by Emma Parker
Table of Contents
About the Book
Foreward
Nell Begins the Story
Mrs. Parker Begins Bonnie's Story
Cousin Bess Relates
Mrs. Parker Goes On
Mary Relates
Mrs. Parker Continues
Nell Goes On With the Story
Mrs. Parker Takes Up the Story
Nell Tells the Story
Mrs. Parker Resumes
Nell Takes Up the Tale Again
Mrs. Parker Relates This Story
Nell Again Continues the Story
Bonnie Tells of Their Escape
Mrs. Parker's Story of Buck's Death
The Story of Bonnie and Clyde
Epilogues
ISBN-10: 0977161072 ISBN-13: 978-0-9771610-7-2
New Material Copyright © 2013
Wild Horse Press
All Rights Reserved
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About the Book
Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow met their end May 23, 1934, but their exploits live on in dozens of books, movies and documentaries that are still produced to this day. Fugitives: The Story of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker came rolling off of the presses in September of 1934, barely three months after the pair met their bloody demise.
The Barrow and Parker families fought hard against several media projects involving the telling of the Bonnie and Clyde saga. They filed a petition to stop the showing of a film produced shortly after the deaths of the criminal pair and also attempted to stop the sale of a record produced by the Southwestern Music Company and the R.C.A. Victor Company, Inc.
In their legal filings they made various claims including great mental suffering and embarrassment caused to the families and misrepresentation of Bonnie and Clyde. Yet, Bonnie's mother, Emma Parker and Clyde's sister, Nell Barrow Cowan, wasted no time in getting this book into print. Their stated desire was to tell the true story of their infamous kin, but no doubt there was a monetary goal as well.
The Ranger Press, Inc. in Dallas, Texas, was the original publisher and was a group effort with Parker and Cowan telling their stories to Jan I. Fortune, a noted poet, reporter and playwright in Dallas. In later years Fortune moved to Hollywood and worked on several movie scripts including Dark Command, starring John Wayne.
Both Clyde and especially Bonnie, were extremely close to their families. During the course of their crime spree, the pair roamed over much of the central United States, but always returned to Dallas and clandestine meetings with their families. The strain must have been tremendous on all involved since they were constantly watched by law enforcement authorities, who hoped to end the crime wave.
Several family members were arrested and tried for aiding and abetting Bonnie and Clyde. Both Bonnie's and Clyde's mothers served thirty day jail terms in 1935, almost a year after the death of the pair.
Mrs. Parker was especially protective of her son's legacy and even went as far as tearing down photos on display at a movie theater in Dallas. The Capital Theater was showing a two-reel film about Bonnie and Clyde when several women appeared and tore down posters and photos in the lobby. When the posters and photos were replaced the women again appeared, but the second time police were present and Mrs. Barrow was arrested and taken to police headquarters. After she apologized, she was released and apparently the incident was dropped.
Despite the desire to protect the memory of Bonnie and Clyde, Fugitives: The Story of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker provides a first hand account and look behind the scenes of Bonnie and Clyde's crime spree. Surprisingly the book does not attempt to sugarcoat their exploits. It also helps to connect the dots as law enforcement chased the pair across the country.
Researchers are skeptical of much of the material in Fugitives: The Story of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker. Many believe some names were changed to protect surviving family members, there are also instances when Mrs. Parker and Nell Cowan attempt to point blame for some of the more serious crimes at other members of the Barrow-Parker gang.
There is also a belief that Jan Fortune attempted to write a book that would appeal to readers and may have taken some jouranlistic liberties in portraying the story of Bonnie and Clyde.
However, despite these shortcomings, the book is a good read and does contain letters, diary entries and other information that might not otherwise have been made available to the public.
Foreward
There may be readers who will hesitate to open this volume, thinking that it is a vindication of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow as persons who were more sinned against than sinning. Such people need have no fear. Within these pages you will find nothing to predicate such a fact. We feel that their life story, as set down here, is the greatest indictment known to modern times against a life of crime.
There is nothing in these pages which would attract any normal person to the life of an outlaw. The two years which Bonnie and Clyde spent as fugitives, hunted by officers from all over the Southwest, were the most horrible years ever spent by two young people. They were on the road constantly; they lived from hand to mouth; they never knew the happiness of safety and security; they had no home and rarely enough money.
Never for one instant did they experience a joy or a thrill which could possibly compensate them for the living hell which made up their lives. In- the last accounting, all they had left in life was each other and the pleasure of occasionally sneaking home to see their people. There never was a time, after the chase began, when they would not have traded places with the poorest and humblest couple on earth if they could have had peace and ordinary happiness.
They trusted but few fellow beings and even here as always that trust was betrayed. Bonnie and Clyde were betrayed by one they considered a friend. This was also true of Jesse James, of Cole Younger, of Pancho Villa, of John Dillinger, of Machine Gun Kelly. It will always be true of those who kill and steal and prey upon decent law-abiding society.
There was only one thing Bonnie and Clyde possessed which the above mentioned did not own: Clyde and Bonnie had a love which bound them together in life and went with them to their graves. We believe that no two people ever loved more devotedly, more sincerely, and more lastingly than Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker. This love was all they had to set them apart from others of their kind; and it was not enough. This recital of their life histories is put down as they told it to us, and from sources we consider reliable. Any discrepancies are not, therefore, of our making. We have told it as we learned it, except for some fictitious names here and there, used in order to avoid trouble for others.
The story of Bonnie and Clyde is offered to the reading public as a thrilling story of the exciting and hectic experiences of two youths who were misfits in society. It proves that crime never pays, and that indeed "the wages of sin is death."
FUGITIVES
The Story of Bonnie and Clyde
Nell Begins the Story
Millions of words have been written about Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, who were shot to death by officers of the law near Arcadia, Louisiana, May 23, 1934. All over the wo
rld the reading public has been kept fully informed concerning the many crimes which they committed or were supposed to have committed. Reams of paper have been covered with their doings,— the sort of clothes Clyde wore, the way he drove, his ruthlessness, his daring; columns have been devoted to Bonnie's yellow hair, her painted toe-nails, her cigar-smoking proclivities, and her defiance of law and order.
But there has never yet been a story written which really told the truth about Clyde and Bonnie; never an account which showed them as they were; never an insight into their lives and characters as human beings. They were monsters, they were outlaws, they did unspeakable things. So said the press, so averred the law. The law and the press were both undoubtedly right.
There was another side to the story; another angle which only we, who loved them and suffered untold worry and torment for them, could possibly know. And during the two years when the pair were being hunted down by officers, we, as kinsmen, had little to say for publication, which was only natural under the circumstances. We dared not talk. When the end of the trail had been reached for them both, there was little need of talking. Talking would have done no good, for the morbidly curious who fought their way into the funeral homes to view all that was left of the bodies of these two young people, were not interested in anything except the gruesome and horrible facts, of which there were plenty to satisfy everybody.
Now that the tumult and shouting has died away in some measure, and the Barrows and the Parkers, released from the hideous strain of two years waiting for what came during May, 1934, are beginning to live normal lives again, I feel that I owe it to my brother, Clyde, and to the woman whom he loved, Bonnie Parker, to present them before the world as we knew them.
Not in extenuation, for of course there is no extenuation. But as human beings who through circumstances became involved in a life from which there was no going back; on a road that knew no turning; as human beings who, strange as it may seem, had their own code of morals, loyalties and loves, and who lived and died by this code — I am almost tempted to say that they died because of it. But let me tell you the story and you shall be the judge.
My first childish memory, outstanding among other memories, is of my little brother, Clyde. We were a large family — there were eight of us children — and Clyde was third from the youngest. I came next, and my brother Buck was the next oldest after me. Clyde was born March 24, 1909.
The older children are a little hazy in my mind during that period, because they were so much older, and Clyde and I had very little companionship with the younger ones because we went away early in life to visit with relatives.
We lived on a farm at Teleco, Texas — just poor tenant farmers, who rarely ever had enough to eat, scanty clothes, and very few pleasures. My father, rather a silent man, with no education — he could neither read nor write — worked hard in the fields all day, coming in at night worn and weary. He had a single track mind and plodded wearily from year to year, never getting anywhere. My mother, with so many babies on hand, had little time for anything else except house work. I suppose we weren't a very happy family. I remember that all my good times were connected with my little brother, Clyde.
I was five when Clyde was born, and I loved him devotedly from the instant that my mother first allowed me to sit beside her bed in a rawhide bottom chair and hold him in my arms. We had named him Clyde Chestnut Barrow. Just where the newspapers got the name of Clyde Champion I don't know, for his middle name was Chestnut and it matched his hair as he grew older. The first time I saw Clyde he had cotton colored hair, dark brown eyes, and cheeks rosy as apples. He laughed a lot, even when a baby. I used to sit and hold him and squeeze him. It seemed to me that I loved him so much I couldn't squeeze him enough. Every day I squeezed a little harder, and he seemed to thrive and grow on it, kicking and squealing with delight.
There is a particular and poignant memory of a morning when Clyde was six months old. I had another squeezing spell. I gathered him up in my arms when my mother wasn't looking and squeezed with all my strength. But instead of the usual crow of delight, Clyde gurgled uncertainly, turned a sickly blue around the mouth, and when I set him back down on the floor, he promptly toppled over and lay there, very still and limp. I shook him, I rubbed him, I pulled him around and still he didn't move. Then I began to yell bloody murder, and my mother came running, took one look at the lifeless form and grabbed him up and dashed out the door.
We lived three miles from town, and our nearest neighbor was half a mile away up a hill. My mother was headed for the neighbor and aid. Terror fairly surged over me as I tagged along after her, holding to her skirts. Not terror for baby Clyde, but terror for little Nell Barrow, who was undoubtedly going to get the spanking of a lifetime whenever her mother got around to it. All the way up the hill I remember hanging onto her skirts and howling at the top of my lungs:
"I didn’t go to do it, mama, I didn’t go to do it!"
As it turned out, I never got the spanking though, for it was three hours before Clyde showed any signs of life, and three days before he was able to move around again normally. By that time my mother had gone through so much worry and suffering that spanking the cause of it all was the last thing in her mind.
Now that I look back, I don't remember ever getting any spankings. I don't remember that the boys got spanked either, though we certainly all needed it. My mother had a quick temper, too, and so did my father, but they simply didn't punish us, that's all. Maybe spankings would have been the thing Clyde and Buck needed; I don't know. Maybe spankings wouldn't have made any difference in the way they turned out, after all. There's never any way of telling when years have passed and things are over and done.
From the day I almost killed him there was a peculiar kinship between Clyde and me, which time never broke, and adversity and sorrow did not change. We were constant companions, despite the difference in our ages. We shared our joys, our troubles, our hopes and ambitions. I almost killed him another time, when he was four, but he never held it against me.
My two cousins and I had slipped off to the creek to go swimming, and Clyde tagged along. We weren't watching him carefully, for we were engrossed in our own fun. A threshing about in the water aroused us, and we discovered Clyde going under. There certainly was a scramble as the life-saving crew mobilized for action, but Clyde was perfectly limp by the time we got him on the bank. We knew nothing whatever of modern resuscitation methods, but we had enough sense to roll him back and forth on a bed of leaves and pump his arms around till he began to show signs of life. When he finally came to, we held solemn council and agreed to keep his drowning a secret among us. Clyde was very sporty about the matter. He agreed to keep it secret too. Someway, we just had the feeling that we'd all be better off if we didn't say anything about the matter when we got home.
By the time Clyde was six, he knew just what he was going to be: A hero like William S. Hart, who was the big screen menace at that time. We used to save our pennies so we could walk the three miles into town to the picture show, and sometimes if it was a very good one, we'd sit through it three or four times while our parents and the neighbors scoured the country for us.
Clyde loved guns from the time I can remember, and always played with them. Toy guns, if he could get them; if not, he'd use a stick for a gun. He was never afraid of anything, even as a baby. I remember when he was scarcely five that he disappeared from home one day before noon. We looked everywhere, — under the beds, under the house, and in the barns. We called in the neighbors; we dragged the well and the creek. As the afternoon wore on, mother was frantic, and my father, called in from the fields to join in the search, was for once moved out of his stoical calm. Such a little fellow to be lost — only five! He might be anywhere, injured, dying, dead. I cried while we hunted, and I cried with a clear conscience. For once, whatever had happened to Clyde, I hadn't done it.
It was almost dark when a wagon drove up to the house and the diminutive adventurer descended with all
the aplomb and poise of a seasoned traveller. He said to his weeping and frantic family, using a lordly gesture: "Shucks! A man gave me some pennies and I couldn't spend 'em till I got to town, could I? So I des walked in." He didn't get a spanking that time, either. We were too relieved to have him safely home again.
Although I was five years his senior, when we played, Clyde was the leader. He was Jesse James, or Cole Younger, or Buffalo Bill, or William S. Hart. He toted guns and shot from the hip with deadly aim, and cowards and redskins always bit the dust in the most approved fashion. It was up to me to be the cowards and the redskins. Many and bitter were the fights we had because I was never allowed to be Jesse James. But Clyde was going to be the big shot if we played, and if I kicked about it, we didn't play. It was very dull when Clyde refused to play, therefore I went on being cowards and redskins.
Clyde played hooky from school and I'd play hooky with him. Neither of us ever liked school, but until Clyde came along to take the lead, I'd gone to school because I thought I had to. Clyde had other ideas; we played hooky. Many a day we've taken our lunch and slipped away in the woods and stayed till school was out, building miniature fortresses out of sand, manning the tops of them with Indians made of corn cobs, and shooting them down without mercy when they offered resistance. I don't believe Texas had compulsory education at this time, and if so, it wasn't compulsory where we were living. No teacher ever reported our absence to our parents. I imagine they simply heaved sighs of relief that there were two less to devil them, and let it go at that.
We had few amusements, as I have said, except of our making, but Clyde had a fertile mind. He could always think up something interesting to do. He used to get out in the pasture and ride the calves till they could hardly totter. Mother didn't kick about that, but when he started riding her milk cows to and from the pasture at a gallop, there was a row. The day he let the fattening hogs out and rode them, there was a terrible row.
