Clyde Champion Barrow, Born: March 24, 1909, Died: May 23, 1934
Bonnie Parker, Born: October 1, 1910, Died: May 23, 1934
Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker made headlines across the country in the early 1930s for their violent crime spree that included robberies, kidnappings and several murders. This was the golden era of gangsters and, while their exploits and love affair have been romanticized in song and on film, let’s not forget they were ruthless killers.
Parker and Barrow came from poor Texas families, made even poorer with the start of the Great Depression. Parker married Roy Thornton on September 25, 1926, six days before her 16th birthday. Thornton was sent to prison in 1929. The couple separated but were never legally divorced. It is believed Barrow and Parker first met at the house of a mutual friend in January 1930 and they instantly became an item.
Marvin “Buck” Barrow, had already taught his younger brother Clyde how to rob banks and steal cars by this time, which led to …
Crime in Waco and McLennan County took two new turns Monday morning with the filing of charges against Clyde Barrow, alleged to have been associated with Pat Bewley and William Turner in a series of robberies and burglaries, and two other knob-knockings at Downsville and Norwood. The Waco Times-Herald, Texas, March 3, 1930
Parker visited Barrow in prison several times, and somehow managed to smuggle in a gun, which led to …
Three prisoners of the McLennan county jail were at liberty today after a sensational break at the point of a gun last night. William Turner, sentenced yesterday to serve four years each in 25 cases of burglary; Embry Abernathy, brought here on a bench warrant in connection with 10 cases of burglary and theft; and Clyde Barrow, held on a burglary charge, made the successful break.
When Asst. County Jailer L.P. Stanford opened their cell door to deliver them some milk, they covered him with the gun, believed to have been smuggled to them. They forced the turnkey to open the front door, and fled. Several shots were fired by officers at the fleeing trio, but none were thought to have taken effect. Austin American-Statesman, Texas, March 12, 1930
The three escapees fled Texas and headed north. Turner and Abernathy were captured a few days later in Ohio.
No trace of Clyde Barrow, third fugitive in the McLennan jailbreak, was reported in the earlier telegrams from Ohio, but officials expressed the belief that Barrow is likely to be in the vicinity of the capture of his companions. The Waco Times-Herald, March 18, 1930
Barrow was soon caught, and the three criminals were escorted back to Texas and faced the wrath of an angry judge …
Three escapees learned from a judge, who had become hard-boiled, Monday morning, that it doesn’t pay in the long run to rebel against law and order as handed down by a soft-hearted jury. Judge Richard I. Munroe sentenced … [Barrow] to serve 14 years, two years in each of seven cases … “I have lost my patience trying to help these men who keep getting into trouble. They get on the sympathy of juries, a suspended sentence or a long sentence to be run concurrently, is recommended, then they break jail. I think it would be a good thing to save you boys from the chair, eventually, to send you up for long terms. You are liable to go round here shooting a peace officer, if you can shoot straight. You keep breaking into houses, and some of these days, you’re either going to get shot or shoot somebody else. With the records you’ve got, you’d probably get the chair when you were tried,” Judge Munroe told them. The Waco Times-Herald, March 24, 1930
Barrow was eventually sent to the Eastham Prison Farm, where he was repeatedly assaulted by another prisoner, Ed Crowder. Barrow killed Crowder. Another inmate, Aubrey Scalley, who was serving a life sentence, declared he was the one who killed Crowder, and Barrow escaped further punishment and the possibility of life in prison. The labor required of the convicts (think Cool Hand Luke, but probably worse) was so difficult Barrow cut off two of his toes to spend time in the infirmary and avoid the daily work detail. A few weeks later, after his mother petitioned the Texas courts, he was released. He quickly reunited with Parker and returned to a life of crime …
Clyde Barrow, “baby bandit” of several years back in Waco criminal history, and also wanted for questioning in the recent brutal slaying of L. Butcher of Hillsboro, is now the object of another man hunt. He is alleged by officers to be one of four men who killed one Oklahoma peace officer and seriously wounded another last Friday night. Barrow, an east Dallas youth, was a mere boy of 16 or 17 when he was convicted in Waco of a series of robberies and burglaries, with others of a gang of young men and boys who became known as the “baby bandits.” The Waco Times-Herald, August 8, 1932
Buck Barrow also spent time in prison and was released in March 1933. Buck and his wife, Blanche, and Clyde and Bonnie, quickly joined forces and continued their criminal ways. They fled to Missouri and rented a house in a quiet neighborhood in Joplin using fake names. They conducted loud card games late into the night, attracted the attention of the local police, who believed they were bootleggers, and then …
A gun battle with two desperadoes at a residence in Freeman Grove, in the south part of the city, last night claimed the lives of two officers. Joplin Globe, Missouri, April 14, 1933
This was the incident/murder that made Bonnie and Clyde infamous, and they would remain on the run, in the spotlight and splattered across the front pages of newspapers until their bloody death a little more than a year later.
According to stories in the Joplin Globe …
Fleeing with the two men in a motor car were two women … The last trace of the car, as it sped southward out of Joplin at a high rate of speed, was west of Seneca, where it was reported seen by several persons.
Police, in a search of the house later, found a small-sized arsenal and five diamonds. The gems were identified as having been taken in a recent burglary.
The arsenal included automatic rifle described as “similar” to a sub-machine gun, four other rifles, a shotgun and revolver. The newspaper reported that “Clyde Barrow had shot and killed four officers in various parts of the country … It was also learned last night that the woman with Clyde Barrow has been identified as Bonnie Parker.”
Included among the items left behind in the Joplin house were Buck’s parole papers, an unexposed roll of film and a poem written by Parker. The police developed and printed the film and eventually released the photos to the press. The photos were a sensation: Bonnie holding a revolver, a cigar clenched between her teeth; Bonnie playfully aiming a shotgun at Clyde; Clyde posing in front of their car with several revolvers and rifles. Their status as gangster superstars was cemented.
And then there was Bonnie’s poem, titled The Story of Suicide Sal, which was printed in several newspapers …
We each of us, have a good alibi
For being down here in the joint;
But few of them are really justified,
If you get right down to the point.
You have heard of a woman’s glory
Being spent on a downright cur,
Still you can’t always judge the story
As ture being told by her.
As long as I stayed on the island
And heard confidence tales from gals,
There was only one interesting and truthful,
It was the story of “Suicide Sal.”
Now Sal was a girl of rare beauty,
Tho’ her features were somewhat tough,
She never once faltered from duty,
To play on the up and up.
Sal told me this tale on the evening
Before she was turned out free,
And I’ll do my best to relate it,
Just as she told it to me:
I was born on a ranch in Wyoming,
Not treated like Helen of Troy,
Was taught that rods were rulers, And ranked with greasy cowboys …”
It ends here, before Parker was able to complete the story of Suicide Sal because …
… the writer apparently was interrupted by the invading police. Kansas City Journal-Post, April 14, 1933
Buck Barrow was seriously wounded during a shootout with police on July 19 in Missouri, and died soon after another shootout five days later. Blanche was wounded and caught by the police in this second shootout, while Bonnie and Clyde (and W.D. Jones) managed to escape. Blanche spent a few years in prison, remarried after her release and died in 1988 at the age of 77. Bonnie and Clyde died in a now-famous shootout on May 23, 1924, on a highway in Gibsland, Louisiana.
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