Jeff Guinn
Page 18
The Jones and Barrow families had been close friends since 1922, when Cumie Barrow met Tookie Jones in the West Dallas campgrounds. Three of Tookie’s sons were almost the same ages as Clyde, L.C., and Marie. When Cumie, Henry, L.C., and Marie went to San Antonio in January 1929 to attend Buck’s trial there, Tookie and her brood went along to provide moral support. W.D.—William Daniel—hero-worshipped Clyde just like L.C. did. As Clyde’s criminal reputation grew, so did W.D.’s admiration. He tried to make himself useful to his idol in small, important ways, like stockpiling license plates for Clyde to switch on stolen cars. By late 1932, he was talking about becoming a full-fledged member of Clyde’s gang, which amused the rest of the Barrow family. Surely Clyde wouldn’t consider letting the kid tag along with him and Bonnie.
But when W.D. made his plea on Christmas Eve, Clyde decided it might not be a bad idea. If nothing else, he’d make a useful lookout. W.D.’s age was a consideration, but he wasn’t that much younger. Clyde and Bonnie were both still just twenty-two. A few days on the road would probably convince W.D. that he didn’t want to be a criminal after all. And if he did demonstrate an aptitude for crime, Clyde might finally have a loyal henchman who would never desert him after a botched bank robbery or question his absolute authority. So W.D. joined Clyde and Bonnie as they said goodbye to their families that night and drove 130 miles south to just outside the central Texas town of Temple, where they checked into a motor court. They took a single room. Clyde and Bonnie got the bed. W.D. had to sleep on the floor.
The newest member of the Barrow Gang needed an initiation, and Clyde didn’t put it off until after the holiday. Late Christmas morning, he picked out a grocery store in Temple and told W.D. that the two of them were going to rob it. Bonnie waited in the car while Clyde and W.D. got out. Clyde had either a shotgun or a handgun—W.D.’s description of the weapons involved changed every time he told the story later on—and he handed W.D. a battered old .45. But when they got inside the store, W.D. froze. He shook his head to indicate to Clyde that he couldn’t do it. They went back to the car, where Clyde proceeded to ream out his new recruit. He called W.D. a coward, and Bonnie compounded the insult with peals of mocking laughter.
Still fuming, Clyde began driving around town, looking for another target and informing W.D. he was going to do what he was told. W.D. whined that he wanted to go home. Then Clyde spotted a Ford Model A roadster parked beside a house on the curb of a residential street. The keys were in the ignition, which wasn’t unusual. Clyde told W.D. that if he wanted to go home, he’d have to steal the Model A first.
It was foolish for Clyde to pick that particular car. Model As were notoriously difficult to start—besides turning the ignition key, it was necessary to pull out the choke while simultaneously pressing down with both feet on the clutch and accelerator pedals. Clyde himself would never have stooped to stealing one. He probably picked the vehicle to humiliate W.D.—anyone who didn’t have the guts to rob a grocery store wasn’t worthy of stealing a good car like the Ford V-8s Clyde favored. But whatever Clyde’s motive, he shoved W.D. out to the sidewalk and told him to get on with it.
W.D. dutifully climbed into the Model A. Though it wasn’t his first attempt to steal a car—the Dallas police had previously hauled him in on suspicion of auto theft, but couldn’t make charges stick—he’d certainly never tried with Clyde Barrow only a few yards away glaring at him. Predictably, the nervous kid couldn’t get the Model A started. It would have made sense for Clyde to let W.D. hop out and get back in the V-8 with him and Bonnie and drive away before anyone noticed them, but Clyde was too aggravated to be sensible. Instead, he got out of his car and joined W.D. in the front seat of the Model A, apparently intent on shaming the kid further by starting the car himself.
The Model A belonged to twenty-seven-year-old Doyle Johnson, who was spending Christmas with his wife, baby daughter, and other family members. Johnson was taking a nap when his father-in-law, Henry Krauser, happened to look outside and saw Clyde and W.D. fumbling at the controls of the Johnsons’ car. Krauser, his son Clarence, and Johnson’s wife, Tillie, all spilled out into the front yard. Clyde jumped from the Model A, pulled out a pistol, and warned them to stay back. He leaped back into the car and finally got it started just as Doyle Johnson emerged from the house and bolted straight for his car. He reached through the open driver’s side window, grabbing at Clyde, who yelled, “Get back, man, or I’ll kill you.” Johnson didn’t get back. He managed to get a grip on Clyde’s neck. Bonnie, watching from the Ford V-8, screamed for Clyde to let Johnson go, and for Clyde and W.D. to come back to their car. She started the engine, ready for a quick getaway. But it wasn’t a matter of Clyde releasing Johnson. Johnson wouldn’t give up his stranglehold on Clyde.
W. D. Jones always swore that Clyde Barrow shot Doyle Johnson, ramming his pistol into Johnson’s body and pulling the trigger several times when Johnson wouldn’t let go of his throat. Clyde’s sister Nell, who heard her brother’s and Bonnie’s versions of the incident, insisted that W.D. still had a pistol from the aborted grocery store robbery, and he shot at Johnson, too. No matter whose gun fired it, the fatal bullet snapped Johnson’s spinal cord, and he died soon afterward.
Clyde and W.D. barreled off in the Model A, with Bonnie right behind them in the V-8. After a few blocks, the Model A was abandoned and all three drove away in the newer, faster Ford. They hid out in East Texas motor courts for a few days before heading back to West Dallas. Clyde told W.D. that whether he liked it or not, he was now a permanent member of the gang. He’d participated in a murder, there were plenty of witnesses, and the cops were after him for sure. That wasn’t true. It took almost seven months for the police to charge someone with Johnson’s murder, and it wasn’t W. D. Jones. But as far as Jones knew on Christmas Day 1932, Clyde was right—the law was hot on his trail and he no longer had the option of going home to his mother, Tookie.
If Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker regretted Doyle Johnson’s death, there is no record of them expressing it to their families or anyone else. Marie Barrow Scoma’s sole comment in her unpublished memoir was that, to Clyde, it was a matter of choosing between squeezing the trigger and going to the electric chair.
Remorseful or not, Clyde turned his attention to a lingering obligation. Raymond Hamilton was still in jail, about to be unfairly tried for the murder of John Bucher. Clyde had a plan to help break him out and needed to return to West Dallas so it could be implemented. Then his penchant for bad timing reasserted itself.
A complex chain of events that culminated in another killing began on December 29, when West Dallas crooks Les Stewart and Odell Chambless robbed the Home Bank of Grapevine, in a Fort Worth suburb. Stewart had been Raymond Hamilton’s partner for the second holdup of the First State Bank of Cedar Hill. Chambless was friendly with Raymond, too. Chambless’s sister Mary was married to Gene O’Dare, currently in the La Grange jail after being arrested with Raymond in Michigan. The criminal world of West Dallas was a small one.
Stewart, captured shortly after the Grapevine robbery, sold out his partner in hopes of a lenient sentence. Odell Chambless, he said, regularly visited the West Dallas home of Lillian McBride, Raymond Hamilton’s sister. If the cops staked out Lillian’s house, Stewart said, there was a good chance Chambless would eventually walk right into their trap. Previously, such an ambush would have been considered beyond the scope of the Dallas County sheriff’s office, but there was a new incumbent. Richard “Smoot” Schmid took office on January 1, 1933, after being elected on a campaign theme of more aggressive law enforcement. A tall, shambling man who wore a white ten-gallon hat and size 14 cowboy boots, Schmid had previously run a Dallas bicycle shop, where he wasn’t a stickler for honesty. Raymond Hamilton later swore that as a kid he sold hot bikes to Schmid, who knew they were stolen and didn’t care. But as sheriff, Schmid was eager to make good on his promise to voters that he’d crack down on criminals. The Grapevine robbery had occurred in nearby Tarrant County, and when
its district attorney contacted Schmid to suggest a joint effort to nab Chambless, the Dallas County sheriff was all for it. They decided to lie in wait for Chambless in West Dallas on the night of January 6.
Sometime around the first of the year, Clyde visited Lillian McBride, whose house was only a few blocks away from the Barrow service station. Her brother Raymond had just been moved from the Dallas County jail to the lockup in Hillsboro. Clyde couldn’t risk going there—his face was too well known in the town where John Bucher died. But it was the most natural thing in the world for Lillian to go down and see her brother. Clyde suggested that Lillian bring a radio to Raymond as a gift. Hacksaw blades would be concealed inside the radio. Then Raymond could cut his way out of his cell. Clyde apparently supplied the radio and blades.
During the afternoon of January 6, a Dallas County deputy came to the McBride house in Dallas. He asked Lillian McBride a few questions, probably about her brother Raymond since he would not have wanted to alert her to the plan to catch Odell Chambless. The real purpose of the visit was undoubtedly to get an idea of the layout of the place. Like almost every other residence in West Dallas, it was a tiny, poorly constructed shack. Lillian left the house soon afterward. Around sundown, Clyde, Bonnie, and W.D. drove up. Clyde wanted to find out if the radio and hacksaw blades had been successfully smuggled in to Raymond. Maggie Fairris, Raymond and Lillian’s younger sister, answered the door. When she told him that Lillian wasn’t there, Clyde said he’d come back later. He, Bonnie, and W.D. spent the next several hours visiting first with Bonnie’s mother, Emma, then with the Barrows and probably Tookie Jones. Bonnie had been drinking, which upset Emma.
About 11 P.M., a five-man posse arrived at the McBride house. It consisted of Tarrant County assistant district attorney W. T. Evans, Special Ranger J. F. Van Noy, Dallas County deputy sheriff Fred Bradberry, and two Fort Worth deputies, Dusty Rhodes and Malcolm Davis. Lillian McBride still wasn’t home. Maggie Fairris told the cops she had just put her small children to bed. They set up the ambush for Odell Chambless anyway. Bradberry, Evans, and Van Noy settled themselves in the front room of the small house. Rhodes and Davis waited outside by the back porch. Bradberry ordered Fairris to turn off all the lights inside the house. She asked for permission to leave on one red bulb in the window of her children’s bedroom. She explained it was a night-light. Actually, it was a time-honored West Dallas signal that the law was lurking nearby, something the officers lying in wait clearly didn’t know.
An hour later, Bradberry and the other two officers watching from the front of the house saw a Ford V-8 coupé drive slowly down the street with its headlights switched off. The car rolled past the house and turned the corner. The lawmen thought it might be Chambless checking out the house to make certain the coast was clear. Bradberry made Fairris turn off the red light in the children’s room. A few minutes later, the car was back. This time, it stopped—its occupants had apparently not noticed the red light. Holding a shotgun against his side, Clyde got out and walked toward the porch. He carried a shotgun. As Clyde approached, Maggie Fairris swung open the door and screamed, “Don’t shoot! Think of my babies!”
Clyde reacted instantly. He swung up his shotgun and fired through the front window of the house. The three lawmen inside threw themselves on the floor. Clyde tried to fire again, but the shotgun jammed. He backed away from the porch, trying to claw the spent cartridge out of the breech. Behind the house, Fort Worth deputies Malcolm Davis and Dusty Rhodes heard the shotgun blast. They drew their guns and ran around to the front, with Davis just ahead of Rhodes.
The newspapers noted later that the fifty-one-year-old Davis “was known to friends and fellow-officers as a quiet-mannered, curly-headed bachelor who liked to catch big catfish at Lake Worth and to invite his friends to help him eat them. The Davis fish dinners were famous in Fort Worth.” But Clyde Barrow wasn’t encountering Malcolm Davis at a friendly fish fry. Clyde cleared the spent cartridge that was jamming his shotgun, chambered a fresh shell, and blew a hole in Davis’s chest at point-blank range. Later, he told his family he’d just fired a quick shot into the dark as “four other guns began going off right in my face,” but the only one shooting up to that point was Clyde. Rhodes managed to drop to the ground quickly enough so that Clyde missed a second shot at him.
Then the three officers inside the McBride house started shooting, and W. D. Jones began firing wildly from the car in their general direction. People in other houses on both sides of the street ran outside. Frightened women screamed. In the confusion, Clyde slipped away, running between houses toward Eagle Ford Road.
Bonnie thought fast. She ordered W.D. to stop shooting, saying sensibly that he was just as likely to hit Clyde or some innocent bystander as he was the cops. She started the car and drove around the block, catching up to Clyde. He jumped in the front seat, taking over for Bonnie behind the wheel, and raced west down Eagle Ford Road heading out of town. He passed his fourteen-year-old sister, Marie, who was pedaling the other way on the bicycle Clyde had just given her for Christmas. Telling the story decades later, Marie never suggested it was odd for a child her age to be out riding a bike in the middle of the night.
The scene back at the McBride house was chaotic. Rain began pouring down. It was hard to see. One of the lawmen snapped off a shot at several men who ran into the yard. Luckily, it missed. They were bystanders trying to get the mortally wounded Malcolm Davis into a car so they could rush him to the hospital. When Lillian McBride and her friend Lucille Hilburn finally showed up around 3 A.M., they were arrested as accessories and held while Schmid and his deputies tried to figure out what had happened.
Clyde’s effort to help Raymond Hamilton was futile. On January 8, Raymond was caught trying to use the hacksaw blades from Clyde to saw through the bars of his cell in the Hillsboro jail. He was immediately transferred back to the more secure Dallas County jail, where he remained in custody until his trial. For the second time in two weeks, Clyde had committed a murder that served absolutely no purpose, though killing Malcolm Davis did earn him a new, implacable enemy.
Dallas County sheriff Smoot Schmid was extremely sensitive to criticism, and the bungled ambush resulting in the death of a Fort Worth deputy got his new administration off to a terrible start with the press. The earliest news reports were positive. Stories blamed Fairris and McBride for tipping off Davis’s killer—the red light was prominently mentioned. Odell Chambless was identified by Schmid as the leading suspect. But there was also the matter of who had been in the V-8 coupé firing at the lawmen, and a day after the incident the Dallas Morning News reported that it was “Clyde Champion Barrow, 22, sought by police for a score of holdups and killings in Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico.” The story added that Schmid was directing a statewide search for the fugitives.
For the next several days, stories chronicled Schmid’s efforts to follow up on tips from the public. Rumored sightings of Chambless and Clyde resulted in the sheriff sending “heavily armed Deputy Sheriffs and city detectives speeding in squad cars to various parts of Dallas and Dallas County.” Schmid made a point of leading several of these searches himself—when Chambless and Clyde went down, he wanted to be there to get the credit. On January 13, an unidentified officer, undoubtedly Schmid, told a reporter that “a tough, two-gun girl” was “riding with the hunted slayers…she is as tough as the back end of a shooting gallery and she has been missing from these parts for some time.” It was the first suggestion by a lawman in the press that Bonnie might be a functioning member of the gang instead of a giddy, love-struck girl tagging along with the wrong men.
But Schmid’s efforts to be lionized in print were thwarted on January 18, when Odell Chambless voluntarily surrendered to police in the Texas Panhandle town of Pampa. Chambless told lawmen there that he left Texas on January 4 and hitchhiked to California. He was arrested in Los Angeles on the 6th on suspicion of robbery, held while his fingerprints were checked against those at the crime scene, and only released on
the 12th. Heading back to Texas, he learned he was wanted for Davis’s murder. On the advice of his father, who lived in Pampa, Chambless decided to turn himself in. Los Angeles police corroborated Chambless’s alibi. Smoot Schmid had done his best to pin a murder on the wrong man.
Schmid tried to backtrack, claiming that “According to the information we had, it was possible for him to have been involved in the shooting.” It didn’t help his cause with reporters, who were undoubtedly embarrassed for lending so much credence to Schmid with their earlier stories. The sheriff in Tarrant County suggested that the shooter might have been notorious Oklahoma outlaw Pretty Boy Floyd, who was vaguely rumored to be in the general vicinity of West Dallas on January 6. Inspired by that straw grasping as well as Schmid’s ineptitude, on January 20 a front-page headline in the Dallas Morning News sarcastically wondered, “Pretty Boy Is New Suspect in Killing; Jesse James Next?” The accompanying story reminded readers that because James was dead he was “therefore practically eliminated from the search for the slayer of Deputy Sheriff Malcolm Davis of Fort Worth.” Schmid, asked to comment, “extended a deprecating hand.”
For the thin-skinned Schmid, it was humiliation of the most public sort. But there was one certain way to restore his reputation. Maybe Odell Chambless hadn’t shot Malcolm Davis, but multiple murderer Clyde Barrow was still prominent in the investigation. It was common knowledge that Barrow and his girlfriend made frequent trips to West Dallas to visit their families. Dallas County didn’t have the resources to keep an around-the-clock watch on the Barrow service station, but Schmid did have a new deputy who knew Clyde’s family well, and Bonnie, too—Ted Hinton, who’d quit a job at the post office to come to work for the sheriff. Veteran deputy Bob Alcorn also had past dealings with the Barrows. From now on all Schmid’s officers, but especially these two, would be on heightened alert for clues that Clyde and Bonnie were coming to town. Perhaps an inside source could be found. It wouldn’t be easy—people in West Dallas hated the cops. But an ambush that bagged Clyde Barrow would surely erase the memory of the Chambless-Davis debacle from media and public memory. Whatever it took, Smoot Schmid was willing to do.