Although Clyde looked up to Floyd as the best in the business, the feeling was not mutual. Floyd considered Bonnie and Clyde trigger-happy punks and not true professionals. He had told his family and the people in the Cookson Hills not to help them and to get word to the law if they stayed around more than a day or two.10 It is possible that Clyde and Floyd met later, but there is no evidence they ever worked together.11
Even if Floyd had wanted to help them, Clyde and Buck would have missed him on this trip. Floyd had, indeed, been in and around eastern Oklahoma in May and early June. He had even gone to church in Sallisaw with his mother on Mother’s Day. Floyd had last been seen about 100 miles west near the town of Cromwell, where he and Adam Richetti stole a car late on the evening of June 8.12 The Barrows missed him by a week. About the time Clyde and Buck went looking for him, Floyd and Richetti were in Bolivar, Missouri. On June 16, they kidnapped the county sheriff and drove to Kansas City. They released Sheriff Killingsworth late in the evening and disappeared, but they had stepped out of the frying pan and into the fire.13
As the Barrows turned in for the evening and Floyd and Richetti arrived in Kansas City, late on Friday, June 16, another group of people arrived at Fort Smith, Arkansas. The car that drove by the entrance to the Twin City Tourist Camp and on to the county jail contained two federal agents, an Oklahoma police chief, and an escaped bank robber. Federal Agents Joe Lackey and Frank Smith, and McAlester, Oklahoma, Police Chief Ott Reed, none of whom had any jurisdiction there, had literally snatched Frank “Jelly” Nash off the street in Hot Springs, Arkansas, earlier that day. Nash had a long history of bank robbery and was currently wanted for his October 19, 1930, escape from the federal prison at Leavenworth, Kansas. At Fort Smith, the lawmen transferred to the Missouri Pacific train, and they arrived in Kansas City at 7:00 A.M. Saturday morning. A few minutes later, Ott Reed, Frank Nash, a federal agent, and two Kansas City police officers were dead, and Pretty Boy Floyd was a prime suspect in what became known as the Union Station Massacre.14
While the shooting in Kansas City took over the headlines, the situation at the Twin City Tourist Camp was becoming grim. By Sunday the 18th, Bonnie’s condition was still very serious, and Clyde knew something had to be done. He decided to go to Dallas and bring back some help. Bonnie needed to see some of her family, and Clyde needed to do something. Whatever else he was, Clyde was a man of action, and being behind the wheel in a dash to Dallas—even though it was very dangerous—was probably more comfortable to him than sitting helpless at Bonnie’s bedside.
According to the Barrow family, Clyde left Fort Smith around noon and arrived in Dallas about 8:00 P.M. Both Clyde and Bonnie’s mothers wanted to go back with him immediately, but Clyde wouldn’t take them. Not only was he afraid the mothers were being watched by the law, but he knew how dangerous it was for them to be with him. He didn’t want to put either mother in the position of being arrested—or shot—on his account.15 Billie Jean Parker Mace, Bonnie’s younger sister, was the one Clyde had come for. She got back from a movie about 11:00 P.M., and the two of them left soon afterward.16 About midnight, on their way out of town, Clyde was spotted by Ted Hinton, a local deputy sheriff who knew Clyde. He chased them for a while, but Clyde disappeared into the night. The deputy was a little confused because the woman with Clyde didn’t look like Bonnie.17 (The next time Hinton and Clyde met, things would be very different.) Clyde and Billie Jean got back to Fort Smith a few hours later. This was about midmorning Monday the 19th.18 Maybe it was just coincidence, but two and a half days later, a small-town bank, thirteen miles away, was robbed.
In 1933, Alma, Arkansas, was a town of about 800 people and sat at the intersection of U.S. 64 running between Fort Smith and Little Rock, and U.S. 71 running north to Fayetteville. Henry D. Humphrey, a fifty-one-year-old farmer and handyman at the local high school, had been elected city marshal on May 1. The marshal’s job paid $15 a month, and its primary duty was as a night watchman. In this capacity, Humphrey chased a fellow down an alley about 1:50 A.M. on Thursday morning, June 22, only to find himself facing a man with a rifle. He had been suckered.
The man and his partner took Henry’s pistol and flashlight, bound him with baling wire, and went to the rear window of the Commercial Bank building on the west side of Alma’s main street.19 They spread the bars with an automobile jack, got in the window, and opened the front door from the inside. All Marshal Humphrey could do was lie on the floor and watch them work. An hour and fifteen minutes later, the two robbers winched a 4,000 pound safe containing $3,600 out the front door into a stolen truck parked in the middle of the main street, and they drove south out of town toward the small community of Kibler.20 Marshal Humphrey then freed himself and called the county sheriff.
Later that day, in the aftermath of the robbery, a salesman convinced the mayor and town council to order Marshal Humphrey a steel bullet-proof vest, saying that it could be delivered in about a week. While it’s doubtful he would have worn it in the sweltering heat of the summer, that question turned out to be academic. He would be dead before it arrived.21
By the time Clyde and Billie Jean returned to the tourist camp, Bonnie had begun to rally. Having her sister there helped her spirits, and it began to look as though she would recover. While Bonnie’s health was improving, however, the gang’s financial situation was becoming dire. Bonnie’s care and medicine, their rent, and their food all took cash, and they were down to their last few dollars. After some discussion, it was decided that Buck and W. D. Jones would try to raise some cash while Clyde stayed with the girls. Buck also wanted to find a Ford sedan to replace his roadster, if he could. They agreed to operate far enough away from the motel so that any police response would not endanger Clyde and the women.
Buck and W. D. left the Twin City Tourist Camp about noon on Friday the 23rd, and headed north toward Fayetteville.22 W. D. Jones was now a six-month veteran of robberies, car thefts, and gunfights, and Buck Barrow had been staging robberies for at least ten years. You would think that with so much experience, the simple task of sticking up a grocery store and getting away should have been easy. Instead, except for the very real bullets and blood, the next few hours could have been written for Laurel and Hardy.
Buck and W. D. began casing the stores in Fayetteville late in the afternoon. Far from behaving like professionals, they were so obvious that they attracted the attention of the owner of Bates Brothers Market, who took down their description and license number. About 5:30 P.M., Buck parked a block away, and W. D. walked across to Brown’s Grocery at 111 West Lafayette. When W. D. entered the store, Mrs. Robert L. Brown was behind the counter, and the only other person in the store was the bag boy, Ewell Trammell. W. D. produced a pistol and told them both to be quiet. He then went to the cash register, but he couldn’t open it. Mrs. Brown opened it for him but immediately put both hands back in her apron pockets. Jones got $20 out of the cash drawer and missed the two diamond rings on Mrs. Brown’s fingers. On the way out, he frisked the bag boy and got another thirty-five cents.
With Buck parked all of a block away, Jones then decided to steal the Model A delivery truck parked outside. Mrs. Brown said, “The keys are in it,” but neglected to add that the battery was dead. W. D. ran for the truck, knocking down seven-year-old Wanda Audit, who was just coming in. Jones finally had to start the truck by pushing it down the hill and popping the clutch. He drove a couple of blocks, to the bottom of the hill, across one block and then back up the hill, to where Buck waited in the Ford sedan. They were last seen driving south on U.S. 71.23
Building that housed Brown’s Grocery in Fayetteville, Arkansas, which was robbed by Buck Barrow or W. D. Jones, June 23, 1933.
—From the author’s collection
Thanks to Mr. Bates’ information plus Mrs. Brown’s call, the Fayetteville police had a good start. By 6:00 P.M., they were on the phone to communities along the getaway route, asking for help. One of the most obvious places to watch was Alma, since it was at the
intersection of the two major highways in the region. They reached Marshal Humphrey at the AHC Garage, run by his son Vernon, gave him the license number and description of the car, and asked him to watch the road for the two men. Fresh from his experience at the bank thirty-six hours before, this may have sounded like the same fellows. Who knows? Maybe the chance for a little payback crossed his mind.
A town the size of Alma was lucky to have a marshal. A deputy was out of the question. If Humphrey was going to have any help, it would probably have to come from his son, but Vernon couldn’t leave the service station unattended. He had a night mechanic, Weber Wilson, who was supposed to come in at 6:00 P.M., but he was late that day. Ansel M. “Red” Salyers offered to go instead. He worked for the Mississippi Valley Power Company but was also what we today would call a reserve deputy sheriff. About 6:20 P.M., Humphrey and Salyers left the AHC heading north up U.S. 71 in Salyers’ maroon Ford sedan.24 Humphrey had lost his service revolver to the bank robbers but had borrowed another .38 pistol from his brother-in-law. Salyers had a Winchester .30-30 he had taken from a customer in trade for his electric bill.25 About two and a half miles north of town, on U.S. 71, Salyers topped a hill and met a blue Chevrolet driven by the late-to-work mechanic, Weber Wilson. He and Humphrey waved and continued down the hill toward what was locally known as “Kaundart Curve,” named after the family who lived there. Before they got to the bottom, they met a black Ford sedan that was traveling very fast.26
The distance from the Brown Grocery Store in Fayetteville to the site north of Alma is just over fifty miles. Highway 71, from Fayetteville to Alma, was considered, until a few years ago, one of the ten most dangerous highways in America. In 1933, it was a two-lane blacktop road over some of the worst mountains in the Ozarks. Today, with an interstate highway, the trip takes at least forty minutes. Buck made it in about fifty minutes, averaging almost sixty miles per hour. It must have been quite a ride.
Even though the trip to Fayetteville had only netted $20, had alerted the police in two counties, and had failed to secure a replacement car for Buck’s roadster, the outlaws’ luck seemed to be improving. They had just passed, undetected, the only lawmen for several miles in any direction and were only twenty minutes or so from the tourist camp. Their good luck lasted a few seconds more—until Buck topped the hill and crashed into the rear end of Weber Wilson’s blue Chevy.
Salyers and Humphrey knew exactly what had happened. They didn’t know that the black Ford was the car they had come out to find—yet—but they knew it was going too fast. It was 102 degrees that day, so, with all the windows down, they heard the crash as well. At the bottom of the hill, they turned around and drove back to the site of the accident, which was about fifty yards past the crest of the hill, facing south.27 As they approached the rear of the wrecked Ford, Humphrey finally saw the license plate the Fayetteville police had called in (1933 Indiana 225-646) and told Salyers, who stopped, facing east, blocking the road behind the car.
At this point, several things happened more or less simultaneously. Buck and W. D. Jones began to recover from the shock of the crash and saw Wilson crawl out of his overturned car, pick up a large rock, and start toward them, furious at the men who had rear-ended him, and they saw the red car stop and block the road behind them. Of course, neither of them could afford to be questioned by the law or even delayed for long, so the response was automatic. They came out shooting.
Wilson was lucky. He saw the guns, dropped the rock, and, showing good sense, ran the other way. Humphrey had just come out the right door of Salyers’ car—the side nearest the wrecked Ford— when Buck opened the fight with a load of number-four buckshot from a sawed-off .12 gauge shotgun. It caught Humphrey full in the chest and blew him into the ditch by the side of the road.28 Salyers was somewhat shielded by the car body as he got out with his rifle. This probably saved him, because W. D. Jones came out firing a Browning automatic rifle (BAR).29 Salyers did what he could, but with his seven-shot deer rifle, he was severely overmatched.
Several shots were exchanged, and then Buck’s shotgun jammed and Jones stopped to load a fresh magazine in the automatic rifle. Salyers knew they would kill him if he stayed where he was, so he ran for a house about seventy-five yards away. Even though Salyers was motivated, long before he could make it to shelter, W. D. was firing again. Fortunately, he managed to hit everything but the deputy. Jones put rounds into the house, the barn, and even into a strawberry field several hundred yards away, but he missed the lawman. Salyers got behind the rock chimney and reloaded while Buck and W. D. ran to Salyers’ car—the only one left that would run.
As one of the men got in and started the car, the other one went to check on Marshal Humphrey, who was lying in the ditch beside the road. “I ought to kill you” the outlaw said.
“I think you already have,” Humphrey replied and watched as the man took his brother-in-law’s pistol—the second gun he had lost in two days—and ran to Salyers’ car. Just as they started to drive away, Salyers got in a couple more shots from the house. One of them knocked off the horn button and took off two of W. D. Jones’ fingertips. As they drove away, Buck and W. D. also fired at a passing motorist.30
When Buck and W. D. left the gunfight site, they were headed back the way they had come— north toward Fayetteville. This was to cause confusion for later authors, but not at the time. Deputy Salyers saw them drive off to the north, but only for a few hundred yards. At that point, he watched them turn west onto a small lane. About a mile later, they turned back south on Rudy Road, where they were seen by a local family named Farris, and a couple of miles later reached U.S. 64.31 At this point, they were about twelve miles from the motel.
Back at the gunfight site, Deputy Salyers went to a nearby phone and called the county sheriff’s office in Van Buren while others attended to Marshal Humphrey. B. C. Ames, the motorist who was fired on by the outlaws, stopped and volunteered to take Marshal Humphrey to the hospital. From Alma, he would take U.S. 64 west, just like the shooters, and would only be a few minutes behind them. At Van Buren, Humphrey was transferred to an ambulance and taken to Saint John’s Hospital in Fort Smith. Meanwhile, Salyers searched the wrecked Ford.32
About three miles east of Van Buren, Buck and W. D. decided, for some reason, to dump Salyers’ maroon Ford. At the intersection of U.S. 64 and what is now Shibley Road, they pulled across the highway and stopped the first car coming the other way, containing Mark Lofton and his wife. With much shouting and swearing, the Loftons were taken out of their car, robbed, and put into Salyers’ car. They both jumped out the other side and ran away. The whole thing was witnessed by Mrs. Jim Brewer from her store across the road.33
Buck and W. D. were now only five miles from the tourist camp, but they had to cross the Arkansas River, and the only way across, for at least twenty-five miles in any direction, was the bridge at Van Buren. Unfortunately for them, the bridge was now guarded.34 Buck couldn’t just run past the lawmen and risk pursuit, because Clyde and the women were only a mile away on the other side. Having no room to maneuver, Buck and W. D. turned north on Highway 59. This road climbs immediately to a bluff called Mt. Vista, overlooking the river. It was on Skyline Drive, a lane on top of this bluff, that the Loftons’ car— with a flat tire—was found a few hours later.35
The police didn’t know who the outlaws were, but they knew that they had driven toward Van Buren and stolen the Loftons’ car. When the car was discovered on Mt. Vista later in the evening, the lawmen were sure the men were on foot in that wooded area. Every man who could be rounded up was deputized and searched the area all night, from Mt. Vista west to the Oklahoma line near the town of Dora, but Buck and W. D. had vanished. In fact, they were probably back at the tourist camp before the Loftons’ car was even found. Unnoticed, they simply went back down the hill into downtown Van Buren and, just after dark, walked across the unguarded Frisco railroad trestle which ran alongside the guarded automobile bridge. They then walked another mile, to the rear
of the Twin City Tourist Camp, and slipped inside.36 It must have been almost 10:00 P.M. by the time Buck and W. D. got back and began to tell Clyde their story.
Buck’s day as leader of the gang’s operations had been a disaster. Instead of the cash they desperately needed, they got just $20. Instead of getting another sedan to replace Buck’s roadster, they wrecked the sedan they had and lost two other cars during their escape. Instead of keeping a low profile so Bonnie could continue to recuperate in peace, they had caused a car wreck, shot a police officer, and created a manhunt that would eventually include all the lawmen in three counties.
As much as he hated moving Bonnie, Clyde knew that staying where they were wasn’t an option. Having only the Ford roadster made matters worse. There was no way all six of them could fit into that car, so Clyde left Buck and W. D. at the tourist camp and took the women out first. This was done very quickly—Clyde was seen leaving with the women at 10:40 P.M.37 After a hair-raising trip into the eastern Oklahoma woods, Clyde left the women and went back for Buck and W. D.38
By first light on Saturday morning, June 24, the Barrows were gone, but none of this was known to the lawmen who had spent the night thrashing through the brush. By this time, Crawford County Sheriff Albert Maxey had returned from Joplin, Missouri, and taken over the search his deputies had organized. Since they had found nothing in the area north and west of Van Buren, Maxey began to shift the search area more to the east. Then came the incident that would confuse the issue of the Barrows’ escape and paint them, in the minds of many, as even more depraved than the killers they certainly were.
Bonnie and Clyde- A Twenty-First-Century Update Page 15
