Back at her trailer, Blanche dug out her own memoir. She knew that among her many other skills, her friend Esther had once worked for a publisher. And in her new capacity as special assistant to the Dallas district clerk she had access to one of the very first computer word processors, the type that filled up half a room and used 8-inch floppy disks. “Do you think you could do something with this?” Blanche asked her. Esther thought she could and took the manuscript with the idea of first transferring it to disk. Nevertheless, something made Esther forget completely about the manuscript for another fifteen years.
A short time after turning her manuscript over to Esther, Blanche got up from her chair and suddenly fell to the floor of her trailer. Her right leg had snapped. In the hospital it was determined she was in the early stages of some brittle bone disease and that her leg required surgery and a long period of convalescence to heal properly. After the surgery, Esther and Rhea Leen moved Blanche temporarily into a subsidized assisted-care facility in Oak Cliff, just across the river from downtown Dallas. It was then easy for both women, especially Esther who worked close by, to share the task of helping Blanche during her recovery. Rhea Leen and Esther alternated days and nights, visiting Blanche, making sure her needs were being met, bringing her what she wanted (including a large television set they both carried up several flights of stairs to Blanche’s room). The experience marked the first time Rhea Leen and Esther met. Thereafter their meetings were brief, usually one passing the other as their respective shifts, so to speak, changed.
Others visited Blanche in Oak Cliff as well. Writer Kent Biffle and his wife, Suzanne brought her a few cartons of Pall Mall cigarettes. Biffle recalled her obvious pain as she lay in traction with raw flesh exposed around a pin inserted in her leg. Nevertheless, he said she was always jovial and up for a visit.81
Eventually she was able to go back to her trailer. Knowing she was going to be confined to a wheelchair for some time, Moon constructed a ramp outside the door and Esther and Rhea Leen rearranged Blanche’s trailer to make it easier for her to move around in it. However, when they brought her home she was obviously displeased, not with the ramp, but with the rearrangement of her trailer. She was not unpleasant about it, but she made it clear she wanted everything back the way it was. To her memory that was the only time Esther ever saw Blanche angry, and even that did not last long.
Blanche spent her days wheeling around, putting food outside her trailer for any wild animal that might wander by, her “critters” she called them, and making clothes for her doll collection. Esther and Rhea Leen saw the critters and dolls as substitutes for the children Blanche could never have.
Blanche’s health never improved. She was soon diagnosed with cancer and spent the next four years in and out of hospitals, undergoing debilitating surgery, radiation treatments, and chemotherapy. Slowly she deteriorated. Her final days were spent in intensive care in Tyler, Texas. It was while she was there that her ninety-three-year-old mother paid her a visit. How she found out where her daughter was, no one knew, but Blanche was not pleased. Even when it was clear that she had terminal cancer, she wanted nothing to do with her mother, refusing Esther’s offer to contact her. Described as an ill-tempered, hard-looking, and extremely overweight woman who kept sacks of money tied in various places under her dress, Lillian stayed at the hospital for only a short time, apparently sensing she was not wanted.82 She went to her daughter’s funeral though.
Blanche Caldwell Barrow Frasure died on Christmas Eve, 1988. She was buried on a cold, damp winter’s day at Grove Hill Cemetery on Samuell Drive in Dallas, the same place LC Barrow had been buried. Artie and Nell were also buried there. Moreover, in a little more than four years Ralph Fults would join them, followed a few weeks later by Jean. In 1999, Marie Barrow, the last principal of the inner circle of Bonnie and Clyde, was also buried at Grove Hill.
Across town, on the hill above West Dallas and just a few feet from Fort Worth Avenue, Clyde, Buck, Jack, Henry, and Cumie Barrow all lie together. Still farther away, near Love Field, Bonnie, her mother, and two nephews lie in three of four Parker plots purchased by Billie Jean in 1945. Only one of the plots, Bonnie’s, is marked.
After Blanche’s funeral, Esther, executor of the meager estate, and Rhea Leen began cleaning out the trailer and neighboring shed. They found coffee cans filled with used nails that Blanche had straightened and stored away for future use, shelves filled with rusted canned goods with no labels, a freezer full of meat and other items that were so old they were, as Rhea Leen put it, “beyond freezer burn. They were freezer dead!”
Blanche and ukelele in prison. On special occasions, such as visitor days, the inmates were not obliged to wear the prison uniform. (Courtesy of Rhea Leen Linder)
Both Rhea Leen and Esther understood what they saw, however. It was the influence of the Great Depression, recycling, thriftiness, stocking up to the point of hoarding for fear of being without. Rhea Leen remembered tough times with Jean, before Moon came along. She remembered coming home from school before Jean got off work to a cold, empty house, and finding only one can of soup in the cupboard, heating the soup and eating only half of it, saving the rest for her aunt. Esther remembered being shunned by other children when her father took a job as a janitor because his savings had been wiped out in the crash of 1929 and there were no other jobs. He always distrusted banks thereafter, refusing to do business with them, preferring to bury his money in the yard. He was not alone.
Blanche never forgot the impact of the Great Depression in her life, and she never forgot those who shared her life then, no matter how difficult and painful the memories, and no matter how much those around her, or even she herself, tried to suppress those memories. Four years before her death she said, “I talk of these incidents [with Bonnie and Clyde] as if I were not a part of any of it, like a character in a book I once read. It’s the only way I keep from going crazy. Maybe we were all pretty young then, but we knew what we were doing. Clyde never held a gun to my head. I was there because I wanted to be! What’s that they say in the movies? ‘The show must go on!’ Well, life goes on.”83
Blanche and Buck Barrow, 1931. (Courtesy of Rhea Leen Linder)
At some point in the process of cleaning the trailer, Rhea Leen looked at Blanche’s big recliner chair and remembered seeing her sitting there just before she entered the hospital for the last time. Her feet were resting on a wooden stool made for her by Clyde Barrow while he was in prison. On a TV tray in front of her was an intricately hand-tooled wooden jewelry box, also made by Barrow. Her name was carved on the lid. She had removed all her jewelry and spread it out before her—all of it. She was looking at the pieces carefully and trying them on, as if for the last time.
Blanche had lived most of her life in the shadow of four months in 1933. In addition, the pain of mortality was with her constantly, always pinching her back to reality. Nevertheless, in the end the only things that really seemed to matter were her friends, her critters, her dolls, and a few bits of paste and metal, those and the memories they carried with them.
Rhea Leen and Esther returned to the task of sifting through Blanche’s life, examining boxes of receipts dating back decades, canceled checks and bank statements, rusty nails and canned goods—and one other thing, a poem:
Sometimes
Across the fields of yesterday
She sometimes comes to me
A little girl just back from play
the girl I used to be
And yet she smiles so wistfully
once she has crept within
I wonder if she hopes to see
the woman I might have been—
—Blanche Barrow, 1933
Blanche, 1932. (Courtesy of Rhea Leen Linder)
Appendix A
Reproduction of Two Pages from the Original Manuscript
The passage on the following two pages replicates two pages from the original manuscript, as Blanche Barrow composed it and before the editor “regularized” it. F
or comparison, see pages 24–27 of this book.
Page 11 of the original handwritten manuscript. (Courtesy of Esther L. Weiser)
Page 12 of the original handwritten manuscript. (Courtesy of Esther L. Weiser)
Appendix B
Blanche’s Letter to Her Father, November 11, 1933
On November 11, 1933, Blanche Barrow wrote to her father from the Missouri State Penitentiary. The letter appears here unedited, just as Blanche wrote it. The “best friend” Blanche mentions is Carl D. Beaty, the man who had sold Buck the ‘29 Marmon sedan that had carried them all to the ill-fated reunion with Bonnie and Clyde in Joplin, Missouri.
Name: M. F. Caldwell Relationship: Father Name: Mrs. Blanche Barrow Box 47. Register No. 43454. No.—this week
Street Number City: Goodwater. State: Okla. Jefferson City, Mo. Nov. 11, 1933.
My dear dad,
Received your sweet letter yesterday noon and was so proud to hear from you, and know you are well, this leaves me feeling fine, hope you are well. I am over my cold now and my eye feels better.
Dear I received a letter from mother and Lucinda and one from Mrs. Barrow yesterday and was so proud to hear from them again, but mother was still sick and was taking Lucinda to the hospital. Mother said John had been out there, he is married again. I am proud he is, maybe he will leave me alone.
Well dear the weather is pretty cold up here. but today the sun has been shining, hope you had a nice armistice day, do you remember where we were 4 years ago today and I met Buck. I never dreamed then I would be here 4 years from then and my darling would be dead and I could never see him again, but we never know from one day to the next what will happen to us. Mrs. Barrow told me about one of Buck’s and my best friends in Dallas being dead, and he is buried in the same grave yard that our darling is resting in, only a little over 3 months differences in there deaths, he was such a big healthy man, you would never think of him being sick, but that is something we all have to go through with. I only hope to be ready when my time comes and I can go to see my darling. Well dear I think I told you we had a dance here last Saturday night, the band boys come over with the warden and played the music for the girls to dance by, everyone seem to have a good time I know I enjoyed the music. Well dear I must go, hoping to hear from you soon, am sending lots and lots of love.
your lonely baby, Blanche
Appendix C
Buck’s Letter Home, January 16, 1930
On January 16, 1930, two days after arriving in Huntsville to begin his sentence, Buck Barrow wrote to his mother. The letter was probably dictated to a cell mate as Buck was illiterate.
Huntsville Tex.
Jan 16, 1930
Dear Mother and all
I will write you a few lines to let you know that I have made the trip. Mother I am in the hospital now and my legs are hurting pretty bad. It sure looks bad but I am going to take it. Mother try to get me a furlow. And don’t fail to write often. And don’t for get to tell Blanch to write me.
And tell me all the news that happen on the out side world. Send me some stamps and envelopes so that I can write ever day And I wish you would do the same. Mother tell sister to send my shoes and send me some more pajamas because they burn mine up.
But they well let me have some more now if you send them to me. And tell her to help me all she can to get out on a parole or a furlow while you are so sick. I hope the out side world don’t for get me just because I am in the walls.
Good-by Mother and don’t worry
—Marvin Barrow
Don’t send me any tobbacco but send me some money Because they wont let any tobbacco come in.
Appendix D
The Barrow Gang’s Victims
In all, the Barrow brothers and/or their accomplices accounted for the deaths of fourteen men between the fall of 1931 and the spring of 1934. The stories behind the murders are summarized below.
Ed Crowder, Killed by Clyde Barrow, October 29, 1931
ED CROWDER WAS A convicted bank robber from Houston, Texas. Not much else is known about him prior to his prison days. Crowder was one of three “building tenders” serving Camp 1 at the Eastham prison farm when Clyde Barrow was moved there from Camp 2, probably in 1931. A building tender was a convict trustee who quite literally tended to the prison building. At each camp there were three building tenders working in eight-hour shifts. Their job was to make sure peace was maintained in the building and that everything ran smoothly. They worked closely with guards and were given quite a bit of latitude regarding the manner in which they kept the peace. Building tenders were not supposed to be armed, but most were. They carried a variety of homemade weapons, the most common being the “dirk knife,” “shiv,” or “shank”—knives fashioned from files stolen from the prison workshop. Some carried other weapons, including ballpeen hammers and a nasty little item called a “tough nut”—a leather glove festooned with razors.
Some building tenders were fair—tough, but fair—like Aubrey Skelley (sometimes appears as Scalley), whom Clyde Barrow befriended and made part of the original plan to raid Eastham. It was Skelley who smuggled in the guns used in the raid of January 16, 1934. Other building tenders were vicious, vindictive, and extremely dangerous. Such was the case with Ed Crowder. Described as large, hulking, and overbearing, Crowder was, among other things, a predator. He enjoyed homing in on smaller convicts, beating them, sexually assaulting them, and making them do all manner of vile things for him. Crowder raped Clyde Barrow at least once, and in return Barrow vowed to kill Crowder.
By that time Barrow was working in the Camp 1 kitchen. He could have taken a knife from there and ripped Crowder in half, but Barrow did not want to do that because the weapon would surely be traced to him. He knew his mother had been fighting to have his fourteen-year sentence reduced to the original two years. His implication in a prison murder might have jeopardized that. Barrow went to Skelley and asked to borrow his knife. Skelley talked him out of that as well. Skelley then devised a plan whereby he, a bank robber serving a long term, would take the rap for Crowder’s murder knowing that nothing could, or would, be done to him. Today such a plan would never work, since convict killings are now capital crimes in the state of Texas, but in the early 1930s, such cases were commonplace and rarely if ever investigated. It might have made a difference with a “short-timer” like Barrow, but for a “heavy” like Skelley, it was nothing. In exchange for the deception, Skelley was to be included in the plan to raid Eastham—a plan that already included Ralph Fults, Joe Palmer, and Henry Methvin.
Barrow smuggled a length of galvanized pipe into the Camp 1 dormitory. He had it concealed in his pants. He waited for all the other convicts to finish their business at the open toilets and showers at the west end of the dormitory then walked back there alone. He knew such a move would lure the predator, Ed Crowder, back there with him. Barrow stood at one of the toilets pretending to urinate. When he heard Crowder approach, Barrow jerked that pipe out, wheeled around, and cracked Crowder’s head wide open. Barrow then rushed back to his bunk. Skelley, waiting nearby, pulled his knife, slashed himself on the stomach, and rushed over to Crowder. Screaming and shouting, he sank the knife deep into the already dead body and backed away, clutching his bleeding, but superficially wounded abdomen. The guard, stationed outside the dormitory, asked about all the shouting. “I just killed Crowder,” Skelley said. The guard said something to the effect of “good riddance” and to leave the body, that it would be cleared out later. It was Clyde Barrow’s first murder.
John N. Bucher, Killed by Ted Rogers, April 30, 1932
John N. Bucher was the sixty-five-year-old owner-operator of a variety store located on the old Fort Worth Highway (Itasca Road today), just north of Hillsboro, Texas. The store was on the ground floor of a two-story building. Bucher and his wife lived upstairs. The store had long since closed for the day when at about 10:00 P.M. on the evening of April 30, 1932, a pounding came from downstairs. Someone claimed to want a guitar string,
saying they were playing in a band at a nearby dance. Bucher went downstairs and let two young men into the store. He recognized them, but he probably did not know them. Their names were Johnny Russell and Ted Rogers. They were part of the gang that had planned to raid Eastham along with Clyde Barrow and Ralph Fults. By then, however, the gang had been decimated when Fults and two other gang members were captured in separate incidents. Russell, Rogers, and Barrow had barely escaped together when their hideout on Lake Dallas (now Lake Lewisville) was raided by the Denton County sheriff’s department. They had left so fast that they lost everything, weapons and cash, in the raid. By the time they rolled into Hillsboro, they were flat broke and desperate.
Russell and Rogers had been in the store earlier in the day browsing with Clyde Barrow, but that night Barrow waited outside in the car. It has long been thought that the reason Barrow did not go inside was because Bucher knew Barrow, which was probably true. Indeed, there is more than one theory as to the exact nature of their association. The most popular is that Barrow knew one of Bucher’s children. Nevertheless, there is another, seedier notion, which has never been substantiated—that Bucher was a fence for stolen goods and that Barrow was a longtime customer. Whatever the reason, Barrow stayed in the car while Russell and Rogers went inside, supposedly looking for a replacement guitar string.
When a string was selected, one of the men produced a ten dollar bill, knowing Bucher would have to open the safe to make change. Some reports have Bucher calling his wife at this point, for only she knew the combination. Regardless, she was apparently there in the store when Bucher opened the safe. At some point Russell and Rogers pulled guns and demanded cash and jewels. According to Rogers, who later related the story to Ralph Fults, Buck Barrow, and two other men inside the main prison at Huntsville, Texas, Bucher pulled a gun from the safe and Rogers shot him. Bucher’s wife then went for the gun but Rogers grabbed her before she could reach it. He and Russell then scooped up forty dollars in cash and about fifteen hundred dollars in jewels and took off. The trio split up that night and apparently never saw each other again.
My Life with Bonnie and Clyde Page 23