By Robert Schimelpfenig, Ph.D., WSU Vancouver library archivist and alumnus
The Archives and Special Collections at the WSU Vancouver Library hold documents that illuminate the fascinating family, life and career of James E. Carty. A WSU alumnus, Carty is perhaps best known as a twice-elected Clark County prosecuting attorney who served from 1973 to 1980. He embraced the Diversion Program and held a controversial stance against prosecuting marijuana possession and gambling.
In the 1940s, Carty enrolled as a political science major at Washington State College (now Washington State University) at the behest of his father, W.E. Carty, an alumnus and state senator from Southwest Washington for more than 30 years. He later attended Duke University and turned his attention to law. Back home, Carty opened a law practice in Woodland, Wash., and chaired the Clark County Democratic Party during the tumultuous era of the 1960s.
The Carty family was among the earliest Euro-American settlers in the Ridgefield, Wash., area, where Carty’s great-uncle established a ranch in the 1800s while working for the Hudson’s Bay Company. The Carty ranch later became the original home of the U-Haul Company, founded by James E. Carty’s sister, Anna Mary Carty, and her husband, Sam Shoen. Portions of the land were eventually bequeathed to the federal government in the 1960s and became part of the Ridgefield Wildlife Refuge.
The library acquired the James E. Carty Collection as a donation from Leona Carty following her husband’s death in 2001. Carty believed that WSU Vancouver Library was perfectly situated to provide local access to the archives while preserving his memory at the school he loved. As the library’s archivist, I inherited the role of caring for the collection in 2006 and have sought to uncover James Carty’s extraordinary life and history.
One of the more curious chapters in his story was a case that briefly placed Carty in the national spotlight as parole attorney for the Depression-era gangster Alvin “Creepy” Karpis. Carty’s entanglement with Karpis would lure him into direct conflict with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover in a strategy that ultimately set the gangster free.
During this venture, Carty and Karpis established a decades-long friendship. Their correspondence details Carty’s compassionate resolve to help Karpis adjust to life after prison. The Carty records also serve as a significant source for understanding the history of Karpis and the Barker gang, the criminal mentality in the Depression era, and the FBI’s public relations battle against the antihero narrative in the 1930s press.
Carty meets Karpis
The story of how Karpis and Carty first encountered one another begins in August 1967. Carty was an attorney in private practice in Woodland and Karpis was serving a life sentence at McNeil Island, a federal penitentiary in south Puget Sound. Karpis had recently been transferred there after serving 26 years at Alcatraz, the longest term served by any prisoner at the notorious pen.
Karpis had been up for parole since 1951 but was repeatedly refused release despite good behavior and references from staff, the Catholic Rehabilitation Service and McNeil Island’s warden Paul J. Madigan. He was once again up for parole in 1968, but at this point he was mostly abandoned by his counsel. He had no money for an attorney and, at 60, had little hope for release.
Carty became familiar with Karpis’s case after one of his clients ended up serving time at McNeil Island. The client became acquainted with Karpis and began sharing information with Carty about the former gangster’s case. Carty became interested in helping Karpis. He knew of Karpis from news stories of bygone days and was surprised to discover that he had remained incarcerated all these years.
The two eventually met at McNeil Island to discuss a potential arrangement. After the meeting, Carty left excited to work with Karpis. He felt confident that Karpis was a reformed prisoner, believed he was being denied a fair parole hearing and knew he could win the case. From then on, Carty considered himself as Karpis’s attorney and provided his services for free.
The case for parole
Carty quickly surmised that the primary obstacle to Karpis’s obtaining parole was J. Edgar Hoover. As a young FBI director in the 1930s, Hoover had placed Karpis on the Public Enemy No. 1 list, along with John Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd and Baby Face Nelson. Whereas these other gangsters were killed in shootouts with law enforcement, Karpis had been apprehended outside an apartment in New Orleans.
Karpis drew Hoover’s attention in 1934 when he was a part of the Karpis-Barker gang, whose members included Kate “Ma” Barker, Doc Barker and Fred Barker. Aside from numerous bank robberies, the gang’s most notorious crimes involved the kidnapping and ransom of two wealthy businessmen: William Hamm Jr., president of the Hamm’s Brewing Company, in 1933, and Edward Bremer, a commercial banker whose father ran the Schmidt Beer empire, in 1934. The gang rolled away with $300,000 (more than $6 million in today’s money). While Doc was quickly apprehended in Chicago and Ma and Fred Barker were killed in a Florida shootout, Karpis remained on the loose for two years.
The press greeted Karpis’s capture with fanfare. Hoover claimed Karpis as his first major bust. It affirmed the relevance of the FBI and broadened the powers of the newly formed bureau as a domestic intelligence agency. It also served as a turning point in Hoover’s public relations campaign to counter certain media accounts that cast the Depression-era gangsters as Robin Hood figures. The image of Karpis surrounded by FBI agents on covers of newspapers across the nation sent Hoover’s resounding message that crime does not pay.
But Karpis also provided accounts that painted his arrest in a more troubling light. He said that Hoover remained with him during the first part of the interrogation and requested that Karpis sign a waiver for extradition to Minnesota to face charges on the two kidnappings. When Karpis refused to sign the waiver without an attorney present, Hoover pressed on with the interrogation. After several hours of questioning, and with the promise of an attorney when he arrived in Minnesota, Karpis conceded. Nevertheless, he was questioned for another 100 hours before an attorney was provided.
The kidnapping trial took three months. As part of a plea deal, Karpis plead guilty to the Hamm kidnapping, but, while admitting his involvement in the Bremer kidnapping, did not face charges for that crime. For the Hamm kidnapping, Karpis was given a life sentence and sent to Alcatraz.
For many years, Karpis speculated that Hoover was preventing his parole because Hoover wanted to hide the truth regarding the violation of his rights during his arrest. Carty could not find a definitive reason, but using his political connections in Washington, D.C., he confirmed that the case for parole was being obstructed by pressure on the board from Hoover. From the perspective of one parole board member whom Carty interviewed, if not for Hoover many on the board would have liked to approve Karpis for release if his home country of Canada agreed to his deportation.
The Carty strategy
Following his initial investigation, Carty felt Karpis had three things going for him: 1) He was a model inmate and could get great references for release; 2) the parole board would approve the release if Karpis was deported to Canada; 3) and Hoover had a fragile ego, which Carty believed he could exploit by threatening to take the case to trial. A public trial potentially meant that Hoover would have to take the stand as a witness for the first time in his career and swear under oath about accusations surrounding Karpis’s arrest. Carty banked on the prospect that Hoover was a coward who would not allow himself to be subjected to a trial.
There were also two legal issues Carty started to pursue. Carty discovered that Karpis was charged and sentenced under the 1932 Lindberg Law for the 1933 Hamm kidnapping. The rules of the original act state that a judge must pass a sentence for a term of years, not a life sentence, in the event of conviction. The act was amended in 1934 after Karpis’s arrest and, evidently, the judge passed a sentence based on the amended act. Carty argued that the judge was wrong to give Karpis a life sentence. Using his connections at Duke University, Carty worked with students to compose a legal brief arguing that this error was grounds for trial.
The second legal issue regarded Karpis’s claim that he was not given legal counsel following his arrest. Carty established that FBI agents under Hoover’s direction coerced Karpis to sign an extradition waiver with the promise of counsel in Minnesota, but instead he was interrogated for an additional 108 hours before receiving an attorney. He used this claim as further grounds for a trial.
Carty was confident that Karpis could get parole if Hoover just got out of the way. So he planned for Karpis to maintain his good standing as a model inmate and obtain the necessary documentation from the Canadian government accepting his deportation from the United States upon release. While Karpis followed these instructions, Carty would focus on tactics to crack Hoover’s fragile ego.
What followed was a yearlong campaign to harass Hoover through records requests to the U.S. Department of Justice and FBI inquiring about the names of agents present during the Karpis interrogation. When Carty sent requests directly to Hoover’s office asking him to assist with the inquiries, Hoover replied that he couldn’t help. Carty let it be known through his political connections in Washington, D.C., that he was eager to pursue a court challenge and put Hoover on the stand should Karpis be denied parole yet again. Knowing his letters to Karpis were being monitored, Carty outlined the brief that students from Duke University composed on the Lindberg Law in preparation for a trial.
In the end, Karpis’s parole hearing was anticlimactic. Hoover was not heard from. The board unanimously approved parole and moved quickly to release and deport Karpis to Canada. In November 1968, Karpis wrote Carty exalting him as his savior and congratulating him on his brilliant strategy to dislodge Hoover from the process. The two were mutual admirers from then on until Karpis died in 1979.
New content revealed in the archives
My interest in the Carty and Karpis story has grown over the last few years as I undertook preservation activities to complete the collection’s historical record. In digitally reformatting a set of Dictabelt tapes (an audio formatting medium that has been discontinued), I discovered new content about the Carty-Karpis story. The tapes must have been produced around the time of the parole hearing, but because the content couldn’t be accessed, it had remained a mystery for years.
At a conference in 2014, I learned of a new service and technology provided by the Northeast Document Conservation Center that could help preserve the recordings. Known as IRENE (Image, Reconstruct, Erase Noise, Etc.), the technology uses a confocal microscope and cameras to optically scan grooved media and reconstruct the captured images into playable digital audio files. Adapted from the work of particle physicists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the technology is suitable for digitizing damaged or obsolete media such as vinyl records, wax cylinders and Dictabelt tapes.
Digitization would cost $2,300 for the set of six tapes amounting to 90 minutes of recorded sound. It seemed like a good opportunity to engage the community. I took to crowdfunding, targeting communities of archivists and preservationists that might be interested in supporting the project. I made presentations at the Clark County Historical Museum about the preservation activities of archives and promoted the James E. Carty Collection. I also collaborated with the museum on a Clark County Historical Promotions Grant to support digitization of the tapes as part of activities for a Clark County Sound and Vision Archive.
Mystery solved
After three years of enlisting help from the community, I had enough funding for IRENE services. In the fall of 2023, I received the final digitized product and reviewed the recordings. It was the first time the contents of the tapes had been accessed in more than 50 years.
The sound quality is rough and awkwardly stilted, but with careful listening, Carty’s dictation can be heard in what amounts to a weeklong account of his trip to accompany Karpis as he is released from McNeil Island. The recordings begin with Carty’s description of Karpis being mobbed by the press at Sea-Tac airport on his way to immigration services. Carty remarked that the press conference was the largest held since Nixon’s visit to Seattle the prior year. He followed Karpis through Vancouver, B.C., where Karpis had his first meal outside of prison in 32 years, and the two drank a toast to freedom. With Montreal as his final destination, Carty discussed the living arrangements Karpis had made there with a family through Catholic Rehabilitation Services.
Among several excerpts are anecdotes about Karpis’s adaptation to life outside of prison. In what amounts to a Rip Van Winkle narrative, Carty described Karpis’s initial fear of escalators, his awe of new technologies, his first shopping trip and his success in navigating the city’s bus line. Carty also talked about his effort to rehabilitate Karpis from his habit of over-politeness and other patterns of behavior he had developed while incarcerated.
The recordings also reveal the celebrity Karpis enjoyed following his release. Carty routinely commented on being followed by news reporters. At one point, he discussed an appointment with ABC’s Peter Jennings, who flew to Montreal to interview Karpis. In this encounter, Jennings recommended that Karpis try selling his story to a publisher as a source of income.
Although much of the recordings focus on events following Karpis’s release, Carty also discussed some past criminal activities. Specifically, Carty learned about Karpis’s whereabouts during his two years on the run after the Hamm kidnapping, including an excursion to Cuba, where he was living the high life.
In all, the recordings help provide additional documentation into a wonderfully curious story that brought a prosecuting attorney and former gangster together to form an enduring friendship. The recordings help bridge a gap in the historical record and bring a new perspective on how events unfolded between Carty and Karpis following their successful venture against Hoover.
What’s next for the Carty Collection?
With the help of a student interested in a career in archives, I intend to have the digitized recordings transcribed so that a full account is available in the collection. I also plan on making a transcript fully available online for public access as a contribution to the Clark County Sound and Vision Archives. Eventually, I would like to provide the digital recordings with further conservation and sound engineering to enhance the audio so that the recordings are more accessible to everyone.