Mildred Hamilton, Floyd’s wife, had been with him on several occasions when they saw Bonnie and Clyde, but, like Marie Barrow, she was given only one hour in the custody of the United States marshal.
William Daniel Jones had traveled with Bonnie and Clyde for about nine months. He had been with them through some of their most violent and dangerous times. Jones left them about the first of September 1933 and was picked up in Houston in the middle of November. Since then, he had been cooperating with authorities. He had given his version of his time with the outlaw couple, which minimized his role and cast him as a virtual prisoner. In fact, he had been a partner in everything they did. He also killed one man, possibly two, during that time. Jones was given two years in addition to the fifteen years he was already serving as an accessory in the killing of Malcolm Davis.
Billie Jean Parker Mace was Bonnie Parker’s sister. Three years younger than Bonnie, she left her two small children and stayed with her sister for seven days when Bonnie was badly burned in a car wreck in June 1933. Billie also attended several family meetings with the rest of the Parkers and Barrows. Billie had spent several days in jail in Fort Worth under suspicion of involvement in the Grapevine killings but was released after Bonnie and Clyde were killed. For her part in nursing her sister, however, she received one year and a day in the Federal Prison for Women at Alderson, West Virginia.
Henry Methvin traveled with Bonnie and Clyde from the time he escaped, with their help, from Eastham Prison Farm, until their deaths. He had been brought from Oklahoma, where he was being held for the murder of Cal Campbell, constable of Commerce, Oklahoma. Later research would show that Henry was probably involved in at least five bank robberies and four killings with Bonnie and Clyde, but his conviction on the harboring charge only brought him fifteen months in the penitentiary. This, of course, was trivial compared to the death sentence he faced in Oklahoma.
James Mullins, alias Jimmy LaMont, was a forty-nine-year-old career criminal, informer, and drug addict who had helped set up the Eastham Prison break. He spent time with Bonnie and Clyde mainly because he was so untrustworthy that Clyde wouldn’t let him out of his sight. Clyde was sure that Mullins would turn them in if he got the chance. Mullins cooperated with authorities and was given four months in jail.
Mary O’Dare traveled with Raymond Hamilton, Bonnie and Clyde, and the rest of the Barrow gang for about three weeks in February and early March 1934. She was intensely disliked and distrusted by Bonnie and Clyde. Mary and Raymond left the group about March 6, 1934. Mary eventually gave information to the police that helped capture Raymond. She was sentenced to one year and a day in the federal penitentiary.
Emma Krause Parker was Bonnie’s mother. She was, of course, involved in all the family meetings during the two years her daughter was with Clyde Barrow. Many times, she pleaded with her daughter to leave Clyde and turn herself in, without success. Mrs. Parker, like Clyde’s mother, received thirty days in jail
S. J. “Baldy” Whatley was an acquaintance of Floyd Hamilton and L. C. Barrow. He went along several times to meet with Bonnie and Clyde and may have gone with Clyde once on an unsuccessful robbery. Three years later, after a falling-out with L. C. Barrow, Whatley would fire into the Barrow house and wound L. C.’s mother, Cumie. For his part in harboring Bonnie and Clyde, Whatley received one year and a day.
THE BARROWS
Henry Barrow
In spite of the fact that he met with both of his infamous sons several times while they were wanted men, Henry Barrow was never charged with any offense connected with their activities. Other than possibly selling a little whiskey out the back door of his filling station during Prohibition, Henry was never suspected of a crime. He and Cumie continued to operate the Star Service Station for a few years after Bonnie and Clyde were killed, but a series of mishaps forced them to give it up in the late thirties. The station itself was firebombed at least once, and there was a shooting incident in which Clyde’s mother was wounded by mistake. After his wife died, in the early forties, Henry Barrow continued to live in the Dallas area near his family.
Henry Barrow died in Dallas on June 19, 1957, at age eighty-three.1
Cumie T. Barrow
There was never any doubt that Cumie met with and helped Bonnie and Clyde as well as other members of the gang during the time they were on the run. Clyde and Buck were her sons, after all. Blanche was also family, and Bonnie might as well have been. While Cumie certainly didn’t approve of the outlaws’ actions, there was never any thought of just abandoning them to their fate. Like her husband, nobody really considered Cumie a criminal. She served the thirty-day sentence imposed at the harboring trial, went home, and never had any more trouble with the law. More trouble, however, from another direction, was still to come.
On the night of September 4, 1938, Cumie’s two youngest children, L. C. and Marie, were involved in what the newspapers described as a “brass knuckles tavern fight” with S. J. “Baldy” Whatley, a small-time hood and acquaintance of Floyd Hamilton, Billie Jean Parker (Bonnie’s sister), and others. Later that night, Whatley drove by the Star Service Station and saw several people getting out of a car. He mistook one of them—Joe Bill Francis, Marie’s husband—for L. C. Barrow and fired a shotgun several times in their direction. Marie ran into the house, got a gun, and returned fire, but her mother was hit in the side of the face. Cumie recovered but lost an eye. Not long afterward, she and Henry moved out of the station.
Cumie T. Barrow died in Dallas on August 14, 1942. She was sixty-seven years old. At the time of her death, two of her seven children had been killed by police and three of the remaining five were serving time in various prisons.2
Elvin Wilson “Jack” Barrow
Clyde Barrow’s oldest brother was the first of the Barrow children to leave the farm for the city. By the time Bonnie and Clyde became famous, Jack and his wife had four daughters and were living a normal life in Dallas. While Clyde’s younger brother L. C. was active in helping the fugitives, it seems that Jack was not directly involved. He accompanied his father to Arcadia to claim Clyde’s body after the ambush, but, like Henry Barrow, Jack was never charged with any crime connected with Bonnie and Clyde. Jack’s only serious encounter with the law came on October 14, 1939, when he was attacked in a Dallas nightspot. In the ensuing struggle, a man named Otis Jenkins was killed.
Elvin Wilson “Jack” Barrow died of natural causes in Dallas on April 26,1947. He was fifty-two years old.3
Artie Adell and Nellie May Barrow
Clyde’s two oldest sisters were the only Barrow children who never had a serious brush with the law. When they left home and moved to Dallas, the sisters went into the beauty parlor business. Nell was said, by the family and others, to have been involved in many of the family meetings during Bonnie and Clyde’s career, but Artie was not. Neither sister was ever charged with anything connected with their two brothers’ criminal activities.
By the time Clyde went to prison in 1930, Artie was already living in Denison, Texas, but Nell had stayed in the Dallas area. After Bonnie and Clyde were killed, Nell worked with author Jan Fortune and Emma Parker on the book Fugitives.
Artie Adell Barrow Winkler Keys died on March 3, 1981, twenty-seven days short of her eighty-second birthday. Nellie May Barrow Francis died on November 16, 1968, at age sixty-three.4
L. C. Barrow
Clyde and Buck Barrow’s younger brother was thought by many in the law enforcement community to be certain to follow in their bloody footsteps. L. C. was nineteen years old when Bonnie and Clyde began their activities, the same age as one of their partners, Raymond Hamilton. He was involved many times in helping Bonnie and Clyde, and he would often drive the rest of the family out to the meeting sites. He also rode with Bonnie and Clyde on several occasions but was never involved in any of their robberies or shootings. L. C. was one of the very few people whom Clyde trusted to the end. L. C. freely admitted all of this, at least to family and friends. What he and the fa
mily deny to this day is his involvement in the October 27, 1934, robbery of a drug store in the Dallas area, and it’s quite possible that his relationship to his famous brother had more to do with his conviction than the evidence available to the court. In any case, he received a five-year sentence, and a few months later the harboring trial added a federal sentence of one year and one day. L. C. was released in late 1938 but at the time of his mother’s death in 1942 was back serving time for a parole violation.
Twenty-nine years old when his mother died, L. C. Barrow seemed headed for the life of a habitual criminal, but, in fact, he began to turn his life around. He lived quietly in the Dallas area and worked as a truck driver until he was forced to retire for health reasons. When L. C. died on September 3, 1979, at age sixty-six, he was survived by his wife, one son, three daughters, and fifteen grandchildren. His last boss had this to say about him: “I guess we’ll never see a better, more loyal employee.”
L. C. never talked much about his experiences with his brother Clyde, especially around the younger generation. To him, it was a tragic story, and the memory of it would often bring tears to his eyes.5
Lillian Marie Barrow
The Barrow family’s youngest child, Marie experienced the two years of Bonnie and Clyde’s exploits as a teenager. Marie was involved in most of the family meetings and remained a staunch defender of her big brother for the rest of her life. In May 1934, Marie, not quite sixteen years old, married Joe Francis, just a few days before Bonnie and Clyde were killed. At the harboring trial, Marie was sentenced to one hour in the custody of the federal marshal.
In the years following Bonnie and Clyde’s death, Marie, like her brother L. C., had several run-ins with the law. At the time of her mother’s death, Marie was at the women’s prison at Alderson, West Virginia, for probation violations. In the years following her mother’s death, however, Marie, again like her brother L. C., avoided trouble and lived a quiet life in the Dallas area. Lillian Marie Barrow Scoma died in Mesquite, Texas, on February 3, 1999.
In the later years of her life, Marie Barrow began to discuss her experiences with researchers and friends. In addition to providing information for other authors, she collaborated with Phillip W. Steele on a book of her own, and her conversations with Jonathan Davis of Dallas form an important part of this book as well.6
Blanche Barrow with her father, Matthew Fountian Caldwell. Probably taken soon after Blanche’s release from prison at the end of March 1939. If so, Blanche would have been twenty-nine years old, and her father sixty-nine.
—Courtesy Marie Barrow Scoma and author Phillip W. Steele
Blanche Caldwell Barrow
In the summer of 1929, Blanche Caldwell, an eighteen-year-old farmer’s daughter from Oklahoma, met a twenty-six-year-old twicedivorced petty thief and occasional poultry rustler named Marvin Ivan “Buck” Barrow. As unlikely a couple as they were, it seems that it was love at first sight. Blanche stayed with Buck through thick and thin. She married him when he was an escaped convict, waited for him when he went back to finish his sentence, and refused to leave him throughout the disastrous four months with Clyde and Bonnie in 1933 that led to Buck’s death. Blanche remained loyal, refused to cooperate with authorities, and lost the sight in one eye from her injuries. When Bonnie and Clyde were killed, Blanche was serving a ten-year sentence in the Missouri State Prison, and the harboring trial added one year and a day.
1. Blanche Barrow in robe and bathing suit. Taken sometime during her time in prison and mailed in a letter to her mother. On the reverse is written, “To mother with love from Blanche. See how much I have gained. I borried [sic] the bathing suit to have the picture taken, but the robe is mine. No, we don’t have any bathing pool.”
—Courtesy the Bob Fischer/Renay Stanard collection
2. Blanche Barrow. Taken on the grounds of the Missouri State Prison sometime during the five and a half years she served there, from September 1933 to March 1939.
—Courtesy the Bob Fischer/Renay Stanard collection
3.Blanche Barrow. All dressed up and sitting in a small tree. Date unknown.
—Courtesy the Bob Fischer/Renay Stanard collection
In the Missouri prison, Blanche became friends with Sheriff Holt Coffee, who was in charge of the Platte City ambush where Buck was fatally wounded, and wrote a volume of memoirs that has only recently come to light. Blanche caused no trouble in prison, and on March 25, 1939, her sentence was commuted to time served.7 She returned to Texas, remarried, and lived quietly in the Dallas area, where she remained in contact with the Barrow family, who always thought very highly of her. Blanche Caldwell Barrow Frasure died in Dallas, Texas, on Christmas Eve, 1988, at age seventy-seven.8
THE PARKERS
Emma Krause Parker
Emma Parker never gave up hope for her bright, willful, doomed middle child, even though Bonnie repeatedly told her that she would go down with Clyde when the time came. Emma constantly begged Bonnie to give herself up, but it wasn’t to be. After Bonnie was killed, Emma gave her the best funeral she could afford—there would be no “side by side” burial. Shortly after Bonnie’s death, Emma Parker collaborated with Nell Barrow and a writer named Jan Fortune to produce the first (and much maligned) account of Bonnie and Clyde’s lives. Emma also toured for a short time, along with Henry, Cumie, and Marie Barrow and John Dillinger Sr., in a show called Crime Does Not Pay. This production was run by Charles Stanley and at one time also included “Pretty Boy” Floyd’s wife, Ruby, and young son, Dempsey.
Emma Krause Parker died in Dallas on September 21, 1944. A year later, Bonnie and her two little nephews were moved from Fishtrap to Crown Hill Cemetery in Dallas and reburied in a single grave. Emma is buried next to them (to the right) in an unmarked grave.
Hubert Nicholas “Buster” Parker
“Buster” Parker was the oldest of Emma Parker’s children, two years older than Bonnie. It was at Buster’s house that Bonnie met Clyde in January 1930.
After bringing his sister’s body back from Arcadia, Louisiana, for her funeral in Dallas, Buster Parker went on with his life. He was never charged with anything connected with Clyde Barrow or his sister Bonnie. Hubert Nicholas Parker died in Irving, Texas, on March 10, 1964. He was fifty-six years old.
Billie Jean Parker Mace
The baby of the Parker children, Billie Jean Parker was married by the time she was sixteen, and, like her sister’s, Billie Jean’s choice in men was unfortunate. By the time Bonnie met Clyde, Billie Jean was married to Fred Mace and had a baby. They were all living in Emma Parker’s house at 2430 Douglas. Two years later, Billie had two children and a husband who was in trouble with the law. Just over two weeks after Bonnie was arrested at Kaufman, Texas, in April 1932, Fred Mace was wounded while resisting arrest.9 A year later, Billie would spend a harrowing week in Arkansas and Oklahoma with the gang. During that time, she nursed her sister after the car wreck at Wellington, and Buck Barrow killed a town marshal. In October 1933, both of Billie’s children died within days of each other. In May 1934, Billie Jean was arrested for a murder that Clyde and Henry Methvin had committed. She was in the Fort Worth jail when her sister died. After Bonnie and Clyde were killed, the murder charge against Billie was dropped, but the harboring trial gave her a year and a day in prison.
Billie Jean Parker Mace. Circa 1934.
—From the collections of the Texas/Dallas History and Archives Division, Dallas Public Library
After her release, Billie returned to Dallas. She later took in and raised her niece and became good friends with Blanche Barrow. Some thirty years after all their notoriety, Billie Jean and Blanche, both in their fifties, were standing in line at a local Green Stamps store when another woman, who had to leave for a moment, asked them to watch her purse. As the lady walked away, leaving her valuables in their care, Clyde Barrow’s sister-in-law turned to Bonnie Parker’s sister and said, “I wonder what that woman would think if she knew who we were?”
Billie Jean Parke
r Mace died on May 21, 1993.
THE GANG
Ralph Fults
After meeting Clyde Barrow in prison, Ralph Fults worked with him very briefly after they were both released. Ralph was arrested, along with Bonnie Parker, at Kemp, Texas, on April 19, 1932, and sent back to prison, where he remained while Bonnie and Clyde became famous. On January 10, 1935, Ralph was released from prison, but he was soon contacted by escaped convict Raymond Hamilton, whom he reluctantly joined in a series of holdups and shootouts as far east as Mississippi. On April 5, 1935, Ray Hamilton was captured, and twelve days later, Ralph was captured as well. Raymond went to the electric chair, and Ralph went back to prison in Texas. Later he was transferred to Mississippi for a bank robbery charge. In January 1944, after being granted a conditional pardon, Fults tried to enlist in the armed forces. The doctor took one look at the scars from Ralph’s five gunshot wounds and one knifing and exempted him from service. He said that Fults looked like he had already been to war.
After the service turned him down, Ralph went to work in the shipyards at Pascagoula, Mississippi. There he met a young lady named Ruth, and they were married. Sometime later, he joined the Baptist Church and gave many talks to young people about his experiences and about the futility of a life of crime. After he retired, he devoted much of his time to the Buckner Home for Boys in Mesquite, Texas, where his boxing team won two state Golden Gloves titles. In the early eighties, Ralph began work with author John Neal Phillips on a book about his life. In 1992, Ralph was diagnosed with cancer. “The way I see it,” he said, “I’ve lived sixty-odd years longer than I should have. I was given a second chance, and I’ve had a really great life.” Ralph Fults passed away in 1993, one of the few associates of Bonnie and Clyde to die of old age.10
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