I took the food back to the tourist cabin and told Clyde what the man had said. He got a good laugh out of that, but after we had eat, he said, “You know, that man might have been giving us a tip. He might have recognized us. We better move on.”
Eventually, Henry Methvin had joined the gang, and Methvin would prove to be the “weak link” in the chain that would eventually break.
Methvin’s mugshot
While the American public was fascinated by the notion of young lovers on the run, the Barrow Gang faced a much starker reality. Because they now lived in constant fear of being recognized, the Barrow Gang no longer ate in restaurants or slept in motels. Instead, they camped in the woods outside of towns, cooked their meals over make shift fires and bathed in cold, shallow streams. On top of all that, the gang constantly had to steal new cars. As Jones later explained:
Clyde drove most always, ‘cause he didn’t trust nobody else to drive like he could. As for me working on the car, I’d change a tire or a battery or something like that. But we’d junk a car if anything went wrong with it and get another one. I don’t know how many cars I stole for Clyde. I do remember we never kept one more than a week or so, because it’d get too hot…
We never stayed long in one place. It was too risky. We had to keep moving. When our clothes got dirty, we’d take them to a cleaners if we thought it was safe. But we didn’t wait until they was ready. We’d drive on somewhere else and, in a week or two, swing back to pick them up, if there was no heat behind. Sometimes we never got back. We’d buy new clothes.
Any shopping we done was done alone. Me and Clyde would wait in the car down the street while Bonnie went in and got what she wanted. Or he would go in a store while we waited out in the car.
I always figured some of them reporters was holed up somewhere with some booze during the time they claimed they’d been off with the law in hot pursuit of the outrageous Barrow gang. They was just writing from their imagination, it seemed to me. I couldn’t read what they was saying in the papers then, but we’d pick up the newspaper in whatever little town we was traveling through and Bonnie would read it aloud. That way, we kept up with where the law thought we was and we’d head in the opposite direction.
These conditions, along with the fact that the five members spent most of their days riding around in cars lacking air conditioning, made life very unpleasant for everyone. Jones noted that the passengers often rode for hours in complete silence:
There was never a whole lot of talk among us when we was on the road. Often what seemed like hours of silence would be broken as Clyde looked at her and said something like, “Honey, _ as soon as I find a place, I’m gonna stop. I’m tired and want to get some rest.” He always called her “Honey” or “Baby” and she called him “Daddy” or “Honey.” They called me “Boy.” I got to where I called Bonnie “Sis” and Clyde “Bud.” We couldn’t say each other’s names, because somebody at a filling station or a tourist court might pick up on them and call, the ‘law.
Bonnie was always agreeable with Clyde, but they did have some fallings out. I’ve seen them fall out over a can of sardines. He jerked it out of her hands and opened it with his pocketknife, and her trying to tell him it had an opener. But I never heard them call each other bad names. They hardly ever used dirty words. I’ve heard today’s teenagers use words worse than Clyde and Bonnie, and they was deadly outlaws.
Sometimes, when she got puffed up about something, Clyde would kid her and say, “Why don’t you go on home to Momma, baby? You probably wouldn’t get more than ninety-nine years. Texas hasn’t sent a woman to the chair yet, and I’d send in my recommendation for leniency.” She’d laugh at him then and everything would be smooth again.
Jones ultimately reached the point that he couldn’t stand the confinement anymore and stole a car to get away from everyone. However, the loneliness soon changed his mind, and he returned to the gang on June 8, 1933.
Two days later, perhaps while drinking, arguing or both, Clyde flipped the car that he, Bonnie and Jones were riding in. While he and Jones walked away unscathed, Bonnie’s leg was very badly burned. The two men managed to get Bonnie to a nearby farm, where a Mrs. Pritchard examined the leg, saw that it was burned to the bone near the knee and insisted that they needed to call a doctor. When Clyde seemed reluctant, Mr. Pritchard became suspicious and slipped away to call the police. Upon noticing his host was missing, Clyde picked up the crying Bonnie and, with Jones on his heels, ran out the door, jumping in Pritchard’s car and driving away.
From there they drove to Fort Smith, Arkansas, where they got a room in a tourist court. Clyde finally agreed to bring in a doctor, who insisted that Bonnie needed round the clock nursing. Unable to risk taking her to a hospital, he hired a private nurse to care for her. He also contacted Bonnie’s sister, Billie Jean, who travelled from Texas to help care for her sister.
In need of quick money, Buck Barrow and Jones attempted and failed to rob a local bank in Alma, Arkansas, killing Marshal Henry Humphrey in the process. This brought out every lawman in the area, and forced the group to go on the run again, dragging the nearly delirious Bonnie with them. According to Jones, “Bonnie never got over that burn. Even after it healed over, her leg was drawn under her. She had to just hop or hobble along. When she was so bad at first, we had to carry her to the toilet and take her off when she finished and put her back in bed.
Chapter 6: The Manhunt
“If a policeman is killed in Dallas
And they have no clue or guide
If they can’t find a fiend, just wipe the slate clean
And hang it on Bonnie and Clyde.
There’s two crimes committed in America
Not accredited to the Barrow Mob
They had no hand in the kidnap demand
Nor the Kansas City Depot job.”
The Red Crown Tourist Court
The gang’s next stop was the Red Crown Tourist Court in Platte City, Missouri, where they rented both the small brick cabins available on July 19, 1933. Unbeknownst to them, the tavern by the same name, located just across the street, was a favorite hang-out for Missouri Highway Patrolmen. Still, had they behaved themselves, they might have avoided notice, but just like in Joplin, the Barrow Gang proved incapable of avoiding notice.
Blanche made the first mistake by strolling into the tourist court office wearing riding breeches and registering only three people. The owner of the tourist court, Neal Houser, knew that the average woman driving with her family through Missouri did not wear riding breeches. On top of that, when he looked out the window, he saw clearly that more than three people were getting out of the car, including what appeared to be crippled women being carried. Furthermore, Houser also also noticed that they backed their car into the driveway, as if ready to make a quick get-away. The gang also paid for both their lodging and five meals each day with coins instead of bills, and with all that Houser was thoroughly suspicious. However, the icing on the cake was that they covered all the windows, which were already curtained, with sheets of newspaper. Houser decided to stroll across the street and mention his unusual guests to one of the Highway Patrolmen, Captain William Baxter, who was drinking coffee at the tavern.
In the meantime, local Sheriff Holt Coffey received word that the infamous Bonnie had been injured and that the gang was on the run again. So when the local druggist called and told him about some suspicious looking characters who had come by to purchase bandages and atropine sulfate (used for treating burns), he decided to put a man near the tourist court to see what was going on. He also contacted Baxter, who agreed that this might be the real deal. Together they planned a raid, sending to nearby Kansas City for reinforcements and an armored car.
The same night the gang arrived, at 11:00 p.m., Coffey, Baxter and their men surrounded the cabins, sending an officer to bang on the door and order everyone out. Instead, all three men began firing ou
t the doors and windows. Much to the gang’s surprise, the “local yokels” they expected returned fire with submachine guns, forcing them to take cover on the floor. Buck, refusing to take cover, attempted to fire back and was hit in the head by two rounds.
Clyde carried the unconscious Bonnie to the garage and threw her in the back seat of the car while Jones checked outside for an escape route. Clyde went back and grabbed Buck while Jones fired on the armored car blocking them in. The driver pulled out of the line of fire, allowing the gang to shoot its way out and escape. During the chaos, Jones had been shot in the shoulder, and Blanche had been blinded by shards of glass that struck her in both eyes.
With four moaning, injured people in the car, Clyde drove through the dark night. Five days later they made camp in a disused amusement park in Dexter, Iowa, but their presence was soon noted by local citizens, who alerted the police. This time, the police called on every man in the community who could fire a gun to help surround the five and open fire. While Bonnie, Clyde and Jones were able to escape, they left the dying Buck behind, along with Blanche. Buck died a few days later, and Blanche was later convicted as an accessory to murder and served ten years in prison.
The arrest of Blanche Barrow
Still determined to live long enough to complete his revenge, Clyde dragged the injured Bonnie and W.D. northwest to Colorado, then back to Minnesota and then south again to Mississippi, pulling mostly small jobs so that they had spending money. One notable exception was when the three robbed the armory in Plattville, Illinois, taking with them three new Browning Automatic Rifles, a number of handguns and as much ammunition as they could carry.
After six weeks on the run, the trio returned to Dallas in September to visit their families. It seems that by now Bonnie and Clyde knew that the end was near, and in a way the trip seemed like one last chance to come home to say good bye. By now, Jones had had enough, and he left with their permission to visit his mother and not return:
“I left Clyde and Bonnie after they was healed up enough to get by without me. Clyde put me out to steal a car and I hooked ‘em back to Texas.
I’d had enough blood and hell.
But it wasn’t done yet. I had to pay. A boy in Houston, where I was working for a vegetable peddler, knowed me and turned me in to the law. They tried me for killing a sheriff’s man at Dallas. Clyde done it, but I was glad to take the rap. Arkansas wanted to extradite me, and. I sure didn’t want to go to no Arkansas prison. I figure now that if Arkansas had got me, one of them skeletons they’ve dug up there might have been me.”
As Jones indicated, he was quickly arrested in Houston, on November 16. He would hear about the final demise of Bonnie and Clyde from a jail cell.
Leaving Bonnie with her family, Clyde went about the Texas countryside, executing small time robberies with the help of local hoodlums who were excited to get to pull a job with the notorious Clyde Barrow. On November 22, he took Bonnie with him to Sowers, Texas to visit some more family members, but Dallas Sheriff Smoot Schmid got wind of their plans and ambushed the two, firing on their car. While they got away, they were both shot in the legs by a single bullet from a BAR. A few days later, a Dallas grand jury would finally indict Bonnie for the murder of Deputy Malcolm Davis. Though Bonnie was often portrayed in the media as the mastermind and the cold-blooded killer in the group, Jones claimed that it was quite the opposite: “Bonnie was the only one Clyde trusted all the way. But not even Bonnie had a voice in the decisions. His leadership was undisputed. She always agreed with him when he ‘ hinted he might like to hear her advice on something. As far as I know, Bonnie never packed a gun. Maybe she’d help carry what we had in the car into a tourist-court room. But during the five big gun battles I was with them, she never fired a gun. But I’ll say she was a hell of a loader.”
The two spent the month of December laying low, perhaps hoping to spend what they might have sensed would be their last Christmas quietly. However, they started 1934 off with a bang, both literally and figuratively, when Clyde finally attacked the Eastham State Prison. On January 16 he sprung his friends Raymond Hamilton and Henry Methvin from the hell-hole that had been the source of so much of his pain. In the process, he killed a prison officer, Major Joe Crowson.
There is a reason for the old saying “don’t mess with Texas” and Clyde’s attack on the prison brought the force of the entire Lone Star State down on his head, in addition to all the federal officials who were already looking for him. The Texas Department of Corrections brought one of the most famous Texas Rangers in history, Captain Frank A. Hamer, out of retirement to go after what was left of the Barrow Gang. Hamer was the perfect man for the job, unafraid to kill anyone that might harm a fellow Texan. According to his record, he had personally sent more than 50 criminals to their graves and had been wounded 17 times in the process. Unlike some others in the organization, he made it clear that he would have no problem firing on Bonnie Parker, even though she was a woman.
Beginning on February 10, 1934, Hamer had one purpose: capture Bonnie and Clyde, dead or alive.
Hamer
Chapter 7: Public Reaction
From heartbreak some people have suffered
From weariness some people have died
But all in all, our troubles are small
‘Til we get like Bonnie and Clyde.
A newsboy once said to his buddy
“I wish old Clyde would get jumped
In these hard times we’s get a few dimes
If five or six cops would get bumped.”
In many ways it’s impossible today for cold-blooded cop killers to become folk heroes, but there were several extenuating circumstances about Depression Era America that made it possible. First, when Bonnie and Clyde first came on the scene in 1932, the American people were still smarting from what they perceived to be a betrayal of their hopes and dreams. The fathers of middle class families had lived through a World War with the promise that, once the Kaiser was beat, all would be well. They had returned home to hope for a secure future based on hard work and careful saving. The Financial Crash of 1929 had smashed their hopes to pieces and left most of them even poorer than when they had started. In the secret places that they would not admit, perhaps not even to themselves, Clyde’s reign of terror against the established systems seemed a little like sweet revenge.
On the other hand, Bonnie’s devil may care attitude had a certain attraction for the hardworking housewife. Like Bonnie, they had once been free to stay up late and bob their hair. They had traded that for the promise of romantic and financial security. Many a 30 year old woman with four or five children to feed had only just a few years earlier been a prosperous bride with the world at her feet. She and her husband had anticipated only continued prosperity, thanks to a booming economy and cheap land. Then the bank foreclosed and they traded their little house with a picket fence for a shack in the Dust Bowl or a one room walk-up on the backside of a tenement. For some of these women, when Bonnie took a shot at one man who stood between her and what she wanted, she was taking a shot at all the men who had ever let some woman down.
Then, of course, there was the way the papers of the day spun the stories. While reporters did mention the murders, they also told fascinating tales of victims kidnapped by the gang only to be turned loose a few hours or days later with money to get home with. Some of these victims even spoke well of their captors, referring to their good looks or polite manners.
However, any good opinion the public had quickly evaporated on April 1, 1934. That day, Easter Sunday, the gang killed two highway patrolmen, H.D. Murphy and Edward Wheeler, in Grapevine, Texas. Though Methvin fired the first shot, and he later claimed Bonnie walked up to the officer with the intention of helping, rumors flew around the country that she had not only fired on the officers, but that she had stood laughing over the dead officer’s body. Others claimed that she left behind a cigar butt with her own tee
th marks on it. By the time it was later reported that Bonnie had nothing to do with this shooting, and may have even been passed out pain killers, their public reputation was tarnished.
There was something about this attack that seemed worse to the public. Maybe it was that it happened on what, to most of the country, was one of the most sacred days of the year. Maybe it was because Murphy’s young bride-to-be attended his funeral in her wedding gown. Whatever the reason, the public was now thoroughly incensed at the lawlessness around them and wanted it stopped. The Highway Patrol and the governor’s office offered a combined reward of $2,000 for the bodies of gang, but specifically for Bonnie and Clyde.
Either unaware of or unconcerned about their new level of notoriety, Clyde and Methvin gunned down 60 year old Constable Cal Campbell five days later just outside of Commerce, Oklahoma. On the same day, they kidnapped the town police chief, Percy Boyd, and then turned him loose with a clean shirt and money to get home with. According to Boyd, Bonnie asked that he tell the world she did not smoke cigars. It seems that of all the things that paper was accusing her of, that was the one that bothered her most.
With Boyd’s eyewitness testimony to Campbell’s murder, the Oklahoma authorities were able to issue warrants for the arrest of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker specifically. On the other hand, they merely referred to Methvin as “John Doe.” This marked the first time that Bonnie was actually seen shooting someone.
Chapter 8: The Inevitable
“They don’t think they’re tough or desperate
The Top 5 Most Notorious Outlaws Page 13
