My Life with Bonnie and Clyde

by Barrow, Blanche Caldwell

  11. Unguentine is a burn salve that evolved from an early-nineteenth-century product called Cooper Alum Ointment developed by two British physicians. One of the physicians moved to the United States where his descendants interested the Norwich Pharmacal Company in the formula. First advertised in medical journals as Unguentine in 1893, the salve soon became one of Norwich’s leading products. By 1922, “Unguentine–The First Thought in Burns” was being produced at a rate of one ton daily. Norwich, “Unguentine.” The acid solution perhaps came from the Howe Drug Store, Fort Smith. Clerks there identified photographs of Clyde Barrow as the man who purchased one pound of burn medicine. Fort Smith Southwest American, June 26, 1933.

  12. Actually, this was probably the ambulance carrying Alma City Marshal Henry Humphrey. After being mortally wounded in the gunfight with Buck Barrow and W. D. Jones, Humphrey was picked up and driven to Van Buren, where a waiting ambulance transported the marshal to a hospital in Fort Smith. Fort Smith Southwest American, June 24, 1933.

  13. Indeed Buck and W. D. had to leave the car. After robbing the R. L. Brown Grocery Store in Fayetteville on June 23, they rear-ended a slow-moving vehicle on Highway 71, three miles north of Alma, Arkansas. Both cars were wrecked. To compound the situation, Alma Town Marshal H. D. Humphrey suddenly arrived in a car driven by a part-time deputy, A. M. Salyers. As he stepped from the car, Humphrey was blown into a ditch by a blast from Buck Barrow’s shotgun. Jones then emerged with a Browning automatic rifle and began spraying the area with slugs, trying to fell Salyers as he ran to the cover of a nearby building. No one was hit. Salyers then returned fire, slicing off the tips of two of Jones’ fingers and knocking out the horn button on Salyers’ own car as the two gunmen climbed in and drove off in it, the only working machine on the road. Salyers watched his car speed north, then turn west on a country road. The gunmen also made off with Humphrey’s pistol. Fort Smith Southwest American, June 24, 1933. Of Salyers’ skill as a marksman, Jones would later comment, “That man could shoot!” Jones, “Riding with Bonnie and Clyde,” 165. Marshal Humphrey died three days later, on Monday, June 26, 1933.

  After leaving the scene of the shooting Barrow and Jones eventually emerged on the highway where they commandeered another car. However, upon seeing that the bridge to Fort Smith was guarded, the two outlaws abandoned the car near the summit of nearby Mount Vista, walked across the Frisco railroad trestle, and continued on foot to the Twin Cities Tourist Camp. Barrow and Jones probably arrived sometime around ten o’clock that night. Dallas County Sheriff’s Department, Jones, Voluntary Statement B-71, 13–14; Cumie Barrow, unpublished manuscript.

  14. In 1933 there were a number of murders that were initially wrongfully attributed to the Barrow brothers for a variety of reasons. Apart from the four lawmen actually killed by the Barrow brothers and W. D. Jones (Malcolm Davis on January 6; Wes Harryman and Harry McGinnis on April 13; and Henry Humphrey, who died on June 26), there were the murders of Sheriff Roger Wilson and Patrolman Ben Boothe near Columbia, Missouri, on June 14; and four officers were killed in Kansas City on June 17. Then there were the related murders of two Texas officers earlier in the year. Early on the morning of January 23, 1933, two men and a woman in a Ford V-8 had tried to rob two service stations in Happy, Texas. They fled toward Tulia, where Sheriff John C. Moseley waited. Moseley intercepted the would-be bandits and forced them over to the side of the road. Gunfire erupted and Moseley was killed. The trio then calmly robbed the service station they had stopped in front of and escaped. A few days later the same group killed Deputy Sheriff Joe Brown of Rhome, Texas. This crime was initially thought to be the work of Clyde Barrow, perhaps because it came so close on the heels of the Davis killing and involved two men and a woman. Tulia Herald, January 26 and February 2, 1933.

  15. That may be, but one of the two gunmen reportedly ran up to the mortally wounded Humphrey and said angrily, “I ought to kill you.” The marshal merely looked at him and replied, “I think you already have.” Knight and Davis, Bonnie and Clyde, 95. James Knight has conducted the most thorough research into this incident. The above book and his essay, “Incident at Alma,” which appeared in the winter 1997 issue of the Arkansas Historical Review, are to date the very best published accounts of the whole Fort Smith-Alma episode.

  16. Eyewitnesses saw a man and three women speed away from the tourist camp at 10:40 p.m. on the night of June 23. Fort Smith Southwest American, June 26, 1933.

  Chapter 12. Platte City

  1. For the complete story of the Platte, Missouri, and Dexfield Park, Iowa, gun battles, see Phillips, Running with Bonnie and Clyde, 140–58.

  2. Dallas Daily Times-Herald, July 9, 10, and 23, 1933.

  3. Kansas City Star, July 20, 1933; Dallas Daily Times-Herald, July 2, 6, 13, and 22, 1933.

  4. This was not the only time Billie Jean rode with her sister. In her own unfinished, unpublished memoir she describes the aftermath of a small robbery in McKinney, Texas. She only mentions Clyde, Bonnie, and herself. There is no mention of Blanche and Buck Barrow, nor of Jones. According to Billie Jean, Clyde Barrow had parked the car in a churchyard near the town square and walked away, leaving the Parker sisters in the car with the motor running. Because they were broke and needed to conserve gas, Billie Jean turned off the motor. Barrow had not mentioned where he was going or why he had left the motor running. When he returned, he was angry because the engine was not running. He had just robbed a grocery store around the corner. Billie had not been thinking in terms of fast getaways. Barrow’s anger evidently got the better of him. When he started the car, it lurched forward and got stuck in some mud. Someone helped them free the car but not before a rather large crowd had gathered around them. Bonnie Parker was afraid an officer might show up and kept telling her sister to get out of the car and mill with the crowd so she would not be caught with her and Barrow. Parker was apparently still recovering from her burns and quite ill, which might account for Billie Jean’s presence. Billie described her sister as being huddled in the backseat. “She looked so afraid and so sick . . . pathetic.” Moon and Huddleston, “Bonnie, Clyde, and Me,” 14–16. This was probably the September 25, 1933, robbery of the C & T Grocery on South Church Street, McKinney, Texas. This was during the county fair in McKinney, which would account for the crowd gathering at the car after the robbery and Bonnie’s notion that her sister could get out of the car and disappear among the faces. At the C & T Grocery, proprietor J. J. Thompson reported that a man about twenty-five years of age asked for a pack of cigarettes then pulled a Colt .45 automatic, opened the cash register on his own, and took between thirty-five and forty dollars. McKinney (Tex.) Courier-Gazette, September 25, 1933. Billie Jean said the amount was much less than twenty dollars.

  5. Other sources, including Billie Parker, say this occurred in Sherman, Texas, eleven miles south of Denison. Moon and Huddleston, “Bonnie, Clyde, and Me,” 14. See also Fortune, Fugitives, 181. However, Fortune states that Billie Parker was with the group for a much shorter time, June 20 to 26. Fortune, Fugitives, 176. That time frame appears incorrect. Even Billie mentions a two-week period. Moon and Huddleston, “Bonnie, Clyde, and Me,” 14.

  6. Frank Hamer mentioned detecting a circular pattern to Clyde Barrow’s travels, although the extent of that circle proved far greater than even he imagined. “Barrow played a circle from Dallas to Joplin, Missouri, to Louisiana, and back to Dallas.” Webb, Texas Rangers, 540. Of such wanderings, Bonnie’s sister wrote, “They were not going anyplace in particular because they had no place to go.” Moon and Huddleston, “Bonnie, Clyde, and Me,” 6.

  7. There is also a reference to a stay at a tourist camp in Great Bend, Kansas, 189 miles north of Enid, Oklahoma, during this period. Fortune, Fugitives, 181.

  8. As reported in the Enid (Okla.) Morning News on July 9, 1933, the robbery took place on July 7. Clyde Barrow had been to Enid before. On June 26, 1933, the day Marshal Humphrey of Alma, Arkansas died, Barrow followed a doctor to his house, waited for him to go insid
e, then stole his car. The object was not the car, however, but the medical bag in the car. Enid (Okla.) Morning News, July 27, 1933; Cumie Barrow, unfinished manuscript.

  9. According to Marie Barrow, her brothers and W. D. Jones decided to play a trick on Bonnie and Blanche on their return from burglarizing the armory. In addition to all of the weapons, field glasses, and other items, the men also stole army uniforms and were dressed in them when they pulled up to the tourist camp. The two women were suitably startled, thinking the army had surrounded their cabins and crashed through the door. Marie Barrow interview, August 24, 1984.

  10. Bonnie’s sister described the very same thing. “I sat up many nights at the campsites, standing watch . . . a sudden sound would send Clyde scrambling for his guns and Bonnie running toward the car.” Moon and Huddleston, “Bonnie, Clyde, and Me,” 19. These night watches became the root of one of the more notorious bits of folklore about Clyde Barrow, the tying up of W. D. Jones. The notion that Jones was held by Barrow against his will was started by Jones himself, as a defense against prosecution. He told Dallas County sheriff’s department investigators that among other things Barrow handcuffed him at night to prevent his escape. Dallas County Sheriff’s Department, Jones, Voluntary Statement B-71, 15. Later, Jones clarified the issue. Barrow and he were actually connected to one another by lengths of string, as a security measure, he said. “When you pull off out in the woods, it wasn’t just because he [Barrow] was thinking I’d turn on him, or shoot him. No, when I was supposed to stay awake, when he was dead tired, he’s hooked it [the string] up to hisself to where any move I make, he’s gonna wake up. He never made it to where if there was a gun battle or somebody run up on us that I’d have to sit there and die.” Jones, interview by Biffle, June 1969.

  11. In the original manuscript the author first wrote “night” here, then crossed it out and replaced it with “afternoon.”

  12. There is no doubt that Buck Barrow was telling Blanche the truth when he declared himself innocent of the attack and beating described in that old newspaper. Just as Buck pointed out, the assault indeed occurred the morning after the shooting, specifically at 11 A.M., more than twelve hours after the Barrow brothers and their troupe had left the Twin Cities Tourist Camp and fled to Oklahoma. The victim, Mrs. John Rogers, was beaten with a chain at her home near Winslow, Arkansas, twenty miles north of the shooting and thirty-six miles north of the Twin Cities Tourist Camp. Two eyewitnesses, including A. M. Salyers, stated that after shooting Marshal Humphrey the gunmen first sped north in Salyers’ car but then turned west onto a country road approximately a quarter-mile from the shooting. Minutes later, Salyers’ car was again on Highway 71, near Van Buren, south of the shooting and even further south of the Rogers’s home. There Buck and W. D. pulled in front of a car driven by a man named Lofton and forced him to a stop. Lofton was accompanied by his wife. Buck and W. D. then car-jacked the Lofton vehicle, only to abandon it a short time later near the summit of Mt. Vista, overlooking the twin cities of Van Buren and Fort Smith. By then Buck and W. D. were more than thirty miles from Rogers. The fugitives had abandoned the Lofton car because the bridge to Fort Smith was under guard. Buck and W. D. waited for dark, then walked across the unguarded Frisco railroad trestle and continued on foot to the tourist camp. Fort Smith Southwest American, June 24, 25, and 26, 1933; Cumie Barrow, unpublished manuscript; Dallas County Sheriff’s Department, Jones, Voluntary Statement B-71, 13. By the time Mrs. Rogers was attacked, the Barrows were in Oklahoma. Fortune actually states that Buck and W. D. were the ones involved in the assault of Mrs. Rogers: “Buck told us she [Mrs. Rogers] gave him the keys [to her car],” but that he and W. D. had not beaten her. Fortune, Fugitives, 179. Family members maintained that Buck said no such thing, “She [Fortune] made most of that stuff up in that book!” Marie Barrow, interview, August 1, 1998. Even fellow journalists were skeptical of Fortune’s research. Harry McCormick, longtime crime reporter for newspapers like the Houston Press and the Dallas Morning News, once wrote in reference to the veracity of Fugitives, “Jan [Fortune] never let [the] truth bother her.” McCormick, handwritten notation in the margin of an unpublished manuscript about Ralph Fults and the Barrow gang. Still, despite its apparent flaws, the Fortune book contains much accurate inside information and remains a good source for those well acquainted with the fact-versus-fiction nature of the subject. See also Knight and Davis, Bonnie and Clyde, 93–98.

  13. No doubt they were tired. At eleven o’clock that very morning Buck, Clyde, and W. D. had robbed three service stations within fifteen minutes at Fort Dodge, Iowa, then abandoned their Chevrolet north of town, switched to a black Ford V-8 occupied by Bonnie and Blanche, and then drove south 280 miles to Platte City, Missouri. Fort Dodge (Iowa) Messenger, July 18, 21, and 25, 1933. Prior to those robberies the group was apparently camped in O’Brien County, Iowa, along the Little Sioux River. Fort Dodge Chief of Police John Lochray had traced the Chevrolet used in the robberies to Spencer, eighty miles northwest of Fort Dodge, where it had been stolen. In Spencer, Lochray interviewed a farmer from Sutherland who had encountered five people, three men and two women, camped on his property. The farmer said the group had been camped there “several days” and left on the Monday before the Fort Dodge robberies and the Platte City gun battle. The farmer approached the camp only once, finding the intruders very unfriendly. He saw no guns but one man reached for his hip when he saw the farmer walking toward him. The farmer also noticed a black Ford V-8, license number 11-2399. The same plates were used on the Chevrolet during the Fort Dodge robberies. Lochray later visited the campsite and found a number of spent shell casings from high-powered rifles and Colt .45 automatics strewn about. He also found several bandages of the same type found in the Red Crown cabins after the Platte City shoot-out. They were probably Bonnie’s. Fort Dodge (Iowa) Messenger, July 21, 1933.

  14. This sort of taunting was typical in the surreal world of convicts in Texas at the time, and no doubt elsewhere too. One former inmate at the Eastham prison farm, where Clyde Barrow had been incarcerated, described a number of such instances, often instigated by guards. One occurrence involved the inmate in question and Henry Methvin, who would be one of those released during Clyde Barrow’s prison raid of January 16, 1934, and who would eventually supply information leading to the ambush of Bonnie and Clyde on May 23, 1934. Methvin had demanded some of this other inmate’s lunch. When the inmate refused, Methvin kicked horse manure onto the inmate’s plate. This precipitated a fight in which guards goaded Methvin to take further action, using the same sort of banter Clyde used with Buck outside of Kansas City. Methvin was nearly beaten to death with a hoe by the other inmate. Henson, letter to Biffle, September 4, 1980.

  15. Buck was absolutely right. Kansas City had long been considered a “wide open, anything goes town . . . firmly in the grip of a few determined men,” Tom Pendergast, the political boss, and Johnny Lazia, the crime boss. Unger, Union Station Massacre, 44–47; McCullough, Truman, 193–207; Hamby, Man of the People, 170–76. Some even referred to Lazia as “de facto chief of [Kansas City] police.” Hamby, Man of the People, 172. According to one historian, “In 1933 it was a well-established rule that all underworld visitors checked in with Johnny Lazia when they came to town . . . nothing criminal . . . happened in Kansas City without the knowledge and consent of Johnny Lazia.” Unger, Union Station Massacre, 49. However, things had changed considerably by the time the Barrow brothers arrived at the outskirts of Kansas City, arguing and goading each other. On June 17, while the Barrow gang was hiding at the Twin Cities Tourist Camp in Fort Smith, Arkansas, frantically tending to Bonnie Parker’s severe burns, four lawmen and a bank robber were shot down in a terrible hail of bullets and buckshot in the parking lot of Kansas City’s Union Station. Pendergast and Lazia, who apparently knew nothing of the events leading up to the gunfight, a botched attempt to free a captured bank robber named Frank Nash, immediately began losing power. The city became awash with federal and state authorities
, particularly the U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Criminal Investigation (later to be called the Federal Bureau of Investigation, or F.B.I.), which lost one of its agents in the gunfight. It was into this atmosphere that the Barrow brothers were driving on July 18. Buck was right, Kansas City was the hottest place in the Midwest that summer. But it was about to get hotter. Regarding the above-mentioned gunfight, the best account to date is Unger’s Union Station Massacre.

  16. In the original manuscript, Blanche first wrote “had to start shooting, of course,” then crossed it out and replaced it with “got into it.”

  17. Jones later stated, “Clyde dominated all them around him, even his older brother, Buck. Clyde planned and made all the decisions.” Jones, “Riding with Bonnie and Clyde,” 162.

  18. This was a usual ploy for Clyde Barrow, and it indeed caused much confusion as to the number of people involved in the upcoming gun battle. Kansas City Star, July 20, 1933. Fifty years later only one eyewitness had correctly deduced there was a third man in the group, a fact no one else believed. Crawford interview, April 19, 1983.

  19. The Red Crown complex was situated near the intersection of Highways 71 and 59 six miles south of Platte City, Missouri, an area known at the time as “the junction.” The tavern, which faced west, housed an office, a soda fountain, and a cafe, as well as a dining room that also doubled as a ballroom. Upstairs, called “the dome,” there were living quarters occupied by William Searles, the nephew of manager Neal Houser, and Searles’s grandmother. The two cabins, made of brick and joined by enclosed garages, stood just north of the tavern, facing south. Searles interview, April 20, 1983; Searles, letter to Phillips, December 14, 1982. The location, near the present intersection of I-29 and Cookingham Road, just one mile west of Ferrelview, was very rural in 1933. Today the spot where the tavern and cabins once stood is in the shadow of the Kansas City International Airport. Kimsey, letter to Phillips, October 25, 2002. In fact, the Red Crown Tavern and cabins were so close to Ferrelview that gunfire could be heard quite clearly there during the battle local residents still call “the horrible nightmare.” In addition to Searles’s description of the Red Crown complex, others have mentioned a service station attached to the tavern, as well as a screened-in porch. Williams, “The Day Bonnie and Clyde Shot It Out.” For a full account of the Platte City, Missouri, incident, see Phillips, Running with Bonnie and Clyde, 141–45.