16
Clyde, on the left, poses with his hero-worshipping henchman W. D. Jones, who was only sixteen when he joined the Barrow Gang just before Christmas 1932. W.D. eventually became disenchanted with the criminal lifestyle and left the gang, but not before having several fingertips blasted off during a gunfight in Arkansas.
17
Cumie Barrow rejoiced when her son Buck married Blanche Caldwell, a preacher’s daughter. This photo was taken in 1931. Blanche begged Buck not to join his younger brother’s gang, predicting it would end badly for him and for her. Blanche was right on both counts.
19
After Buck’s death, Clyde and Bonnie made even more visits to Texas to meet with their families. Standing from left to right are Bonnie’s sister Billie Jean, Clyde, Cumie, and Clyde’s younger brother, L.C. Kneeling are Clyde’s sister Marie, Bonnie’s mother Emma, and Bonnie. Note the coat obscuring the car license plate—Clyde had learned a lesson from the film left behind in Joplin.
20
While the public believed the Barrow Gang spent its spare time in luxurious hotel hideouts, Clyde and Bonnie actually spent most nights in primitive backcountry camps, sleeping in their car, bathing in streams, and frequently eating their meals out of cans. They often spread a blanket on the ground and laid out their arsenal of guns for cleaning. Clyde didn’t mind roughing it, but Bonnie was afraid of bugs, snakes, and thunderstorms.
21
Clyde, Henry Methvin, and Raymond Hamilton sometime between January 16, 1934, when Clyde helped break Henry and Raymond out of Eastham Prison Farm, and March 6, when Raymond left the Barrow Gang. Clyde always insisted that, in public or posing for pictures, his subordinates dress in suits—the Barrow Gang had an image to uphold.
22
Henry Methvin was a bad-tempered small-time hood from Louisiana who was serving a ten-year sentence for attempted murder in Texas when Clyde broke him out of Eastham Prison Farm. Though Henry pretended to be a loyal Barrow Gang member and enthusiastically participated in two separate killings of lawmen, the Methvin family was anxious to betray Clyde and Bonnie in return for a pardon for Henry from Texas authorities.
23
The six-man posse that pursued Clyde and Bonnie in northeast Louisiana was led by legendary Frank Hamer, who had left the Texas Rangers but was recruited by state officials to end the Barrow Gang’s two-year reign of terror. Hamer was joined by Dallas deputies Ted Hinton and Bob Alcorn, Manny Gault of the Texas Highway Patrol, and Sheriff Henderson Jordan and his deputy, Prentiss Oakley, of Bienville Parish, Louisiana. Standing left to right are Oakley, Hinton, Alcorn, and Gault. Squatting in front are Hamer and Jordan.
24
Following the May 23, 1934, ambush outside Gibsland, Louisiana, the bullet-riddled Ford V-8 with Clyde’s and Bonnie’s bodies still sprawled inside was towed to the parish county seat of Arcadia. Thousands of spectators gawked along the way, and some were disappointed that in death the two seemed so small and harmless. On man said of Clyde, “He was nothing but a little bitty fart.”
25
The bodies of Clyde and Bonnie were displayed on tables in the back room of Arcadia’s Conger’s Furniture Store, which doubled as the parish coroner’s laboratory. Photographers were allowed to snap pictures before Dr. J. L. Wade conducted a cursory examination that concluded the cause of death was gunshot wounds.
27
In death as in life, Clyde and Bonnie provided entertainment for Depression-weary Americans. The so-called Death Car was on display at state fairs all over America for much of the next decade.
28
Newsreels depicting the scenes of Barrow Gang crimes and garish footage from the coroner’s laboratory in Arcadia were popular attractions at movie theaters. As this poster indicates, the Barrow Gang “shorts” routinely received top billing over full-length feature films.
*Reproduced with permission of the City of Huntsville, Texas, this photo is from a digitization project done in consultation with John Stokes under a TexTreasures grant from the Texas State Library and Archives Commission. Project partners are the Walker County Genealogical Society, the Walker County Historical Commission, Sam Houston State University, and Sam Houston Memorial Museum.
Table of Contents
Cover
Colophon
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Prologue
BEFORE
1. Henry and Cumie
2. The Devil’s Back Porch
3. Clyde
4. Bonnie
5. Dumbbells
6. The Bloody ’Ham
7. Decision
THE BARROW GANG
8. A Stumbling Start
9. Bonnie in Jail
10. Murder in Stringtown
11. Clyde and Bonnie on the Run
12. The Price of Fame
13. Raymond and W.D.
14. “It Gets Mixed Up”
15. The Shootout in Joplin
16. Shooting Stars
17. Disaster in Wellington, Murder in Arkansas
18. The Last Interlude
19. The Platte City Shootout
20. The Battle of Dexfield Park
21. Buck and Blanche
22. Struggling to Survive
23. The Eastham Breakout
24. Hamer
THE HUNT
25. The New Barrow Gang
26. Hamer on the Trail
27. The Methvins Make a Deal
28. Bloody Easter
29. Hamer Forms a Posse
30. Another Murder
31. The Letters of April
32. The Noose Tightens
33. Final Meetings
34. A New Line of Work
35. Haven
36. The Beginning of the End
37. “Do You Know Any Bank Robbers?”;
38. The Setup
39. The Ambush
40. “Well, We Got Them”;
AFTERWARD
41. Consequences
42. The Legend of Bonnie and Clyde
Note on Sources
Notes
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Photography Credits
About the Author
Photographic Insert
Jeff Guinn Page 55