When the gray Ford came in sight of the posse, it was about half a mile away and coming fast. Ivy Methvin was standing beside his truck, and the posse was in position in the brush on the east side of the road. First in line, with a pair of field glasses, was Bob Alcorn. Since he knew Clyde by sight, his job was to make a positive identification. With all of that firepower, they didn’t want to open up on some innocent person. Next was Alcorn’s partner, Ted Hinton. Third was Bienville Parish Deputy Prentis Oakley, and then his boss, Sheriff Henderson Jordan. Manny Gault was fifth, and, anchoring the line, was Lee Simmons’ manhunter, Frank Hamer. The most experienced of the group, Hamer was armed with a Colt Monitor machine rifle. It was Colt’s effort to market a civilian version of Clyde’s favorite, the Browning automatic rifle, to police departments, and it fired the same 30-06 ammunition used by the BAR. As long as Hamer was alive, Clyde Barrow would not get past him.20
As Clyde started up the hill, he saw Ivy Methvin and the familiar log truck blocking his lane. He had provided the money for the truck himself and ridden around on it several times in the last few weeks as he pretended to be a logger. He rolled to a stop, looked out Bonnie’s window, and spoke to Henry’s father. After all the waiting, the posse’s plan was suddenly unfolding in front of them. The famous outlaw couple was in perfect position. All the posse had to do was not miss.
At this point, a log truck came into view in Clyde’s rearview mirror. Since Methvin’s truck and Clyde’s Ford blocked the whole road, Clyde shifted into first to move out of the way, and, on the right side of the car, Ivy Methvin grabbed his stomach and ran toward the woods.21 For once, Clyde Barrow’s famous sixth sense for smelling trouble deserted him. For the last several years, he had sown the wind. Now the whirlwind had finally arrived.
While the gray Ford was rolling up to the disabled log truck, Bob Alcorn had whispered down the line of lawmen that it was certainly Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker. Now the famous outlaw couple was sitting there, maybe twenty-five feet away. Early in the stakeout, there had been some discussion about whether to shout, “Hands up,” or “This is the police. You’re under arrest,” or something similar. The Louisiana lawmen thought they should try it, but the Texans disagreed. “Ain’t no way that boy’s going to give up,” one of them said, and they weren’t inclined to give Clyde a chance to get away again.22 Having decided that question, however, it’s unclear who was to give the command to fire, now that the time had come. As it turned out, the command was unnecessary.
The thirty-six hours spent waiting in the woods had taken their toll on everybody, and now, with the prospect of a deadly gunfight starting any second, the pressure on the lawmen became almost unbearable. In such a situation, anyone can snap, and this time it was Prentis Oakley. He later told friends that there was no challenge to Clyde, or even any command to fire. He didn’t really know what happened. Oakley simply remembered being crouched down in the brush one second and on his feet firing the next.23
When Prentis Oakley learned that he would be involved in trying to ambush Bonnie and Clyde, he went in search of some serious firepower. He had borrowed a Remington Model 8 semi automatic rifle in .35 caliber from his friend Dr. Shehee, a local dentist, and now he emptied the five-round magazine into Clyde’s window. Fortunately, when Oakley stood up, all the pressure of the last two days dropped away and his hunter’s instinct took over. Since he was still looking to the right, Barrow gave Oakley a perfect profile view, and the first .35 caliber round took Clyde in the left temple, exiting two inches above his right ear, blowing off his hat, and killing him instantly. Two more bullets hit the left front door post, one hit the windshield frame, and the last one went in the roof just above Clyde’s window. None of the posse knew it, but those four bullets, as well as the 130 or so that followed, were really unnecessary.24 Clyde Barrow was dead with the first shot.
Prentis Oakley’s action took the other posse members by surprise. Some of them were far enough away in the brush that they may have even thought it was Clyde who had fired first, but it didn’t matter what they thought. Once the shooting started—whoever started it—everyone else joined in. Oakley’s first two shots stood out by themselves and were distinctly heard by witnesses, but the last three were swallowed up in the roar as the others opened fire.25
Clyde never knew what hit him,26 but Bonnie wasn’t so lucky. She had three or four more conscious seconds to scream when her lover’s head exploded next to her and to understand exactly what was going to happen to her before the wave of lead and steel washed through the car.
When Oakley’s first shot hit Clyde, his head snapped back and his foot came off the clutch. Since the car was in first gear, it started to move forward, and this movement only added to the confusion. It looked as though Clyde might be trying to get away. It also meant that the car slowly cruised by each of the posse members in turn, giving them all perfect shots—just like a shooting gallery. After it passed Frank Hamer, the last lawman, it ran off into the left-side ditch and stopped with the driver’s door against a bank, having rolled about one hundred yards.
As the car came to rest, someone went around to the right side and put a finishing burst in the passenger window. Some of those bullets went high and into the frame just over Bonnie’s window, but one hit Bonnie in the right cheek and left a gaping wound on the left side of her face.27 A few seconds later, Ted Hinton and Bob Alcorn arrived, having almost run into the line of fire trying to catch up with the car.28 Seeing Clyde’s door wedged against an embankment, Hinton pulled the passenger door open and Bonnie fell into his arms, already dead. Hinton had known Bonnie back when she was a waitress. He was very fond of her, always having a hard time seeing her as an outlaw, and now he had helped kill her. The sight of her lifeless body stayed with him for the rest of his life.29
The whole sequence—from first shot to last— had taken just over fifteen seconds. Now that it was over, silence settled over the scene. Having had seventy or eighty supersonic rifle rounds and several shotgun blasts fired in close proximity to their ears, the posse members were all practically deafened and would remain so for several hours. And, as they all approached the car, even the most hardened of them were stunned at the amount of damage they had inflicted. The left side of the car—mainly the driver’s door—was riddled. When they looked inside, however, it was obvious that many of the bullets didn’t get through. The Ford’s door was double walled, and most of the soft lead hunting ammunition remained between the two layers of sheet metal, unless it happened to hit a place where an access panel was cut in the inner wall. Most of the bullets that penetrated the car body came from Hinton or Alcorn’s BAR or Frank Hamer’s Monitor rifle. On the right side, the difference was even more pronounced. For the seventy-five to one hundred holes in the left side, there were less than twenty exit holes on the right.30
More than enough bullets got through, in any case. Although not as mangled as later sensational stories would have you believe, the couple still made a gruesome sight. Clyde had been hit at least twenty times, including two head shots and one that severed his spinal column. Bonnie was hit twenty-six times, including three shots to the head and face.31 Bonnie was bending forward with her head between her knees, part of a sandwich still on her lap. Clyde had fallen forward with his head through the spokes of the steering wheel. His purple-tinted sunglasses, still hooked over his ears, hung down under his chin, and his two shotguns were still on either side of him, one hit by a bullet.32
Along with the two dead outlaws, a great many other things were found in the Ford V-8. As Ted Hinton took pictures with a 16-millimeter movie camera, Frank Hamer and Sheriff Jordan began the inventory. First, of course, was Clyde Barrow’s normal complement of weapons. They found three Browning automatic rifles, two-sawed off shotguns, nine Colt automatic pistols (in three different calibers), a Colt .45 double action, 100 BAR twentyshot magazines, and 3,000 rounds of ammunition.33 Besides the weapons, there were clothes, blankets, a makeup case, road maps, magazines, fifteen s
ets of stolen license plates, and a saxophone.34 No mention was ever made of the suitcase containing the legal papers and the large amount of money that Henry Barrow had seen the last time Clyde visited him. No one knows what happened to it, or if it was even there, but the Barrow family has always suspected that the money made its way into the hands of some of the people involved.
Bonnie and Clyde’s lives had ended—just the way Bonnie had predicted they would in her last poem. They certainly “went down together.” Their career was over, but their legend was just beginning.
The ambush site was out in the country along what seemed to be a deserted road, but not long after the shooting stopped, people began to arrive. Some just happened by. Others lived nearby or had been working in the fields. Within a few minutes, a small crowd had gathered. Cleo Sneed and some friends stopped cutting wood and walked over to see what had happened. They noticed a man helping Ivy Methvin put the wheel back on his truck, and a log truck turning around, but what they saw in the shot-up gray Ford made them wish they had kept sawing timber.1 Buddy Goldston, who was driving the log truck and had almost driven into the ambush, got a look at the scene before he turned around and drove away. Almost sixty years later, he remembered the sight. “That car was all shot up. Them people was all shot up!” he said.2
Spectators gathered near the posse’s ambush position. Bienville Parish, Louisiana, May 23, 1934.
—Courtesy the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum, Waco, Texas
When the adrenaline rush of the fight wore off, the lawmen set about doing what had to be done. As soon as Sheriff Jordan and Frank Hamer searched the car, Jordan and his deputy, Oakley, left to get the coroner, Dr. J. L. Wade, to satisfy the legal requirements.3 Hamer and Ted Hinton drove to Gibsland to find a wrecker and to report in. Hinton called Dallas County Sheriff “Smoot” Schmid, and Hamer called Lee Simmons. Each was sure their boss would want to come to Arcadia and share in the publicity bonanza that was about to explode, and they were right.4 Manny Gault and Bob Alcorn stayed at the scene to secure the car from the crowd, which was steadily growing.
Hinton and Hamer made their calls from a Gibsland filling station, where they were overheard by a local man named Davis. He spread the word, and several carloads of people headed out to see the famous desperadoes. By the time the coroner arrived, cars and people filled the road and the souvenir hunters were in full swing. People picked up spent cartridge cases, stole glass out of the Ford’s shattered windows, tramped through the brush, and even tried to dig bullets out of the surrounding trees. Others went for the bodies themselves. Taking pieces of clothing and hanks of Bonnie’s hair was bad enough, but at least a couple of folks went even further. One was caught about to slice off one of Clyde’s ears, and another was after his “trigger finger.”5
The tow truck finally arrived and hooked up to the Ford V-8.6 Everything had been left in the car— including the bodies—but an “Indian blanket” was laid over Clyde.7 Many of the spectators followed the wrecker as it towed the car toward Arcadia. Eventually, there were almost two hundred vehicles in the procession. Word had gone ahead of them to Gibsland, and even the schoolchildren were watching the road for a glimpse of the famous outlaws. As the wrecker came in sight, somebody yelled, “Here they come,” and the whole school emptied into the street. Some say that Sheriff Jordan stopped at the school in order to teach a lesson on the wages of sin, but most witnesses say that the students simply ran out and blocked the road so that the wrecker had no choice but to stop and let them have a look. Several people describe a scene of schoolchildren swarming the car and sticking their heads in the windows, only to come face to face with two bulletriddled corpses.8 The situation was becoming more bizarre by the minute.
After leaving Gibsland, the procession turned toward Arcadia, the county seat. There, Dr. Wade would impanel a coroner’s jury and give a legal finding of the cause of death. Driving in the procession, Bob Alcorn and Ted Hinton tried unsuccessfully to rid their heads of the constant ringing caused by the gunfire. “I can’t hear a damn thing!” Alcorn shouted. Hinton agreed, watching Alcorn’s lips move.9
When the wrecker reached Arcadia, it stopped in front of Conger’s Furniture Store, which faced out on the town square toward the depot. Undertaker “Boots” Bailey’s funeral parlor occupied the rear of the building, and that’s where Dr. Wade and his jury would preside while Bailey and his helpers began the process of embalming the bodies.
The crowd gathers outside Conger’s Furniture on the town square in Arcadia, Louisiana, as they wait for a chance to view the bodies of Bonnie and Clyde. May 23, 1934.
—Courtesy the Bob Fischer/Renay Stanard collection
Death car at Arcadia, Louisiana, left side, showing damage to driver’s door. (Below) Right side. May 23, 1934. Note the small number of exit holes in the passenger’s door, and the entry holes above the passenger’s window. May 23, 1934.
—From the collections of the Texas/Dallas History and Archives Division, Dallas Public Library
Posse members at Arcadia, Louisiana, May 23, 1934. Left to right, standing: Ted Hinton, Prentis Oakley, Manny Gault. Seated: Bob Alcorn, Henderson Jordan, Frank Hamer.
—From the collections of the Texas/Dallas History and Archives Division, Dallas Public Library
If possible, the crowds were even worse here in town. The attendants had to push through the mass of people to carry Bonnie and Clyde inside. Even after they were on the stretchers, folks were still pulling on Bonnie’s wedding ring. Everyone, though, was amazed at their size. Over the past two years, the newspapers had made Bonnie and Clyde seem nine feet tall, but in death they seemed pitifully small. Clyde had once told Ralph Fults that there was so much dying around him because people wouldn’t take him seriously, even when he pulled his guns. “They think we’re just school kids,” he said.10
After the bodies were in the building, things outside kept getting crazier and more crowded. Arcadia’s population, normally about 2,00011 increased eight times. By nightfall, the population of Bienville Parish as a whole would triple.12 In the funeral parlor, several groups struggled in the heat of the Louisiana summer to finish their own jobs. Dr. Wade hurried to finish his report so the jury could arrive at a finding of the cause of death. The physical cause was, of course, a foregone conclusion. They were shot to pieces. It was the legal finding that was important.13 In the meantime, undertaker Bailey was having troubles of his own. It’s not easy to embalm a body with so many holes in it, and pictures would later show stains around Bonnie and Clyde caused not by blood but by leaking embalming fluid. As time went by and the people outside became even more unruly, the same embalming fluid was sometimes sprayed at them as crowd control.14
In the late May heat, Dr. Wade and his five queasy jurymen went about their duties in the back-room funeral parlor. When the coroner finally finished his examinations and notes, he dictated two statements, which the five of them signed. In addition, he prepared a statement of identification for Bob Alcorn, the Dallas deputy sheriff who best knew Bonnie and Clyde.
We, the undersigned coroner’s Jury after diligent Inquiry and thorough investigation find that Clyde Champion Barrow met his death from gun shot wounds fired by officers.
And then for Bonnie:
We the undersigned coroners Jury after diligent inquiry and thorough investigation find that Bonnie Parker came to her death from gun shot wounds fired from rifles Pistols and shot guns in the hands of officers.
Both statements were signed by the jury:
M. W. Barber
G. C. Taylor
F. W. Pentecost
B. C. Theus
J. R. Goff
[signatures]
Alcorn’s statement was as follows:
R. F. Alcorn—Dallis Tex—
Being duly sworn testifies as follows: deposes and says he knows the 2 parties exami[ned] by him & that one of them is Clyde C. Barrow & the other Bonnie Parker alias also know[n] as Bonnie Thornton You [he] furthe[r] testifies that he has
personally know[n] then for six or seven years. That he know[s] of his own knowledge that both were 2 [times] indited on charge of murder Case #5046&7 Criminal District Court Dallis Tex. Nov—28-1933
R. F. Alcorn [signature]
While those in Louisiana tried to finish their work in the increasingly chaotic atmosphere of Arcadia, the news of the ambush was spreading fast. In Dallas, the phone rang at Buster Parker’s house. Bonnie’s mother was there visiting, and when she answered it, a reporter asked if she was alone. “No,” she said. Could he speak to someone in the house? Worn out by the press, she was beginning to give him a piece of her mind until he said that Bonnie and Clyde had been killed.15 Instead of giving him a quote he could use before his deadline, Emma Parker fainted. Marie Barrow, married to Joe Francis only three days before, heard the news on the radio at a gas station where she had stopped and immediately drove to the Star Service Station on Eagle Ford Road.16 Each family then began to make their arrangements.
Bonnie and Clyde- A Twenty-First-Century Update Page 26
