Bremer Gangsters Revealed by Fingerprint Technology
After three weeks, the family put together the $200,000 for the ransom. Bremer was released near Rochester, Minnesota, injured but alive. But it was a close call; the negotiation dragged on so long Karpis worried they might have to “do something he didn’t want to do” to take care of the problem. The FBI caught a break in the Bremer case, however, when a farmer in Wisconsin found gas cans in his field.
The cans had Doc Barker’s fingerprints on them. Within two years, the fingerprints helped the FBI identify the Barker-Karpis gang and their associates as the kidnappers. Despite the gang moving away from St. Paul in the wake of the Bremer kidnapping and their efforts to hide, theFBI captured them. Everyone involved was jailed or killed. But the Hamm and Bremer kidnappings put a deep crack in the O’Connor system, one from which it never recovered.
