Usually at these family gatherings, Emma Parker tried to talk Bonnie into leaving Clyde and giving herself up. This time, it was Clyde who made the suggestion. His devotion to Bonnie remained unwavering, and even though he accepted his own inevitable death at the hands of the law he didn’t want her to share that fate. So in front of both their families, Clyde reminded Bonnie that it was still only a matter of time before they were caught. He said he would write a letter swearing that Bonnie had taken no active part in any murder or robbery. If she took it with her when she surrendered, Bonnie would probably go to prison for a while but at least avoid the death penalty. She still had public sympathy on her side. But Bonnie refused to consider giving herself up. She told Clyde and the others that whenever he went down, she wanted to be with him. They were together for life, however abbreviated that might be. Clyde didn’t insist—he probably knew Bonnie wouldn’t agree, but still made the suggestion to ease his own conscience.
Clyde, Bonnie, and Henry stayed around Dallas for the next few weeks, sleeping in their car or abandoned farmhouses at night. Though they didn’t stage any robberies—the money from the bank job in Lancaster was certainly enough to keep them going for a while—the Barrow Gang was still blamed for a major theft thanks to Bonnie’s colorful reputation. On March 12, the same day that Clyde and Bonnie were with their families in Texas, a bank in Atchison, Kansas, was robbed of $25,000. Local authorities decided it was a Barrow Gang job because witnesses reported seeing a woman smoking a cigar hours earlier in the lobby of an Atchison hotel.
Clyde, Bonnie, and Henry met with the Barrows and Parkers again on March 19, 24, and 27. On the 27th, a Tuesday, Clyde told everyone that he, Bonnie, and Henry were leaving for a while. But he promised they’d be back in five days. Sunday, April 1, would be Easter, and Bonnie wanted to give her mother Emma a holiday gift. That was typical—Clyde and Bonnie both loved giving presents to family members. But what they were leaving Dallas to do wasn’t. For the first time since the Barrow Gang formed in March 1932, Clyde was about to participate in premeditated murder.
Clyde had kept in touch with Joe Palmer after dropping him off in Joplin at the end of January. Palmer’s plot to arrange a furlough for Eastham building tender Wade McNabb had come to fruition. On February 24, 1934, McNabb left Eastham on a sixty-day pass. Apparently he didn’t connect his unexpected temporary freedom to Joe Palmer. But Palmer was waiting to pounce, and Clyde came along to assist. It was the kind of blood vendetta Clyde respected, and by his own peculiar code he undoubtedly felt obligated to help. The sickly Palmer was too weak to take on McNabb by himself. Three years earlier, when smaller, weaker Clyde killed powerful Ed Crowder after the Eastham building tender repeatedly raped him, Aubrey Scalley helped carry out the murder plot. Now it was Clyde’s turn to help an abused Eastham con kill a tormentor. It would take lawmen and historians years to link Palmer and Clyde to what happened to McNabb because, unlike most Barrow Gang criminal acts, they carried this one out with such lethal efficiency. Clyde’s friend and former partner Ralph Fults eventually told people what happened.
Apparently, Palmer tracked McNabb after his release on furlough. On Thursday, March 29, McNabb disappeared from a domino parlor in the East Texas town of Gladewater. On Monday, April 2, an anonymous letter received by the Houston Press described abuse of prisoners at Eastham and included a crude map to where “one of Lee Simmons’ chief rats” could be found near the Texas-Louisiana border. A Press reporter and the Shreveport sheriff went to the spot and found McNabb’s body. The Eastham building tender’s skull had been crushed by a powerful blow, and he’d also been shot several times. The subsequent newspaper story wasn’t kind to the deceased. Apparently, he’d been making an illicit living while on furlough. The Press reported that McNabb had sixteen dollar bills in his pocket and “three pair of crooked dice.”
Having gained his revenge with Clyde’s help, Joe Palmer joined Clyde, Bonnie, and Henry Methvin as they returned to Dallas early on April 1. They weren’t the only outlaws traveling there on Easter Sunday. About 240 miles to the south, Raymond Hamilton and Mary O’Dare were heading for Dallas, too.
Since leaving the Barrow Gang on March 6, Raymond had been busy. He and Mary O’Dare returned to Texas, where Raymond soon put together a gang consisting of himself, his brother Floyd, and an unemployed truck driver named John Basden. The three men successfully robbed the Grand Prairie State Bank on March 19, splitting just over $1,500 afterward. A few days later, Raymond was spotted stealing a Ford V-8 in Lufkin. He’d been linked by then to the Grand Prairie bank heist, and because local lawmen didn’t know that he’d split with Clyde they assumed it was the work of the Barrow Gang. Then on Saturday, March 31, the day before Easter, Raymond and Mary traveled eighty miles south of Dallas to the town of West, where Raymond single-handedly relieved the State National Bank of almost $1,900. Mary drove the getaway car, but after only a few miles she ran it into an embankment. Raymond’s nose was broken. Mary was knocked out. Driving past with her four-year-old son, Mrs. Cam Gunter stopped to help. Raymond thanked her by pulling his gun. He forced Mrs. Gunter to put her child out of her car, then made her drive him and Mary away. Another witness called the sheriff, who had the little boy taken to safety and then issued an all-points bulletin for Raymond—the witness identified him from mug shots.
Mrs. Gunter took Raymond and Mary south to Houston. They arrived on Saturday night. Raymond rented a hotel room and promised his captive that he’d release her in the morning. Early on April 1 he let Mrs. Gunter go, first giving her a few dollars to cover travel expenses back home. Then Raymond stole a snappy black Ford V-8 sedan with yellow wire wheel rims and drove north to Dallas with Mary O’Dare.
Clyde, Bonnie, Henry Methvin, and Joe Palmer arrived back in the Dallas area late on Easter morning. They didn’t stop at the Barrow family service station in West Dallas—Smoot Schmid and his deputies were all too aware of how Clyde and Bonnie liked to meet with their families on holidays. Instead, Clyde drove about twenty-five miles northwest and parked just off paved two-lane Highway 114 near the small town of Grapevine. The narrow dirt side road where he stopped was called Dove Road. At Clyde’s request, Joe Palmer hitchhiked back into West Dallas and arrived on Eagle Ford Road about 1:30 in the afternoon. He found only Henry Barrow at home. Cumie was probably at church, and L.C. and Marie, according to Marie in her unpublished memoir, were off “celebrating Easter in their own way,” which in the case of the hard-partying young Barrows probably meant sleeping off hangovers at the homes of friends. Palmer told Henry where Clyde wanted everyone to meet near Grapevine, and then went on to Emma Parker’s house and passed along the same message to her. It took several hours for the various Barrows and Parkers to get home and organize themselves for the drive to Grapevine. Joe Palmer stayed in West Dallas, perhaps intending to catch a ride with some of them rather than have to hitchhike again.
Meanwhile Clyde, Bonnie, and Henry relaxed and waited on Dove Road in their latest stolen car, a flashy black Ford V-8 with yellow wire wheel rims. Their location was relatively isolated, though their car was visible to the sporadic holiday traffic about one hundred yards away on Highway 114. There was farmland on either side of Dove Road. The afternoon was sunny. Bonnie got out of the car to play for a while with the Easter present she’d brought for her mother—a live rabbit Bonnie had named Sonny Boy. It was the kind of silly, sentimental gesture she still liked to make. She thought it would be fun to surprise Emma on Easter with an Easter bunny. Despite all she’d been through, Bonnie never lost her sense of whimsy.
But she hadn’t lost her taste for whiskey, either, and while she waited for Emma and the others to arrive Bonnie passed a bottle back and forth with Henry Methvin. Clyde didn’t drink—it was his custom to abstain whenever they were out in public and might have to make a sudden run for it. On this Easter Sunday, Clyde felt relatively certain that the law wouldn’t be a problem. He’d heard, perhaps on a service station radio while stopping for gas, that Raymond Hami
lton had kidnapped a woman and left her in the Houston area. Cops would be on the lookout for Raymond, not the Barrow Gang. Clyde felt so secure that he stretched out in the back seat of the sedan and took a nap. Bonnie did the same in the front seat. She didn’t want her mother to know she’d been drinking, so before she fell asleep Bonnie chewed on bits of lemon peel to mask the whiskey smell on her breath. Henry Methvin didn’t nap at all. He was often jumpy and aggressive, and when he drank those traits became even more pronounced. Henry lurked near the car, his BAR within easy reach. Clyde and Bonnie dozed. The lazy afternoon wore on.
Around 3:30 P.M., three motorcycle officers from the Texas State Highway Patrol cruised along Highway 114 north of Grapevine. Senior officer Polk Ivy rode a little ahead of the other two. Twenty-six-year-old E. B. Wheeler had been a patrolman for four years. Easter Sunday was twenty-four-year-old H. D. Murphy’s first day on two-wheel patrol. Motorcycle cops for the highway patrol usually worked singly or in pairs. Murphy was undoubtedly riding with Ivy and Wheeler so the rookie could observe the veterans at work.
Ivy rode past the intersection of Highway 114 and Dove Road, but Wheeler noticed the flashy car parked a hundred yards away and gestured for Murphy to follow as he turned down Dove Road to conduct a routine check. Wheeler clearly didn’t expect any trouble. He left his shotgun secured in its harness alongside the seat of his motorcycle. Murphy had a shotgun, too, but the rookie’s wasn’t even loaded. He had the shells in his pocket.
Clyde might have been alerted by the approaching rumble of two motorcycle engines, or else Henry Methvin may have warned him. Clyde sat up, saw the approaching lawmen, reached for his shotgun and prepared to reenact what had become almost a routine Barrow Gang scenario: kidnap some cops, drive them far away, and drop them off unharmed. Clyde swore to his family later that this was all he intended when he whispered to Henry Methvin, “Let’s take them.”
But Henry Methvin hadn’t been with Clyde in Springfield, Missouri, on January 26, 1933, for the kidnapping of Officer Thomas Persell; or in Wellington, Texas, six months later when Clyde, Bonnie, and W. D. Jones took lawmen Paul Hardy and George Corry prisoner and released them later that night. Henry had been drinking, too, which further impaired his judgment. He interpreted Clyde’s command as an order to take the two patrolmen on motorcycles down rather than prisoner. When Wheeler rolled to a halt and began to dismount, Henry raised his BAR and shot the officer in the chest, killing him instantly. Murphy tried to grab shells from his pocket and load his gun, but Clyde, realizing the opportunity to get away without bloodshed was lost, fired his shotgun and knocked the rookie patrolman off his motorcycle.
Back on Highway 114, Mr. and Mrs. Fred Giggal were out enjoying a leisurely Easter Sunday drive in the country. For some miles they had been tagging along behind three highway patrolmen on motorcyles, not getting in the officers’ way at all, just following at a good distance, when they saw two of them turn off on a narrow dirt road and ride toward a parked black car. Then there were several explosions. The Giggals paused at the intersection of Highway 114 and Dove Road and watched the taller of two men with guns roll over the prone body of one of the motorcycle officers and shoot him several times. Then both armed men got into the black car, which had bright yellow wire wheel rims, and they raced east onto Highway 114 right past the Giggals. Later, Clyde told his family that Henry Methvin went over to where Murphy lay wounded and fired several more shots into his body. (Murphy would die shortly afterward as he was rushed to the hospital.)
Clyde’s account jibed exactly with that of the Giggals. But it didn’t match up at all with the testimony of the man who became the most quoted witness. William Schieffer lived on farmland adjacent to the scene of the murders. His house was several hundred yards away, and Clyde’s sister Marie complained later in her memoir that it would have been impossible for Schieffer to see anything clearly from his porch. But Schieffer eagerly told Patrolman Ivy—who’d doubled back as soon as he realized Wheeler and Murphy were no longer riding just behind him—and then investigators and reporters a colorful tale.
Schieffer swore that a man and a woman killed the two motorcycle cops while a third man watched, and it was the woman who approached one of the downed officers and shot him repeatedly while his head bounced on the road “like a rubber ball.” That was good enough for the media. Their stories the next day described the cold-blooded Easter execution of lawmen by the Barrow Gang, with Bonnie Parker pulling one of the triggers. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram informed readers that Clyde and Bonnie shot Wheeler and Murphy off their motorcycles and “then riddled their prostrate forms…. Fort Worth and Dallas authorities with other peace officers of Tarrant and Dallas counties branded the deed as the work of Barrow and his red-headed companion after hearing [William] Schieffer’s description of the two.” According to the article, Schieffer’s story was corroborated by the discovery near the patrolmen’s bodies of “a cigar butt bearing small teeth marks, such as might have been made by a woman…further evidence that a cigar-smoking woman took part in the shooting.”
The cigar, if it even existed, would have had nothing to do with Bonnie, but when Dallas County deputy Bob Alcorn arrived on the scene he found other evidence that convinced him she’d been there. Bits of chewed lemon peel were scattered near an empty whiskey bottle. Alcorn was aware of Bonnie’s habitual trick to hide her drinking. A man’s fingerprint was on the bottle, and the press soon reported that it was Clyde Barrow’s. In fact, it was Henry Methvin’s.
Dallas radio stations interrupted their Easter Sunday afternoon broadcasts to announce that the Barrow Gang was fleeing from a local murder scene in a flashy black Ford V-8 sedan with yellow wire wheel rims. That news alarmed Floyd Hamilton in West Dallas. Just before the report came over the airwaves, he’d been visited by his brother Raymond’s girlfriend. Mary O’Dare told Floyd that she and Raymond were in town, and that they’d arrived in style in a fancy black V-8 sedan whose wheel rims were bright yellow. Floyd raced out to find Raymond. The Hamilton brothers swapped Raymond’s canary-colored wheel rims for something less noticeable, and Raymond and Mary left West Dallas in a hurry. They eventually drove to New Orleans. It seemed like a good place to hide while local police swarmed the area looking for Clyde and Bonnie, who were in the process of getting away from Dallas themselves.
Clyde drove away from the murder site at high speed, taking Highway 114 east. He cursed at Henry in the back seat. Bonnie was in shock. She still had the rabbit, and despite what had happened she hung on to it, hoping for another chance to give Sonny Boy to her mother. Not far from Grapevine, Clyde recognized a car coming the other way. His brother L.C. was at the wheel, with his sister Marie in the front seat beside him. The first members of the Barrow family were finally arriving for the Easter get-together. Clyde waved L.C. to a stop, leaned out the car window, and snarled, “You’ll have to get out of here. Henry’s just killed two cops back there.” Then Clyde drove away, still heading east on the highway. L.C. turned his own car around and followed, but within moments Clyde’s V-8 was lost from sight. “When Clyde meant business,” Marie wrote later, “no one could keep up with him.”
Clyde, Bonnie, and Henry drove on into Oklahoma, not risking a stop in West Dallas to pick up Joe Palmer. Back in Texas, media coverage of the Barrow Gang reached new heights. While the national press also reported the murders of the motorcycle cops, papers in Texas and particularly in the Dallas area printed numerous follow-up stories focusing on H. D. Murphy. The unfortunate highway patrol rookie had not only been murdered on his first day on the job, he’d been about to marry twenty-year-old Marie Tullis on April 13. She wore her wedding gown to his funeral, providing the grist for several articles. Another described the “cozy, furnished apartment” the young couple had just rented in anticipation of their marriage. Bonnie’s coup de grâce shots into Murphy’s body—always presented as fact rather than allegation—were emphasized.
These stories devastated Clyde’s mother, Cumie. Marie Barrow said la
ter that “what went on” in the wake of the Grapevine murders “drove Momma crazy…[it] acted as a sword through my mother’s soul.” After ignoring or explaining away all the other murders involving her beloved child Clyde, the thought of a young bride-to-be attending her fiancé’s funeral in her wedding gown was what finally broke Cumie down. The woman who disdained sinful indulgence of any sort began drinking herself. She also stopped marking down the dates of Clyde’s visits. Cumie never disavowed her son. She continued meeting with Clyde when he came home after the Grapevine slayings, and prayed for him constantly. But she was crumbling under the weight of his guilt.
Bonnie was also victimized by the fresh wave of inaccurate publicity. Before, she’d been the sexy, cigar-smoking companion of a colorful killer. Now she was apparently a killer herself, and the destroyer of a loving young couple’s dreams at that. Besides the lawmen pursuing her, much of the public now believed Bonnie Parker had turned out to be every bit as vicious as Clyde Barrow. There was no chance now, even if she surrendered voluntarily, for Bonnie to get off with a light prison sentence. Previously, it had been her choice to stay with Clyde until death. After Grapevine, it was Bonnie’s unavoidable fate.
CHAPTER 29
Hamer Forms a Posse
The Grapevine murders added a new sense of urgency to Frank Hamer’s pursuit of the Barrow Gang. During the first seven weeks of his hunt, Clyde and Bonnie had been relatively quiet and the former Texas Rangers captain pursued them alone at his preferred methodical pace. But the outcry against Clyde and Bonnie after Grapevine was led by some of the same county and state officials whose support Hamer needed to successfully complete his assignment. L. G. Phares, superintendent of the highway patrol, immediately offered a $1,000 reward for “the dead bodies of the Grapevine slayers.” In Austin, Governor Ma Ferguson added another $500 reward for each of the two alleged killers. That meant for the first time there was a specific price on Bonnie’s head, since she was so widely believed to have shot H. D. Murphy. Clyde came in for special vituperation from Dallas County sheriff Smoot Schmid, who declared that Clyde was no longer a man but an animal. Perhaps most worrisome of all was a scathing editorial in the April edition of The Texas Bankers Record, a publication of the politically powerful Texas Bankers Association. The bankers of Texas were less concerned about murdered motorcycle cops than in protecting their deposits, but their hatred of the Barrow Gang was just as rabid. The April Record printed photos of Clyde, Bonnie, and Raymond Hamilton, listed twenty-three ways banks could protect their staff, customers, and, most of all, money from the murderous trio—suggestions included encasing safes in concrete “at least twelve inches thick” and not opening “too early in the morning”—and thundered that “depredations on Texas banks by bandits, highwaymen and thugs continue unabated. The peace officers seem helpless to prevent robberies, or even to catch the robbers after the damage is done.” It was the type of criticism certain to be noted by Governor Ferguson, who wouldn’t want the Bankers Association to believe she was lax regarding the pursuit of bank robbers and accordingly fund an opponent’s campaign in the next gubernatorial election.
Jeff Guinn Page 33