My Life with Bonnie and Clyde

by Barrow, Blanche Caldwell

  23. Apparently this was a fairly common method used by fugitives to dispose of cars (and the evidence therein). Following the robbery of the bank at Ash Grove, Missouri (mentioned by Barrow, Parker, and Jones to Springfield motorcycle officer Tom Persell after his abduction on January 26, 1933), the burned-out hulk of a Ford V-8 sedan believed used in the robbery was discovered four miles from Springfield, Missouri. Springfield (Mo.) Press, January 13, 1933. Clyde Barrow and Ralph Fults similarly burned a car in north Texas in April of 1932. See Phillips, Running with Bonnie and Clyde, 77–78.

  24. According to Cumie Barrow, $700 of the $1,600 taken from the First State Bank in Okabena, Minnesota, consisted of silver dollars. Cumie Barrow, unpublished manuscript.

  25. Three of Clyde Barrow’s cohorts in crime described him as very quiet, calm, and thoughtful. Fults interview, November 5, 1980; Hammett interview, February 20, 1982; Jones, interview by Biffle, June 1968. Fults had a mixed view of Buck. He once described him as “solemn, sullen.” Fults interview, May 21, 1983. However, on another occassion Fults, who considred himself hotheaded in those days, remembered Buck as quiet and easygoing. Fults interview, November 12, 1980. Jones said Buck was “hot-headed.” Jones, interview by Biffle, June 1968. Buck’s sister Marie said of him, “Buck was the meanest, most hot-tempered kid you ever saw. He’d fight at the drop of a hat.” Marie Barrow interview, April 19, 1995.

  26. Here Blanche first wrote, then crossed out the following: “He would have gotten me first because I wouldn’t have been quick enough to shoot him face-to-face. And I would never have shot him in the back, even if he was a dirty rat and would as soon shoot someone in the back as face them. But then, if he had shot Buck and I managed to shoot him, Bonnie would have shot me anyway.”

  Chapter 7. Mother’s Day

  1. That would be Monday, May 15, 1933, three days after the attempted bank robbery in Lucerne, Indiana, and four days before the successful robbery of the First State Bank in Okabena, Minnesota.

  2. The bus driver’s concern reinforces the observation of some of Blanche’s friends that because she was so petite men felt compelled to protect her and watch over her. Linder and Weiser interviews, October 5, 2002.

  3. In a letter four months earlier, Blanche had complained to her mother that she was “as fat as a pig,” adding, “I weigh 114½. I am getting so fat. I can’t wear my clothes. Guess I will have to reduce to get in some of them.” Blanche Barrow letter to mother, January 14, 1933, quoted in Baker, Blanche Barrow, 25–26.

  4. In the 1933 city directory Elvin, or “Jack,” as he was known, is listed as residing at 1308 Second Avenue, which does not exist anymore.

  5. Apparently the families of these fugitives, particularly the mothers, remained very close throughout this period and for years afterward. Cumie Barrow and Emma Parker called each other frequently and invited each other over for visits on a regular basis. And their concern for Alice Davis, Raymond Hamilton’s mother, is also evident. When Hamilton was captured in April 1934, Emma asked Cumie in a phone conversation, “How is his mother?” Dallas Police Department telephone wiretap transcript, April 27, 1934, 49; April 29, 1934, 64. Blanche’s mother, at the time Lillian Horton, was a part of that circle as well, even long after Buck’s death and Blanche’s imprisonment. This is indicated in a number of Blanche’s prison letters, quoted in Baker, Blanche Barrow, 31–33, 38, 45–46, 49–51, and 55–56.

  6. By then Nell was divorced from Leon Hale, the musician who taught Clyde to play saxophone, and had married Luther J. Cowan. Cowan was a barber who met Nell when she was a beautician at May’s Barber Shop and Beauty Parlor at 4907 Ross Avenue in Dallas. By 1933 they were both living at the Sanger Hotel and Apartments at 717 South Ervay and working at the Sanger Hotel Barber and Beauty Shop. Worley’s Dallas (Tex.) City Directory 1931, 1933–34. “Just ‘LC’ is all I ever knew.” Marie Barrow interview, September 15, 1993.

  7. Cumie Barrow, who suspected a police wiretap on her phone, was circumspect in her calls. In a Dallas police wiretap transcript covering a thirteen-day period in April 1934 there are a number of cryptic remarks made by Cumie Barrow that her descendants have identified as references to, or inquiries about Bonnie and Clyde. References to “the Howards” and “cooking beans,” appearing throughout the transcript, are said to be veiled references to “the kids,” as they were called. Also, a slight variation to a rural Texas colloquialism was another reference. The caller would sometimes lead with, “Do you know anything?” Even today this phrase is still used by rural Texans to spark a conversation, but from the mouths of Cumie Barrow and Emma Parker it sometimes meant something else. Once, one of the Barrows’ older daughters called Cumie and asked if she knew anything. Cumie remained silent for several seconds, then said, “Come over.” Just a few minutes before, Cumie had done the same thing to Emma Parker, telling her, “Come over. I have something to tell you.” Dallas Police Department telephone wiretap transcript, April 30, 1934, 65. Sometimes the references weren’t so veiled. “Say, do you know what we were talking about down in the cafe today? Well, they are going to leave early in the morning.” Dallas Police Department telephone wiretap transcript, April 19, 1934, 13. Everyone apparently kept close to the radio and scanned the papers carefully, frequently calling the four Dallas dailies to inquire about “extras.” Emma Parker once called Cumie Barrow to ask if she was listening to the radio, that the police were in the midst of a running gunfight with three men who had abandoned their car and were on foot in the Trinity River bottoms. Dallas Police Department telephone wiretap transcript, April 18, 1934, 11. That incident had nothing to do with Bonnie and Clyde as it turned out, but another telephone call did. A friend of the Barrows called to tell Cumie that he had been at the Dallas police headquarters checking on the status of his own brother who had been arrested when he overheard officers in another room talking about a gunfight in Highland Park, a city which at the time bordered Dallas to the north. Bonnie and Clyde, traveling at their usual high rate of speed, had passed a police car on Lover’s Lane and had then run through a stop sign. When the police pursued them, they were fired on with a machine gun. The incident was reported in the papers the following day, but the part about the shooting was omitted. Dallas Police Department telephone wiretap transcript, April 26, 1934, 43–46; Dallas Daily Times-Herald, May 27, 1934.

  8. In Fugitives, Nell is presented as the eyewitness narrator of the events of the meeting near Commerce, Texas. Fortune, Fugitives, 156–63.

  9. According to Blanche, Clyde Barrow felt very safe in this part of Texas, especially in or around Paris because of its proximity to the Oklahoma line and the host of back roads honeycombing the area. Blanche Barrow, quoted in Weiser interview, April 18, 2003. Cumie Barrow was also known to have inquired at least once about train passage to Paris, Texas. Dallas Police Department telephone wiretap transcript, April 18, 1934, 8. Blanche herself had a relative, Ruby Caldwell, living in Gilmer, Texas, north of Tyler.

  10. It is not known when and where the first attempt to contact Floyd took place. However, they apparently had met at least once prior to the encounter mentioned by Blanche, although it is thought the outlaws never worked together on any robberies. In June 1933 both Clyde and Buck tried again to find Floyd, after the wreck near Wellington, Texas, in which Bonnie Parker was so severely burned. The Barrows were hoping Floyd could provide a safe hideout where Bonnie could recuperate. But they never located him. It was later, after he and Parker were wounded in November of that same year, that Clyde Barrow finally met up with Floyd. Floyd, or members of his family, found an underworld doctor for them. Cumie Barrow, unpublished manuscript; Marie Barrow interview, August 24, 1984.

  11. According to W. D. Jones, two aspects of this story are atypical of Clyde Barrow. Although Jones was not a witness to this specific incident, he was with Barrow constantly for several months and during that time Barrow never used his real name, especially when talking to a stranger, as with the filling-station attendant in Sallisaw, and Jones never saw
Barrow drunk. Although he admitted they all drank from time to time, even Clyde, Jones said, “I never did see him [Clyde] drunk, drunk enough not to be sensible. No, I never seen him like that.” Jones, interview by Biffle, June 1968. Ralph Fults echoed this, adding, “Clyde hated dope! He didn’t drink and didn’t smoke either, at least not while I was with him. He didn’t even like to drink coffee!” Fults also remarked about pseudonyms, saying Clyde used names like “Bud” and “Jack Sherman,” among others. Fults used them as well. Fults interview, December 10, 1980.

  12. According to her sister, Bonnie Parker apparently stuck to small talk during these meetings—local gossip, clothes, hair styles, and food. “She was very evasive about other things.” Billie Jean Parker Moon, unpublished hand-written observations.

  13. Blanche apparently continued to like boots and riding pants, wearing them frequently late in life. Weiser interview, April 18, 2003.

  14. The time and circumstances of this meeting have been related elsewhere with confusing and contradictory details. Buck’s mother described a meeting with Bonnie and Clyde and Blanche and Buck on the driveway outside of the family filling station in West Dallas. She wrote that the meeting took place “three days after Mother’s Day,” May 17, and then closes the passage by writing, “I never saw Buck but one more time after that until he was shot” (in Platte City, Missouri, on July 19, 1933). Cumie Barrow, unpublished manuscript. However, on the very same page of her own manuscript, Cumie Barrow contradicts herself by writing that after the Okabena robbery, on May 19, five days after Mother’s Day, “Clyde and Buck came by the house . . . every three or four weeks.” Fortune has the meeting near Commerce taking place “on the Wednesday after Mother’s Day,” May 17, the same day as the meeting described above by Cumie Barrow. The events of the Commerce meeting, according to Fortune, are narrated by Nell and at least one incident related by the fugitives to their families that day would not happen until later—the robbery of the First State Bank of Okabena, Minnesota, on Friday, May 19, 1933. Fortune, Fugitives, 156–63; Fairmont (Minn.) Daily Sentinel, May 19, 1933. However, as we have seen, Fortune actually describes the events of the attempted robbery of the Lucerne State Bank, Lucerne, Indiana, on May 12, 1933, the previous Friday, but identifies it as the robbery of the First State Bank of Okabena, Minnesota. Fortune, Fugitives, 163; Fairmont (Minn.) Daily Sentinel, May 19, 1933; Pharos-Tribune, May 12, 1933. Blanche wrote that she arrived in Dallas on the Monday after Mother’s Day, May 15 and that the Commerce meeting took place that same afternoon. She also emphasizes the fact that Nell refused to go to the meeting at all. However if, as the author writes, the visit in Commerce was the only trip the fugitives made to Texas in May, then when did Cumie Barrow see Buck “one more time after that”? And why did she follow that statement with the contradiction that after Okabena her sons “came by the house . . . every three or four weeks”? Did the meeting on the driveway happen exactly as Cumie Barrow suggests? Perhaps not, unless Blanche is mistaken, which may be the case. The May 1933 time frame is confusing in nearly every source, including Blanche’s own manuscript. But still, it may be that Cumie Barrow is simply confused about the date and that the meeting she describes actually occurred in late April and is the same one referred to earlier by Blanche, the visit made immediately following the abductions in Ruston, Louisiana. Moreover, in the next chapter Blanche indicates that she and the other three fugitives spent nearly all day and most of the night of the May 17 camped on a riverbank in Mississippi.

  Chapter 8. Florida

  1. This would have been the night of May 17–18, Wednesday and Thursday, respectively. It is possible that the four fugitives diverted to southern Minnesota at this point in order to stage the Okabena robbery on Friday, May 19, 1933. Considering Blanche’s next statement, “In a few days we were in Florida,” coupled with Clyde Barrow’s penchant for long drives, it is indeed possible that the Okabena robbery was sandwiched between Mississippi and Florida. The robbery of the First State Bank in Okabena, Minnesota, was nearly a carbon copy of the Lucerne incident, except for the old man with a chunk of wood, the pigs, and having to flee with no money. “Machine Gun Bandits Shoot Up Okabena; Rob Bank,” read the headlines of the Fairmont (Minn.) Daily Sentinel, May 19, 1933.

  2. Blanche and Buck actually made two trips to Florida, in March 1930 (apparently right after Buck’s escape from the Ferguson prison farm) and again in 1931 on their honeymoon.

  3. There is no city, town, or village named Cumberland along the Atlantic coast of Georgia. There is, however, Cumberland Island, one of several barrier islands between the Georgia mainland and the Atlantic Ocean. It is possible that Blanche is confusing the name of that island with the town she describes. But Cumberland Island, declared a National Seashore in 1972 and a National Wilderness area in 1982, is not connected by bridge to the mainland and never has been. Thus, it is unlikely that the beach described by Blanche was on Cumberland Island. It would appear that the most likely location (between Jacksonville and Brunswick, Georgia, their next destination) would have been Amelia Island, in Florida, just south of the Georgia line. On Amelia Island there are a handful of towns, any one of which might be the place mentioned by Blanche. However, two of the towns, Fernandina Beach and American Beach, are particularly suited to her description; especially Fernandina Beach, seemingly the only Amelia Island community large enough to warrant the presence of a motorcycle patrol. Also, Fernandina Beach, Florida, is just a few miles from the southern tip of Cumberland Island. Cumberland quite possibly was a name in common use by businesses in Fernandina Beach, perhaps accounting for Blanche’s confusion. Carol Ruckdeschel, Cumberland Island Museum, letter to Phillips, January 22, 2002.

  4. The Barrow brothers and two accomplices were once caught in the act of burglarizing a business in Atlanta, Georgia, probably in 1929. Clyde somehow eluded the officers and slipped away unseen. Buck and the two accomplices were trapped inside the business, but Buck managed to squeeze between the engine and firewall of a large delivery truck and pull the hood down over his head before he was spotted. The two accomplices were then arrested and taken to jail. Afterward, Buck emerged from his hiding place and rejoined Clyde. The two burglarized another place and went back to Texas. When Clyde Barrow and Ralph Fults were initially planning the raid on Eastham, Barrow mentioned wanting to free a couple of convicts in Georgia afterward. Fults interview, May 10, 1981. See also Phillips, Running with Bonnie and Clyde, 33–92, 101–02, 167–71; Phillips, “Raid on Eastham.”

  5. Blanche once told a story about this trip, perhaps related to this very incident, which illustrated the only known occurrence of Clyde Barrow getting completely disoriented while behind the wheel of a car. It happened after leaving Florida when, as described in the text, a police car began chasing them. Barrow was extremely tired at the time, and in the process of turning again and again and doubling back repeatedly he lost his bearings. After eluding the police car in a maze of roads Barrow then continued driving all night long toward Texas, or so he thought. When Barrow, who would let no one else drive, finally got too tired to drive farther he pulled to a stop in a wooded area. He and the others then stretched out and slept for the rest of the night, thinking they were not far from the Texas line. When the sun rose a few hours later Barrow and his band of fugitives found themselves staring at palm trees and sandy beaches. Instead of Texas, they had ventured to within a few yards of the Atlantic Ocean on the east coast of Florida. Blanche Barrow as quoted in Weiser interview, April 18, 2003.

  6. Clyde took a chance each time he traveled through Alabama. One of his uncles was a lawman in that state, and Barrow had promised his family he would never commit a crime there. Marie Barrow interview, April 29, 1998. There are pictures in Blanche’s scrapbooks from trips taken to Mobile, Alabama; Pensacola, Florida; and East Jacksonville, Florida. During at least one of these trips several friends accompanied her and Buck. In addition, there is photographic evidence of a trip to Nashville, Tennessee, and at least one other trip. The latter
journey was in the company of W. D. Jones’s older brother Clyde and his wife. Blanche Barrow scrapbooks.

  Chapter 9. A Visit with My Father

  1. These incidents occurred on June 10 and 23, respectively. For the full story of each event, see Phillips, Running with Bonnie and Clyde, 134–39. For a more concise and detailed look at the Arkansas killing, see also Knight, “Incident at Alma,” and Knight and Davis., Bonnie and Clyde, 93–98.

  2. Dallas Daily Times-Herald, June 7 and 21, 1933.

  3. Mexico (Mo.) Weekly Ledger, June 15, 1933; Dallas Daily Times-Herald, June 5, and 29, 1933; Dallas Daily Times-Herald, June 17, 1933.

  4. Dallas Daily Times-Herald, June 2, 1933. Hamilton’s combined sentence is usually listed as 263 years. However, his brother points out a little known three-year suspended sentence for auto theft that was revoked and added to the total, making it 266 years. See Hamilton, Public Enemy No. 1, 18.

  5. Cleveland County (Ark.) Herald, June 7, 14, and, 21, 1933; Dallas Daily Times-Herald, June 9, and 11, 1933. Frank Hardy helped Barrow and Hollis Hale rob a bank at Oronogo, Missouri, on November 30, 1932. His arrest in the Johnson killing prompted Barrow to write a letter declaring Hardy’s innocence. By then, however, W. D. Jones had been arrested and confessed to the crime and the letter became unnecessary. It remained in the Barrow family possessions until it was sold at auction in the 1990s.