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After gangsters kidnapped Hamm’s beer heir, police searched Minnesota. He was in Illinois.
The FBI said the Barker-Karpis gang took $100,000 in ransom and used silver nitrate to link fingerprints to the 1933 case.
- On June 15, 1933, the Barker-Karpis gang kidnapped William Hamm Jr., president of the Theodore Hamm Brewing Company, while he walked near his St. Paul office.
- Fred Barker and Alvin Karpis led the gang in demanding $100,000 in unmarked bills to secure the 39-year-old brewing heir's release, launching a frantic four-day effort.
- Following instructions, brewery sales manager William W. Dunn drove up Highway 61 to drop the ransom 'so that the kidnapers could see that no one was concealed in the car,' while authorities searched Minnesota's North Shore instead of Wisconsin and Illinois.
- St. Paul Police Chief Thomas Brown reportedly fed the gang information on the investigation and accepted a cut of the ransom money, leading to his later demotion and charges.
- Federal authorities eventually tracked the gang across the country; Doc Barker was killed in Chicago, Fred Barker and his mother, Kate 'Ma' Barker, died in a shootout in Florida, and Karpis was arrested and sent to Alcatraz.
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After gangsters kidnapped Hamm’s beer heir, police searched Minnesota. He was in Illinois.
Investigators later discovered that the St. Paul brewery heir and his captors were states away from the land of sky blue waters.
·Cherokee County, United States
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Total News Sources17
Leaning Left0Leaning Right8Center6Last UpdatedBias Distribution57% Right
Bias Distribution
- 57% of the sources lean Right
57% Right
C 43%
R 57%
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