Ma Barker, whose sons Herman, Lloyd, Arthur ("Doc"), and Freddie used her as a cover, maintained that her boys were driven to crime by poverty. Along with Freddie, she was killed in a Division of Investigation (D.O.I.) shoot-out near Oklawaha, Florida. Fearing a scandal when the public found out his agents had killed someone's mother, J. Edgar Hoover invented the myth of Ma Barker as the evil mastermind of the Barker-Karpis gang, who had led her sons astray. Karpis later said that she had nothing to do with her sons' crimes.