Fugitives- The True Story of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker

by Emma Parker

  At any rate, this letter burned Clyde up, and he wrote one in reply. Only one, though two were received. Clyde had nothing to do with the letter written on a typewriter. Clyde had no typewriter, and the letter was not his. When Clyde replied to Raymond's open communication, he cited the rear vision mirror's view of Raymond lifting more than his share of the loot, and showed his dislike for Alice.

  Up North Clyde would never leave Raymond and Alice alone for a minute. If they did not wish to attend shows with him and Henry and Bonnie, one of them stayed behind to keep them company. At last Raymond accused Clyde of not trusting him, and Clyde admitted that he didn't trust him or Alice.

  The final break came when Clyde and Bonnie had a row. Bonnie was furious at Clyde and was "going home to mama" again. Alice sympathized with her. "I wouldn't put up with him," she stated. "I'd fix him, Bonnie."

  "I’m going home," Bonnie sobbed. "I simply hate him."

  "I’d fix him before I left," Alice told her.

  "I’m going to," Bonnie insisted. "You wait and see." "I’d poison him," Alice went on.

  "Poison him?" Bonnie cried, and whirled on her. "Poison Clyde?"

  "Well, just dope him, then," Alice conceded. "Then while he’s out, you can take his roll and beat it. Boy, think of the good time you could have on that money." "If I hadn’t been so mad at Clyde, I believe I’d have slapped her," Bonnie told me. "But that finished me up with Alice. I told Clyde and he told Raymond that if Alice stuck around, it was all off. They split up right there, and we came back to Texas with Henry."

  Bonnie told us this out on the Preston Road, where we'd gone to meet them in Nell's car. Bonnie needed a permanent and Clyde asked Nell to slip her into the shop late at night and give her one. "Good Lord," Nell cried in horror, "I wouldn't do it for a million dollars, Clyde. Why didn't she get one up North?"

  "Sis, you ought to go to Indiana and open a beauty shop," Clyde replied. "You’d make a fortune. We drove three hours looking for one and never found it."

  A car was coming down the main road; Nell got scared and tried to turn her car around, and ran off in the ditch. When the car had gone by, Clyde and Henry got out to pull her back on the road. Henry took barbed wire off a fence and tied Nell's car to the back of Clyde's. Clyde steered and Henry jerked her automobile to safety. When Clyde came back, wiping his hands from the grease, he grinned and said: "Sis, did you know you were practically walking? Why don't you buy yourself a decent car?"

  "Beauty parlor operators don’t get as much money as bandits," Nell replied, and Clyde yelled with laughter.

  We weren't to see them again till a week after the Grapevine killing on April 1, 1934. The real reason back of that Grapevine murder is such a simple thing that the telling of it borders on the ridiculous. All the newspaper stories were wrong. The reports were that Raymond Hamilton, who had just robbed the bank at West, Texas, was to join Clyde and Bonnie on this side road. Clyde and Raymond hadn't been together for weeks, and there was no chance of their meeting this day. They were not parked there waiting for any gangsters. They had come to Dallas because Bonnie had a white rabbit which she wanted me to have for Easter, and they were waiting for both families to join them when the two officers drove up and were killed. They were not alone in the car. Joe Palmer and Henry Methvyn were with them when they first arrived, and Henry was there when the men were shot. Joe Palmer had gone to town to get word to us.

  Bonnie bought the rabbit for me several days before Easter and she had had him in the car ever since. They named him Sonny Boy and Bonnie kept the car cluttered up with lettuce leaves and carrots for days. One afternoon, driving along, Clyde complained that Sonny Boy had acquired a peculiar odor, and had to have a bath if he was going to keep on riding with him. He found a little stream, took a cake of soap, and gave Sonny a very thorough scrubbing. Bonnie dried him with a towel and they started off again; but bathing didn't agree with Sonny Boy. He proceeded to pass out of the picture. Bonnie began bawling.

  "He’s dying," she sobbed. "You’ve killed my mama’s rabbit with your old scrubbing."

  "Oh, he’ll come out of it," Clyde said, and kept on driving. Sonny Boy didn’t come out of it. Bonnie’s sobs shook the car.

  "You would go and bathe him and he didn’t smell — much," she snubbed.

  "A little soap and water never hurt a rabbit yet," Clyde insisted, and kept on driving. Bonnie cried and Sonny Boy lay stiff and cold and wouldn’t so much as wiggle a whisker. At last Clyde could stand it no longer. He turned down a side road, got out, gathered up a lot of dry wood and leaves and made a fire. He came back and got Sonny Boy and the weeping Bonnie. He thawed Sonny Boy out, and a time he had doing it, too. "I singed all my eyebrows off bringing that darned rabbit to," he told me.

  After all this to-do, Clyde decided he wasn't going to allow a rabbit to run him crazy. They headed for Dallas to bring Sonny Boy to me. Joe Palmer and Henry were along. They stopped out near Grapevine and Joe got out and "thumbed" it into town to tell us where the kids would be. Nobody was at home at my house and nobody at Clyde's home except his father. Joe delivered the message. This was about one-thirty o'clock Sunday afternoon. They didn't get there till about one o'clock, and they didn't stay in the place where the officers were killed a great length of time. Clyde and Bonnie never told us a definite spot where they would meet us. They would say, "On the Eagle Ford Road," or "Mockingbird Lane," or "Preston Road." They usually just drove around and we'd meet them in the vicinity indicated. They drove around some this time, while waiting.

  They had been in this lane but a short while when the shooting occurred. Newspapers stated that a man with guns and a girl in riding clothes had been parked in the lane all day. They had done target practice, eaten their lunch on the fender and made open love to each other. When the two officers arrived, both had opened up with machine guns, killing them. The girl then ran to where one dying officer lay and kicked him over, pumping lead into his helpless body. The two drove away laughing.

  This is how the kids related it: Bonnie was letting Sonny Boy eat grass along the road. Clyde, becoming sleepy, took a nap in the back of the car. Henry walked up and down. They had no lunch, neither did they do target practice. "That would have been a smart trick," Clyde remarked, when he read the account in the papers. "Wanted for a dozen things by every cop in Texas and then I'd get out on a country road and shoot off guns. Damn smart! " Clyde and Bonnie rarely, if ever, made love before people. I never saw Clyde kiss Bonnie but three times in my life. Besides, they had been together for two years now, and it wasn't likely they'd be making exhibitions of their devotion for Henry Methvyn or any other person. Neither Clyde nor Bonnie were out of the car when the two officers, E. B. Wheeler and H. D. Murphy, turned into the lane that afternoon.

  Bonnie got back into the front seat with Sonny Boy by this time, and was brushing his fur. She heard the noise and leaned and shook Clyde. "It's the law," she whispered. Clyde jumped up and looked out quickly. Henry had moved back by the side of the car where the guns were lying. The officers had ridden in and were leisurely racking their motorcycles, apparently with no thought of danger. They had not drawn their guns and were evidently not expecting any trouble.

  "Let’s take ’em," Clyde said.

  Henry Methvyn had been with Clyde only a short time and had never been in a situation where Clyde had kipnapped officers before. To him, "Let's take 'em," meant only one thing. Of course, he was badly frightened. He was an escaped convict and wanted for a number of things. Also, he and Bonnie had been drinking. He seized the guns, whirled and fired a steady volley. Both men crumpled to the ground without a sound, their guns still in their holsters. Bonnie was petrified with fear and Clyde was white with rage. He was cursing furiously as he slid over the seat and under the wheel.

  "Get in here, you damn fool!" he cried. "Now you’ve done it."

  "But it was them or us," Henry protested, looking at Clyde in amazement.

  "Like hell!" Clyde exploded. "They didn’t know who we w
ere. Tell me! There’s not a pair of cops in the whole country with guts enough to come after Clyde Barrow alone. They’d never have turned in that lane if they’d known I was down here."

  This may sound like bragging on Clyde's part, but bragging or not, he said it. When officers came to get Clyde, as newspapers told it, they came in droves with armored cars, machine guns, and shields. If Wheeler and Murphy had known that Clyde was up that country lane, they'd probably be alive today.

  Clyde ran for it. It was all they could do. Bonnie told me that Clyde swore at Henry for two days because of the blunder he had made. Not that Clyde was against killing policemen, but simply that he saw no sense in doing it unless it had to be done.

  We got in from White Rock about 3:30 that afternoon. Clyde's father gave us the message and we drove right on out to Grapevine. We knew nothing of the shooting and considered it rather peculiar that the highway was lined with officers with machine guns. We drove up and down for several hours, still not knowing what had happened. We did not go near the lane where the killing occurred because we did not know they had been there. When it began to get dark we came back home. As soon as we got home we were informed of the tragedy. Clyde's father said someone had heard it over the radio and had telephoned him. We didn't believe that Clyde and Bonnie had done it at all. It didn't sound a bit like them. Bonnie had never worn men's clothes; she didn't like them, and since the injury to her leg, she was unable to wear tight-fitting clothes. We just didn't believe that she'd so wantonly kill a person. The whole thing sounded phony, so we decided that someone else had done this awful deed and the kids had beat it because they dared not stay.

  On Saturday, April 6, less than a week from the Easter killing, Clyde, Bonnie, and Henry were again in the papers. This time they had killed Constable Cal Campbell at Commerce, Oklahoma, and had kidnapped the police chief, Percy Boyd. We believed that story because it sounded just like them. But we didn't learn details till a week later when Clyde and Bonnie came back to Texas. They came on April 17.

  On this Saturday, the two boys were sleeping in the car by the roadside outside of Commerce. Bonnie was keeping watch in the front seat, holding the white rabbit. A farmer with a cow in a truck drove along. Bonnie didn't waken Clyde because she said she felt sure the farmer didn't recognize them and wouldn't report them. The farmer didn't know who they were, but he reported them just the same. He hunted up Constable Campbell and informed him that two drunks were out on the highway asleep and there was a girl with them. Cal Campbell found the chief of police Percy Boyd, having a shave in a barber shop. They took their time getting under way. Drunks were often troublesome, but they weren't exciting.

  Bonnie saw them coming and called to Clyde. He slid over the seat and under the wheel, still in his sock feet. He meant to run for it. In his haste to turn around, he backed off into the ditch and stuck. The officers alighted with drawn guns and came forward. Clyde and Henry started firing. Cal Campbell fell, and Boyd raised his hands over his head in token of surrender. Both men were rather old and certainly hadn't come looking for trouble. Clyde made Boyd get into the car. Then, while Bonnie held a gun on him, the two boys tried to get the car out of the ditch. Another car came along and stopped to ask if they could help. Clyde used his gun to hasten matters. The men hurriedly put the car back on the pavement. Clyde raced away with Boyd in the back seat beside Henry.

  After half an hour of terrific driving, Boyd inquired timidly of Henry: "I don't like to get personal, but isn't that Clyde Barrow? " Henry said it was.

  Bonnie and Boyd struck up quite an acquaintanceship. He told her about his family and she told him about hers. She also asked him, if anything happened to her while he was in the car, would he see that her mama got the white rabbit? Boyd promised.

  "We liked him," Bonnie said. "When we let him out, we gave him a new shirt and tie and expense money back home. He asked me: ‘Bonnie, what shall I tell the world when I go back?’ And I said, ‘Tell them I don’t smoke cigars!’ He did it, too. It was in all the Oklahoma newspapers." This pleased Bonnie greatly.

  They drove to Topeka that day, and circled back to Dallas about the middle of April. At Wichita Falls, Henry Methvyn got out and took the train. He was coming down to tell us where to meet Clyde and Bonnie this time. On the train from Wichita Falls Henry rode with Texas Rangers. They were friendly and soon Henry joined in the conversation. He told us that all their talk was of the Grapevine killing and Bonnie and Clyde. He said his hair stood on end when they speculated as to where Henry Methvyn and the two kids could be.

  When he arrived in Dallas it was early morning. Henry went down to the Sanger Hotel and walked up and down in front of the shop, but Nell wasn't down yet. He debated calling her apartment and decided against it.

  Failing to find Nell, Henry walked on out to find me and Clyde's mother. One of the first things he said to me was: "Mrs. Parker, I killed those two officers at Grapevine! " Later that day at Mount Pleasant, Bonnie told me this, too, but Henry told me first. My white rabbit was delivered to me that trip. I still have him. "Keep him away from the cops," Bonnie said, when she gave him to me. "He's been in two gun battles and he'll land at Huntsville if the law finds it out."

  Clyde was still angry with Henry about the Grapevine murder. Not from the standpoint of murder, but from the standpoint of a senseless murder. "He didn't have to kill them," he insisted* "They didn't suspect a thing — just racked their motorcycles and never even drew a gun. We could have taken 'em for a ride. Such a damn fool stunt." Bonnie finally made him hush. What was done was done, she said, so let it go.

  That day we begged Clyde and Bonnie to leave the country. It seemed beyond human endurance that we could go on living through the horrors we were enduring; we didn't see how they could, either. The endless strain was telling on them and it was certainly killing us. The end was so inevitable. They hadn't a chance — not a chance in the world. Death was waiting for them. It was at their very heels. We begged them to run for the border; try to get across and start all over again. "You know you're going to get it and get it soon," we said. "Aren't you afraid?"

  "Sure, we’re afraid," Clyde replied. "We never know what the next hour will bring. You may think this is funny — but we never go through a town or past a place where there may be a trap, that we don’t pray we’ll make it."

  I didn't think that was funny. Every human being, when desperate, turns to God, no matter what sort of lives they may have led. Bonnie and Clyde had their backs to the wall; they could depend on nothing now except their own swiftness, courage and cunning. They were worn out with the fight. They were outlawed to the world and to society. Every hand was against them, and justly so. There was no earthly help toward which they might turn, so they prayed. It wasn't funny to me. It was tragic.

  We tried all of our arguments that day; we used every persuasion we could muster to get them to leave Texas forever, but they refused. "Seeing you folks is all the pleasure Bonnie and I have left in life now," Clyde said. "Besides each other, it's all we've got to live for. Whenever we get so we can't visit our people, we might as well die and be done with it. We're staying close to home and we're coming in as long as we're alive."

  They had a plan, too, whereby we could be with them all summer. They said they wanted to buy a house on Henry Methvyn's father's land down in Louisiana, and fix it up so that we could come down and visit with them. Then at nights they'd slip in and be with us. We listened to their enthusiastic planning with an apathetic numbness. It would be the same old thing again: secret meetings, signals, constant fear like a black shadow over everything; and then some night out of the stillness a terrific barrage of machine gun fire from some ditch or gully. But we let them plan.

  When we were convinced that we could not change them, we turned our talk to lighter things and tried to enjoy the afternoon. Clyde had a bunch of clippings he'd saved from Dallas newspapers, and he got a big kick out of them. There were several cartoons and some squibs from columnists. One cartoon showed
the sheriff asleep, snoring, while Clyde and Bonnie poked their heads out from under his bed. Another was of Pretty Boy Floyd surrounded by newspapers featuring Clyde and Bonnie. Pretty Boy was jumping up and down and yelling: "I haven't had any publicity in weeks." The squibs were all jibes at the Dallas authorities for their failure to apprehend Clyde and Bonnie. One read: "Clyde and Bonnie give Smoot Schmid twenty-four hours to get out of town." Another said: "Clyde and Bonnie let Smoot Schmid get away again."

  Clyde thought all these ridiculous pictures and stories were very funny, but they were merging into a tide of sentiment which was to sweep over the two of them on a May morning in Louisiana and leave death behind. Officers had been kidded about Clyde and Bonnie long enough; too long, to suit their sense of humor. They meant to get them and they did.

  We saw them for the last time on Sunday evening, May 6. They drove by the filling station in West Dallas and told us where to meet them. They had chosen a spot four miles east of Dallas on a country road. We went out and were with them about two hours, I guess. I sat on the ground under the stars and talked to Bonnie for a long time that night. I remember that as she talked, she was showing me some new snapshots she and Clyde had taken.

  "Mama," she began, with that peculiar calm which she and Clyde were always in when speaking of death, "when they kill us, don’t let them take me to an undertaking parlor, will you? Bring me home."