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Bonnie and Clyde
Bonnie and Clyde in March 1933, in a photo found by police at the Joplin, Missouri hideout.

Clyde Barrow
Born	Clyde Chestnut Barrow March 24, 1909(1909-03-24) Ellis County, Texas
Died	May 23, 1934 (aged 25) Bienville Parish, Louisiana

Bonnie Parker
Born	Bonnie Elizabeth Parker October 1, 1910(1910-10-01) Rowena, Texas
Died	May 23, 1934 (aged 23) Bienville Parish, Louisiana

Bonnie Parker (October 1, 1910 – May 23, 1934) and Clyde Barrow (March 24, 1909 – May 23, 1934) were well known outlaws, robbers, and criminals who, with their gang, traveled the Central United States during the Great Depression. Their exploits were known nationwide. They captured the attention of the American press and its readership during what is sometimes referred to as the "public enemy era" between 1931 and 1934. Though known today for his dozen-or-so bank robberies, Barrow in fact preferred to rob small stores or rural gas stations. The gang is believed to have killed at least nine police officers and committed several civilian murders. They were eventually ambushed and killed in Louisiana by law officers.
Believed at the time to be a full participant in the gang's crimes, Parker's role has since been a source of controversy. While gang members W. D. Jones and Ralph Fults said they never saw her fire a gun and described her role as logistical,^[1] Jones also told investigators that she had fired a pistol at officers "two or three times" when he was deposed under arrest in 1933.^[2] By 1968 his recollection was that "during the five big gun battles I was with them, she never fired a gun. But I'll say she was a hell of a loader."^[3] Youngest Barrow sister Marie made the same claim: "Bonnie never fired a shot. She just followed my brother no matter where he went."^[4] Parker's reputation as a cigar-smoking gun moll grew out of a gag snapshot found by police and released to the press; while she did chain-smoke Camel cigarettes, she was not a cigar smoker.^[5]
Author Jeff Guinn, in his 2009 book Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde, explains their appeal: "Although Clyde and Bonnie were never criminal masterminds or even particularly competent crooks — their two year crime spree was as much a reign of error as terror — the media made them seem like they were, and that was enough to turn them into icons.... Barrow Gang fans liked the idea of colorful young rebels sticking it to bankers and cops. Clyde and Bonnie were even better than actors like Jimmy Cagney who committed crimes onscreen, because they were doing it for real."^[6]

[edit] Beginnings

[edit] Bonnie Parker

Bonnie Elizabeth Parker was born in Rowena, Texas, the second of three children. Her father, Charles Parker (? – December 31, 1914),^[7] a bricklayer, died when Bonnie was four, prompting her mother, Emma Krause Parker (c.1886 – 1946),^[8] to move with the children to West Dallas, where they lived in poverty. An honor roll student in high school where she excelled in creative writing, she won a County League contest in literary arts, for Cement City School,^[9] and even gave introductory speeches for local politicians.
On September 25, 1926, less than a week before her sixteenth birthday, Parker married Roy Thornton. The marriage was short-lived, and in January 1929 they separated but never divorced; Parker was wearing Thornton's wedding ring when she died.^[10] His reaction to his wife's death was, "I'm glad they went out like they did. It's much better than being caught."^[10] On March 5, 1933, Thornton was sentenced to five years in prison for burglary. He was killed by guards on October 3, 1937, during an escape attempt from Eastham Farm prison.^[10]
Jimmy Fowler, writing about Parker in 1999 for the Dallas Observer noted that "although the authorities who gunned down the 23-year-old in 1934 conceded that she was no bloodthirsty killer and that when taken into custody she tended to inspire the paternal aspects of the police who held her ... there was a mystifying devolution from the high school poet, speech class star, and mini-celebrity who performed Shirley Temple-like as a warm up act at the stump speeches of local politicians to the accomplice of rage-filled Clyde Barrow."^[11]

[edit] Clyde Barrow

Clyde Chestnut Barrow^[12] was born in Ellis County, Texas, near Telico just south of Dallas.^[4] He was the fifth of seven children, in a poor farming family. Clyde was first arrested in late 1926, after running when police confronted him over a rental car he had failed to return on time. His second arrest, with brother Marvin "Buck" Barrow, came soon after, this time for possession of stolen goods (turkeys). Despite having legitimate jobs during the period 1927 through 1929, he also cracked safes, robbed stores, and stole cars. After sequential arrests in 1928 and 1929, his luck ran out and he was sent to Eastham Prison Farm in April 1930. While in prison, he was sexually assaulted repeatedly for over a year by a dominant inmate, whose skull he eventually fractured with a length of pipe;^[13] it was Clyde Barrow's first killing. Paroled in February 1932, Barrow emerged from Eastham a hardened and bitter criminal. In his post-Eastham career, he still focused on smaller jobs, robbing grocery stores and gas stations, at a rate far outpacing the mere ten to fifteen bank robberies attributed to him and the Barrow Gang. Barrow's favored weapon was the M1918 Browning Automatic Rifle (called a BAR). According to John Neal Phillips, Clyde's goal in life was not to gain fame and fortune from robbing banks, but to seek revenge against the Texas prison system for the abuses he suffered while serving time.^[14]

[edit] First meeting

There are a number of versions of the story describing Bonnie's and Clyde's first meeting, but the most credible version indicates that Bonnie Parker met Clyde Barrow in January 1930 at a friend's house. Parker was out of work and was staying in West Dallas to assist a girlfriend with a broken arm. Barrow dropped by the girl's house while Parker was supposedly in the kitchen making hot chocolate. They did not meet, as legend has it, while she was a waitress.
When they met, both were smitten immediately and most historians believe Parker joined Barrow because she was in love. She remained a loyal companion to him as they carried out their crime spree and awaited the violent deaths they viewed as inevitable. Her fondness for creative writing found expression in poems such as "The Story of Suicide Sal" and "The Trail's End" (aka "The Story of Bonnie and Clyde").^[8]

[edit] The spree

[edit] Early jobs, early murders

During Buck Barrow's time in jail in 1932, Clyde Barrow, Raymond Hamilton and a rotating core group of associates participated in small robberies, mostly of stores and gas stations. In April 1932, Bonnie Parker was captured in a failed robbery attempt in Kaufman, Texas, and was subsequently jailed.^[6] On April 30, 1932, Barrow was involved in a robbery in Hillsboro, Texas, during which shopkeeper J. N. Bucher was shot and killed.^[15] When shown photos, the wife of the murder victim identified Barrow as one of the shooters. It was his first involvement in a murder accusation. Meanwhile, Parker remained in jail until June 17, 1932, when the Kaufman County grand jury met, declined to indict her, and she was released.^[6] Within a few weeks she joined up with Barrow. They were again on the run together.
On August 5, 1932, while Parker was visiting her mother, Barrow, Hamilton and Everett Milligan were drinking alcohol at a country dance in Stringtown, Oklahoma (illegal under Prohibition). When Sheriff C.G. Maxwell and his deputy, Eugene C. Moore, approached them in the parking lot, Barrow opened fire, killing the deputy.^[6] That was the first killing of a lawman by what would later be known as the Barrow Gang, a total eventually amounting to nine officers killed. Another civilian was added to the list on October 11, 1932 when storekeeper Howard Hall was killed during a robbery of his store in Sherman, Texas. There was sixty dollars in his till.^[15]
W. D. Jones had been a friend to the Barrow family since childhood, and though he was still only 16 years old on Christmas Eve of 1932, he persuaded Barrow to let him join up with the pair and ride out of Dallas with them that night.^[6] The very next day, Christmas, Jones was initiated into homicide when he and Barrow killed Doyle Johnson, a young family man, in the process of stealing his car in Temple, Texas. Two weeks later, Barrow killed Dallas Deputy Sheriff Malcolm Davis on January 6, 1933. The total murder count since April was five.^[15]

[edit] Buck joins the gang

On March 22, 1933, Buck Barrow was granted a full pardon and released from prison. Within days, he and his wife, Blanche, were living with W.D. Jones, Clyde Barrow and Parker in a temporary hideout in Joplin, Missouri. According to some accounts, Buck and Blanche were there merely to visit and attempt to talk Clyde into giving himself up. As was common with Bonnie and Clyde, their next brush with the law arose from their generally suspicious behavior, not because their identities had been discovered.
Not knowing what awaited them, local lawmen assembled only a two-car, five-man force to confront the suspected bootleggers living in the rented apartment over a garage. Though caught by surprise, Clyde, noted for remaining cool under fire, was gaining far more experience in gun battles than most lawmen. He, Jones and Buck quickly killed one lawman and fatally wounded another^[16][17] before bundling Parker into the car and escaping. They pulled Blanche in off the street, where she was pursuing her fleeing dog, Snow Ball.^[5] The surviving officers later testified that their side had fired only fourteen rounds in the conflict,^[15] although one of these hit Jones in the side, one struck Clyde and was deflected by his suitcoat button, and one grazed Buck after ricocheting off a wall.
The group escaped the police at Joplin, but left most of their possessions at the rented apartment: Buck's and Blanche's marriage license, Buck's parole papers (only three weeks old), a large arsenal — and a handwritten poem and camera with several rolls of exposed film.^[5] The film was developed at The Joplin Globe and yielded many now-famous photos of Barrow, Parker and Jones clowning around and pointing ordnance at one another. When the poem and the photos, including one featuring the poetess clenching a cigar in her teeth and a pistol in her fist, went out on the newly installed newswire, the obscure fivesome from Dallas became front page news across America as The Barrow Gang, fully illustrated and with the rhyming-couplet "Story of 'Suicide Sal'" as a seeming instant backstory.
For the next three months they ranged from Texas as far north as Minnesota. In May, they robbed banks in Lucerne, Indiana and Okabena, Minnesota.^[15] Previously they had kidnapped Dillard Darby and Sophie Stone at Ruston, Louisiana, in the course of stealing Darby's car; this was one of several incidents between 1932 and 1934 in which they kidnapped lawmen or robbery victims, usually releasing them far from home, sometimes with money to help them get back.^[18][3] Stories of these encounters made headlines, but so too did the darker encounters. The Barrow Gang would not hesitate to shoot anybody, lawman or civilian, who got in their way. Other members of the Barrow Gang known or thought to have committed murders include Raymond Hamilton, W.D. Jones, Buck Barrow and Henry Methvin. Eventually, the cold-bloodedness of the killings not only soured the public perception of the outlaws, but led directly to their undoings.
While the photos in the papers might have suggested a glamorous lifestyle for the Barrow Gang, in reality they were desperate and discontented, as noted in the account of their life written by Blanche Barrow while she was in jail through the latter 1930s.^[7] With fame — some would say notoriety — came difficulty in the smallest tasks of everyday living. Restaurants and tourist courts became less and less of an option; cooking and bathing became campfire and cold-stream propositions.^[5]
In June 1933, while driving with W.D. Jones and Parker near Wellington, Texas, Clyde Barrow missed some construction signs and flipped their car over into a ravine.^[3] Parker was doused with battery acid, causing third degree burns to her right leg.^[6] The burn was so severe, the muscles contracted and caused the leg to "draw up;"^[5] near the end of her life, Parker could hardly walk and would either hop on her good leg or be carried by Clyde. After getting help from a nearby farm family, the three rendezvoused with Blanche and Buck Barrow again and they hid out in a tourist court near Ft. Smith, Arkansas, nursing Parker's grievous burns until Buck and Jones bungled a local robbery then killed a city marshal. With the renewed heat from the law, they had to flee again, despite the grave condition of Bonnie Parker.^[15]

[edit] Platte City and Dexfield Park

On July 18, 1933, the gang checked into the Red Crown Tourist Court^[19] south of Platte City, Missouri (now within the city limits of Kansas City, Missouri across I-29 from Kansas City International Airport). The Red Crown Court was just two brick cabins joined by garages and the gang rented both.^[19] To the south stood the Red Crown Tavern, a popular restaurant and a frequent meeting place for Missouri Highway Patrolmen. Once again, the gang seemed to go out of their way to draw attention to themselves:^[20] owner Neal Houser became interested in the group immediately when Blanche Barrow registered the party as three guests, and Houser, out his rear window, could see five people exiting their car — which the driver backed into the garage, "gangster style," for a quick getaway.^[20] Blanche paid the lodging tab with coins rather than paper money, and did the same thing again later when she purchased five dinners and five beers for, presumably, three guests.^[7] The next day, Houser noticed that his guests had taped newspapers over the windows of their cabin, and Blanche once again paid in silver for five meals. Even Blanche's outfit — saucy, tight jodhpurs riding breeches^[5] — attracted undue attention: they were just not the kind of thing the upright women of Platte City would ever wear, and were the first thing mentioned by eyewitnesses reminiscing even forty years later.^[6] It was all too much for Houser, who brought the conspicuous group to the attention of his restaurant patron, Captain William Baxter of the Highway Patrol.^[19]
When Blanche Barrow went into town to purchase bandages, crackers, cheese, and atropine sulfate to treat Bonnie's leg,^[7] the druggist contacted Sheriff Holt Coffey, who put the cabins under watch. Coffey had been alerted by Oklahoma, Texas, and Arkansas to be on the lookout for strangers seeking such supplies. The sheriff contacted Captain Baxter, who called for reinforcements from Kansas City including an armored car.^[19] At 11 p.m. that night, Sheriff Coffey led a group of officers armed with Thompson submachine guns toward the cabins.^[21] But in a pitched gunfight at considerable distances, the submachine guns proved no match for Clyde Barrow's preferred Browning Automatic Rifles, stolen July 7, 1933 from the National Guard armory at Enid, Oklahoma.^[1][15] The Barrows laid down withering fire and made their escape when a bullet short-circuited the horn on the armored car and the lawmen mistook it for a cease-fire signal. They did not pursue the retreating Barrow automobile.^[19]
Although the gang evaded law enforcement once again, Buck Barrow had sustained a horrific wound in the side of the head and Blanche Barrow was nearly blinded from glass fragments in both her eyes.^[7][19] Their prospects for holding out against the ensuing manhunt dwindled.
On July 24, 1933, the Barrow Gang was camped at Dexfield Park, an abandoned amusement park near Dexter, Iowa.^[22][3] After their bloody bandages were noticed by local citizens, it was determined that the campers were the Barrow gang. Surrounded by local lawmen and approximately one hundred spectators, the Barrows once again found themselves under fire.^[22] Clyde Barrow, Parker, and W.D. Jones escaped on foot.^[22][3] Buck was shot again, in the back, and he and his wife were captured by the officers. Buck died five days later, at Kings Daughters Hospital in Perry, Iowa, of pneumonia after surgery.^[7][22] Although Jones parted ways with the pair the next month,^[3][22] Barrow and Parker regrouped, kept a low profile, and pulled only small robberies for daily-bread money. On November 22, 1933, they again narrowly evaded arrest — but not bullets, each catching one in the leg — while attempting to rendezvous with family members near Sowers, Texas. It was the only time they ever attempted family meetings at the same place on consecutive nights.^[6]

[edit] Final run

In January 1934, Clyde finally made his long-awaited move against the Texas Department of Corrections. In the infamous "Eastham Breakout" of 1934, Clyde's longtime goal appeared to come true, as he masterminded the escape of Henry Methvin, Raymond Hamilton, and several others.^[14] The Texas Department of Corrections received national negative publicity over the jailbreak, and Clyde appeared to have achieved what Phillips describes as the burning passion in his life: revenge on the Texas Department of Corrections.^[1]
It was an expensive revenge, for all concerned, as the killing of a prison officer^[23] by another escapee, Joe Palmer, brought the full power of the Texas and federal governments to bear on the manhunt for Bonnie and Clyde, ultimately resulting in their deaths. As the officer, Major Joe Crowson, lay dying, Lee Simmons of the Texas Department of Corrections reportedly promised him that the persons involved in the breakout would be hunted down and killed.^[14] He kept his word, except for Henry Methvin, whose life was exchanged in return for turning over Bonnie and Clyde to authorities.^[14] The Texas Department of Corrections then contacted former Texas Ranger Captain Frank A. Hamer, and persuaded him to accept an assignment to hunt down the Barrow Gang. Though retired,^[24] Hamer had retained his commission, which had not yet expired.^[25] He accepted the assignment immediately as a Texas Highway Patrol officer, secondarily assigned to the prison system as a special investigator, given the specific task of hunting down Bonnie and Clyde, and the Barrow Gang.
Clyde and Henry Methvin killed two young highway patrolmen at Grapevine, Texas (now called Southlake), on April 1, 1934.^[26][27] A contemporary eyewitness account stated that Barrow and Parker fired the fatal shots, but John Treherne exhaustively investigated this shooting and concludes that Methvin fired the first shot, after assuming Barrow wanted them killed. Methvin later admitted that Barrow did not intend to kill them, but had been preparing to capture them and take them on one of his famous rides; he also admitted that Parker had approached the dying officers not to administer a cold-blooded point-blank coup de grace, as the discredited eyewitness had claimed, but to try to help them.^[28] Having little choice once Methvin had commenced a gun battle with law officers, Barrow then joined in, firing at the second officer. Ted Hinton's son Boots, himself a Bonnie and Clyde historian, states that Parker was actually asleep in the back seat when Methvin started shooting and took no part in it.^[18] It has also been argued that in accepting a pardon for these killings, Methvin admitted to both; he confessed in open court to being the sole killer in both killings.^[28] But in April 1934, the Grapevine killings, and the massive negative publicity they generated against Parker in particular, accelerated the public clamor for the extermination of the remaining elements of the Barrow Gang. Public hostility only increased when, just five days later, Barrow and Methvin killed Constable William "Cal" Campbell near Commerce, Oklahoma.^[29]

[edit] Death

Bonnie and Clyde were killed on May 23, 1934, on a desolate road near their Bienville Parish, Louisiana hideout.^[22][30] The couple appeared in daylight in an automobile and were shot by a posse of four Texas officers and two Louisiana officers when they attempted to drive away.^[31] Questions about the way the ambush was conducted, and the failure to warn the duo of impending death, have been raised about the incident.

Texas officers Frank Hamer (1884–1955) B.M. "Manny" Gault (1896–1947) Bob Alcorn (1897–1964) Ted Hinton (1904–1977)

Louisiana officers Henderson Jordan (1896–1958) Prentiss Morel Oakley (1905–1957)

The posse was led by Hamer, who had begun tracking the pair on February 10, 1934. Having never before seen Parker or Barrow, he arranged a meeting with a representative of Methvin's parents in the hope of gaining a lead. Hamer obtained a quantity of civilian Browning Automatic Rifles (manufactured by Colt as the "Monitor") and 20 round magazines with armor piercing rounds.^[28][32]
Hamer studied the gang's movements and found they swung in a circle skirting the edges of five midwest states, exploiting the "state line" rule that prevented officers from one jurisdiction from pursuing a fugitive into another. Barrow was a master of that pre-FBI rule but he was consistent in his movements, so an experienced manhunter like Hamer could chart his path and predict where he would go. The gang's itinerary centered on family visits, and they were due next to see Henry Methvin's family, which explained Hamer's meeting with them within a month of beginning the hunt.
On May 21, 1934, the four posse members from Texas were in Shreveport, Louisiana, when they learned that Barrow and Parker were to go to Bienville Parish that evening with Methvin. Barrow had designated the residence of Methvin's parents as a rendezvous in case they were later separated and indeed Methvin did get separated from the pair in Shreveport. The full posse, consisting of Captain Hamer, Dallas County Sheriff's Deputies Bob Alcorn and Ted Hinton (who had met Clyde in the past), former Texas Ranger B.M. "Manny" Gault, Bienville Parish Sheriff Henderson Jordan, and his deputy Prentiss Oakley, set up an ambush at the rendezvous point along Louisiana State Highway 154 south of Gibsland toward Sailes. Hinton's account has the group in place by 9:00 p.m. on the 21st and waiting through the whole next day (May 22) with no sign of the outlaw couple;^[33] all other accounts have them setting up on the evening of the 22nd.^[6]
At approximately 9:15 a.m. on May 23, the posse, concealed in the bushes and almost ready to concede defeat, heard Barrow's stolen Ford V8 approaching at a high rate of speed. The posse's official report had Barrow stopping to speak with Henry Methvin's father, planted there with his truck that morning to distract him and force him into the lane closest to the posse. The lawmen then opened fire, killing Barrow and Parker while shooting a combined total of approximately 130 rounds. The posse did not call out a warning,^[24] or order the duo to surrender. All accounts of the ambush, including his own, agree that Oakley fired first; some imply that he fired before any order was given to do so.^[6][33] Barrow was killed instantly by Oakley's initial head shot, but Parker did not die as easily. The posse reported hearing her long horrified scream as the bullets tore into the car.^[33] The officers emptied the specially-ordered automatic rifle, as well as rifles, shotguns and pistols at the car.^[32] According to statements made by Ted Hinton and Bob Alcorn: