by Emma Parker
Nell Tells the Story
When Clyde left home with Bonnie, our family was as ignorant of what was going on as Mrs. Parker. We had no idea the two were together, though good common sense should have told us, I suppose, that they weren't likely to be separated. You must understand, if you can, that we never believed anything bad we heard about Clyde until he told us with his own lips. Newspaper stories sometimes frightened us, but we refused to believe them till we had confirmation. We realized that Clyde was restless, unhappy, and not at all like he had been before he went to prison, and we were willing to humour him and let him get his bearings again, if that was what he needed. We would have objected with our last breaths, to his taking to the road and living by what he could steal. We didn't know it till word came from Mrs. Parker that Bonnie was in Kaufman, and that Clyde had been with her.
Although he was implicated, we did not believe that Clyde had killed old Mr. Bucher in Hillsboro. The next day after the killing, I went out to my mother's to see if there had been any word from Clyde. He was hiding behind the house, mother said, and I went out to talk with him. I asked him if he had been mixed up in that Hillsboro thing and he said, "No, Sis, good God, no! I told those dumb eggs not to use any gun play — and I beat it the minute I heard the bullets popping."
"Oh," I cried, "so you were with them, then? I thought you said you weren’t."
"Listen, Sis, don’t start bawling me out," he begged. "I’m near enough crazy as it is. I was with them — I meant to take my share of the money — I’m not denying any of that. But you see, it was this way. When we walked into that store of Mr. Bucher’s the first time to look the joint over, Mrs. Bucher was there, and she recognized me and I her. She used to live in Dallas and I went around with her boy some. So when we got out of the place, I said to the boys: ‘I can’t have anything to do with this, because that woman knows me as well as she knows her own son.’
"We fixed it up, then. I was to sit outside in the car and they were to go inside pretending to want to buy some guitar strings, offer a big bill as payment, and get old man Bucher to open the safe. Then they were going to hold him up and take the money. I told them two or three times to be careful about any gun play. I said, ‘You start anything, and we’ll be sunk, because Mrs. Bucher will remember me, and they’ll catch us all.’ Well, they promised. The two boys — one was almost twice as big as I am — went in according to arrangements, but they thought that Mr. Bucher would open the safe. It turned out that he called his wife to do it. I don’t know how the shooting started — I just heard somebody scream, and guns popping, and I stepped on the gas and beat it. I don’t know how they got away and I don’t care."
Well, of course, Mrs. Bucher identified Clyde and also Raymond Hamilton later. I'm sure she identified Clyde because she knew he'd been with them on the first trip, but why she said Raymond was along I don't know. Clyde had never been with Raymond on any job at that time. He hadn't met him till 1930, and had not teamed up with him at this time. Clyde told me the names of the two boys who did the killing. They're both serving time now for burglary but were never implicated in the Hillsboro murder. It's still pinned on Clyde and Raymond. Not that it matters, considering how many terrible things Clyde and Raymond did eventually; I'm just trying to set things down as they really happened, and show how one thing led to another, each one getting Clyde in just a little deeper, till in his mind there wasn't a chance for him to do anything but go on as he did. Please understand that I realize fully that Clyde didn't have to steal in the first place; that the first offence needn't have been followed by a second; that when he came from prison, he could have stayed on the job in Wooster, if he'd put his mind to it; and that after he came home, he could have begged or starved rather than become an outlaw and a fugitive again. I realize fully all of these things and I'm not excusing Clyde. I'm just telling.
On May 5th, five days after the Hillsboro affair, two bandits robbed the Magnolia station at Lufkin, and kidnapped the manager. Four blocks down the street they repeated the performance at the Gulf station, and kidnapped that manager. The headlines screamed that Bonnie and Clyde were at it again, and both kidnapped men, when released, identified pictures in the rogue's gallery as Clyde and Frank Clause. Clyde told me later that he wasn't in on that, either, and certainly Bonnie wasn't, because she was still in the Kaufman jail. As I have said, we believed Clyde when he said he didn't do a certain robbery or murder, because he admitted so many crimes to us, often crimes that the law knew nothing about. Why should he lie to us? What was one robbery more or less during a spring and summer that was filled, not only with robberies, but murders?
At this time it became the fad to recognize Clyde Barrow as the principal in every crime committed in Texas, and always there was a girl with bright yellow hair in the car, waiting. She was not, however, smoking big black cigars, although the whole world now believes that Bonnie smoked them from the first, so potent is the power of suggestion. But the picture of Bonnie with the cigar wasn't discovered till April of 1933 in a tourist camp in Joplin, Missouri.
Yet, if you read the stories in the blood and thunder magazines, you will learn that Bonnie Parker was notorious in Dallas for years before she met Clyde as one who smoked cigars constantly in public. Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to make an angel out of Bonnie. The truth is fair and right, even to a murderer, and legends and traditions have grown up around this girl, manufactured out of whole cloth without one word of truth to back them, which when looked at in the cold light of reason and factual evidence, simply cannot stand up.
Mrs. Parker Resumes
Meantime, in Kaufman, the grand jury met. They had Bonnie up before them, questioned her about many things, and as Mrs. Adams had predicted, they nobilled her on June 17, and she came home to me. She was soberer, more quiet, and a great deal older than the Bonnie who had left home three months before. It was evident that she had been doing a lot of thinking. We talked the situation over and I pointed out to her the trouble she had caused herself by following her heart instead of her head. "If Clyde's going to keep on the way he's been going," I said, "you're going to have to stay away from him."
She looked at me soberly. "I'm through with him," she told me. "I'm never going to have anything more to do with him." Then she went out of the room rather quickly and I suspected she'd gone to have a good cry.
She stayed in Dallas till the last of June, looking for work, and having very little to say. I felt sorry for her, but I felt too, that time would heal the wound and she'd find other interests and be able to forget Clyde. I didn't want her to go to him. What mother in her right mind would want such a thing to happen to her daughter? Clyde was a marked man, and no good could ever come of Bonnie's being with him, no matter how much they loved each other. One day in June, I came home from work and my mother told me that Bonnie had gone to Wichita Falls, where she had heard of an opening in a new cafe. It seemed queer that Bonnie would leave me without saying goodbye. Something whispered to me that she'd gone to Clyde, but I shut it in the back of my mind. I didn't want to believe that. Besides, in a few days I had a letter from Bonnie, telling all about the new job, where she was staying, and what hours she was working. I heaved a sigh of relief.
It was not till August that I saw Bonnie again. She came back to see me then. It was Friday, the fifth, I remember, because that was the night that it was reported that Clyde and Raymond Hamilton murdered two officers at Atoka, Oklahoma. Bonnie came by the place where I worked and wanted me to go home with her then. She said she'd be in Dallas only a day or two. I couldn't get off at that hour, so I sent her on home, and the forewoman let me leave at 4:30. Bonnie was at home with Billie and the baby when I reached there, and we had a grand reunion when all the family came in from work. I never was so glad to see a person in my life. She hadn't changed a bit that I could see, except that she seemed nervous, jumped at the slightest noise, and kept looking out of the windows constantly.
It was hot, and Bonnie said the hours in the
cafe were pretty long, and she had been working hard and was pretty well worn out. I babied her a lot. Bonnie was so little and she could be so pathetic looking when she was tired or not feeling well. I didn't mention Clyde to her till late that night when we were sitting on the porch alone. I asked her then if she'd seen him and she denied it vigorously. "You know I wouldn't have anything to do with him, mama," she said. "Not after the trouble I got into down in Kaufman. No, I haven't seen him and I don't want to see him." It didn't seem sensible that she would, and I believed her. You see, I wanted to believe her more than anything in the world. Besides, Bonnie had never lied to me before this. (I discovered later that she was lying to me about everything.)
For instance, Clyde himself had brought Bonnie to Dallas four days before, and she had spent the day at Clyde's home. They had arrived early on the morning of the first, coming from Wichita Falls, where Bonnie, Clyde, and Raymond had been living in a rented cottage ever since the last of June. Clyde and Raymond were planning to stick up the Neuhoff Packing Company that day. They had already gone over the grounds and mapped out the plans. There is no earthly doubt but that Bonnie knew all about it, too, but either Clyde wasn't taking chances with her getting into trouble any more, or else she herself had refused to have anything to do with it. At any rate, Clyde left her at his home, and he and Raymond drove away around noon. Clyde called back as he left: "Listen over the radio, honey, and see if we make our get away."
Bonnie, who was always superstitious about certain things, called out quickly: "Don't say things like that, Clyde. It's a jinx." But she went right back in and tuned in on the radio and sat down to listen. In half an hour the word was on the air. The Neuhoff Packing Co. had been successfully held up, and the bandits had escaped. They had whipped back through town, down Industrial Boulevard, thence to the West Dallas road, and picked up Bonnie, and disappeared. They went to an abandoned farm house several miles out of Grand Prairie and laid low four days. On August 5th, Clyde brought Bonnie back to Dallas to visit with me, and he and Raymond went on to Oklahoma. I knew nothing of all this till nearly a year later. All I did know was what Bonnie told me, and she didn't want me to find out what she was doing, so she told me lies.
I believe that, up to this time, even though Bonnie knew that Clyde robbed so they could live, she didn't like it and was not in sympathy with that mode of life. Clyde had never killed anyone before though the Hillsboro murder was on his head. Bonnie realized that Clyde faced the chair already because of this charge, and she didn't believe he had a chance in the world to clear himself of it. If caught, the odds were ten to one that he'd get the chair. She didn't want him caught. All of this is feminine logic of a woman in love, and has nothing whatever to do with law and order. Bonnie had become an outlaw at heart because she wanted to be with Clyde.
It was not till almost a year later, in May of 1933, that I saw Bonnie again to talk with her about any of these things, and by that time there was no going back for Bonnie either. She told me then: "I never dreamed what I was getting into, mama. I only meant to go and be with him a little while —just a few months out of a lifetime. Then I thought I'd come home and never see him again. Long before I was ready to come back home, the way was blocked, and my name was chalked up with Clyde's. It was fixed for us both — the way we'd have to go if we were to live and stay together — and death was always at the end of the road. I didn't realize, mama — I didn't realize."
I don't think, in her heart, that Bonnie would have ever come home to stay again, even if Clyde hadn't become a murderer. She loved him so madly, so insanely and so without rhyme or reason, that she would have stayed with him anyway, no matter what came. She made her little excuses to me to make me feel better, and perhaps at that particular moment she did feel that she wouldn't have gone on if there'd been any turning back. However, back to this story of August fifth.
Bonnie was up early the following morning, August 6, and seized the paper as soon as she was up. There was a story in it about the Atoka killing. Four men, said to be well known Dallas bandits, had shot two officers at a country dance the night before. One officer was killed instantly. Moore was his name. The other one, Sheriff Maxwell, died four days later. The entire affair was utterly without justification or logic, a revolting and terrible murder without any sense or reason to it. They weren't staging a hold-up and caught and forced to fight for their lives. In fact, there was no excuse for them being where they were, in the first place. It turned out that Raymond Hamilton's rather childish desire to attend a dance was what started the whole affair. Anybody with brains can easily deduce that men wanted by the law for the things Clyde and Raymond were guilty of, hadn't the least bit of business trying to horn in on a country dance. As I told Bonnie later, if Raymond just had to dance, he could have turned on the radio in the car and got out by the side of the road and hopped up and down by himself. This murder was one which roused the whole of the South against the outlaws, and with good reason.
Raymond was wanting to dance this Friday night. Cruising along the country roads, the four boys spotted the dance in progress and Raymond immediately decided that they would attend. They drove up to the place and sat awhile in their car, debating whether or not they'd better try it. Raymond was all for it. They had some whiskey and had been drinking quite a bit. They got out of their car and moved over into another car, closer to the door, still arguing. This move attracted the attention of Sheriff Maxwell and his deputy, Eugene Moore. They decided they might do well to investigate.
"What’s going on here?" Maxwell wanted to know. The answer he got came from guns. Moore was killed instantly, a bullet through his heart and one through his head. Maxwell fell, badly wounded in half a dozen places. The sound of the shooting caused a riot inside the dance hall, and people began pouring out; women screamed and fainted or had hysterics; men yelled and milled back and forth uncertainly.
The four boys leaped from the car into their own and started off down the road, firing as they fled. Maxwell, on his elbow, fired after them. Seizing the guns of the helpless officers, several of the party jumped into cars and took up the chase. The car the boys were driving had a Texas license; and suddenly as it speeded down the road, something went wrong; it trembled on the edge of the ditch, turned and toppled over.
A man named Cleve Brady, who lived at Stringtown, happened to be passing, and not knowing they were bandits, stopped as any good motorist should do and offered aid. Clyde rammed a gun in his ribs and hustled him back into his own automobile, the others climbed into the Brady car, and they were off again. Outside of Stringtown about fifteen miles, Brady's car lost a wheel, and spun around in the road. Raymond Hamilton was thrown clear, but was uninjured. All four jumped from the disabled motor and ran toward a farmhouse owned by John Redden. "We've had a wreck," they told him. "A fellow down there is badly hurt and we've got to get him to a doctor, quick. Have you a car?"
Redden's nephew, Haskell Owens, obligingly backed his car down and offered to carry the wounded man to town. Before he had driven twenty feet from the farmhouse, a revolver in his side forced him to turn away from town and drive in the opposite direction at breakneck speed. A few miles further on, Clyde took the wheel. At Clayton, Oklahoma, they set Owens free in his own car and stole a machine for themselves from Frank Smith, who lived at Seminole, and disappeared.
Clyde and Raymond were not accused of the affair at first. Many were the conjectures as to who might have committed the crime. James Acker, a former convict, was picked up and held because he had a gun wound. Acker insisted, however, that bandits had held him up and stolen $7 from him, shooting him because he resisted. He had never been near Atoka nor Stringtown, and officers were unable to prove that he had been. Conjectures were at a standstill till the Seminole car was found at Grandview, Texas, on Sunday afternoon. Officers could scarcely believe the evidence of their eyes. The distance covered since the boys had let Owens go near Clayton on Saturday was amazing. But it told them one thing — the men who killed the o
fficers at Atoka had come from Texas and had returned to Texas. I could have amazed the officers further, had I known what I know now. That distance from Clayton to Grandview wasn't covered in twenty-four hours as they thought, but in less than six, for Clyde Barrow sent to my house after Bonnie Parker at 8 o'clock on the evening of Saturday, August 6, although the Seminole car was not discovered till the next afternoon.
This was but a sample of the phenomenal driving for which Clyde later became famous. A thousand miles was nothing unusual for Clyde to cover in a day. He drove like a devil, and he had the luck of one. He also came to know all the roads in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, New Mexico, and Missouri. Not only the main roads, but all the side roads and little country lanes. His mind was a photostatic copy of the intricate windings where he could rush in and hide, elude capture, fade into the landscape and become lost to sight.
We were again sitting on the porch, saying very little. Bonnie had planned to return to Wichita Falls the next morning, and had already ordered the taxi to call for her at five. A car drove up in front of the house with a boy in it whom I had never seen before. Bonnie ran out and talked with him a few minutes. She came back and said that she had a ride to Wichita and wouldn't wait till daylight. She gave me her bus fare, took her handbag, kissed me good-bye and left.
That was the last I was to see of my daughter for almost a year, except for two hasty visits of about five minutes each, one on Hallowe'en evening, and another on January 6th, the night that Malcolm Davis was killed. Long before Bonnie admitted to me that she was with Barrow again, newspapers had told me all I wanted to know, and a great deal that I would give my life if I could forget.
Nell Takes Up the Tale Again
