May 11, 1932 Fults is returned to prison.
June 15, 1932 Bonnie is “no billed,” that is, no bill of indictment was returned by the grand jury, in Kaufman County and released.
August 1, 1932 Clyde Barrow, Raymond Hamilton, and another man rob the Neuhoff Meat Packing Plant, in Dallas.
August 5, 1932 Barrow, Hamilton, and at least one other man, perhaps even a fourth man, are involved in the killing of Undersheriff Eugene Moore at an outdoor dance near Stringtown, Oklahoma.
August 14, 1932 Barrow, Hamilton, and Bonnie Parker abduct Chief Deputy Sheriff Joe Johns near Carlsbad, New Mexico, leaving him by the side of the road unharmed near San Antonio, Texas, the following day.
September 1, 1932 Raymond Hamilton leaves Bonnie and Clyde and travels to Bay City, Michigan.
October 8, 1932 Raymond Hamilton returns to Texas and robs a bank in Cedar Hill, Texas (Dallas County).
October 11, 1932 A lone bandit who escapes in a car occupied by at least two other men kills grocer Howard Hall. Some suspect Clyde Barrow is the killer, but others do not.
November 9, 1932 Raymond Hamilton and another man rob a bank in La Grange, Texas.
November 25, 1932 Hamilton robs the bank in Cedar Hill a second time.
November 30, 1932 Clyde Barrow, along with Hollis Hale and Frank Hardy, robs a bank in Oronogo, Missouri.
December 6, 1932 Hamilton and his La Grange accomplice are arrested in Bay City, Michigan and returned to Texas.
December 25, 1932 Clyde Barrow and W. D. Jones shoot Doyle Johnson in Temple, Texas, while in the process of stealing Johnson’s car. Bonnie Parker is in another car nearby. Johnson dies the next day. Frank Hardy is eventually charged with the murder, which precipitates the well-known letter written by Clyde Barrow in Hardy’s defense.
January 6, 1933 Clyde Barrow kills Tarrant county deputy sheriff Malcolm Davis at 507 County Avenue, West Dallas.
January 13, 1933 A bank in Ash Grove, Missouri, is robbed.
January 26, 1933 Barrow, Jones, and Parker abduct Springfield, Missouri motorcycle officer Tom Persell, later leaving him unharmed near Joplin, Missouri. Persell, who found himself sitting on bags of money in the car, later states that his abductors spoke freely of a number of bank robberies, including the one in Ash Grove, Missouri, on January 13, 1933.
March 22, 1933 Buck Barrow is granted a full pardon from the State of Texas by Governor Miriam Ferguson. The following day Buck and Blanche are reunited.
March 25-26, 1933 Buck and Blanche Barrow pay a visit to Blanche’s mother near Wilmer, Texas. During the night Clyde Barrow, Bonnie Parker, and W. D. Jones arrive. Clyde immediately begins pressing his older brother to help him raid Eastham.
March 29, 1933 Buck and Blanche leave Texas to meet Clyde in Oklahoma. After meeting, the group (Bonnie, Clyde, W. D., Buck, and Blanche) proceed to Joplin, Missouri.
April 1, 1933 After first staying in a Joplin tourist court, Blanche Barrow, the Barrow brothers, Parker, and Jones rent a garage apartment at 3347½ Oak Ridge Drive.
April 13, 1933 Newton County (Missouri) Constable Wes Harryman and Joplin (Missouri) City Motor Detective Harry McGinnis are killed trying to serve a warrant at the Joplin, Missouri, garage apartment occupied by the Barrows and W. D. Jones. All three men in the Barrow group are wounded during the gunfight.
April 14, 1933 Clyde and Buck Barrow rob a service station in Amarillo, Texas.
April 27, 1933 Ruston, Louisiana, residents H. D. Darby and Sophie Stone are abducted by the Barrow gang following Jones’s theft of Darby’s car. Either by accident or by design, Jones loses the group and does not rejoin them until June.
May 5, 1933 After receiving sentences of 167 years for everything from auto theft to bank robbery, Raymond Hamilton is convicted of the murder of John N. Bucher of Hillsboro, Texas (although Ted Rogers is the actual killer). Hamilton is then sentenced to an additional 99 years—for a grand total of 266 years (the 263 years usually cited plus a little-known three-year suspended sentence for auto theft that was also revoked).
May 12, 1933 Buck and Clyde attempt a bank robbery in Lucerne, Indiana. They steal nothing and have to shoot their way out of town.
May 14, 1933 Blanche takes a bus to Dallas to arrange a post-Mother’s Day meeting for Bonnie, Buck, and Clyde.
May 15, 1933 The post-Mother’s Day meeting takes place near Cooper, Texas.
May 19, 1933 Buck and Clyde rob a bank in Okabena, Minnesota, of approximately $2,500 However, just as in Lucerne, Indiana, the bandits, including Bonnie Parker and Blanche Barrow, have to shoot their way out of town.
May 1933 At some point between the May 15 meeting with members of the Barrow and Parker families and the June 6 meeting with Matt Caldwell, the Barrow gang visits Mississippi, Florida, Georgia, and several other states during a vacation of sorts.
June 6, 1933 Buck and Blanche Barrow visit Matt Caldwell, Blanche’s father, in Oklahoma.
June 10, 1933 Clyde Barrow accidentally drives into the dry wash of the Salt Fork River near Wellington, Texas. He and W. D. (who has just rejoined the gang) are thrown free. Bonnie is severely burned. While trying to investigate, Collingsworth County Sheriff George Corry and Wellington City Marshal Paul Hardy are abducted and driven to Oklahoma, where a rendezvous with Buck and Blanche takes place and the officers are released.
June 11-14, 1933 The gang hides out in Pratt, Kansas.
June 15, 1933 They move to the Twin Cities Tourist Camp in Fort Smith, Arkansas.
June 18, 1933 Clyde Barrow drives to Dallas to get Billie Jean Parker Mace so she can help nurse her sister, Bonnie Parker, in Arkansas.
June 23, 1933 With Bonnie a virtual invalid in a Fort Smith, Arkansas, motor court, Buck Barrow and W. D. Jones rob the Brown Grocery in Fayetteville, Arkansas. On the return to Fort Smith, they are involved in an accident, followed immediately by a gunfight with Alma (Ark.) City Marshal Henry D. Humphrey and Deputy A. M. “Red” Salyers. Buck kills Humphrey. He and Jones then escape in the deputy’s car.
July 3, 1933 After helping her sister regain her strength, and after a brief romance with W. D. Jones, Billie Jean Mace is put on a train and sent back to Dallas.
July 7, 1933 The Barrow brothers and Jones rob the National Guard armory on the campus of Phillips University in Enid, Oklahoma.
July 10-16, 1933 The Barrow gang camps on a farmer’s property on the banks of the Little Sioux River in northwest Iowa.
July 18, 1933 The Barrow brothers and Jones rob three service stations within minutes in Fort Dodge, Iowa.
July 19, 1933 Buck and Blanche are wounded during a gunfight at a motor court outside of Platte City, Missouri. Buck is shot in the head; Blanche is partially blinded by flying glass. After a protracted flight from the area, the gang escapes into Iowa.
July 22, 1933 Raymond Hamilton, held in the Dallas County jail while awaiting transfer to the state penitentiary, is discovered in the process of escaping by jailer Murray Fischer and is placed in a more secure cell.
July 24, 1933 After a gunfight in an abandoned amusement park between Dexter and Redfield, Iowa, Clyde, Bonnie, and W. D., all wounded, escape. Buck and Blanche are captured.
July 26, 1933 Blanche Barrow is extradited to Missouri where she is charged with assault with intent to kill, stemming from the Platte City gunfight.
July 29, 1933 Buck Barrow dies at King’s Daughters Hospital in Perry, Iowa.
August 5, 1933 Blanche Barrow appears at a preliminary hearing in Platte County, Missouri. Her bail is set at $15,000.
August 8, 1933 Raymond Hamilton is transferred to the Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville. Two weeks later, he is transferred to the Eastham prison farm. This is nearly five months after Clyde Barrow tried to recruit Buck and Blanche to raid the farm.
August 20, 1933 Clyde Barrow and W. D. Jones rob a National Guard armory in Plattville, Illinois. Jones leaves Bonnie and Clyde not long afterward. He is later arrested near Houston, Texas.
September 4, 1933 Blanche Barrow pleads guilty
in court and receives a ten-year sentence. She is transferred immediately to the Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City and received as prisoner #43454. She undergoes the first of a series of ultimately unsuccessful operations designed to save her injured eye. During this same period of time Clyde Barrow and two other men, including Texas prison escapee Henry Massingale, are involved in a series of auto mishaps, followed by a brief gun battle with local officers. Later, in an attempt to get a fresh car, Massingale approaches a group of people at an outdoor church social and demands the keys to one of the cars parked nearby. While Massingale is making his demands, a woman walks up behind him and knocks the bandit out with a croquet mallet. Barrow and the other man escape.
November 22, 1933 Bonnie and Clyde are wounded in an ambush staged by the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department near Sowers. Dallas County Sheriff Smoot Schmid, organizer of the failed attempt, immediately assigns one of his deputies, Bob Alcorn, to hunt Bonnie and Clyde full-time.
January 16, 1934 Bonnie and Clyde raid the Eastham prison farm, freeing five convicts (Raymond Hamilton, Henry Methvin, Hilton Bybee, J. B. French, and Joe Palmer). Palmer kills guard Major (his given name, not his title) Joseph Crowson during the raid. Another guard, Olan Bozeman, is wounded.
January 23, 1934 The Barrow gang robs a bank in Rembrandt, Iowa.
January 25, 1934 The Barrow gang robs a bank in Poteau, Oklahoma.
February 1, 1934 The Barrow gang robs a bank in Knierim, Iowa. Former Texas Ranger Captain Frank Hamer is hired by Colonel Lee Simmons, general manager of the Texas prison system, to hunt down Bonnie and Clyde. Simmons, whose brutal policies are the basis for Barrow’s intense desire to raid Eastham, tells Hamer, “I want you to put Clyde and Bonnie ‘on the spot’ and then shoot everyone in sight.” Hamer and Dallas County Deputy Sheriff Bob Alcorn soon join forces in the field.
February 12, 1934 Clyde Barrow, Raymond Hamilton, and Henry Methvin engage local authorities in a brief but intense gun battle near Reed Springs, Missouri.
February 27, 1934 Barrow gang robs the R. P. Henry & Sons Bank in Lancaster, Texas. After the robbery, Barrow and Hamilton get into an argument and part company.
March 19, 1934 Raymond and Floyd Hamilton rob the Grand Prairie State Bank in Grand Prairie, Texas.
April 1, 1934 Clyde Barrow and Henry Methvin (one of the Eastham escapees) kill motorcycle officers E. B. Wheeler and H. D. Murphy of the Texas State Highway Patrol near Grapevine, Texas. Eyewitnesses Fred and Mary Giggal see “the larger of two men” firing at the already wounded officers. (Henry Methvin is much taller and bigger than Barrow.)
April 3, 1934 The bullet-riddled body of former Eastham convict trustee Wade McNabb is found near Marshall, Texas. The Barrow gang, or at least elements of it, are no doubt responsible.
April 6, 1934 Barrow and Methvin kill Constable Cal Campbell of Commerce, Oklahoma.
April 16, 1934 The Barrow gang robs a bank in Stuart, Iowa. The getaway car is spotted speeding through Dexter, just five miles east of Stuart.
April 25, 1934 Raymond Hamilton is captured near Howe, Texas.
May 3, 1934 The Barrow gang robs a bank in Everly, Iowa.
May 23, 1934 Bonnie and Clyde are ambushed and killed eight miles south of Gibsland, Louisiana. Henry Methvin (the Eastham escapee) later admits in an Oklahoma court that he helped engineer the ambush. From the Missouri State Penitentiary for Women, Blanche Barrow says, “I’m glad they were both killed. It was the easiest way out. I’m glad it’s over. It is much better they were both killed, rather than have to be taken alive.”
June 15, 1934 Joe Palmer is arrested in St. Joseph, Missouri. He is extradited to Texas where he and Hamilton both receive the death sentence—Palmer for murder, Hamilton for being a habitual criminal.
July 22, 1934 Hamilton, Palmer, and Irvin “Blackie” Thompson escape from the death house inside the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville.
August 8, 1934 Palmer is captured in Paducah, Kentucky, and returned to Texas.
December 6, 1934 Blackie Thompson is killed in a gunfight with police near Amarillo, Texas.
January 10, 1935 Ralph Fults is pardoned by Texas governor Miriam Ferguson.
February 4, 1935 Floyd and Raymond Hamilton rob a bank in Carthage, Texas, along with another man. Later that same night the brothers narrowly escape a police trap at their hideout in Dallas. Raymond Hamilton is wounded in the neck.
February 5, 1935 Floyd Hamilton is captured in Shreveport, Louisiana.
February 16, 1935 Raymond Hamilton and Ralph Fults rob a National Guard armory in Beaumont, Texas.
February 22, 1935 Twenty-two defendants are put on trial in federal court in Dallas for harboring Bonnie and Clyde. It is a test case, the first federal harboring charges ever brought to trial. Among the defendants are Blanche Barrow and the mothers of Bonnie Parker, Clyde Barrow, and Raymond Hamilton.
February 24, 1935 Raymond Hamilton and Ralph Fults drive through a hail of bullets and narrowly escape a police ambush north of McKinney, Texas.
March 18, 1935 Ralph Fults and Raymond Hamilton pretend to abduct reporter Harry McCormick of the Houston Press, supposedly to let Hamilton tell his side of the story. In reality, the abduction story is staged to protect McCormick, who receives money from the outlaws for Joe Palmer’s defense attorney.
March 28, 1935 Fults and Hamilton rob a bank in Prentiss, Mississippi. During their flight, Fults is wounded. Fults and Hamilton then capture a fifteen-man posse, then a six-man posse, and finally elude two hundred troops of the Mississippi National Guard before escaping to Tennessee. The governor of Mississippi declares a state of emergency. Fults and Hamilton split up in Memphis.
April 3, 1935 Members of the Texas Prison Board and the Texas state legislature launch investigations into the brutal policies of the state prison system’s general manager, Colonel Lee Simmons.
April 5, 1935 Hamilton is captured in the rail yard near East Belknap, Fort Worth, Texas. He soon rejoins Palmer on death row in Huntsville.
April 10, 1935 The Osborne Commission on U.S. Prisons names the Texas prison system the worst in the nation, citing the brutal way in which convicts are handled, particularly at Eastham.
April 17, 1935 Ralph Fults is captured near Denton, Texas.
May 10, 1935 Joe Palmer and Raymond Hamilton are executed.
June 29, 1935 Ralph Fults is extradited to Mississippi.
September 2, 1935 Ralph Fults is sentenced to two fifty-year terms in Mississippi for his part in the Prentiss bank robbery. The very same day, Colonel Lee Simmons, general manager of the Texas prison system, resigns under fire.
March 24, 1939 Blanche Caldwell Barrow is released from the Missouri State Penitentiary.
March 25, 1939 Blanche’s conditional commutation from the State of Missouri, signed by Governor Lloyd C. Stark, becomes effective.
April 19, 1940 Blanche Caldwell marries Edwin Bert “Eddie” Frasure in Rockwall, Texas.
September 19, 1947 Matthew Fountain Caldwell dies.
1952 Esther Weiser moves in with Blanche and Eddie Frasure.
1967 The motion picture Bonnie and Clyde starring Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, Estelle Parsons, and Gene Hackman is released.
May 11, 1969 Eddie Frasure dies.
1970-1988 Blanche Caldwell Frasure renews old friendships with the Barrows and Parkers, particularly Artie, LC, and Marie Barrow, and Billie Jean Parker Moon. During this period, Blanche also kept in close contact with Floyd Hamilton, mostly by phone, and visited Ralph Fults at least once.
December 24, 1988 Blanche Caldwell Frasure dies.
1
View from a Cell
PEOPLE ONLY LIVE HAPPILY ever after in fairy tales. In my case, it seems it was a crime to have ever met Buck Barrow. I was brought up by a kind, loving, law-abiding father, without the aid of a mother. But when I met Buck it was a case of true love from the first. I knew I loved him more than I had ever loved anyone before, more than I could ever love anyone else for the rest of my life. And
he loved me the same, if it is possible for a man to love1 as a woman does. I don’t think I am the only woman who loved a man so much. But because I loved Marvin Buck Barrow, married him, was loyal and true to him, and to my marriage vows to the bitter end, I am now serving a ten-year sentence in prison.
I am not guilty of the crime charged to me. But I am guilty of loving my husband so much I couldn’t bear to have him leave me, not knowing what hour of the day or night I may receive word of him being riddled by bullets fired from some officer’s machine gun. I am asking all who may read this story, was that a crime? Even though I knew my life was in danger I went with him wherever he went. Rather than live without him, I chose to face death with him.
Blanche Caldwell Barrow in the Missouri State Penitentiary for Women, 1933. (Courtesy of Rhea Leen Linder)
2
Marriage
Editor’s Note: 1929 and 1931
On Monday, November 11, 1929, the date Blanche Caldwell Callaway met Buck Barrow, the weather in Dallas, Texas, was cloudy and 72 degrees. It was Armistice Day (now Veterans Day), exactly eleven years after the close of what was then referred to as “the Great War”—World War I. At 11 A.M., there was a moment of silence throughout the city to commemorate the event, commencing with a blast from a siren at the Adolphus Hotel on Commerce Street. Later a parade wound its way through the downtown streets and past a reviewing stand constructed on Harwood Street in front of city hall.1
On Elm Street, theaters and vaudeville houses planned various patriotic programs. At the Melba Theater it was possible to view, among other things, a short motion picture documentary called Over There Today, which focused on the rebuilding and restoration campaign in France since the close of the war. At the Palace Theater, where Clyde Barrow once worked as an usher, the house organist, Billy Muth, was to play a medley of songs titled “Recollections of War,” followed by a program by the Highland Park High School band, fresh from its first-place triumph in a battle of the state’s best bands at the Texas State Fair the previous month. In addition, local NBC radio affiliate WFAA scheduled an American Legion Armistice Day program beginning at 10:40 A.M.2
My Life with Bonnie and Clyde Page 4