Public Enemies_ America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI - Bryan Burrough [282]
By this time, there was a commotion behind Connelley, in the trees down at the lakefront. The woods were filling with teenage boys.
Within minutes of the first shots, many of Oklawaha’s three hundred or so residents were peering out their windows and standing in their yards, asking what the sound was. By eight o’clock, crowds of people were milling out on the highway, barred from advancing by two agents. The more curious, many of them teenagers, crept into the woods, where they could make out the figures of FBI men firing at the house. A sixteen-year-old named Harry Scott watched in awe as shots ricocheted through branches above him. “The agents were firing all over the place because Fred was running all around from room to room,” Scott remembered sixty-seven years later. “They must have thought they had the whole gang inside.”
Across the grassy lane to the east of the Barker house, Mrs. A. F. Westberry was asleep when the shooting began. Bullets seared through the walls of her thin frame house, striking the headboard of her bed. Panic-stricken, she crawled to a window and saw men in dark suits firing at her neighbor’s house. She had no idea who they were, but she was so close she could see flames spouting from gun barrels. Not wanting to see any more, Mrs. Westberry grabbed her daughter’s hand and jumped out a window. Once to the ground the two women began running.
Fifty yards away, Agent Ralph Brown saw the women take off. He had no idea who they were. For all Brown knew it was Ma Barker making a getaway. He yelled “Stop! Halt! Federal officers!,” but the women kept running. He began firing over the women’s heads, stopping only when they reached another house.
The outside world, including Hoover, learned of the unfolding gunfight from an Associated Press reporter in Ocala, who received a call from a local hotel wondering what all the shooting was about. On a hunch, the reporter phoned the FBI’s Jacksonville office at 10:45, where the SAC, Rudolph Alt, passed news of the gunfight to Washington.eq Hoover, worried that Connelley might run out of ammunition, told Alt to charter a plane and take extra bullets to Oklawaha.
Back at the Barker house, intermittent gunfire continued for the next hour. It was an odd, stop-and-start affair. When shots seemed to come from one window, agents fired at it. They were never able to get a tear-gas canister inside. Around ten, firing from the house ebbed. By 10:30 it had gone silent. Connelley watched the windows. There was no way to know if the Barkers had run out of bullets or were waiting to ambush agents storming the house.
At one point Connelley turned to see a pair of agents bringing up Willie Woodbury, the home’s twenty-five-year-old caretaker. Woodbury and his wife had been asleep in the guesthouse when the first shots rang out, and had crawled under their bed as bullets flew through their windows. Eyeing the house, Connelley asked Woodbury if he would be willing to check inside. Woodbury looked petrified. Connelley assured him the Barkers wouldn’t shoot him. If they were still alive, maybe he could talk them out. Reluctantly Woodbury agreed to try.
Woodbury scampered to the front porch and tried the screen door. It was locked. He ran back to where Connelley stood by the guesthouse. “That door’s shut,” Woodburry said. The gas was getting to him; he was beginning to cry. Someone handed him a pocketknife.
“Go back and cut the screen and kick it down,” Connelley said.
Again Woodbury ran to the door. He cut the screen, shoved the door open, and, pressing a handkerchief over his mouth against the drifting tear gas, stepped across the porch to the front door. Inside, the house was still. Beer bottles were scattered around the dining room. “It’s okay, Ma, it’s me!” Woodbury announced. “They’re makin’ me do this!” There was no