Gypsy Bob: Tattoos and Murder

Arthur "Gypsy Bob" Harper (b. 1880) was one of Michigan's most notorious criminals. Murder, theft, and assault were part of his everyday life outside of prison. Luckily he only spent 15 of his 73 years out in the world. The rest of his time was spent locked up in various prisons in New York, Missouri, Illinois, and Michigan. 

Even that didn't stop him from committing heinous crimes. 

Let's learn about the man who holds the record for the most consecutive years in solitary confinement and the most tattoos.

Transcript

Welcome to Year Four of the Curator135 Podcast

I’m your host, Nathan Olli and 

This is Episode 66 ‘Gypsy Bob: Tattoos and Murder” 

Arthur Harper was born on August 18, 1880 in Binghamton, New York to parents Godfrey Harper and Estelle Peeler. They were a young couple. Estelle, who went by ‘Stella’, was only 18 at the time of their wedding and barely twenty when Arthur came along. 

Godfrey Harper worked at a planing mill, taking cut and seasoned boards from a sawmill and turning them into finished lumber. Quickly, Godfrey realized that there was something off about his new wife. Despite having a son together, Godfrey filed for divorce, packed his bags and moved to Philadelphia. 

Arthur reached the sixth grade and decided that he’d had enough schooling. He turned to petty larceny and minor crimes as he entered his teens. His mother had married and divorced for a second time when she met a gentleman named William Flint in 1894. Flint was 23 at the time of their wedding, Stella was 33. The couple moved into a modest home in nearby Utica with Flint’s mother and by all accounts the three did not get along. 

A few months into the marriage, Stella learned of her husband’s plans to send her to a mental institution to get the help that he couldn’t offer her. She didn’t appreciate that, and soon purchased a revolver. Flint, a baker by trade, was up early one Sunday morning, cleaning the pantry. When he emerged, Stella met him in the kitchen and shot him in the head. Flint’s mother heard the commotion and came running in, she was shot twice, once in the shoulder and one in the arm. 

The two survived the shooting, but William Flint wouldn’t last long. He held on for seven days before passing away in the hospital. His mother would go on to fully recover. 

After William’s passing, a murder trial ensued and Stella was found guilty by reason of insanity and sent to the state mental hospital for the criminally insane. She remained within the prison walls until her passing in 1904.  

So perhaps, some thought, Arthur Harper came by his actions naturally. The apple, it seemed, didn’t fall far from the tree… and when Arthur’s apple fell, it hurt a lot of people. In 1897, Arthur was arrested on charges of theft and sentenced to the Rochester, NY Industrial School. There, it was learned, Arthur was a great artist, his drawings impressed teachers. He was also good at repurposing things into keys and weapons as he’d go on to escape numerous times.

In 1903, Arthur was arrested once again on charges of robbery. He was sent to the New York State Reformatory in Elmira. After serving his sentence, he decided to join the Navy. While with the Navy, his records show that he was often in trouble for mischief, assault and robbery. One of his crimes led to him spending four months inside the Deer Island Military Prison. Another earned him one month in chains aboard the USS Olympic.

By the time he left the Navy, Arthur’s body was covered head to toe in tattoos. Naked ladies, stars, animals, flowers and anything else one could think of, all well detailed and done in his own hand. His love of art had transferred from paper to his own skin. 

It was also around this time that Arthur Harper began to earn his nickname, “Gypsy Bob”. He hit the road and started a traveling life of crime. 

In 1908, Arthur, or Gypsy Bob as we’ll now refer to him, was arrested on robbery charges and given two years in a St. Louis, Missouri prison. As soon as he was released, he robbed another store and was sent to a prison in neighboring Illinois. 

Somewhere between 1912 and 1917 is when Gypsy Bob wound up in Detroit, Michigan. Despite his small stature, he was listed as 5’7” and 145 pounds, Bob had a reputation and quickly became the leader of a troublesome gang. The Harper Gang was blamed for numerous robberies and assaults but police were having trouble apprehending any of the crew.

On a cold February afternoon in 1918, Gypsy Bob entered a butcher shop owned by Ernest Maier. Without saying a word, Harper shot the man twice and then ordered him to put up his hands. As Gypsy Bob emptied a few dollars from the till into his pockets, passersby looked inside of the shop and called for help. 

A young fireman named Charles Deimel took off after Gypsy Bob, eventually catching up with the hardened criminal and tackled him to the street. He patted the man down, took his gun, and handed him over to the police. 

Deimel would end up leading police to the rest of Gypsy Bob’s gang and at least six men were arrested thanks to him. At the end of the trial, Gypsy Bob was found guilty and given a sentence of seven and a half to 15 years. On a happier note, it would appear that Ernest Maier went on to lead a long life, passing away at the age of 92 in 1963.   

In March of that year, Gypsy Bob Harper was moved from his cell in Detroit to the Jackson State Prison, a little under 80 miles west. This would be the scene of more violence involving the “most tattooed man in Michigan”.

At Jackson State Prison, Gypsy Bob would bump into one of his ex-gang members, Roman Kubiak. For whatever reason, the pair had gone from partners in crime to bitter enemies. They fought for control of the prison and threatened each other’s lives numerous times. It all came to a head in early January of 1919. 

It was rumored that the pair were going to participate in a duel to the death somehow within the prison walls. The date was set and Kubiak was excited for his chance to take down his former boss. The day before the duel, however, Gypsy Bob spotted Kubiak in line at the cafeteria. He produced a knife, jumped Kubiak from behind, and stabbed him in the back. 

As he lay dying in a prison hospital bed, Kubiak initially refused to say who had done this to him. He’d known though, from the moment the blade pierced his skin he’d known. It wasn’t until moments before his last breath, as the doctors rushed to get a minister for the dying man, that he said to one of the doctors, “It was Gypsy Bob, the only way that sneak could get me was from behind.” 

On January 12th, a jury found Gypsy Bob Harper guilty of murder and he was given life in prison, to be served at the Marquette Branch Prison in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Marquette Branch Prison was in a remote part of the northern Upper Peninsula, it housed some of the worst criminals in the state. The prison hadn’t seen anything yet. 

Initially, Gypsy Bob seemed to be changing his ways, he got along with the warden at the time, James Russell, who gave him privileges due to his exemplary behavior. Unfortunately, Warden Russell suffered a heart attack in December of 1920 and died while onboard a boat traveling along the straits of Mackinac.

Russell’s successor was a man named Theodore B. Catlin. Catlin had been with the Marquette prison for 18 years in the position of deputy warden. Unlike his former boss, Catlin didn’t like Gypsy Bob… and the feeling was mutual. 

One of Catlin’s first orders of business was to strip Gypsy Bob of any and all privileges awarded to him by Russell. 

Under Russell’s watch, there hadn’t been a prison break in over fifteen years. It wasn’t long before Gypsy Bob put a black mark on Catlin’s record. On the evening of September 30th, 1921, Gypsy Bob hid in the yard and waited for nightfall. As soon as the inmates were ushered into the prison for the night, Harper scaled the wall and made a run for it. 

While newspapers in the area took the story more seriously, folks who didn’t know much about Gypsy Bob Harper were quick to run brief, sarcastic stories. The Spokane Press in Washington ran an article that read,

“It ought to be easy to catch “Gypsy Bob” Harper, a lifer, who escaped from an Upper Michigan prison. He is the most tattooed man in the United States. Every inch of his body is covered in tattoo marks.”    

It turns out, they weren’t wrong. Prison personnel tracked Harper down before the end of the next day. He was returned to his cell under a more watchful eye and Warden Catlin set out to make his prison stay even more miserable. Over the next two months, as Harper watched more of his rights taken away, his hatred for the new Warden festered.  

December 11th was a Sunday and a majority of the prison population was in the chapel that afternoon. After church, the chapel was converted to a movie theater and everyone was settling into their seats as the movie began. Warden Catlin, Deputy Warden Fred Menhennit, and Menhennit’s son, Arthur took their seats in the front row.  

Unbeknownst to anyone, earlier that morning, Gypsy Bob and two of his cronies, Charles Roberts and Jasper Perry had secured three butcher knives from the prison kitchen. 

As the movie played, the three inmates quietly worked their way towards the front row under the cover of the darkened chapel. When Gypsy Bob got close enough to the warden he attacked, stabbing Catlin numerous times. When Menhennit tried to intervene, Harper turned his knife towards him. At this point the other two men joined the fight and Catlin, Menhennit and his son, who was a guard, were seriously injured. 

Other guards quickly turned on the lights and saw 400 inmates in a frenzy. Some were scared, some excited, all scrambling around the chapel. Warden Catlin managed to get away from Harper long enough to run towards the stairwell, Gypsy Bob was not far behind however. At the bottom of the stairwell Catlin found a blanket and threw it at his assailant which bought him enough time to get into his office and lock the door.

A prison guard, Charles Muck, ran to Catlin’s office, entering through another door. He raised his gun and ordered Gypsy Bob and his pals to put down their knives. With some assistance, the three inmates were ushered back to their cells and the excitement died down. 

Of the three injured men, Catlin seemed to be in the worst shape. All three were rushed to a nearby hospital. Arthur Menhennit would be okay, and his dad, Deputy Warden Menhennit was sent home that evening, doctors believed he would recover better there. 

Unfortunately, he died the next morning from his wounds. 

After the December 11th attack, the conversation around Capitol Punishment ramped up again throughout the state. As discussed in Episode 56, Michigan abolished the death penalty in 1846. The execution of Anthony Chebatoris took place in 1938 but since he’d robbed a bank, it was a federal matter. His execution did not take place in Michigan technically but on a US Government-owned facility within the borders of Michigan. 

At the time of the prison attack, no executions had taken place in Michigan for 86 years.  Elected officials looked at the death of Menhennit as an opportunity to push for the death penalty again. Had Gypsy Bob been electrocuted or hung after killing an inmate in 1919, the deputy warden would still be alive today. It didn’t work. Michigan would remain death penalty free. 

The way the State of Michigan could punish the three men responsible for his death was with flogging and solitary confinement. One by one, each of the men was placed over a barrel and their bodies were covered with a brine-soaked sheet. They were then whipped with a thick leather paddle. 

Gypsy Bob and Jasper Perry received 30 lashes each. Charles Roberts got 25. 

Without the death penalty scare to fall back on, floggings were often the tool used to curb bad behavior by inmates. It worked to a degree, but not like the threat of death. Nowadays, it’s considered cruel and unusual punishment and hefty fines and jail time can result for any prison employees that attempt to use it. 

On January 10th, Gypsy Bob’s father sat down and penned a letter to Warden Catlin. He was a police sergeant in Philadelphia now. He hadn’t spoken to his son in over twenty years but felt the need to write when he’d heard about what his son had done. This letter would end up surprising Catlin when he received it. The warden had been led to believe that William Flint was Gypsy Bob’s father and that his mother had murdered him. Little did Warden Catlin know, but William Flint was only eight when Gypsy Bob was born.  

The letter from Godfrey Harper read,

“Kindly let me know if the gentlemen who were injured by those outlaws have fully recovered their health. I am the father of Arthur Harper and I do not understand why you gentlemen show any mercy to such characters. 

Because of the many dastardly crimes he has committed I often wonder why he has been permitted to live. I had heard nothing from him for twenty years until I received word that he was in prison for life for murder, and next I was informed of this affair in prison. 

Will you kindly let me know if he has been electrocuted, or how this very serious affair has been disposed of? When you try, as you did, to treat them right and they show their appreciation by trying to take your lives, I cannot understand why they are not electrocuted.”

Catlin wrote back to Godfrey Harper and explained that Michigan does not have the death penalty. 

Warden Catlin seemed to be recovering in the days and weeks since the attack. Eventually he even returned to work. On January 26th, 45 days after the attack, he passed away from a heart attack while in his office at the prison. The death certificate listed Catlin’s cause of death as coronary occlusion or a buildup of plaque blocking the coronary artery. At some point state authorities had the cause changed to ‘death by knife wounds.’

Ultimately, the death most likely stemmed from the attack. Catlin returned too soon to work and his body couldn’t keep up. Changing the cause of death was little more than a technicality in the long run, convicting an inmate on a third count of murder in the first degree, in a state without the death penalty wouldn’t matter. It was a waste of money. 

Instead, Gypsy Bob, Perry, and Roberts were sent to solitary confinement. They would have no contact with any other prisoners and were allowed outside for one hour a day. Even then, they would be shackled to a ball and chain and put to work. 

The next we hear about Gypsy Bob Harper is 1923. After spending the first year after the prison attack in a location within the prison known as ‘the dungeon’, he was moved to the regular solitary confinement location. A step up but barely. He wanted more freedom and had written numerous letters to the new warden, a man named Corgan. He insisted that he was not a bad man and wrote, “Is there no chance for me?” 

Warden Corgan responded by stating, “Not as long as I am warden.”

In 1925, Gypsy Bob was still in solitary confinement. The only time he saw daylight was with a pick in one hand and a shovel in the other. He was tasked with breaking through a solid ledge of rock and loading several wheelbarrows full of broken rock, every day. 

To keep himself from going insane, Gypsy Bob was allowed to make beaded trinkets inside his cell. His artistic side really showed, his beaded items which included beaded bags for women, sold quickly. 

He’d never be able to use any of that money however. 

When he wasn’t working outside or working on crafts he was typically writing letters to the parole board and anyone else that would listen. He’d been shown the original autopsy report at some point and argued that the doctor’s notes show that Catlin died from a heart attack, not the stabbings. While that shouldn’t excuse him from prison, it should at least get him out of solitary.  

In February of 1929, Gypsy Bob got out of solitary for a brief period to have an operation for Appendicitis. He was closing in on his fiftieth birthday. It was also reported that Harper was allowed to care for canary birds in his cell. 

In 1932 he made the news again after sending a former prison employee that he’d befriended a bouquet of hand carved wooden roses. The man, Charles Shean, was originally afraid to open the package, fearing it contained an explosive device. 

Three years later he got a brief glimmer of hope in the form of an interview with the parole board. He was 55, and calmly explained that he would rather be put to death than spend another day in solitary confinement. Aside from his appendix surgery and that parole board meeting, he’d spent 14 years basically alone.

He was denied parole but the following year, he’d be brought to trial for the murder of Warden Catlin. Technically it was not his trial. It was for his partner in crime, Charles Roberts. By 1936, Jasper Perry had been moved to the Ionia State Asylum for the Criminally Insane, where he would stay until his death. At the end of the trial, in December of ‘36, the three men had the case dismissed. The third murder would never be on Gypsy Bob’s record. For Charles Roberts it meant freedom. He’d served his sentence for the death of the Deputy Warden and without a guilty verdict on the Catlin case, he was now a free man. 

Gypsy Bob Harper was sent back to the Marquette Branch prison and his solitary confinement cell. There he would sit until 1938 when the latest warden felt that he’d spent more than his fair share of time in solitary. In May of 1938 Arthur ‘Gypsy Bob’ Harper reentered the regular prison population for the first time in over 16 years. He still holds the record for most time spent in solitary. He was now 58 years old. 

Gypsy Bob was given a job in the prison greenhouse and allowed to spend more time on his artwork. In his later years he was known as more of a philosopher, who saw to helping young inmates get their lives in order. 

He passed away in his prison cell on January 20th of 1953. He was 73 years old. 

If you live in Michigan and are ever near Alpena, the Besser Museum for Northeast Michigan has on display two miniature canoe paddles painted by “Gypsy Bob.” 

Gypsy Bob Harper was a bad man, some of which may have been inherited from his mother. For all of the awful crimes he was brought to justice for, many people believe that the worst things he did were never attributed to him. He seemed to find peace in the last 15 years of his life and possibly could have gone up for parole… but he stopped trying. 

Is there mercy in the death penalty? I’ve asked capital punishment questions before. I’m still not sure where I stand. Hopefully in his time he did some good for somebody. Without a proper father figure or a sane mother, he likely never stood a chance. In his case, it may not have made a difference anyway.

Let me know what you think. Nathan@curator135.com Visit the website to see photos of Gypsy Bob and various news articles from his 73 years on earth. Curator135.com  

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