Retired United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent Doug Jones stood before a small crowd in front of the Bradford-Ma Barker House in Ocklawaha, in the US state of Florida, and spoke softly beneath a gloomy sky.
Around the same time 90 years ago, in 1935 – when the house sat on the other side of Lake Weir – the last echoes of automatic gunfire crackled through the air.
Kate “Ma” Barker and her son Fred lay dead on the second floor of the house, marking the demise of the notorious Barker-Karpis Gang after four-and-a-half hours of what is still the longest shoot-out in the history of the FBI.
Reporters, local dignitaries and high-school students were invited to see the gang’s rented hideout, which still has its interior pocked with bullet holes from that period.
“Ninety years ago, anywhere from 15 minutes to 45 minutes from now, the shooting stopped. Heroic agents of the FBI ended that crime wave,” Jones said as he presented a plaque from the Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI, commemorating the infamous history of the two-storey wooden-framed house, at a ceremony on January 16.