Bonnie and Clyde- A Twenty-First-Century Update

by James R Knight

  About 11:00 A.M., a call came in to the Crawford County Sheriff’s Office from Winslow, a small community about twenty-seven miles, as the crow flies, northeast of Van Buren. Twenty-sixyear-old Clara Rogers was in her kitchen making grape jelly when two men came in and demanded the keys to her car. When she refused, they beat her with a chain, stabbed her in the hip, and sexually assaulted her. Even so, through Mrs. Rogers’ efforts or by an accident on the part of the thieves, the car was disabled and the two men fled on foot.39 Since the lawmen had just spent all night looking for two men on foot who badly needed a car (and had no idea that these two men were now resting in the woods of eastern Oklahoma), this seemed to explain where they had gone. All search efforts were immediately shifted to the area around Winslow, with Washington County officers now being added to the posse as well.

  The assault on Mrs. Rogers fit so well into the scheme of things that nobody seems to have asked how two men on foot could have moved—in the dark—more than twenty-five miles through some of the worst mountain terrain in the central United States in just over twelve hours. When it was discovered on Saturday night that the rest of the gang had been staying in the Twin City Tourist Camp, less than two miles from the fugitives’ last known position, and in the opposite direction, this should have raised some questions also. Without the assault on Mrs. Rogers as a lead, however, there was no place else to go, so the posse continued searching the area around Winslow for four more days, and the Barrows would add rape to the list of crimes for which they were wanted. Somebody certainly assaulted Clara Rogers in her home that Saturday morning, but it was almost as certainly not the Barrows.

  On Monday the 26th, Sheriff Maxey made a statement that summed up the opinion of many of the lawmen who had been involved in pursuing the Barrows since the Joplin killings in April. He described the brothers as killers and said they were “far worse than Pretty Boy Floyd because they go crazy and don’t use their heads.”40 While they certainly weren’t crazy, Maxey’s comment about lack of headwork during Buck and W. D. Jones’ adventure couldn’t be denied.

  While the Crawford and Washington county officers searched the mountains, Sebastian County Sheriff John Williams was doing the detective work. He had discovered that a group of people, with a badly burned woman, had been staying at the Twin City Tourist Camp for the past several days. By Saturday night, he had been in touch with Sheriff Corey in Wellington, Texas, and strongly suspected the Barrows. By Sunday evening, he had pictures. The gunfight witnesses—including the rapidly failing Marshal Humphrey—recognized Buck, but opinion about Clyde’s presence was divided. He was identified by several merchants and the people at the tourist camp, however. W. D. Jones was still unidentified. On Monday morning, June 26, Henry Humphrey died at Saint John’s Hospital. He was the fifth lawman killed by the Barrows.

  While lawmen from three counties searched for them in Arkansas, the Barrows were in Oklahoma trying to solve several problems of their own. In order to keep the group together, they had to have another car. Bonnie needed continuing care and medicine. Also, since Clyde had decided it was too dangerous for her to stay, they had to find some way to get Billie home. The answer to all these concerns came together in the town of Enid. On Monday, June 26, Clyde followed the vehicle of Dr. Julian Fields to a parking lot near a hospital. Dr. Fields left his bag in the back seat and went inside, but when he came back, Clyde had taken the car.41 Later that evening, they put Billie on the Dallas Interurban train at Sherman, Texas, and drove back north.42 Doctor Fields’ car was found outside Enid the next day, but the medical bag was missing.43

  Alma, Arkansas, town marshal Henry D. Humphrey and family. This picture was taken about 1913, twenty years before Humphrey was shot and killed by Marvin I. “Buck” Barrow. Pictured with Humphrey are, left to right, his son Vernon, daughter Viola, wife Alice, and youngest daughter Velma.

  —From the author’s collection. Picture provided to the author

  by Bonnie Cook, Fort Smith, Arkansas

  Back in northwest Arkansas, the search was winding down, but there was still one more “Keystone Cops” episode left. On Tuesday afternoon, June 27, a funeral home in Fort Smith received a strange request for an ambulance. The man refused to identify himself but asked that it be sent to a point about twelve miles north of Van Buren. “We’ll flag you down on the highway. We’ve got plenty of money to pay you,” he said. The call was immediately reported to Sheriff John B. Williams.

  When the ambulance left for the meeting, it contained four armed deputies and was preceded and followed by more in unmarked cars. By the time it got through Van Buren, it had picked up another carload of Crawford County officers. This heavily armed convoy drove north on Highway 59 as far as Natural Dam, seeing only a few campers, and then turned back. Meanwhile, a merchant and his helper left Van Buren, driving north for Siloam Springs with a load of overalls. As luck would have it, they were hauling them in a black ambulance.

  The overalls ambulance, heading north, and the decoy ambulance, heading south, met just north of Van Buren. As the black ambulance shot by them at high speed, the lawmen jumped to the obvious conclusion, wheeled around, and gave chase. The merchant, seeing the unmarked cars full of armed men behind him, decided that he and his overalls were in danger of being hijacked, so he put his foot down and ran for all he was worth. The chase lasted for ten miles before the merchant was finally forced to stop. After some tense moments, identities were checked and everything was cleared up, but given the level of adrenaline and suspicion, and the presence of several newly acquired automatic weapons, the wonder is that nobody was killed.44

  Wanted poster issued by Crawford County (Arkansas) Sheriff Albert Maxey following the killing of Henry D. Humphrey, town marshal, Alma, Arkansas. Late June 1933.

  —From the author’s collection

  On Wednesday, June 28, after a funeral that overflowed the First Baptist Church at Alma, Marshal Humphrey was laid to rest. The manhunt had been called off, and everybody was becoming resigned to the fact that the Barrow gang had escaped again. In fact, by now they were several hundred miles away. After a couple of nights in the Oklahoma woods and the trip to Sherman, Texas, to put Billie on the train, the gang had driven north and settled into another tourist camp, in Great Bend, Kansas.45 It would be just over two weeks before they surfaced again, but when they did, it would make the little shootout at Alma look like a church social.

  During the episode in northwest Arkansas, the Barrows had managed to stay one step ahead of the law. By the time the manhunt started, they were already on the move. They spent a few uncomfortable nights in the woods but were never in any serious danger. They managed to get Billie safely back home and now had settled down in a motel in Kansas.

  The plan was essentially the same: lie low and let Bonnie heal while financing themselves with small hit-and-run robberies staged far enough away to avoid police pressure in the area around Great Bend. As it turned out, the plan worked much better in Kansas than it did in Arkansas. Once they were set up in Great Bend and got a few dollars ahead, Clyde was ready to address one last problem left over from the Arkansas disaster. During the wreck, shooting, and escape, they had lost much of their firepower. Most of their guns and ammunition were either lost or abandoned.

  On Friday evening, July 7, Clyde and Buck entered the campus of Phillips University in Enid, Oklahoma, and pulled up to the rear entrance of the Headquarters Battery, First Battalion, 189th Field Artillery. They removed a pane of glass and got into the building, which contained the unit’s armory. To Clyde Barrow, who lived by his firearms, it must have seemed like Christmas in July. Officials later admitted to the loss of thirty-five Colt .45 automatic pistols, eighty magazines, and several pairs of field glasses.1 What the authorities did not admit was that they had also lost several Browning automatic rifles and a large quantity of ammunition.2 Clyde cut down the barrel of one of the BARs and cut the stock back as much as he could. His hope was to make a compact automatic rifle he could use in tight
places—like the front seat of a Ford V-8.3 W. D. Jones said he also had an extended magazine made that would hold almost three times the normal amount of ammunition. The cut-down rifle, which Clyde called his “scatter gun,” was later recovered by police, but the extended magazine was not, and some researchers doubt that it really existed.4

  Two weeks of relative peace and quiet allowed Bonnie to recover enough to travel, even though she still had to be carried to the car. Damaged ligaments had caused her burned leg to draw up so that it was impossible for her to walk normally. As always, too long in one place made Clyde nervous, so by July 10, they left Great Bend and moved to north central Iowa.5

  On July 11, some citizen of Storm Lake, Iowa, lost a set of license plates (1933 Iowa 11-2399). About July 17, a Mr. Shaffer of Spencer, Iowa, lost a 1929 Chevrolet sedan. Just before 11:00 A.M. the next day, Mr. Shaffer’s Chevrolet, now wearing the Storm Lake plates and driven by Buck Barrow, rolled into the Continental Oil service station at Twelfth Street and Second Avenue in Fort Dodge, Iowa. Harold Anderson, the attendant, watched as one of the three men in the car jumped out and pulled a gun on him. Anderson empted his pockets and the safe, and was then “invited” to get in the car. He reported that the men didn’t say much— just that they had a couple more stops to make.

  Next stop was the Standard Oil station at Fifteenth Street and Eighth Avenue, where Harry Stark saw a gun and heard the words, “No monkey business or I’ll kill you.” After giving up all his money, Stark joined Anderson in the back seat. As they pulled out, Stark kicked a back door open but only managed to get it smashed by some metal shelves as they went by. One of the gang pulled him back in, and they drove a block north to Leon Chevalier’s Texaco station. Leon and his brother Justin were standing in the driveway when the gunmen arrived, and, for the third time in ten minutes, the Barrow brothers gathered up what petty cash they could. Three was pushing even Clyde Barrow’s luck, so they took the keys to Justin Chevalier’s car—just in case he decided to follow—let out their two hostages, and said goodbye. As they drove off, Justin asked if they wouldn’t mind throwing his keys out after a few blocks, to save him the trouble of having a new set made. To his amazement, they did just that. The Chevy was found later that day on a side road a few miles north of Fort Dodge.6 By evening, the gang had driven 250 miles south and were at a service station about six miles south of Platte City, Missouri, at the intersection of Highways 71 and 59.7

  Delbert Crabtree was working at the service station when Clyde pulled in and stopped past the gas pumps. Clyde told Crabtree that he had his wife and mother-in-law with him and wanted to see the two cabins across the street.8 Crabtree told him the cabins belonged to the Red Crown Tavern, a restaurant with a ballroom next door to the cabins. Neal Houser, the manager, checked them in as Blanche paid in advance with small change. There was something not quite right about the group, so Houser and his nephew, William Searles, kept an eye on them. Others noticed them too. Kermit Crawford and his sister operated the filling station where Clyde first stopped. It was called Slim’s Castle and included a small grocery store. From there, Crawford could look directly across the street at the two cabins connected by a garage, and he watched the people going back and forth between the two rooms. Crawford never dreamed that they were killers. He had never even heard of the Barrow gang. He actually thought they were school kids shacking up for the weekend.9

  The next day, when Buck, Blanche, and W. D. Jones ate lunch at the Red Crown Tavern, their waitress was Kermit Crawford’s fiancee, Mildred Anderson. She thought they were nice, quiet folks. In later years, Blanche remembered having lunch at the Red Crown. She also remembered that, as they paid their bill—again with small change—she and Buck noticed Sheriff Holt Coffee watching them.

  Later, Blanche went into Platte City to buy medical supplies for Bonnie. Alerts on the Barrows and on any unknown persons buying medical supplies had been issued by several states, dating all the way back to the shooting in Joplin in April, so the druggist immediately called Sheriff Coffee.10 The people at the Red Crown had already come to Coffee with their doubts about the people in the cabins, and now, with the druggist’s call, Sheriff Coffee went to work. Before long, he was sure he was dealing with the Barrows, or someone like them. Most of the general public around Platte City had never heard of them. Before the night was over, that would change.

  Once Sheriff Coffee was convinced of the seriousness of the situation, he called in Captain William Baxter of the Missouri Highway Patrol. Baxter, in turn, called in some extra men from Kansas City and an armored car. The men began arriving at the Red Crown early that evening, but they planned to wait until after closing to make their move.

  Everything was quiet in the cabins until about 10:30. Then a young man came out, walked over to Slim’s Castle, and ordered five sandwiches and five sodas. Kermit Crawford waited on him but noticed that he seemed nervous and kept looking toward the Red Crown. Slim’s Castle and the tavern closed at 11:00, but Crawford, his sister, and his fiancée, Miss Anderson, stayed around, knowing something was about to happen. Several people were also watching from the Red Crown.11

  Bonnie and Clyde had been on the run for fifteen months and had been in several gunfights and other tight places, but this was different. The other shooting scrapes had been spur-of-the-moment affairs that caught the police surprised and outgunned. The worst that had happened to any of them was a few flesh wounds. Now, for the first time, the law was ahead of them. The police suspected who they were, had time to make a plan, and had them trapped and outnumbered by at least five to one. It should have been the end of the line for the Barrow gang. The police thought they were ready for anything, but they were about to get a lesson in firepower.

  About 11:30 P.M., Sheriff Coffee and his men moved in. They drove the armored car up so that it blocked both garage doors and parked a truck in front of the Red Crown to block access to Highway 71. Sheriff Coffee—either very brave or very foolish—took a steel shield, walked up to the righthand cabin, and knocked on the door. This happened to be Buck and Blanche’s room. Bonnie, Clyde, and W. D. Jones were across the garage.

  According to Blanche Barrow, when Sheriff Coffee knocked, she was washing out some of Bonnie’s clothes. When she asked who it was, Coffee said, “I need to talk to the boys.” Blanche was enough of a veteran by now to know exactly what was happening. Even though she was surprised and scared, she played for time and also gave the predetermined signal for the law loudly enough to be heard in the other cabin: “Just a minute. Let us get dressed.”

  Coffee seemed to relax a little, not knowing that inside the cabins there was a flurry of activity. In the left-hand cabin, Clyde told W. D. Jones to go start the car and grabbed his “scatter gun” BAR. As Coffee waited on Blanche’s doorstep, his back was almost turned to Clyde, so when Barrow raised his BAR and fired a burst from the other cabin, Coffee never saw it coming. It blew out the glass in the inside door and the garage door. Coffee was hit in the neck, his shield went flying, and he staggered back toward the Red Crown.12 At this point, in the words of Kermit Crawford, who was watching from his driveway across the street, “All hell broke loose.”13

  The police were surprised but quickly recovered. As Coffee retreated, they opened fire and began raking both cabins. Clyde, thinking he might be surrounded, began firing blindly out every window—just in case. Next, he looked out the front again and took on the armored car. This wasn’t a real military-type armored car, but just a regular automobile with some reinforcement. Whatever the police considered to be “armor” on this car meant nothing to Clyde’s BAR. A burst of 30-06 full-metal-jacket military rounds went completely through the car, wounding the driver, George Highfill, in both knees. It also hit the horn button, causing it to sound, and hit one of the headlights so that it now shone straight up. That was enough for Highfill, who backed the car out of the way toward the Red Crown.14

  Clyde may have won the first skirmish, but the war wasn’t over. By now, the gunfight was in f
ull swing. Across the street, Crawford and the two ladies retreated inside Slim’s Castle after several bullets went whistling by their ears, the lawmen were firing from several directions, and Buck had opened up with another BAR from the right-hand cabin. One source said that Buck actually fired more than either Clyde or W. D.15 During all this, Bonnie was trying to get to the car, parked in the garage attached to the left cabin, while W. D. Jones was starting it and firing as well. Bonnie and Clyde’s cabin was connected to the garage with the car, but Buck and Blanche’s cabin was not. They had to come out their front door and run for it.16

  Just as Clyde was opening the garage door, Buck and Blanche made their break. Buck was firing a BAR to cover them, but before he got to the car, he was hit. Just in front of the garage, a .45 slug caught him in the left temple, fracturing his skull and exiting from his forehead. He went over backward, his BAR continuing to fire into the air. Blanche began screaming and trying to get Buck to his feet. Buck was not killed outright, nor even completely unconscious, but he couldn’t get up. Clyde got the door open, and he and Blanche managed to drag Buck inside the car. As they came out of the garage, a bullet shattered one of the windows, and slivers of glass went into Blanche’s eyes, but then the shooting stopped. Clyde came out of the driveway, finding just enough room to slide by the parked truck. They hit the highway and disappeared into the night. One of the state troopers wanted to chase him, but nobody else would go.17

  After the Barrows escaped, everybody went to the cabins to see what was left behind. There were several articles of clothing, empty soda bottles and the remains of sandwiches, and quite a few weapons. Henry Humphrey’s brother-in-law’s .38 revolver, taken from him at Alma, was found along with the medical bag stolen from Dr. Fields’ car at Enid, Oklahoma.18

  For the first time, the police had the initiative, knew who they were dealing with, and had time to develop a plan of attack. In spite of all this, the Barrows escaped again. A myth of invincibility was beginning to form around them, but they knew better. This time, they got away, but not unhurt. Buck had a hideous head wound that would eventually kill him, and the glass in Blanche’s eyes would later cost her part of her sight. Out of necessity, Clyde had become a pretty fair amateur doctor when dealing with cuts and bruises and flesh wounds, but this was completely out of his league. In the end, it made no difference. Both brothers were now convinced they would get a quick trip to the electric chair if caught, so going to a hospital only postponed the inevitable. In spite of Blanche’s pleadings, Buck, in his conscious moments, agreed with Clyde. There was nothing to do but keep driving.19