My Life with Bonnie and Clyde

by Barrow, Blanche Caldwell

  Mrs. C. T. Barrow (home offer), Mr. & Mrs. W. J. Wilkerson (employment), W. J. Winkler offers employment.

  Your sponsor is James Parsons of K. C., Mo. Judge is neutral, Pros. Atty., neu., Sheriff-Rec.

  Blanche, your file is as good as it should be, the idea is just to get these people here to push your file along. There is no one who has any more right to get out of here than you have and I hope you do go. There is nothing you can do to get any better file than you already have. Around 1,000 on petitions.

  —B. D. Paschall, Dallas attorney

  Notes

  Editor’s Introduction

  1. State of Texas, County of Dallas, certified copy of birth certificate 15965, Bennie Iva Blanche Caldwell. Blanche mentions in a letter to her mother, as quoted in Baker, Blanche Barrow, 22–23, that she can’t remember her parents being together “more than a couple of days.” Also, in the first chapter of Blanche Caldwell Barrow’s own memoir she states, “I was brought up by a kind, loving, law-abiding father, without the aid of a mother.” In an interview with the editor, October 5, 2002, Rhea Leen Linder (Bonnie Parker’s niece), said that Blanche had an “everything for me” attitude, which probably stemmed from her father’s attentions.

  2. The divorce rate was one in eighty-five in 1905. By 1911 it had risen to one in twelve. Gordon and Gordon, American Chronicle, 117. In an undated letter to her mother written from her prison cell in Missouri, Blanche noted, “I want you two [mother and father] with me for once in my life, as I can’t remember having you both with me at the same time for more than a couple of days.” Baker, Blanche Barrow, 22–23.

  Lillian Bell Pond was born August 25, 1895, and was already ninety-three at the time of Blanche Caldwell Frasure’s death in 1988. She lived an unknown number of years afterward. Bennie Iva Blanche Caldwell’s certificate of birth. Besides Caldwell, other surnames Lillian Pond used included Marcum, Horton, Pierce, and Oberlacher. This is based on addresses in the headings of Blanche Caldwell Barrow’s letters to her mother as reproduced in Baker, Blanche Barrow, 27 and 52; on a Dallas Evening Journal article as reproduced in Baker, 21; and on Blanche Caldwell Frasure’s death certificate, December 24, 1988. But Pond may not have actually married these men. To friends Blanche intimated that her mother was prone to merely using the last name of whomever she was living with at the time. Esther Weiser, interview by editor, October 31, 2002. Hereafter, unless otherwise noted, all interviews were conducted by the editor.

  3. Blanche Barrow quoted in Weiser interview, September 8, 2001. In a letter to her mother, Blanche alluded to this, lamenting that she would never be called “mother” or “grandmother.” Letter of February 28, 1936, reproduced in Baker, Blanche Barrow, 60–62. Later in life Blanche owned at least four dolls that some thought were treated as surrogate children. Blanche made clothes for them and spoke to them as if they were her own flesh and blood. Linder interview, October 5, 2002; Weiser interview, October 5, 2002.

  From letters it can be surmised that Callaway remained in contact with Blanche’s mother at least up to and during Blanche’s incarceration in the Missouri State Penitentiary, long after Blanche’s estrangement and subsequent divorce from Callaway. In an undated letter to her mother, Blanche asks her if Callaway still visits her. In yet another letter Blanche responds to an apparent reference by her mother to Callaway: “Well, mother, I don’t care what John [Callaway] thinks of me, but that is just one more mark against him tearing my picture up. But he can’t hurt me any.” Callaway even wrote to Blanche while she was in prison, something Blanche was none too pleased with. Writing to her mother, Blanche stated she did not care to have anything from Callaway. Almost four months later Blanche wrote, “I hope he [Callaway] does not come near me when I am a free woman.” Letters reproduced in Baker, Blanche Barrow, 22–23, 35, 51, 54.

  4. Knowledge of Blanche’s friendship with Renfro comes from information written in Blanche’s hand on the back of a photograph of her and Renfro.

  5. Blanche Barrow, letter to her mother, n.d., quoted in Baker, Blanche Barrow, 22–23.

  6. Marie Barrow interview, May 1, 1998; Weiser interview, September 8, 2001. According to a letter written to her father, Blanche Barrow establishes the date she met Buck as November 11, 1929. Blanche Caldwell Barrow, letter to Matt Caldwell, November 11, 1933. See Appendix B. Because the date of Buck Barrow’s arrest following a Denton, Texas, burglary has been listed in some sources as occurring in October 1929, the date in Blanche’s letter would seem incorrect, but it is not. Buck was arrested shortly after midnight on November 30, 1929. Denton (Tex.) Record-Chronicle, November 30, 1929. See also Fortune, Fugitives, 32; Cumie Barrow, unpublished manuscript. The latter two sources both list October 1929 as the date of the Denton, Texas, burglary.

  Supposedly the origin of Marvin Barrow’s nickname, Buck, lay in the fact of his sprinting abilities. His aunt once observed him running around acting like a horse when he was just a child. Accordingly she dubbed him Buck, and the name stuck. Cumie Barrow, unpublished manuscript.

  7. State of Oklahoma, Marriage License, July 2–3, 1931. In her unpublished manuscript, Cumie Barrow cites Buck’s sentence as four years; Blanche also states four years in her memoir. However, the sentence is listed as five years in Fortune, Fugitives, 32. Buck’s letter of January 16, 1930, to his mother appears in Appendix C. The letter was no doubt written by a fellow convict. According to Cumie Barrow, Buck was illiterate. Cumie Barrow, unpublished manuscript.

  8. Cumie Barrow, unpublished manuscript. Also in a 1984 interview, Blanche openly admitted to accompanying Buck on robberies while he was an escaped convict. Blanche Barrow interview, November 18, 1984.

  9. For the full story of the evolution of the plot to raid Eastham, see Phillips, Running with Bonnie and Clyde, 33–92. In an interview by the editor on November 3, 1984, Blanche stated that she had visited Clyde a number of times while he was at Eastham, accompanied more than once by Buck, who had escaped from the Ferguson unit, just across the Trinity River from Eastham. During each visit Clyde told Blanche he couldn’t stand Eastham, that he wanted to escape, then raid the farm and free as many prisoners as he could.

  10. Blanche was a self-described camera buff, using a camera of some kind throughout most of her adult life. She loved taking snapshots, nothing formal or particularly aesthetic, just images of captured moments, mostly of the people closest to her. Between 1930 and 1933, she owned a handheld Kodak camera with folding bellows, probably a No. 2A Folding Autographic Brownie, manufactured between 1915 and 1926. It used 116 film and produced eight 2½-by-4¼-inch negatives per roll. She bought the camera secondhand for three dollars (the original retail price was thirteen dollars) to use mostly during road trips with Buck in 1930 and 1931.

  Throughout 1932, Blanche used the camera both in West Dallas and Denison, Texas, while she waited for Buck to finish his prison term. Early in 1933, she lent the camera to Bonnie, Clyde, and W. D. Jones. With it they took some of the better-known photographs of themselves, including the infamous shot of Bonnie with a cigar clenched in her teeth. The unprocessed rolls of film containing these images, as well as the camera itself, were among the many items abandoned in Joplin, Missouri, following the shoot-out of April 13, 1933.

  Blanche was then without a camera until fall 1933 when her mother mailed her own red Kodak handheld camera to her in prison. This was a less expensive fixed-focus camera, probably a No. 2A Beau Brownie, manufactured between 1930 and 1933 and available in five colors, including red. Like its folding-bellows forerunner, the Beau Brownie used 116 film.

  Throughout Blanche’s incarceration, she and her mother mailed the camera back and forth to each other. Blanche used it to make all her prison photographs. Her interest in taking pictures continued after her release from prison, lasting until a few years before her death. Blanche Barrow interview, September 24, 1984; Blanche Barrow, letter to her mother, April 10, 1934, quoted in Baker, Blanche Barrow, 39; Weiser interviews, September 8, 2001, and October 31, 2002.

&
nbsp; 11. Blanche Barrow interview, November 3 and September 24, 1984.

  12. Accompanying Blanche Barrow’s original manuscript is a large, unused Christmas card, on the back of which appears in Blanche’s hand, “written in 1933 or 34 & 35. Part of my story with the Barrow gang. Blanche Barrow.”

  13. Blanche Barrow, letter to mother, October 28, 1933, quoted in Baker, Blanche Barrow, 15.

  14. Baker, Blanche Barrow, 15.

  Chapter 1. View from a Cell

  1. In the original manuscript Blanche first wrote, “me as I did him,” then crossed that out and replaced it with “as a woman does.”

  Chapter 2. Marriage

  1. Blanche Barrow, letter to her father Matt Caldwell, November 11, 1933; Dallas Morning News, November 11, 1929.

  2. Fortune, Fugitives, 24; Dallas Morning News, November 11, 1929.

  3. On “Black Thursday,” October 24, U.S. Steel dropped from 261.75 to 193.5 and General Electric went from above 400 to 283. A consortium of bankers, including J. P. Morgan then tried desperately to drive stocks back up by deliberately paying above-market value for U.S. Steel and other stocks, but to no avail. On “Black Tuesday,” October 29, there was such a sell-off of stocks that it was humanly impossible to keep up with the trading. The ticker tape flowed for hours after the market closed. By the day of Blanche and Buck’s first meeting, American Can was down 54 percent, AT&T had dropped 35 percent, General Motors had lost 50 percent of its value, and U.S. Steel had sunk 63 percent. And it was only the beginning. Arnold, “The Crash, 217.

  4. Dallas Morning News, July 3, 1931.

  5. Procter, “Great Depression”; Marie Barrow interview, September 15, 1984; U.S. Census, 1920 and 1930. The population of Dallas, Texas was listed at 158,976 in 1920 and 294,734 in 1930. Although cities like Dallas would reach unemployment numbers in the double digits, the rate remained far below the national average of 25 percent. And the Barrows were actually able to open a small business in 1931, the Star Service Station at 1620 Eagle Ford Road (Singleton Road today) in West Dallas.

  6. Procter, “Great Depression”; Cabell Phillips, New York Times Chronicle of American Life, 54, 34; Watkins, Hungry Years, 105, 126; Andrist, American Heritage History, p. 185; Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 192.

  7. Procter, “Great Depression”; Fults interview December 5, 1980.

  8. John Callaway was Blanche’s first husband. This was Buck Barrow’s third marriage. At age seventeen he had married Margaret Heneger. During the marriage twin boys were born, one of whom died at five months of age. Barrow later divorced his first wife and married Pearl Churchley, by whom he fathered a girl. Eventually that marriage also ended in divorce. Blanche Caldwell Callaway was still married to her first husband when she met Buck Barrow, but the month after her divorce was finalized, she married him. Cumie Barrow, unpublished manuscript.

  9. In the original manuscript, “shadow” was written here, then crossed out and replaced with “sentence” by Blanche.

  10. It may have been true that Blanche did not know of Buck’s record. In a letter to her father dated November 11, 1933, she reminisces about having met Buck exactly four years earlier to the day. However, Blanche couldn’t have remained ignorant for long because on November 30, 1929, less than three weeks later, Buck was wounded and arrested following a burglary in Denton, Texas. Denton Record-Chronicle, November 30, 1929. Furthermore, Blanche definitely knew Buck was tried, convicted, and sent to prison. Buck mentions Blanche in a letter he sent from the main prison in Huntsville, Texas. Buck Barrow, letter to family, January 16, 1930. If, as Blanche states, the revelation of her husband’s escape came after she had married him (July 3, 1931), it would mean that Buck Barrow had kept his secret since March 8, 1930, the date of his escape. State of Texas, Texas Prison System, letter from William Thompson to Doug Walsh, May 17, 1932. There is evidence to suggest Blanche may have actually known all along of Buck’s escape. Cumie Barrow makes it quite clear in her unpublished manuscript that she knew her son had escaped when he arrived at her home in March 1930. She described the white prison clothes Buck was wearing, how he changed out of them, and how he told her to burn them. Cumie Barrow, unpublished manuscript. In addition, in a memo from the Justice Department Bureau of Criminal Investigation to Doug Walsh of the Dallas Police Department, Jim Muckleroy told investigators that his nephew, Buck Barrow, hid at his farm near Martinsville, Texas, following his prison break. In addition to the November 30, 1929, burglary for which he was sentenced to the Texas penitentiary, Buck Barrow had a number of prior arrests. On December 21, 1925, he was arrested in Houston under the name “Elmer Toms” for stealing tires. Dallas Morning News, April 14, 1933. This Houston arrest may be the source of some stories that Buck’s younger brother Clyde had a criminal record in Houston. According to Marie Barrow, her brother Clyde neither lived in Houston nor committed any crimes there. Marie Barrow interview, August 24, 1984. By 1928, Buck Barrow was suspected of auto theft in a number of Texas cities, including Dallas, Waco, Uvalde, Waxahachie, and San Antonio. Dallas Morning News, April 14, 1933. Most of the charges were dropped, but San Antonio authorities arrested Buck in August 1928 after a local police officer caught him in the act of stealing a car. Cumie Barrow, unpublished manuscript. His younger sister, Marie, ten years old at the time, remembered that she and her parents traveled to San Antonio for Buck’s trial. She described traveling by horse-drawn wagon and that for some reason W. D. Jones, his mother, and a couple of brothers traveled with them. The trip took a long time and the group worked their way to and from San Antonio as migrant farmhands. Marie Barrow interview, September 15, 1993. In January 1929, however, the San Antonio charges were also dismissed. Later in the year, October 13, 1929, Buck and Clyde Barrow and a friend named Frank Clause were arrested trying to burglarize a lumber company at 2521 Florence in Dallas. They were released due to lack of evidence. Dallas Morning News, April 14, 1933. Then on November 30, 1929, the Barrow brothers along with yet another friend, Sidney Moore, burglarized a service station in Denton, Texas. The Denton police chased them and opened fire, wounding and capturing Buck. Clyde and Sidney escaped. Denton (Tex.) Record-Chronicle, November 30, 1929. Despite what Blanche may have known or when she knew it, by all accounts she did press him to return to prison and finish his sentence.

  11. Readers familiar with the old Walls Unit in Huntsville, Texas, with its distinctive red brick walls, may be puzzled by the reference here to gray walls. However, at the time of Buck Barrow’s return to prison the original gray sandstone walls, dating from the nineteenth century, were still the only things separating the inmates from the outside world. In the 1940s those walls, by then seriously deteriorated, were encased in the red brick we see today. From atop the walls at almost any point it is possible to still see the cap of the original gray wall sandwiched between the two layers of brick.

  12. In addition to Cumie and Blanche, the group traveling with Buck included sisters Marie and Nell, and Nell’s second husband Luther Cowan. Marie Barrow interviews, September 25, 1993, and April 19, 1995. Cumie Barrow mentions only one sister in her unpublished manuscript. Nell is the sister implied by Fortune. Fortune, Fugitives, 89. The date and voluntary nature of Buck Barrow’s return to prison are officially confirmed in a letter from William Thompson, chief of the Bureau of Records, Texas Prison System, to Doug Walsh of the Dallas Police Department, May 17, 1932. There is, however, a bit of confusion as to whether it was Nell’s second husband, Luther Cowan, or her first, Leon Hale, who accompanied the family to Huntsville. In the two interviews mentioned above Marie interchanges the names. However, at the time there is no mention of Hale in the city directory, Nell’s last name is listed as Barrow not Hale, and she’s not only working at the same beauty and barber shop as Cowan but is also living in the same apartment building. Thus it was probably Cowan who went to Huntsville. Worley’s Dallas City Directory, 1931.

  When Henry and Cumie Barrow first moved to Dallas in 1921, Clyde did not live with them at the free campground but with Nell and h
er first husband, Leon Hale. Clyde attended Sidney Lanier School for “no more than two weeks” then got a job working at the same business where Hale was working. Hale also played saxophone in a local band at night. He is the one who taught Clyde Barrow to play saxophone. Despite his divorce from Nell, Hale remained highly regarded by the Barrows. Years later, LC, whose name was legally composed of those two letters, and only those letters, adopted the name “Leon” in honor of Hale. Marie Barrow interviews, September 15 and 25, 1993, and April 19, 1995; Buddy Barrow interview, October 26, 2002.

  13. This is unusual. Standard Texas prison system procedure at the time called for escapees, or other troublemakers, to wear stripes so they would stand out from the other convicts and thus be easier for guards to keep an eye on. Ralph Fults, interview, February 1, 1981. Cumie Barrow makes mention of this, saying that upon Buck’s return to prison, “They never even put him back in stripes.” Cumie Barrow, unpublished manuscript.

  14. In the original manuscript, “people” was written here, then crossed out and replaced with “mother” by Blanche.

  15. Marvin Ivan “Buck” Barrow was born on March 14, 1903, at Jones Prairie, Texas, in Milam County. Cumie Barrow, unpublished manuscript. His gravestone at Western Heights Cemetery in Dallas lists the year as 1905, which is incorrect. Family members concede that their mother was so upset when Buck was killed that she confused his birth year with Nell’s. Evidently the same thing happened with Clyde as well. The family Bible as well as other sources lists Clyde Barrow’s birth year as 1910, not 1909 as carved on the gravestone. This is supported by Cumie herself in her own unpublished manuscript. It is also supported in Fortune, who quotes Nell indicating in three different places that she was five years older than Clyde. Fortune, Fugitives, 3, 7, 10. The 1910 date is further supported by information supplied to Louisiana officials by Elvin “Jack” Barrow, Clyde’s oldest brother, at the time of Clyde’s death. Barrow declared Clyde’s age to be twenty-four, indicating a 1910 birth year. Louisiana State Board of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics, certificate of death, Clyde Chestnut Barrow.