Bonnie and Clyde- A Twenty-First-Century Update

by James R Knight

  On Thursday, May 11, 1933, two men were seen in a Ford V-8 sedan with Indiana plates, cruising the streets of Lucerne, Indiana, just north of Logansport.6 Later that evening, the two men broke into the Lucerne State Bank and were hiding on top of the vault when the first two employees came to work Friday morning. Everett Gregg and Lawson Selders arrived about 7:30 A.M. and began to prepare the bank for the day’s business. Some minutes later, Gregg went into the vault and left Selders alone out front. With the men now separated, one of the bandits yelled, “Put ’em up,” and threatened the bookkeeper with a pistol. Instead of freezing, Selders ran for the vault while the bandit fired at him but missed. Just about this time, Ed Frushour walked past the bank and, hearing the shot, looked in the front window. The robbers yelled at Frushour to come inside, but he turned and ran, and they fired four shots through the window, almost hitting a passing mail carrier. The bandits’ plans had fallen apart.

  Like many small-town banks, the vault at Lucerne contained firearms for just such an occasion, so by now, Cashier Gregg had a rifle trained on the entrance to the vault. The two bandits must have suspected this, because they made no attempt to enter, but, probably out of frustration, they did fire seven shots at the outside of the vault and nine more into the back wall and windows of the bank.

  As soon as the shooting started, two women drove a Ford V-8 sedan up to the rear door of the bank. They had been seen in town, waiting in the car, for the last hour, and now the two would-be bank robbers joined them and the group headed out of town, firing as they went. As the car rounded a corner, Ura Witters tried to wreck them by throwing a large chunk of wood into the street. The driver had to swerve through someone’s lawn to avoid the log but straightened out and left town, pursued by two civilians. The two men followed the bandits as far west as Winamac but then lost the trail. During this fiasco, about forty shots were fired, two women bystanders were slightly wounded, and two pigs were killed when the bandits drove through a herd of swine while making their getaway. No money was taken from the bank.7

  There were probably hundreds of bank robberies in the Midwest that hot summer of 1933, and there was no shortage of criminals, famous and unknown, to pin them on. The main thing about the Lucerne robbery that points to Clyde and Buck Barrow is the very unusual detail of the local man trying to stop them by throwing a log into the street. A year later, in Fugitives, Clyde’s sister Nell tells exactly the same story but combines it with details of the next robbery done by the brothers a week after Lucerne.8 It’s easy to understand how she could have gotten this confused, since the two robberies were almost carbon copies of each other.

  Sometime during the night of May 18, 1933, a car containing two men and two women stopped behind the First State Bank of Okabena, Minnesota. The two men got out and the women drove to the outskirts of town to wait. The men broke into the bank through a window and were waiting when R. M. Jones, the assistant cashier, arrived the next morning. Several other people came in during the robbery and were put on the floor. The two men took a little over $1,400 and left through the rear door, where the women were waiting. One of the men in the bank had managed to trip the alarm, so the owner of the adjoining hardware store was alerted and was able to get off three shots at the robbers as they ran to the car. One of the men fired back with what was described as a machine gun. The local paper provided details of a getaway down the main street, with the desperadoes spraying bullets in all directions. It also stated that there were two women in the getaway car and that one of them was firing as they left town.9

  Fugitives, Cumie Barrow, and several other sources all say that Clyde and Buck did the Okabena job. Clyde’s mother even gives the take—$1,600, with $700 of that in silver dollars, close to the newspaper’s figure.10 However, two brothers, Floyd and Anthony Strain, and Anthony’s common-law wife, Mildred, were arrested and convicted of the Okabena robbery. All three protested their innocence, and in view of the evidence, they were probably right.11

  After the Okabena robbery, the four current members of “the Barrow gang” drove south to Texas and contacted their families to arrange a meeting. In the account in Fugitives, Clyde’s sister Nell is the narrator and describes a meeting near Commerce, Texas, three days after Mother’s Day, which would put it on May 17, 1933.12 Given the details of the Okabena job, that date can’t be correct. Most likely, the family meeting took place May 22 or later, and details of both the Lucerne and Okabena robberies were combined into the story by the Fugitives author. At this meeting, Bonnie and Clyde told the family their version of all the things that had happened since Buck got out of prison. Even given the problems with Fortune’s account in many places, it is interesting reading.13

  The four fugitives left the family meeting together, and there are stories of them traveling as far as Florida. Whatever the truth, by the first of June they had separated again, with Bonnie and Clyde returning to the Dallas area and Buck and Blanche probably going to southeastern Oklahoma, where Blanche’s father lived. Before they parted, they agreed on a rendevous at a place in western Oklahoma the second weekend in June.

  The sun had set on the Texas Panhandle the evening of June 10, 1933, and the breeze coming in the window of Clyde Barrow’s stolen 1933 Ford V-8 coupe was beginning to cool down a little. Just as Clyde was becoming a hunted man, Ford had introduced a new sixty-five-horsepower V-8 engine for its 1932 models. The two-door coupe was sportier and had enough room for him and Bonnie. If there were more people traveling with him, the four-door sedan was the better choice, but with the steel body and the V-8 engine that would push them up to seventy-five miles an hour, either model was equal to the best he was likely to be up against from the other side of the law. Bonnie was Clyde’s love, but his car was his life—even before his guns. By now Clyde was carrying a small arsenal with him at all times, but he knew one thing: He might shoot some of them, but if he couldn’t run, he was dead—as simple as that.

  Clyde’s love of fast cars might have begun as teenage “macho,” as it does with a lot of guys, but now it was all business. In Clyde’s world of 1933 law enforcement, a fast car and driving skills could make all the difference. The places he operated and his choice of hideouts show that Clyde was acutely aware of jurisdictional lines. If he had to jump and run, he was almost always just a short distance from a county or state line, and with few radio cars to coordinate the pursuit between authorities, this gave Clyde precious minutes of extra time. Unfortunately for the law, Clyde Barrow with a few minutes’ head start almost anywhere in the Southwest or Midwest was as good as gone. He had practically unlimited confidence in his ability to outdrive them all—and with good reason. In twenty-five months on the run, involving escapes from at least fifteen shootings or gunfights, five kidnappings, and uncounted numbers of robberies, he was never run down by police pursuit.

  The outlaw couple had left Dallas the day before, spending the night of June 9 in a tourist court near Vernon, Texas. W. D. Jones, whom they hadn’t seen in over a month, had contacted them just before they left Dallas and wanted to go back on the road with them. Jones had a case of hero worship where Clyde Barrow was concerned. He was reasonably dependable, had no qualms about shooting at the least provocation,1 and didn’t mind doing the dirty, greasy work on the cars that Clyde avoided. He was almost the perfect sidekick. According to Clyde’s mother, everybody—including Clyde—told him to stay home and try to go straight, believing that nobody knew about his involvement with them during four murders.2 Regardless, he was still determined to go. As Clyde drove north out of Wellington, Texas, Jones was asleep in the coupe’s back seat.

  Clyde had been out of prison for sixteen months and was a wanted man for thirteen of those. Except for her two months in the Kaufman jail, Bonnie had been with him for most of that time. Because of Clyde’s criminal activities, at least six people had already died, but so far, neither Clyde nor Bonnie nor any of their family had been seriously hurt. That was about to change.

  About seven miles north of Well
ington, where the highway crosses the Salt Fork of the Red River, there was an area of construction involving a new road branching off the main Wellington-Shamrock highway. Clyde missed the signs and drove straight off a twelve-foot drop into a ravine.3 The coupe rolled over a couple of times, and Clyde was thrown clear. As he ran back to the car, the now wideawake W. D. Jones was freeing himself, but Bonnie was pinned in the right front seat. To make matters even worse, sulfuric acid began to leak from the battery onto Bonnie’s right leg. It quickly turned into a nightmare—Clyde frantic to get Bonnie out of the car, and Bonnie screaming at them to do something or shoot her so she wouldn’t burn.4

  Sam Pritchard and his son-inlaw Alonzo Cartwright saved them, and according to a recent interview with Gladys Pritchard Cartwright, the Pritchards’ daughter and an eyewitness, here’s what happened:

  Gladys and Alonzo Cartwright were visiting Gladys’ parents, whose house overlooked the accident site, and when Clyde crashed, the two men ran to help. Along with Clyde and Jones, they were able to free Bonnie, but not before the battery acid had covered most of her right leg. Bonnie was carried to the Pritchard house, where Gladys and her mother immediately saw that she was badly burned. All they could do was apply wet baking soda (which mercifully neutralized some of the acid) and Cloverine Salve, a standard country home remedy. The worst burns covered her right knee and were easily second-degree in severity. Mrs. Pritchard wanted to call a doctor right away, but both Clyde and Bonnie refused.

  Bonnie and Clyde—late March 1933. The car is a 1932 Ford B-400 stolen in mid-March in Marshall, Texas. The picture is one of a group found in the Joplin, Missouri, apartment after the April 13, 1933, shootout.

  —Courtesy Sandy Jones–The John Dillinger Historical Society

  While the ladies tended Bonnie, Clyde went back to the car to salvage their weapons. The guns Clyde was carrying plus their suspicious behavior convinced Alonzo that these were dangerous people, so, in the confusion, he went to his father-in-law’s car, pushed it quietly down the driveway, and went for the law. Before long, though, Alonzo was missed, and Clyde correctly guessed where he had gone. At that point, the relations between the Pritchards and the outlaws became a little strained. On the other hand, Alonzo’s escape served as a warning. So when Sheriff George Corry and Wellington City Marshal Paul Hardy arrived a few minutes later, Clyde was ready.

  Mug shot of Marvin Ivan “Buck” Barrow, Dallas, circa 1930.

  —From the collections of the Texas/Dallas History and Archives Division, Dallas Public Library

  Due to the placement of the Pritchard house, when the two officers drove up, they went in the back door and then proceeded through the front of the house. Bonnie had gotten out of bed and limped to the front yard with Clyde and Jones where the three of them disarmed the two lawmen as soon as they stepped out the front door. W. D. Jones then walked around the house to make sure the two officers had come alone, but saw movement in the kitchen. He fired a shotgun blast through the window at what he thought was another policeman, but hit Gladys Cartwright, who had gone back inside and was trying to lock the back door. She was hit in the right hand by six pellets, and her fourmonth-old son, on her hip, was cut by flying metal.5

  Things were getting out of hand, and Clyde decided, in spite of Bonnie’s injury, that it was time to go. They were supposed to meet Buck and Blanche in Oklahoma in a few hours anyway. The lawmen were handcuffed together, put in the back seat of their own police car, and Bonnie lay across their laps. Just before they drove off into the night, W. D. Jones took a .45 automatic and shot out the tires on the Cartwrights’ car. Seventy years later, Gladys still keeps some of those recovered .45 slugs as souvenirs.

  Mug shot of Blanche Caldwell Barrow, Missouri State Prison, fall 1933.

  —From the collections of the Texas/Dallas History and Archives Division, Dallas Public Library

  The two outlaws, two lawmen, and one small, burned woman left the Pritchard house about 11:30 P.M. Around 3:00 A.M., they arrived at one end of a bridge near Erick, Oklahoma. Clyde stopped and honked the horn, and was answered by a honk from the other side. Soon Buck Barrow joined them. Clyde explained what had happened, took the policemen out of the car, and sent Jones and Bonnie across in the police car to meet Blanche on the other side. Buck looked at the two policemen and said, “What will we do with them? Kill them?”

  “No,” Clyde said. “I’m used to them now. I kinda like them.”

  The officers were tied to a tree with barbed wire. The Barrows then disappeared. It took Corry and Hardy about thirty minutes to free themselves, find a farmer’s house, and call officers at nearby Sayre, Oklahoma. The Barrows’ trail led toward Pampa in the Texas Panhandle but was lost when they hit the main road. They must have stolen another car soon after they left Erick, because Corry’s Chevy was found a short distance away, and Buck’s Ford convertible coupe couldn’t carry all five of them any distance—especially with Bonnie burned so badly.6

  By daylight on Sunday, June 11, the Barrows had disappeared into the Texas-Oklahoma Panhandle area. For the next three days, they hid out and worked their way north into Kansas. By then, Bonnie was in a bad way. She had gone untreated for more than three days with at least seconddegree burns over much of her right leg. She simply couldn’t survive much longer in the back seat of a car. They had to find a place for her to recover. On Wednesday the 14th, Clyde stole a Ford V-8 sedan in Hutchinson, Kansas, and the group drove through the evening toward Arkansas.7

  In the early hours of Thursday morning, June 15, 1933, two carloads of worn-out people pulled into a tourist camp at the corner of North Eleventh Street1 and Waldron Road, located on the northern edge of Fort Smith, Arkansas. It was about a mile from the county line and the bridge over the Arkansas River that led into Van Buren. From there, Crawford County stretched north into a part of the Ozarks called the Boston Mountains, some of the wildest country between the Mississippi and the Rockies. The Twin Cities Tourist Camp (later called the Dennis Motel) was a fairly modern establishment, as these places went. The cabins were almost new, and they featured indoor plumbing, showers, mattresses on the beds, hot plates, and enclosed garages for the cars. The Barrows rented two cabins, for $1 a day each.2

  Clyde’s first priority was treatment for Bonnie. As a cover story, he told Mr. and Mrs. Sid Dennis, the owners, that his “wife” had been burned when a camp stove exploded, and Dr. Walter Eberle was called to see her.3 His opinion was that she should be in a hospital, but, of course, Clyde couldn’t allow that. If she couldn’t go to the hospital, the doctor said, at least they should have a nurse come every day to check on her and change the dressings. Even this was a risk, but Clyde knew that Bonnie’s life was at stake, so the arrangements were made. Fortunately, the Dennises’ daughter, Hazel, had worked in a hospital and had some experience with burn victims. She helped out where she could and took Bonnie ice cream and lemonade to help her cope with the 100-degree heat that was plaguing the area.4

  As the Barrows settled in to wait, Blanche was almost certainly the primary caregiver for Bonnie. No doubt Clyde was very worried about her condition, but the statement by the family that “He never left her bedside, day or night, for a week”5 is not true. Mrs. Dennis said that Clyde would “come out every morning, all dressed up, and drive into town. All of them acted real nice and were very clean.”6 This is confirmed by several townspeople who later recalled Clyde shopping at a drugstore and buying groceries.

  According to Clyde’s mother, it was during this time that he and Buck tried to make contact with the Floyd family near Sallisaw, Oklahoma, only about twenty-five miles away.7 The Barrows were now well known to law enforcement agencies in the Southwest, and since Joplin, they were becoming known in Missouri and the Midwest, but they hadn’t quite become household names to the general public. By the end of the summer, that would change, but at the time, the undisputed champion of Southwest outlaws was still Charles Arthur Floyd.

  Born in Bartow County, Georgia, on February 3, 1904,
young Charlie moved with his family to Sequoyah County, Oklahoma, when he was seven years old. He grew up around Akin, just north of Sallisaw, a well-liked, fun-loving—if wild—young man. In 1925, Charley went to St. Louis with a fellow he met during the wheat harvest, leaving his wife, Ruby, and their infant son, Dempsey, in Oklahoma. Once in Missouri, the two men began robbing grocery stores. On September 11, Floyd and two other men hit the Kroger headquarters payroll in St. Louis, and got over $11,000. Two days later, Charley returned to Sallisaw with a roll of cash and a brand new Studebaker.

  Floyd’s new wealth didn’t go unnoticed, and within days he was picked up by Oklahoma authorities. The police description from St. Louis labeled the fellow who carried the gun in the Kroger robbery as “a pretty boy with apple cheeks,” which fit Charley to a T, and his famous nickname was born. “Pretty Boy” was a rather unfortunate title to take with you to prison, but that was where Charley was going. On December 18, 1925, he entered the Missouri State Penitentiary at Jefferson City, sentenced to five years. “Pretty Boy” actually did three years and three months, being released March 7, 1929.8 From then on, there is no evidence that he was ever on the right side of the law.

  By the time Clyde and Buck went looking for him in June 1933, Floyd had been out of prison and operating for four years. He was the scourge of small-town banks in Oklahoma and the Ozarks, and his name appeared almost daily in newspapers connected with the latest robbery, car theft, or abduction. In spite of this, he came and went in the area around Sallisaw and the Cookson Hills of eastern Oklahoma with relative ease, so Clyde’s idea of making contact with Floyd’s family—and possibly even meeting Floyd himself—was reasonable. Clyde is said to have met with Floyd’s brother E. W. and set up a way for Charley to contact him,9 but what he really wanted was for the Floyd family to help him find a better place to stay than some tourist camp while Bonnie recovered. In this, he was disappointed.