Bonnie and Clyde- A Twenty-First-Century Update

by James R Knight

  Bonnie and Clyde had been out of town and drove in from Oklahoma. They spent most of the day visiting, because it was a special occasion— Cumie Barrow’s fifty-ninth birthday. The only thing wrong with the birthday party was that Clyde didn’t have a present for his mother. Cumie, whose best present was waking up in the morning to find that Clyde was still alive, didn’t care about that, but Clyde insisted that he would bring one the next day. For some reason—maybe out of convenience, or maybe due to carelessness—he decided they could meet at the same place the next evening. Clyde had several favorite meeting places, but he never used the same one twice in a row. Tomorrow he would, and would live to regret it.9

  Sometime after 6:00 P.M. the next evening, November 22, a car drove by the Stovall farm from the east. It slowed down and finally turned around and parked, facing back toward Dallas. The car was driven by Joe Bill Francis and contained the same people who had been there the day before, Joe Bill’s soon-to-be-wife, Marie Barrow, L. C. Barrow, Cumie Barrow, Emma Parker, and Billie Jean Mace. About 6:45, a black Ford V-8 coupe approached from the north on Esters Road and stopped at the intersection. Clyde later told his family that he asked Bonnie, “How do you feel about it, honey? It seems phony tonight.”10 It didn’t feel right, but he could see Joe Bill’s car just down the road, so he decided to chance it.

  As he approached the parked car, the bad feeling increased. Clyde caught a glimpse of something out of place and decided to keep going.11 Just as he passed his family’s car and shifted to second gear, four lawmen opened fire from a ditch about twentyfive yards away. Everybody in the parked car hit the floor—they were almost in the line of fire—and Clyde floored the gas pedal, even as glass shattered around him and pieces of the steering wheel came off in his hand. Dallas County Sheriff Smoot Schmid and deputies Ted Hinton, Ed Caster, and Bob Alcorn had been waiting for an hour or so for Bonnie and Clyde to come by. Schmid and Hinton had .45 caliber Thompson submachine guns, and Caster had a .351 rifle—all of which did nothing against the steel Ford body except break glass and make a great deal of noise. In fact, Sheriff Schmid, in all the excitement, jammed his Thompson and didn’t even get a shot off.12 The only one who did any good was Bob Alcorn. He had decided to match Clyde’s firepower and had acquired a .30 caliber Browning automatic rifle. It shot completely through the car, and one round wounded both Bonnie and Clyde in the legs.13

  As soon as he could, Joe Bill started his car and drove away from the firefight. Everybody else was on the floor except fifteen-year-old Marie. She just had to watch out the back window to see what happened. In a few seconds, she triumphantly announced to her mother that Clyde had made it over the hill and escaped.14 In Clyde’s Ford V-8 coupe, there were a few seconds of noise and flying glass as the car shook from the impact of bullets, windows broke, and a tire blew out, but Clyde was already on the move when the shooting started and after a few seconds was out of range. He and Bonnie returned fire from one or two pistols but really didn’t know where the lawmen were and feared that they might hit some of their family instead.15 Their main goal was to get out of sight.

  Sheriff Schmid and his posse just stood in the road and watched them go. They had parked so far away that pursuit was impossible. At least, for all their trouble, they had managed to wound both Bonnie and Clyde. Unfortunately, they had created a “friendly fire” incident as well. One of Bob Alcorn’s 30-06 rounds had gone high and slightly wounded Mrs. Stovall, the dairyman’s wife, several hundred yards away. All this was not going to look good in the morning papers, but Smoot Schmid was a politician first and foremost, and he had an ace in the hole sitting in a cell at his jail.

  1. Joe Bill Francis mug shot. Taken at the Dallas (Texas) Sheriff’s Department, February 2, 1934. Joe Bill married Marie Barrow a week before Bonnie and Clyde were killed.

  —Courtesy the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum, Waco, Texas

  2. Marie Barrow about the time of her marriage to Joe Bill Francis. May 1934.

  —Courtesy Marie Barrow Scoma and author Phillip W. Steele

  3. Mug shot of Billie Jean Parker Mace. Taken in Dallas, November 28, 1933, six days after the Sowers ambush.

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

  Meanwhile, Clyde’s first priority was securing another car. He was running on a flat, and, for all he knew, there was a whole posse a few minutes behind him. About four miles from the ambush site, they passed near the Army Air Corps’ Hensley Field and stopped an older Ford with two men inside. Thomas James and Paul Reich, both of Fort Worth, were on their way home from a Masonic Lodge reunion. They were in no mood to be hijacked, so they didn’t get out of the car as Clyde ordered. Under the circumstances, Clyde was a little cranky himself, so rather than argue the issue, he just put his .16 gauge sawed-off shotgun up against the window, aimed over the men’s heads, and fired. It blew out two windows, put a hole in the roof, and took one man’s hat off. The men inside immediately reconsidered, and within seconds, Bonnie and Clyde had the car all to themselves—not that it was any prize. This older four-cylinder model was not Clyde’s style, but it would have to do.16 After fumbling around to find the ignition switch, he and Bonnie disappeared in the darkness.

  Bonnie Parker. Taken during a family meeting near Dallas. November 1933.

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

  At one point in their escape along country roads, Clyde had to get out and open a gate. He stepped out of the car and promptly fell down in the mud. Bonnie tried to help him and fell down also. Later they found blood on the floor and finally discovered that they had been shot through the knees. In all the excitement, they simply hadn’t noticed. Floyd Hamilton later said that they found an underworld doctor in Oklahoma to treat them. Six days later, they were back in Dallas.17

  The next day, Dallas newsboys were calling, “Read all about it! Sheriff escapes from Clyde Barrow.”18 In spite of his failure to capture the famous outlaws, however, Sheriff Schmid managed to avoid much of the criticism by redirecting the interest of the news media. He had a bullet-riddled, blood-soaked car to put on display, and a public relations secret weapon as well. A few days before the ambush, W. D. Jones had been picked up in Houston and brought to Dallas.19 Jones underwent intensive interrogation and on November 18 dictated a twenty-eight-page statement covering his time with Bonnie and Clyde. Up until now, Sheriff Schmid had kept Jones under wraps and flatly denied press reports about a Barrow gang member being held, but with the ambush a failure, it was time to show “Deacon” Jones to the public.20

  Looking back from the vantage point of the twenty-first century, Jones’ statement is an intriguing document—an interesting mixture of fact and fiction. Much of it simply tells the story as it was. Jones was smart enough to lie as little as possible. His objective seemed to be just what Clyde suggested—he didn’t deny being with them, he just played down his role as much as possible. While much of the account was truthful, his portrayal of the gunfights and the killings were a little too self-serving. Even the police didn’t believe for a second that he was Bonnie and Clyde’s prisoner, or that he was unconscious during all the shooting, but W. D. knew how to play the part of the victim pretty well. The clean-cut, scaredlooking young man the police showed the press bore little resemblance to the cigarchomping, tough-looking gangster in the pictures that came out of Joplin. In fact, W. D. Jones had been involved in scores of robberies, six gunfights or shootings, and at least one murder, all before he was eighteen years old.

  W. D. Jones in the Dallas jail. Early December 1933.

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

  There were several surprises for the police in Jones’ statement, but one had immediate impact on one of Bonnie and Clyde’s former partners. Frank Hardy had been with Bonnie and Clyde briefly about a year before, in Missouri, but left them for good soon after the b
ank job in Oronogo at the end of November 1932. A few weeks later, on Christmas Day, Clyde and W. D Jones killed Doyle Johnson in Temple, Texas, but they were not identified or connected with the murder. It was poor Frank Hardy who was eventually arrested for it. Hardy had just been tried, but the result was a hung jury. He was waiting for his second trial to begin when W. D. Jones was caught. Fortunately for Hardy, when Jones told his story, all of that changed. It seemed that the law was willing to believe Jones’ story and lay the Johnson killing on Clyde instead. They were almost right. Clyde was there, for sure, and tried his best to shoot Johnson, but it was actually W. D.’s bullet that killed him. Frank Hardy didn’t care who they blamed as long as it wasn’t him.21

  W.D. also served Sheriff Schmid in another capacity. One of the big questions asked after the Sowers ambush was “Who tipped off the law?” Neither the press nor the Barrow family believed that the ambush was just a lucky break for the sheriff. Both sides knew someone had talked. For the benefit of the public, who didn’t know the real situation, the Dallas Sheriff’s Office said that they “acted on a tip received from a prisoner in the county jail.”22 As soon as Jones’ capture became known, it was obvious who they meant. On the other hand, Ted Hinton, forty-five years after Clyde was dead and buried, identified Stovall, the dairy farmer, as the source of the information.23

  The Barrow family, however, didn’t believe either story. They knew that W. D. was not the informer. He simply couldn’t have known, and Stovall’s name didn’t come up until later. That left, in their minds, a very short list. The issue was still alive as recently as a few years ago, according to a conversation between Ted Hinton’s son and Marie Barrow. Hinton’s son stood by his father’s statement that Stovall was the informant, but, in Marie’s mind, it came down to Joe Bill Francis (her ex-husband) or Billie Mace. The question can’t be resolved either way, but Mr. Stovall’s daughter was recently interviewed and expressed serious doubts that her father had provided any information on Bonnie and Clyde.24

  Members of the Sowers Ambush posse with captured items. From left to right: Sheriff R. A. “Smoot” Schmid, Deputy Ed Castor, Deputy Ted Hinton, and Deputy Robert Alcorn. November 23, 1933.

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

  As December 1933 began, nothing really had changed. The newspapers had another headline; the law was no closer to Bonnie and Clyde than they had been since July; and the famous outlaw couple had gained a little more media attention, a few more scars, and were right back where they had been before.

  When Clyde got back to Dallas at the beginning of December, he was angry. As Bonnie would later say in her most famous poem, he had “been shot at before,”1 but this last ambush was different. In Clyde’s way of thinking, as rough as the game was, there were still some basic rules. Clyde accepted the fact that he and even Bonnie were fair game, but, to him, the sheriff placing his mother and Mrs. Parker in the line of fire was unforgivable. In Clyde’s mind, they had broken the rules, and he wanted to make them pay. For the first time since he and the trusty at Eastham Prison Farm had killed his tormentor, “Big Ed,” Clyde Barrow was considering premeditated, cold-blooded murder. In the presence of his family and others, he threatened the lives of Sheriff Schmid and Deputies Bob Alcorn and Ted Hinton. Clyde is even said to have found out where Schmid and Alcorn lived and staked out their homes with the idea of killing them if he got the chance. His family considered this to be revenge and tried to talk him out of it.2

  Singling out revenge as a wrong motivation for murder may seem odd, since Clyde already was linked to nine killings. But right or wrong, Clyde looked upon his fight with the law almost like combat, and so far, he felt that all his killings had come in the heat of battle. The way he looked at it, lawmen had to take their chances just like he did. Clyde took no joy in killing—after the first couple of shootings, he told his sister that he felt sick about it afterward—but was also firm in his belief that “it was him or me.”3 To Clyde’s mother and father and others in his family, who had to read in the paper about the men he killed and the wives and children they left behind, that was about the only thread they had to cling to.

  As bad as the other killings were (especially of unarmed civilians like Doyle Johnson and possibly Howard Hall), to Clyde’s family, what he was planning now was worse. Clyde was already being called a “Mad Dog Killer” by the police and the news media. That wasn’t the son and brother they knew, and they told people so. They didn’t want it to finally become true. Fortunately, when Clyde’s initial efforts failed, he was talked out of the idea.4 Before long, something else came along to capture his interest.

  Raymond Hamilton had been in custody and out of circulation for a year (except for a couple of hours when he broke out of the Hill County Jail on March 23, 1933).5 He had been moved around from trial to trial until he had accumulated about four lifetimes’ worth of jail time.6 On August 8, 1933, Ray was finally taken to Huntsville and then to Eastham Farm. Although he wouldn’t help Clyde and Ralph Fults to free convicts from Eastham a year and a half before, now the plan for a raid on the prison farm began to look pretty good to him. During a visit, Ray showed his brother Floyd a ring he had made. When the time came for the escape, he said, whoever brought the ring with him would be Ray’s messenger.7 On January 12, 1934, a man knocked on Floyd Hamilton’s door in west Dallas and showed him Ray’s ring, but the man himself didn’t inspire much confidence.

  When he arrived at Floyd Hamilton’s door, James Mullins looked all of his forty-eight hard years. Mullins was a career criminal (he had already served jail time before Clyde Barrow was born), a drug addict, and a suspected stool pigeon, so he was not chosen for his reliability but simply because he was getting released. Ray had promised him $1,000 to carry the message and help in the escape. He was to find Floyd Hamilton, and Floyd would do the rest. Floyd had the contacts, all right, and before long they were parked on a country road near Irving, explaining Ray’s plan to a skeptical Clyde Barrow.8

  Raymond’s scheme was a far cry from the mass escape envisioned by Clyde and Ralph Fults back in April 1932. Mullins and Floyd Hamilton were to get some guns and ammunition and hide them under a bridge near the Eastham Farm buildings. A trusty was set up to bring the guns inside and get them to Ray.9 The break would be made early in the morning as the prisoners were marched out to work. Clyde’s part was to help Floyd and Mullins with the guns, cover the escape, and have a getaway car ready.

  This, at least, is the story generally told, but several things about it suggest that Clyde Barrow may have been involved earlier in the planning. All the major players were friends of Clyde’s from the time he spent in Eastham. Ray, on the other hand, had only been at Eastham for five months and was not well liked. It’s hard to believe that Ray could have gained the trust and participation of these veteran cons without at least some word from Clyde or Ralph Fults on Ray’s behalf. Both Fults and another convict, Jack Hammett, told author John Neal Phillips that communication was relatively easy from inside either the main prison at Huntsville or the farms. Both said that they knew about the break before it happened. Fults was at the Walls unit at Huntsville and was told to get out to Eastham to be part of the break, but he was unable to manage it. He sent word that Hilton Bybee should go in his place.10 All this suggests greater involvement on Barrow’s part in the planning stages. Messages may have been going back and forth between Clyde on the outside and Fults and Hamilton on the inside since Bonnie and Clyde’s return to the Dallas area in September.11

  Even so, Clyde had serious misgivings. He was sure the plan would work. He and Fults had worked it out from the inside almost three years before. What worried him was the human element. Raymond Hamilton was not the most discreet or humble guy in the world. He had a reputation as a smart aleck, and as soon as he got to Huntsville, he began bragging that Clyde Barrow would come and break him out. The only good news was that nobody in the prison administration took him seriousl
y.12 The other weak link, James Mullins—alias Jimmy LaMont—was so unstable that, under normal circumstances, Clyde wouldn’t have come within a mile of him.13 In the end, partly because of urging from Bonnie, Clyde decided to go along with the plan anyway. Raymond was his old partner, after all. Clyde may actually have been glad to take any opportunity to shake up the folks at Eastham. He hated the place with a passion.

  Mullins bought some .45 ammunition, and Floyd Hamilton and Clyde each contributed a pistol.14 These were sealed up in a piece of old inner tube. Before daylight Sunday morning, January 14, 1934, the four of them stopped a mile or so from Eastham Farm. What came next was the dangerous part. The guns were to be placed under a bridge within 200 yards of the main building, and Clyde wasn’t going to try that on the word of a dope addict. He had already told Mullins that he would have to plant the guns himself. Mullins finally convinced Floyd Hamilton to go with him and the two of them started off into the night.15 Sometime later, they came back, shaking, but successful.