Jeff Guinn
Page 17
Clyde certainly might have tried to rob a small-town grocery store—it would have been typical of him. Shooting an unarmed man when he was in no immediate danger himself would not. Neither was visiting L.C. in the Grayson County lockup. Clyde had already demonstrated when Bonnie was in the Kaufman County jail that he was too wary to visit incarcerated loved ones himself. (Soon after the Hall murder, L.C. was no-billed for lack of evidence by the Grayson County grand jury.) Glaze and Enloe might have picked out his mug shot, but misidentification by eyewitnesses was common. Back in Hillsboro, Madora Bucher had mistaken Ted Rogers for Raymond Hamilton. Enloe’s testimony becomes even more suspect because it’s unclear from surviving state and local records whether, on October 11, L.C. Barrow had even been transferred yet to Grayson County from Dallas, where he’d originally been arrested.
Then there’s the most mitigating factor of all—on October 11, Clyde hadn’t yet returned to Texas. In Fugitives, Clyde’s sister Nell insists he and Bonnie only arrived on Halloween, when he learned from his family that he had been charged with Hall’s murder and that L.C. was in jail. It’s possible, but not probable, that Clyde misled them. He and Bonnie could have been back in Texas weeks earlier, and learned about L.C.’s incarceration from someone else. But from John Bucher in Hillsboro through his final victim two years later in Oklahoma, Clyde never lied to his family about the murders he committed. He often tried to place most of the blame on someone else, suggesting to the other Barrows that he was almost as much a victim of circumstance as whoever died, but he never denied being involved. If he’d killed Hall, he would have admitted it during the family gathering on Halloween night. Marie wrote that Clyde “vehemently denied” having anything to do with the Sherman murder. In her opinion, the Dallas police told Glaze and Enloe to say it was Clyde they’d seen. Nell Barrow wrote that her brother was philosophic about the news, saying, “They’ve got to hang it on somebody, you know.”
It would be a continuing source of frustration to the rest of the Barrows that Clyde was repeatedly blamed by police and journalists for crimes he didn’t commit. But Clyde usually liked it. He and Bonnie began saving the newspaper articles, which they’d reread and savor. Police would find the clippings in abandoned stolen cars, the newsprint creased and smeared from frequent handling. To Clyde and Bonnie, every story whether true or not was further proof they were important now, people to be reckoned with by the laws and the public. If some of the newspaper descriptions of Clyde tended toward the demonic (“Barrow, his mean little eyes snapping, was pointing a revolver at Hall and Homer Glaze…. Barrow stood over the old butcher and fired three shots into Hall’s body”), it just reinforced his opinion of himself as someone other men ought to fear. Smart people had been scared of Jesse James and Billy the Kid, too. Bonnie wanted everyone to like her. Clyde wanted to be intimidating.
Of course, criminal celebrity had its drawbacks. Just as the newspaper articles extended Clyde’s reputation in Texas, they also reminded lawmen all over the state of what to be on the lookout for. There weren’t that many twenty-two-year-olds in suits barreling down the roads in flashy Ford V-8s with blond girls perched by their sides. Clyde had no intention of completely abandoning his home state—no cops were going to keep Clyde Barrow from seeing his family and pulling holdups wherever he pleased—but he did realize he ought to exercise more caution. He and Bonnie wouldn’t camp any longer in abandoned farmhouses outside Dallas for weeks at a time. They’d need to be on the move almost every day, and sometimes expand their criminal hunting grounds beyond Texas and Oklahoma, the states where they were most familiar to police. And that was fine—Clyde loved to drive. The trip to Michigan and drive back through Illinois and Kansas whetted Clyde’s and Bonnie’s appetites for travel. After getting the news about the Hall murder from Clyde’s family on Halloween night, they decided to try their luck in Missouri for a while. But before they left, there was one more bit of business Clyde had to attend to.
From his first forays into crime as a West Dallas teenager, Clyde rarely worked alone. He’d teamed at various times with his brother Buck, Frank Clause, William Turner, Ralph Fults, the Lake Dallas boys, and Raymond Hamilton. It made sense to have partners. Robberies were easier with one man pointing the gun, another emptying the safe or looting the cash drawer, and still another accomplice outside revving the engine of the getaway car. In that respect, Bonnie didn’t count. Clyde was still keeping her away from the action. Having male sidekicks was an advantage Clyde always wanted and appreciated.
But, as his reputation grew, there was another reason he wanted partners. Being the leader of a gang would give even more heft to his burgeoning fame. The legendary outlaws Clyde idolized didn’t work alone. Jesse James had the fearsome James Gang. Billy the Kid terrorized New Mexico with a pack of henchmen. The most famous criminals of Clyde’s own general era—John Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, Al Capone—all led gangs. There was extra cachet in being boss. Clyde always wanted to be the one giving orders. Until now in his criminal career, it wasn’t possible. Buck was Clyde’s big brother. Frank Clause took the inexperienced Clyde under his wing. Ralph Fults was Clyde’s equal. Raymond Hamilton considered himself that, too—it was probably the main reason Clyde didn’t like him.
Now, anointed by the Texas press as a criminal mastermind, Clyde had the opportunity to establish a Barrow Gang in which there was no doubt as to who was in charge. So before he and Bonnie left West Dallas after their Halloween visit, Clyde recruited two new partners to go north to Missouri with them. Frank Hardy and Hollis Hale were eager to join up. They believed that in working with Clyde Barrow, they were breaking into the criminal big time. Clyde, Bonnie, and their two new partners headed north into southern Missouri, where they eventually holed up in a motor court in Carthage, a few miles northeast of Joplin.
Uncharacteristically, Clyde now took his time choosing the newly formed gang’s first target. Even more uncharacteristically, he decided to rob a bank. He might have wanted to impress Hardy and Hale. There was one false start—Marie Barrow Scoma mentions in her unpublished memoir that Clyde and his new cohorts broke into an unnamed Missouri bank, only to be informed by the lone clerk on duty that the institution had failed a few days earlier. He had no money left for them to steal. So Clyde next selected the Farmer and Miners Bank of Oronogo. Time had become of the essence—the Barrow Gang was down to its last few dollars. Still, Clyde planned the robbery far more carefully than usual. On November 29, Bonnie was sent to reconnoiter, which might have been a mistake. Very few women went into banks, and those who did were expected to be properly dressed—hat and gloves were socially mandatory—and in the company of their husbands or, at least, a male companion to do the talking for them. The Barrow family never had a bank account back in West Dallas, and Clyde almost certainly had no idea of proper bank etiquette for females. Bonnie probably dressed appropriately, but she may never have been in a bank before. Coming in alone, uncertain of how to behave and with no business to transact, she was bound to seem suspicious. Perhaps as a result of Bonnie’s visit, when Clyde, Hardy, and Hale arrived to stage their holdup at 11:30 A.M. on November 30, it didn’t go as they’d anticipated. Hale waited outside in the getaway car while Clyde and Hardy went in. Clyde probably carried one of the BARs he’d stolen from the armory in Fort Worth. A story the next day in the Carthage Evening Press noted that it was the first “sub-machine gun” ever used in a local robbery.
There was only one customer in the bank, but the teller had a pistol handy. Ducking down behind the counter—which was lead-lined as a precaution against holdups, something Bonnie would have had no way of learning during her previous day’s scouting expedition—the teller started blasting away. Fortunately for the robbers, his gun jammed after a few shots. Clyde fired back, but his bullets couldn’t penetrate the thick shielding and the teller wasn’t hit. Hardy grabbed for the cash lying within reach on a table in the cubicle, in the process cutting his hand on glass smashed by Clyde’s shots. Then he and Clyde ra
n for the car outside. But somebody had sounded an alarm, and several armed Oronogo citizens were waiting. They opened fire as Clyde and Hardy jumped in the car and Hale drove away. They weren’t hit, and nobody bothered chasing them. Their take, according to the Carthage paper, was “less than $500.” It was actually a lot less—$110.
For Clyde, it was just one more job that hadn’t been especially lucrative. But the gang had gotten some money, and nobody had been hurt aside from Frank Hardy’s cut hand. As far as Clyde was concerned, they’d pack up, drive on, and try it again somewhere else.
Frank Hardy and Hollis Hale reacted differently. They’d signed on with big-shot Clyde Barrow to commit spectacular robberies of banks with piles of money in their vaults. They’d read about the Barker Gang’s recent raid on a bank in Concordia, Kansas, where the reported take was $240,000. Neither had realized that kind of job was far beyond Clyde’s capabilities. Almost all the major bank thefts by Dillinger, Floyd, or the Barker boys were pulled off because the perpetrators either secretly colluded with bank officers or else paid off local police. Sometimes they did both. It was never a matter of them randomly picking out a bank, driving up to it, going in with guns, and emptying the vault. Clyde didn’t have the resources or contacts necessary to plan and carry out sophisticated schemes. No matter what exaggerated descriptions of his criminal prowess the Texas newspapers might print, where robbery was concerned he was strictly a small-timer.
But Hardy and Hale had expected six-figure takes, and in their two bank robberies as members of the Barrow Gang they’d come up first with nothing, then with a measly $110 that would have to be split three ways. Their disillusionment was complete. Back at the motor court in Carthage, they lied and told Clyde they’d only gotten $80. Then, after splitting that reduced amount, Hardy and Hale said they needed to go into town to buy ammunition. They never came back. Clyde and Bonnie were left with about $25.
Within a few weeks the couple was back in Texas, hoping to rescue two old friends from the McKinney jail. Ralph Fults had been sent there from the state prison in Huntsville to be tried on an old charge of car theft. Though there is some doubt that Fults was guilty of that particular crime, he still had an additional five years tacked onto his current sentence. Ted Rogers was also in the McKinney lockup, held on charges unrelated to his brief partnership with Clyde. Somehow, word reached Clyde and Bonnie. On December 19, while Fults and Rogers were waiting to be transferred back to Huntsville by Bud Russell and the One Way Wagon, Fults was told he had a visitor. Bonnie Parker gave Fults a pack of cigarettes and whispered that Clyde was outside ready to break him and Rogers out. Fults hissed that the jailor kept the cell keys at another location, and wouldn’t have them again until breakfast the next day. Clyde and Bonnie prepared for a morning rescue, but were thwarted when Bud Russell arrived at 4 A.M. to take Fults and Rogers away.
A few days before Christmas, Clyde and Bonnie made plans for another quick visit to West Dallas. They wanted to bring presents to their families, whom they hadn’t seen since Halloween. Nineteen thirty-two had been a tumultuous year, beginning with Clyde cutting off two of his toes and being paroled by the governor just days later. Bonnie had spent several months in jail. Clyde was involved in two murders and blamed for three, in the process becoming the most famous outlaw in Texas. He and Bonnie were more certain than ever that they would die in the end, gunned down by lawmen in some desperate shootout. There was clearly no going back to their old lives even if they wanted to—and they didn’t. Whatever they suffered, whatever anyone else suffered, was worth it to them. Even if their lives were the eventual price, they’d broken free from insignificance and tedium. They mattered. People were paying attention to them.
CHAPTER 13
Raymond and W.D.
Raymond Hamilton had never intended to stay in Michigan after Clyde and Bonnie dropped him off there in early September 1932. He hung around in Bay City for about a month, then went back to Texas during the first week of October. Like Clyde and Bonnie, Raymond had family in West Dallas—his mother, an older brother, and several sisters. Using West Dallas as a base, staying with friends rather than family in case the police were watching his mother’s house, Raymond made his return to crime on October 8 when he single-handedly held up the First State Bank of Cedar Hill, a small Dallas suburb. The job went amazingly well. Raymond caught two bank staffers and two customers off-guard, snatched up $1,401, and locked his prisoners in the vault while he made a getaway. For a few days following the robbery, Raymond lay low in Houston, where he bought an expensive new suit. Who needed Clyde Barrow?
But, like Clyde, Raymond realized the advantages of having partners. From Houston he went west to Wichita Falls, where he teamed up with small-time hood Gene O’Dare. Raymond probably had met O’Dare earlier in the year when he lived in Wichita Falls with Clyde and Bonnie. On November 9, Raymond and O’Dare drove several hundred miles to the central Texas town of La Grange, where they robbed the Carmen State Bank and got away with $1,061. O’Dare took his half of the money back to Wichita Falls. Raymond returned to West Dallas, where he recruited a new partner named Les Stewart. On November 25, Raymond and Stewart hit Cedar Hill’s first state bank again. The teller there remembered Raymond, who told him he wanted this stickup to be quicker than the first one. It was, and Raymond and Stewart escaped with $1,802.
Raymond had never had so much money, and he was ready to blow it on good times. Since cops all over Texas were on the lookout for him, it made sense to give the heat time to die down by taking another vacation in Michigan. Raymond didn’t go north alone. He convinced Gene O’Dare to come along with him. O’Dare’s wife, Mary, was left back in Wichita Falls. Fidelity apparently wasn’t one of O’Dare’s priorities. As soon as he and Raymond arrived in Bay City, they began pursuing local girls, taking their dates to a skating rink and spending lots of money to impress them. Still nineteen, Raymond had just demonstrated adult acumen as a bank robber, but now he proved he wasn’t mature enough to know when to keep his mouth shut. When one girl wasn’t sufficiently awed by his personal charms and bankroll, Raymond bragged that he was among the most famous criminals in Texas. Instead of being swept off her feet, she went to the local police. On December 6, Michigan state police surrounded the rink and took Raymond and O’Dare prisoner. Raymond had no chance to run—he had ice skates strapped to his feet. The Michigan authorities contacted lawmen in Texas, who were disappointed to learn they were about to gain custody of Raymond but not Clyde. A week later, Raymond and O’Dare were extradited to Texas. They arrived in Dallas on December 14. Raymond was held in the county jail on several charges of burglary. O’Dare was shipped on to La Grange to face charges for the bank robbery there.
The Cedar Hill bank staffers were brought to Dallas, where they picked Raymond out of a lineup as the man who’d robbed them twice. A few days later, Madora Bucher was driven up from Hillsboro. The first time she saw Raymond, she said he wasn’t one of the men who murdered her husband, John. Mrs. Bucher was asked to take a second look. This time, she identified Raymond as one of the killers.
Raymond was also identified as a participant in the Neuhoff Packing Company and La Grange bank robberies. No one came down to Dallas from Stringtown to confirm Raymond’s part in Eugene Moore’s murder, but it wasn’t necessary. Clearly, Raymond was going to eventually be convicted of the Bucher murder, even though he’d been in Bay City, Michigan, when the killing occurred. His word would count less to a jury than that of a grieving widow. Shortly after Christmas, Raymond was transferred to the Hillsboro jail so he could stand trial there in the spring.
Predictably, Texas newspapers couldn’t get enough of the story. Raymond’s picture was printed everywhere, and every article linked him with Clyde. But Raymond continued to get short shrift: the headline in a Dallas Morning News story lauded “Quick-Shooting Clyde Barrow,” while mocking “Boastful Raymond Hamilton.”
Because of all the articles, Clyde soon learned that Raymond was in custody. In some ways, he
wouldn’t have been sorry. He disliked Raymond intensely, and it must have galled him that Raymond had pulled off three highly successful bank robberies in Texas while Clyde was lucky to escape with his life during the Oronogo holdup. Raymond was back in a Texas jail now because of his own big mouth. He deserved it.
But Raymond didn’t deserve the death penalty or a life sentence in prison for the murder of John Bucher, and Clyde knew it. Throughout Clyde’s life he demonstrated a strong commitment to fairness, or at least fairness as he defined it. Raymond hadn’t been there when Bucher was killed, so even though Clyde didn’t like his ex-partner, he was obligated to rescue him. Nothing could be done while Raymond was held in the downtown Dallas jail. Clyde’s face was familiar to every cop in the city, and Bonnie was too well known to them to pose as one of Raymond’s relatives. Clyde had to wait until Raymond was transferred to the smaller, less secure Hillsboro jail before attempting to break him out. He was determined to try.
Meanwhile, it was almost Christmas. Clyde and Bonnie had presents for their families, so they planned another quick trip to West Dallas. Some of the gifts were purchased in stores, but others were contraband. Clyde’s sister Marie recalled many years later how thrilled she was when Clyde presented her with a bicycle, and always added that they both laughed when she asked him where he stole it.
Clyde and Bonnie arrived in West Dallas on December 24. It was after dark when they drove in on Eagle Ford Road. They hadn’t reached the Barrow service station when they spotted Henry Barrow’s truck coming in the opposite direction. Clyde’s nineteen-year-old brother, L.C., fresh from his release by the Grayson County jury, was at the wheel, joyriding with his friend W. D. Jones. Clyde had L.C. take a message to their mother, designating a time and place to meet later that night. Cumie then relayed the information to Emma Parker. W.D., sixteen, also came along to the very brief holiday gathering, and had a request for Clyde and Bonnie. He wanted to join them.