On this day: Wealthy St. Paul banker kidnapped by Barker gang

What happened: Three weeks later, Bremer's family — which owned the Schmidt Brewery — paid a $200,000 ransom, which is the equivalent of $4.6 million today.

Flashback: The kidnapping was the second successful plot by the Barker-Karpis gang in St. Paul. Months earlier they kidnapped the Hamm Brewing Company president and collected a $100,000 ransom.

Between the lines: Paul Maccabee, who wrote a book about crooks and corruption in St. Paul, told MPR News that the gang was using the money to bribe crooked cops.

The bottom line: The outlaws split up after the Bremer kidnapping and went their separate ways, some as far as Cuba. Three of them underwent back-room plastic surgery to conceal their identities and fingerprints, according to an FBI synopsis.

• The FBI apprehended or killed most of the gang members over the following couple of years, finally nabbing in 1936 Alvin Karpis, the brains of the operation.