest of the feared Barker-Karpis Gang were in jail or dead. Many were safely lodged at the then-new Federal Penitentiary on Alcatraz now known as ‘The Rock.’ On arriving, Karpis had bragged that it would never hold him, he was wrong. Thinking the same, Arthur Barker had died trying to escape Alcatraz in January, 1940.

One of his co-conspirators was Henri Young, whose case was immortalised (and far too fictionalised) by Hollywood movie ‘Murder in the First.’ As great as the performances are, the film itself touts a version of Henri Young that is almost mendacious, as are its portrayals of Warden James Johnston and Associate Warden Edward Miller. Young was not a poor innocent lad unfairly condemned to a life behind bars, he was a violent career felon with a record as long as your arm.

Young, while less violent than DeVol, thoroughly merited a transfer to the Rock. He certainly never merited the Hollywood treatment and being shown as anything other than a violent, recidivist sociopath. By contrast DeVol, as much an outlaw as Dillinger, Karpis, Nelson, Floyd or any of the bigger names of his time, has been largely forgotten and ignored. All told, neither deserves any particular sympathy.