to avoid prosecution when he was seriously wounded after crashing his car. In 1928, Lloyd Barker was incarcerated in the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kansas, Arthur "Doc" Barker was in the Oklahoma State Prison, and Fred was in the Kansas State Prison. George was last listed living with his wife in the 1928 Tulsa city directory. Either she threw him out, as some say, or he left when life became intolerable with his criminal family. According to writer Miriam Allen deFord, George "gave up completely and quietly removed himself from the scene" after Herman's death and the imprisonment of his other sons. The FBI claimed that George left Ma because she had become "loose in her moral life" and was "having outside dates with other men". They noted that George was not a criminal, but he was willing to profit from his sons' crimes after their deaths by claiming their assets as next of kin. However, a family friend recalled that the couple argued about their children's "dissolute life". Arrie "countenanced their wrongdoings" while George refused to accept them. The crunch came when George refused to support Lloyd after his arrest, insisting that he should be punished for his crime. Arrie did everything that she could to get her sons off, no matter what they had done. From 1928 to 1930, Ma lived in "miserable poverty" in a "dirt-floor shack" with no husband and no job, while all her sons were in jail. This may have been when she became "loose" with local men, as the FBI suggested. By 1930, she was living with a jobless man named Arthur W. Dunlop (sometimes spelled "Dunlap"). She is described as his wife on the 1930 census of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Things improved for her in 1931 after her son Fred was released from jail. He joined former prison-mate Alvin Karpis to form the Barker–Karpis Gang. After a series of robberies, Fred and Karpis killed Sheriff C. Roy Kelly in West Plains, Missouri on December 19, 1931, an act that forced them to flee the territory. Ma and Dunlop traveled with them, using various false names during their itinerant crime career. A wanted poster issued at this time offered $100 reward for the capture of "Old Lady Arrie Barker" as an accomplice. After this, she was usually known to gang members as "Kate". St. Paul and Wisconsin Arthur was released from prison in 1932