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Karpis in 1979
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Death
Alvin Karpis died in Spain in 1979. I have seen his death described as a suicide, but that is not true. Al was not the type of person to give up and take his own life. He was awaiting the publication of the book that I wrote with him, On the Rock; but most important, he was a survivor, he had survived 33 depressing years in prison.
Thanks to Richard Kudish, a very dedicated and thorough crime historian and author, I was informed that the Chicago Sun-Times retracted its original suicide story on August 30, 1979 in a column "World/nation digest" page 24.
The following is verbatim from the Chicago Sun-Times:
"GANGSTER ALVIN KARPIS APPARENTLY DIED OF NATURAL CAUSES POLICE SAID, CONTRADICTING EARLIER REPORTS THAT HE HAD COMMITTED SUICIDE BY TAKING AN OVERDOSE OF SLEEPING PILLS. KARPIS, TRIGGERMAN FOR THE NOTORIOUS MA BARKER GANG THAT TERRORIZED THE MIDWEST WITH BLAZING MACHINE GUNS IN THE 1930'S WAS FOUND DEAD TUESDAY AT HIS HOME ON SPAIN'S COSTAL DEL SOL. HE WAS 71."
Richard Kudish is the author of a well balanced article about Alvin Karpis available on the internet at WWW. crimelibrary.com (then click "outlaws")
I have always been positive that Alvin Karpis did not take his own life. Faced with the information that a bottle of prescription "sleeping" pills were found in his large two-bedroom apartment in Spain, I noted that they belonged to his last girlfriend who had left Spain only a week or so before his death. She had called me from Chicago when she returned.
Originally, I had suggested two possible theories: either Alvin Karpis "might" have combined the sleeping pills with alcohol and accidently overdosed... or that someone used them to murder him. Apparently, some person by the name of Bryon Burrough, decided to invent his own fictional version of Alvin Karpis's life and death in Spain based on the first of these two theories. His book, which I shall not name because I would never recommend it to anyone interested in the truth, is an outrageously inaccurate description. The best way to characterize Bryon's description of Alvin Karpis in Spain is in the very words that he used to snub bad gangster movies in his book: "ridiculous - fantasies, fictional concoctions in an artificial world."
Bryon has a right to indulge his imagination and create what some will find entertaining, but he had no right to state in his "Bibliographical Essay" at the end of the book that:
"For the portrait of Alvin Karpis's last years in Spain, I am grateful to Robert Livesey, who spent many hours there with Karpis compiling their book, "On the Rock: Twenty-five years in Alcatraz."
I never spoke to or communicated with Bryan Burrough in any way. He never attempted to contact me. His description of Alvin Karpis is not anything that I, my family, my friends, or my associates who met Alvin would recognize. I knew Alvin Karpis for the last four or five years of his life. He visited me in Canada and stayed at my home three times and I spent several months visiting with him in Spain on two occasions. If Bryon had been interested in a truthful or accurate description of Mr. Karpis, I would have been pleased to share my knowledge with him.
Alvin Karpis was buried in Spain within 24 hours of his death, as is the law in that country.
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