The Most Romanticized Crime Couple: Bonnie & Clyde | Rogues Gallery | HT
On May 23rd, 1934, one of the most publicized crime sprees in American history came to a violent end. >> A young man and woman were shot to death in each other’s arms. Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker made news for only two years, but their mark on American culture has been indelible. >> There was almost an aura of lover magic that grew up around this couple.
There was an exotic feeling to this term, Bonnie and Clyde. >> They were seen by many as a modern-day Romeo and Juliet. Misunderstood lovers cast out by society, fighting back any way they could. They were just a couple of kids in love, very young, and they didn’t do all the killings that they said they did.
>> Hollywood has exploited this romantic image. Every movie that deals with a pair of young lovers pursued by the law invariably gets compared to the real life adventures of Bonnie and Clyde. >> There seems to be a persistent feeling that this was something kind of neat. This boy and girl going against uh the grain.
>> They quickly became an American archetype. Why do we continue to hold such a fascination for these two lovers? So passionate in their love, so violent in their crimes? Why do we continue to romanticize and justify their impetuous actions? How has the story of two young lovers, both poor, desperate outlaws in a rural small town world, evolved into such sophisticated fair as natural-born killers? In part, it is because Bonnie and Clyde, aware of the legend they were forging, helped cultivate it even as the
violence escalated. Bonnie Parker, a self-styled poet, helped shape her romantic image with poems that newspapers of the 30s were only too eager to print. They reveal her flare for melodram, her love of publicity. >> You’ve read the story of Jesse James, of how he lived and died. If you’re still in need of something to read, here’s a story of Bonnie and Clyde.
Rogu’s Gallery is narrated by William Devain. This episode, Bonnie and Clyde. Young, reckless, in love. A dangerous combination, even a deadly one, when Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow get together. Starcrossed lovers with a driving need to survive. Both grow up in poor families.
First crossing paths in West Dallas, Texas. Born on March 24th, 1909, Clyde is one of seven children born to illiterate farmers Henry and Kumi Barrow. His family gives up their farm in 1921, moving to West Dallas, where they buy into a mom and pop gas station. Bonnie is born on October 1st, 1910 to a brickmason and his wife Charles and Emma. When Mr.
Parker dies 5 years later. Mrs. Parker takes her brood to live in West Dallas. After her father’s death, the young girl grows even closer to her mother. Family will always be important to both Bonnie and Clyde as they continually risk capture to see their loved ones over the years. Clyde’s family settles into a trashier section of town than Bonnie’s, but it’s the best they can afford.
>> >> It’s an unsavory atmosphere of bootleggers, prostitutes, and pimps. Petty crime flourishes. Nobody on the side of the law cares as long as they get their payoffs. None of this is lost on Clyde. To him, it seems easier to steal a dollar than to earn one. Clyde also develops a taste for the good life.
>> >> He was a man who had great lust for fast cars, beautiful clothes, women. >> Clyde, small in stature, stands just 5’5 and weighs about 125 lbs. >> Clyde’s size very well may have been a factor in him becoming a criminal. There is a term that’s banded a lot. The Napoleonic complex, a feeling of inferiority because of a dimminitive size.
By 1926, America’s keeping cool with Coolage in the White House. Speak easys flourish. National League Baseball celebrates its 50th anniversary. Valentino is Hollywood’s hottest heartthrob. One in six US citizens now owns an automobile. Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover announces that Americans are enjoying the highest standard of living in the nation’s history.
But the Barrows share none of this seemingly care-free lifestyle, nor do the Parkers. Unlike Clyde, Bonnie is fairly well educated. She likes attention and often recites poetry when neighbors come by. She doesn’t start dating till she’s 15, but at 16 impetuously marries school friend Roy Thornton, also 16. Impulsively, she has a tattoo put on her inner thigh to declare her devotion to Roy.
Roy doesn’t share such devotion, and within a year, they separate. Shortly afterwards, in 1929, Roy pulls a 5-year prison sentence for burglary. deciding it would be too cruel to divorce him when he’s down on his luck. She technically remains Mrs. Roy Thornton till the day she dies. After finishing high school, Bonnie finds work at the local diner to support herself and her mother.
At the same time, Clyde and his brother Buck drift into petty burglaries. 1930, the first full year of the depression plunges the economy into chaos. Banks fail, crops fail, many industries fail. The celebrated American spirit develops a definite edge. Americans growing feeling that government and financial institutions have let them down leads to a strange fascination with criminals.
Texans are no exception. They have a history of embracing rebels. Clyde often compares his own heroics to those of Jesse and Frank James, fiercely independent individuals like himself. In many ways, Bonnie and Clyde embody these willful, impetuous rebels later in their own notorious crime spree.
In January 1930, Clyde and Buck break into a garage in Denton, Texas. Shot in the leg, Buck is captured while Clyde escapes. On January 5th, he heads for a girlfriend’s house to hide out. It just so happens that Bonnie is staying there as well. Meeting for the first time, it’s love at first sight.
Their attraction, so immediate and intense, lights sparks that neither has ever experienced. They call them cold-blooded killers. They say they are heartless and mean. But I say this with pride. I once knew Clyde when he was honest and upright and clean. Knowing that he’s a fugitive, but thinking he’s innocent, Bonnie takes him home to meet her mother on the night of February 12th.
While there, he’s captured by the police who have learned his whereabouts. He’s arrested and taken to the county jail in Waco, Texas. Though Mrs. Parker thinks Bonnie should cut her ties to Clyde right now, Bonnie throws caution to the wind and accompanies Clyde’s mother to Waco to be near him. During a visit on March 8th, Clyde asks her to smuggle in a gun so he can break out of jail.
This is a turning point in Bonnie’s life. Is she willing to break the law, to risk going to jail herself if she’s caught? or will she try to persuade him to stick it out? Afraid he’ll be killed in a jailbreak. With Clyde urging her on, she agrees to risk it. Her own freedom seems to matter less to her than Clyde’s.
She recklessly breaks into a house where Clyde knows there’s a gun and ransacks the place to find it. The next day, she nervously walks past the jailhouse guards with a large weapon barely concealed on her tiny 4t 10 frame. Perhaps her very daring leads to success. Her passion fuels Clyde’s actions.
I think Clyde would not have been as successful without Bonnie. After he met Bonnie, perhaps to impress her, he seemed to be more focused on his career of crime. >> Within hours, Clyde and five others escape. With the law on his trail, there’s no time for Clyde to hook up with Bonnie.
Stealing a car, he rushes off and heads north, crossing state lines. 9 days later, police recapture Clyde in Ohio. With his added offenses, Clyde pulls a 14-year prison sentence and soon experiences the full force of Texas justice at the East Prison Farm. But the laws fooled around and taking him down and locking him up in a cell till he said to me, “I’ll never be free, so I’ll meet a few of them in hell.
” >> East is a place where guards rule unchecked. Inmates toil cutting sugar cane and picking cotton. Grueling jobs that are physically exhausting. For Clyde, who’s small, the work proves especially hard. Prisoners are personally abused. Atrocities abound. Finally, Clyde snaps. One night, he kills a trustee who’s been brutally sodomizing him.
He smuggles a piece of pipe into the prison and beats him to death in a dark corner of the ward. It’s a profound experience for the young man. Though he’s never accused of the crime, killing a man changes Clyde forever. >> In the words of Ralph Folultz, uh uh turned Clyde from a school boy to a rattlesnake right in front of his eyes.
After almost two years of hard labor at Eastam under harsh conditions, Clyde can’t take it anymore. Feeling he’s been pushed too far, he takes desperate measures. It’s a side of Clyde that others will fall victim to in the future. He gets another convict to chop off two of his toes, hoping his injury will gain him an easier work detail.
Ironically, his timing couldn’t be worse. While he’s in the prison hospital recuperating, he gets word that he’s been pardoned. His mother’s efforts to get her son an early release have finally paid off. Bonnie has been writing to Clyde in prison, but they haven’t seen each other for over 2 years. The reunion comes almost immediately upon his return in February 1932.
When Bonnie sees Clyde, it’s as if he had never been away. Together again, they pledge their undying devotion. Clyde tries a hand at various jobs, but soon claims the police won’t give him a chance. I’m just going to have to go out and and do what they’re accusing me of. And I’m not going back to that hell hole east.
They’re going to have to kill me first. I swear they’re just going to have to kill me. Prison leaves Clyde a changed person. bitter and hardened from the injustices he’s endured. From now on, he seems to prefer the adventure and lure of quick money despite the risks involved. Knowing of her mother’s opposition to Clyde, Bonnie lies and tells her that she’s got a job in Houston, then runs off with Clyde instead.
Clyde forms a gang with Ray Hamilton, a car thief that he’s known since childhood, and Ralph Fultz, a former inmate and friend from East Prison. They begin making raids on small town stores and banks. On April 19th, 1932, the four of them are spotted while trying to rob a gun shop.
Chased by the police, the four get separated. Clyde leaves Bonnie and Ralph Folultz, figuring he’ll steal a car and return for them. Bonnie and Ralph spend the night in a ditch. The next day, they’re cornered by a posi member and give themselves up. Ralph gets charged and sent to prison. Bonnie’s case is dismissed on June 17th by the grand jury for lack of evidence.
It’s the only time that Bonnie ever spends behind bars. Another member of the gang, Ralph Folultz, had confessed that he was the main one and that Bonnie was just along for the ride. And so, uh, Bonnie kept quiet and said she was she was unaware that what was going on. And Folultz, uh, to use the term of the time, took the fall.
>> Meanwhile, Clyde and Ray rob a store in Hillsboro, Texas, killing the owner, John Butcher. It’s most likely that Hamilton fires the shot in a rash moment when challenged by Butcher. But it’s Clyde who’s positively IDed by Butcher’s widow. Now he’s wanted for homicide. Now Bonnie and Clyde are the Barrow Gang.
I’m sure you all have read how they rob and steal and those who squeal are usually found dying or dead. >> For Clyde and Hamilton, it’s just the beginning. They set off on a crime spree, pulling off a series of car thefts and burgaries that carry them across state lines. In Stringtown, Oklahoma, they take time off to attend a local dance.
When two policemen confront them as they sit in a stolen car, both Clyde and Hamilton open fire without warning, killing one of the officers. They managed to escape, but Clyde knows that if he’s caught, he’ll surely be executed. From now on, Clyde’s crime rampage takes on an even more desperate aspect.
He no longer has anything to lose but his life. After the deputy’s murder, Clyde goes looking for Bonnie. The reunion takes place on August 6th when Clyde sends a friend to pick up Bonnie at the Parker home in Dallas to join him. Now that Clyde’s considered a dangerous murderer, he’s even more of a risk to be around.
Yet, Bonnie’s passion for Clyde reaches beyond her better judgment and concern for her safety. >> There’s not that many couples that formed a crime career and were able to sustain it for the period of time that Bonnie and Clyde did. Being a man and woman team and making the papers quite often, which made them rather famous outside the state, probably doesn’t have a parallel in in criminal history.
A news boy once said to his buddy, “I wish old Clyde would get jumped. In these hard times, we’ve got a few dimes. If five or six cops would get bumped.” Bonnie is a woman with an obsession, and that obsession is Clyde Barrow. From this moment on, they will never be apart. With a policeman and a store owner dead, Clyde has to get away.
Bonnie comes up with an escape plan. She has an aunt in Carl’sbad, New Mexico. No one would think of looking for them there. The visit to Bonnie’s aunt in Carl’sbad proves a disaster. Almost as soon as they arrive on August 15th, the local sheriff becomes suspicious of their outofstate license plate. When he runs a check, he discovers it’s a stolen car.
When the officer investigates, shots ring out. Before anyone’s heard, Clyde disarms the law man, Sheriff Joe John’s, and kidnaps him instead. >> The kidnappings that they conducted were probably done to get the word out so that uh they would be in the papers. They were seeking fame. They were seeking uh notoriety.
And they knew that a kidnapped victim would be interviewed. And uh I’m sure at the time that there was erroneous information. >> With the identity of the outlaw soon known, it’s assumed that Sheriff John’s will turn up dead. There’s great surprise when he’s released unharmed the next day in San Antonio, Texas. If one event launches the legend of Bonnie and Clyde, it’s the kidnapping of Sheriff John’s. Sometimes they kill.
Sometimes they seem to toy with their victims. What does it mean? Do they only kill when cornered? >> Uh, could have been for a couple of reasons. Possibly this was again part of the Napoleonic complex. Uh, Clyde was exercising his power to choose not to kill. On the other hand, there is some evidence to indicate that he only killed when necessary.
>> He’d try and talk his way out of a situation. He would try and uh drive out of a situation or he would uh try and abduct uh the person in the situation. If that didn’t work, if he got caught totally by surprise, then that rattlesnake appeared and he’d strike with his guns. Now on the lamb, the pair continued to rob small town stores throughout the fall across the southwest.
On the move, Clyde kills again. He guns down butcher Howard Hall during the botched robbery of a grocery store >> with a gun. He was almost like Wild Bill Hickok. He carried a saw-doff shotgun strung over his right shoulder under his coat. If he wanted to, he could pull that gun up and shoot uh within a matter of seconds.
So, he could be extremely confident in a gun battle. His talent with guns feeds his growing confidence in any confrontation. He’s beginning to reveal a sense of invincibility that could one day betray him. As 1932 draws to a close, Bonnie and Clyde still elude capture. Sticking to back roads and tourist camps, people just don’t recognize them.
It’s up to local law enforcement, often underststaffed and illqualified, to go after the gang. >> Quite a number of the small town police were probably afraid of Bonnie and Clyde because they lacked the training. They got their job either by fact that they were somebody’s brother-in-law or they were elected.
They had absolutely no law enforcement training whatsoever. It a lot of elections for sheriff were nothing more than popularity contests. Consequently, when they had to go up against a criminal of the caliber Bonnie and Clyde, they were totally unprepared. >> The FBI has no power to launch a manhunt. It’s not until 1934 that it becomes a federal crime to rob banks or cross state lines to avoid prosecution, or that FBI special agents are granted full police powers.
Nor does Clyde just target banks. He also robs oil company payrolls. As the need for gasoline grows with the increased demand for cars, oil wells in Texas and Oklahoma flourish. Located in barren areas often far from major cities, oil payrolls make easier targets. In the years before the government protects personal accounts, Clyde feels that robbing small town banks means robbing poor people’s life savings.
Clyde can relate to poor people. He’s been surrounded by them all his life. Oil wells owned by wealthy corporations can afford the loss. Bonnie and Clyde also robbed national armories to keep up their own wells stocked arsenal, stealing the military’s Browning automatics among other weapons. As far as Bonnie, I don’t think Bonnie ever shot anybody or ever had a gun in her hand because Bonnie was not into guns.
Clyde always talked about Bonnie being scared of guns. >> Bonnie is never known to have fired a gun. In fact, she was terrified of guns. >> In December, Bonnie and Clyde join their families for a Christmas reunion. While there, they welcome 16-year-old WD Jones to the gang. He’s a neighbor boy who’s known Clyde since he was 5 years old.
On Christmas Day, as they head out of town, Jones murders a young husband and father as the man tries to keep Clyde from stealing his new car. A week later, on January 6th, 1933, Clyde kills a sheriff’s deputy when he runs into a police ambush at a friend’s house. As their notoriety spreads from such deeds, the young lovers gain a reputation for ruthlessness.
>> There’s lots of untruth to these write-ups. They’re not so ruthless as that. Their nature is raw. They hate all law. Stool pigeons, spotters, and rats. As their fame spreads, Emma Parker begs her daughter to quit. But Bonnie’s become resigned to the inevitable fate that one day awaits her. Her mother pleaded with her to come in off the road.
She said, “The state of Texas has never executed a woman in the 20th century.” And Bonnie said, “I can’t leave Clyde.” And her mother said, “But you’re going to be killed.” And she said, “I know that, but I can’t leave Clyde.” The fact that Bonnie’s father died when she was so young very well may have been a factor and her bonding so strongly with with Clyde Barah.
Here was a young man who was a possible father figure. He was very strong. Uh was trying to prove himself uh already reasonably well known in West Dallas as a smalltime gangster. Perhaps this was an attraction to her. >> Well, Bonnie and Clyde were real, they were really in love with each other. I don’t know why they were so in love, but they really was.
Clyde’s driving ability is one reason that it’s so hard for police to catch up with him. Time and again, Clyde outdrives his pursuers. His MMO is to get as far away from the crime scene as possible, and his love of cars, especially the Ford V8, becomes legendary. Clyde Barl loved Fords and especially the V8 Ford because the V8 Ford, remember, was one of the first automobiles that had an all steel body and the V8 engine would go for indefinite periods without repair.
Clyde always steals a Ford V8 whenever one is available. The steel body proves more bulletproof than other cars, and the powerful engine can attain higher speeds than most police cars, sometimes as much as 100 m hour. There was one uh person who was abducted that told me that all the guns in the car didn’t scare her as much as the way he drove.
>> Clyde so admires Henry Ford’s product that he writes him a letter. Dear sir, while I still have got breath in my lungs, I will tell you what a dandy car you make. I have drove Fords exclusively when I could get away with one. The Ford has got every other car skin. And even if my business hasn’t been strictly legal, it don’t hurt nothing to tell you what a fine car you make in the V8.
B also collects license plates that he cleverly uses to conceal their identity as they travel. On March 22nd, Buck Barrow finally gets parrolled after a 4-year stretch in the dreaded Eastam prison. First, he reunites with his wife, Blanch. Buck was going with a girl and Blanch happened to be a friend of hers.
Blanch lived in Oklahoma and she come up to visit this girl that Buck was going with and they happened to meet and Buck and her kind of fell in love with each other so he kind of taken over her and they got married and uh I love Blanch and my whole family loved Blanch. She was a sweet girl.
When Buck escaped, well, her and my mother both talked to him and got him to go back to prison because Blanch wanted him to do good. And I think really he wanted to do good. >> Buck makes plans to rendevous with his wife Blanch and Bonnie and Clyde in Fort Smith, Arkansas. As the older brother, he worries that it’s his fault Clyde has strayed to a life of crime.
Blanch opposes the meeting. She and Buck are on their way to a new life, working on her father’s farm. As it turns out, Blanch Barrow’s fears about meeting her notorious relatives are well justified. In April, Bonnie and Clyde meet Buck and Blanch Barrow in Fort Smith, Arkansas.
Along with WD Jones, the two couples take an apartment in Joplain, Missouri. always on the run. It’s the first place in a year where Bonnie has stayed in anything that resembles a home. But their interlude lasts only a few days. When the landlord spots a large arsenal of guns that the Barrow gang carries with them, he alerts police.
The law shows up to arrest the outlaws and an enormous gun battle erupts. Two law men die. In a spectacular feat of daring, Clyde directs the fugitives to blast their way out of the garage with automatic rifles. >> If they try to act like citizens and rent a nice little flat, about the third night, they’re invited to fight by a subgun’s ratat.
Pictures left behind in the Joplain apartment seem to confirm their love of publicity and the fame that follows them. It also reveals a lighter side to their natures. There’s no evidence to indicate that Bonnie was a cigar smoking gun. That was just a joke. And Bonnie was just horsing around, grabbed a cigar, and had pictures made of her with a cigar, not ever dreaming that those pictures would be left behind after a gunfight and be published all over the nation.
She hated that picture. Their escape under such overwhelming odds just reinforces Clyde’s claims to invincibility. >> He had a almost mythic reputation of being able to shoot his way out or drive his way out or of anything, anything. He was shot so many times and survived. Clyde and Buck split up to take the heat off, but agree to meet outside Dallas.
Before this can happen, Bonnie and Clyde face their most serious setback. In some ways, it spells the beginning of the end. With Clyde driving at 70 mph, he comes around a bend in the road. Not seeing a sign in time that the bridge is out, he plunges into a deep ravine. Clyde and Jones escape injury, but Bonnie is pinned under the car.
Before they can free her, a gas fire ignites, severely burning her right leg. Helped by some local farmers, they get Bonnie out from under the car and into a nearby farmhouse. But when Clyde rejects medical attention for the seriously injured woman, the farmers get suspicious and alert the local sheriff. Clyde gets the drop on the sheriff and his deputy when they arrive.
He loads Bonnie into the car along with the two lawmen. Later, in a rural spot, he leaves them tied to a tree and drives off to meet up with Buck and Blanch. Together, they haul up in a tourist camp in Kansas while Bonnie recuperates. Burned to the bone in some areas, it’s amazing that she doesn’t lose her leg or her life to serious infection from the wound.
As it is, there’s some question as to whether Bonnie ever walks again. While Clyde tenderly nurses Bonnie, Jones and Buck set off to pull several robberies to pay for Bonnie’s medical needs as well as the room and board. In a confrontation in Arkansas, they kill another police officer. Police turn up the heat.
The gang moves around, desperate to elude the law while Bonnie slowly recovers. Knowing they have the Barrow gang cornered in a tourist court in Plat City, Missouri, the law, heavily armed, moves in. The sheriff first knocks on their door and demands their surrender. Clyde leaps into action. As in Joplin, Clyde defies the odds, loads everyone into the car, and makes a break for it, heading straight through the circle of lawmen.
This time, the fugitives aren’t so lucky. Buck takes two bullets in the head. Shattering glass catches Blanch in the eye. Clyde manages to get away, but with Bonnie incapacitated and Buck and Blanch seriously wounded, time’s running out. Forced to slow down his driving, Clyde searches for a hiding place. He thinks he’s found it in the middle of a densely wooded park near Dexter, Iowa.
But this time he’s got a determined posi on his trail. Over a hundred men track them to the refuge. At dawn, Clyde sees the posi closing in. A rain of gunfire destroys both the gang’s cars. Desperate, they try to escape on foot. Hit several times, a dying buck is caught, a cowering blanch at his side. Though hit in the leg and arm, Clyde once more manages to pull off a miraculous escape, carrying Bonnie and accompanied by WD Jones, who’s been shot in the chest and face.
Clyde steals a car and vanishes. They have cheated death again. >> The road was so dimly lighted, there were no highway signs to guide, but they made up their minds. If all roads were blind, they wouldn’t give up till they die. Clyde’s brother Buck dies at a nearby hospital a few days later on July 29th. Blanch ends up in prison.
>> When my brother Buck was killed, I do believe Clyde made the funeral and a Everybody says that they, you know, but I do believe that Clyde was there at Buck’s funeral. I think he wore a wig and a and a woman’s dress when he come to the funeral. Bonnie and Clyde lie low, recovering from their wounds throughout the late summer and early fall. There are rumored sightings.
Crimes they don’t commit are attributed to them. If a policeman is killed in Dallas and they have no clue or guide, if they can’t find a fiend, just wipe the slate clean and hang it on Bonnie and Clyde. WD Jones leaves Bonnie and Clyde after the Iowa shootout. And that November, he’s captured without incident in Houston.
He actually expresses relief at being arrested. Though only 17, Jones has lost his fascination with a life of crime. >> I have been indicted along with Clyde and Bonnie for the murder of Malcolm Davis, Fort Worth Deputy Sheriff. I was forced along under threats of death with Clyde Bar through many of his gun battles and saw him kill five men.
Clyde Bar never seemed to care for killing anyone. All he thought of was himself. That’s the reason I tried to escape. Just didn’t kill me as anyone. While Jones was a willing participant in the gang, Clyde tells him to say anything he thinks will help him get off or lessen his sentence.
It’s certainly too late to matter to Clyde. WD Jones, you know, when he he got out and everything, Clyde told him to come home and because they didn’t know who he was and to come home and he wouldn’t get no trouble. But when he did come home, well, Clyde told him he can tell anything he wants to tell that, you know, he don’t care what he tells about him.
And that’s why WD told so much stuff about Clyde because he uh, you know, was trying to save himself. And Clyde had told him he didn’t care, but of course he was with Clyde and Clyde didn’t chain him up and tie him up and all that stuff. Once Jones is in custody, some question the nature of his relationship with the couple.
There are rumors about Clyde’s sexuality. We don’t know where those stories started. W Jones uh once said he didn’t even know where it started from. Um that the fact of the matter was that uh he didn’t have any problem with women at all. Clyde Barrow did not. And uh I I interviewed uh one of Clyde’s uh uh early early girlfriends and and uh she said Clyde didn’t have any trouble at all with women.
That that she was quite frank about that. In fact, the evidence indicates that heathered a child at one point. He was a great womanizer. He dated several girls. There was no indication that he was ever interested in boys. The only possible connection to this could have been that at one point he and Bonnie were driving through several towns and not wanting to be recognized, Clyde apparently put on a blonde wig.
And knowing that the police would have been looking for a man and a woman, but not two women, this is entirely possible the source of all that. In late November, the pair risk a meeting with their families outside Dallas to celebrate Mrs. Barrow’s birthday. Unfortunately, a suspicious farmer alerts the police. Once more, Bonnie and Clyde are caught in an ambush.
Fleeing the scene, both are hit in the knees, but managed to escape. Nothing is heard of them for the rest of the year. 1934 begins with renewed hope for a downtrodden American public. Prohibition is over. President Franklin Roosevelt promises a new deal. Cole Porter proclaims in his Broadway show Anything Goes. And a small film about a poor guy who ends up with an ays catapults Clark Gable into superstardom.
When Bonnie and Clyde reappear in early 1934, the event is as spectacular as any in their career. Clyde decides that Bonnie and he can’t go it alone. He plans a breakout at Eastam Prison Farm to spring their former partner Ray Hamilton. He plants two guns in the brush near Hamilton’s work detail.
According to plan, Hamilton finds the guns and opens fire, killing one prison guard and wounding another. Four cons escape with Hamilton. Two of them, Henry Mithin and Joe Palmer, join Hamilton in a nearby car where Bonnie and Clyde are waiting. They become part of the infamous Barrow gang. The fact that one of those guards was killed probably made no difference to Barrow because the way Barl put it to full, he made it clear, let’s kill every damn one of these guards.
He hated those guards. That that was that one thing that Ralph said about prison, changing Clyde from a school boy to a rattlesnake. The road gets dimmer and dimmer. Sometimes you can hardly see, but it’s fight manto man and do all you can for they know they can never be free. >> Bonnie and Clyde’s sheer audacity in orchestrating the prison break seals their doom.
Outraged over the guard’s killing, director of Texas prisons Lee Simmons decides it’s time for the law to take serious action. With the governor’s permission, he creates a new job. Special investigator for the Texas prison system. His task, stop Bonnie and Clyde. No matter what it takes, no matter how it’s done.
The man who gets the job is former Texas Ranger Frank Hamr. Hamr vows that Bonnie and Clyde will be dead in a matter of weeks. Other lawmen have been tracking Bonnie and Clyde. But Hamr decides that following the gang is useless. Instead, Hamr looks at where Bonnie and Clyde have been to determine where they’re going.
Studying the pattern of their crimes, he sees that they generally move from Dallas north to Oklahoma in Kansas, down through Missouri into Louisiana, and then back to Dallas. He knows that success means intercepting them somewhere on the circuit. Hammer decides that the key is to lie and wait ahead of them.
But to do this, he needs to get someone within their circle to betray them. The Judas in their midst turns out to be the father of one of the cons. They broke out of prison, Henry Methin. Henry Methin fits well into the Barrow gang, making a name for himself by participating in the slayings of three policemen in the kidnapping of a fourth.
Along with Bonnie and Clyde, Methin joins the FBI’s list as one of the most wanted criminals in America. HR continues monitoring the gang’s movements, figuring from their pattern that they might be heading for the Methin residence in Louisiana. So Hamr approaches Methin’s father, offering his son immunity if he’ll help set up Bonnie and Clyde.
Unbeknownst to Henry Methin, his father agrees. When Bonnie and Clyde are spotted heading towards northern Louisiana, Frank Hamr realizes all the pieces are now in place. He enlists the aid of five other lawmen for the ambush. As luck has it, Henry accidentally gets separated from Bonnie and Clyde and tells his father his plans to meet up with them.
Methan’s father, in turn, tells Hamr that the outlaws plan to rendevous on a lonely stretch of Highway 80 between Arcadia and Gibsland. The posi decides to use Methin’s logging truck as a decoy. With the truck parked nearby, the posi hides in the bushes to wait. Unsuspecting of the impending danger, Bonnie and Clyde’s car slows to look for Methin.
As the pair’s infamous luck finally runs out, the lawmen set about their grim task. Perhaps if Clyde had not always been so sure of shooting his way out, it might have been handled differently. As it is, the lawmen never offer to let them surrender. It all happens so quickly that Bonnie and Clyde never even draw their weapons.
Well over a hundred bullets are fired at the notorious pair. >> For people who were great fans of Frank Hamr, this seemed like this wouldn’t be what this man would do. On the other hand, Hamr knew that everyone who ordered Bonnie and Clyde to halt got killed and so he was responsible for a six-man posi.
I feel like Hamr felt like I need to get these folks before they get some of us. Bonnie and Clyde both had stated several times that they would not be taken alive. >> Bonnie had always resigned herself to their inevitable fate. They don’t think they’re tough or desperate. They know the law always wins.
They’ve been shot at before, but they do not ignore that death is the wages of sin. >> The arsenal found in their car is truly staggering. Three Browning automatic rifles, two sawoff shotguns, four 45 caliber automatic pistols, a 45 Colt automatic, two 38 automatics, and thousands of rounds of ammunition. The display of firepower certainly backs up Bonnie and Clyde’s claims that they’d never surrender peacefully.
It is anything but a peaceful end. Clyde is 25, Bonnie is 24. The violence is over. Bonnie and Clyde draw as much attention in death as they did in life. They’re not buried together as Bonnie wished, but receive separate funerals in separate cemeteries. Extensive media coverage records the thousands of people who file past their open caskets to get a final glimpse of the desperadoo.
It was a pretty big deal. They stampeded. You couldn’t hardly get to the funeral yourself because of the people, the sightseers and things coming. And my brother had to stand at the door and try to keep some of them out when, you know, the funeral because they just uh stampeded it so bad. >> >> Someday they’ll go down together and they’ll bury them side by side.
To few it’ll be grief. To the law a relief. But it’s death for Bonnie and Clyde. Bonnie and Clyde made a significant impact on the American psyche. In Binville Parish, Louisiana, a stone marker was erected on the site of their execution. There is a haunted quality about this notorious pair, an indefinable something that keeps them in our consciousness.
Certainly, a big part of this was their fatalism. They were going down a road that could only end in violence. The public knew that they would come to a grizzly end and played the guessing game of where and when. Bonnie was determined to die with Clyde. A female criminal was unusual enough, but there was something sad about one who seemed to fearlessly embrace death.
But if she couldn’t live without Clyde, why not die with him? Such fatalism truly gives this tale a tragic Romeo and Juliet quality. Bonnie and Clyde remain an enigma. There are so many contradictions. She wrote poetry. He played the saxophone. Sometimes they killed, sometimes they let their victims go. They loved their families and risked their lives on several occasions just to see them for a few minutes.
But they didn’t hesitate to end the happiness of other families by killing their husbands, fathers, and sons. Perhaps ambiguity is the key to their allure. Even their final moments are punctuated by that ambiguity. They died in an embrace even as an act of violence tore them apart. As Shakespeare said, “These violent delights have violent ends.
” The story of Bonnie and Clyde is truly a love story, a passion bathed in violence that could only end the way it did. Heat. Heat.