Beyond Cold Blood: The KBI from Ma Barker to BTK

Ma Barker and Pretty Boy Floyd once shot their way across the state, and Bonnie and Clyde were known to travel within its borders. Between 1933 and 1938, thirty bank robberies occurred in Kansas, while livestock thefts also grew at an alarming rate. Little wonder, then, that pressure was brought to bear on the state legislature to create a Kansas counterpart to the Texas Rangers or FBI.

Larry Welch, tenth director of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, now provides readers with the first his...