August 12, 2009 • 26 mins
When Clyde Barrow met Bonnie Parker in 1930 , they felt an instant, deep attraction. Learn how this couple went from love at first sight to a string of notorious bank robberies in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Katie Lambert and joining me today is Sarah Dowdy.
How are you, Sarah. I'm doing good. How are you,
Katie good? We were talking about rearranging our Netflix cues earlier,
(00:23):
and you brought up a specific film, Bonnie and Clyde exactly,
and that's who we're going to talk about today. But
not the Warren Batty and Faye Dunaway version. No. And
if you've seen that, you probably remember it being very
glamorous there, you know, gangsters, well dressed gangsters. Um. But
reality is a little different as it usually is. Clyde
(00:45):
Barrow was born in nineteen ten in Texas to a
sharecropper father. He was one of eight kids, and he
wasn't particularly interested in school. Some accounts say that he
never made it past the fifth grade and he was
always a troublemaker. My favorite story is that like to
sell stolen turkeys with his brother. Oh well, and Bonnie
came from similarly humble backgrounds Um born in nineteen ten, Rowena, Texas. UM.
(01:11):
Both of these are really tiny towns, kind of on
the outskirts of Dallas. Um. Maybe today you'd call them suburbs,
but back then they were probably just dusty stops on
the road, you know. Um. And she after her father died.
She had a pretty rough upbringing, but still managed to
do really well in school. And she was a pretty girl.
(01:35):
There are in different accounts as to what she looks like.
We keep finding things that say she was four eleven,
and other things that say she was five ft, and
then a wanted poster that says she's five fives apparently
no one knows. Was sort of red, gold hair and freckles.
And miss Bonnie Parker decided she wanted to get married
when she was sixteen and eloped with a no good man. Yeah,
(01:55):
it kind of started off a kick and taste for
bad men for poor Bonnie because her husband soon landed
in jail and she actually never divorced him. Interestingly enough,
supposedly she was wearing his wedding ring still when she
was found with Clyde. Not to be too much of
a spoiler, but they don't live. Yeah, they might make
(02:16):
it if you haven't seen the movie. Yeah, so things
kind of fall together for the pair in nineteen thirty
when they meet at the home of a mutual friend
and it was love at first sight. According to accounts,
Bonnie Parker's friend had broken her arm and she was
there taking care of her, and the story goes that
Clyde came over to see this girl and saw Bonnie
(02:40):
and that was the end of that. And Clyde actually
already had a criminal past of his own, and he
had barely known that. They've known each other for like
a couple of months, and he gets arrested and put
into prison. She helps break him out at one point,
this is my favorite part. She'd been writing letters to
him where she addressed him sugar and being very supportive,
(03:01):
and then he and his cellmate convinced her to smuggle
him in a gun, so it's like a cartoon. She
she brings him a gun in jail, and both he
and his cellmate escape where they still cars started robbing again,
And of course he was recaptured in Ohio and stuck
in a Texas prison called Eastern Prison Farm, which he
(03:22):
ends up calling a hell hole for good reason. It
sounds like it was pretty bad. And imagine this is
depression era Texas to that kind of compounds everything. But
you know, it's a place where the prisoners are regularly beaten.
He saw people put into tin sweat boxes in the
Texas heat um and even prisoners were murdered sometimes. Uh
(03:48):
so the guards could collect a twenty dollar reward for
captured inmates. And even if you weren't being murdered, you
were still picking cotton from sun up to sundown again
in the Texas heat. And stories say that he left
prison even worse than he started. He came out in
a much more bitter many. But he starts to thinking
in prison that you know, his dream when he gets
(04:10):
out is he's gonna really stick it to him. You know,
he wants to form a gang come back and you know,
turn everybody loose. And while he's in prison, Bonnie is
still writing to him, and his mother is actually writing
to the state and asking for leniency for her son
and her please work. But not before he's already gotten
two of his toes cut off as a sort of
(04:32):
get out of jail free pass. But by February ninety
two he works at a conditional pardon because Eastam is
so crowded that they've got to let some people out.
Um and he meets up with the guy who Ralph Folts,
who he was sort of planning a future escape and
(04:56):
break out with, meets up with him again and starts
bringing his gang to together. And this is about when
the Barrow Gang forms. And he goes right back into
robbery after he's released, of course, because that's what you do.
It's what he does. And the first one didn't go
so well, he killed a store owner. In the next one,
and this is where the bad stuff starts there and
he stolen Ford and he's in Oklahoma and they're drinking
(05:19):
whiskey in the car and pull up to a dance
and decide, you know, maybe they'd like to have a
little fun. And a couple of police officers walk over
to talk to them because drinking and driving generally frowned upon,
and they shot them. One of the officers died and
one was wounded, and one of the gang members folded
and turned Bunny and Clyde in. Yeah, and Bunny and Clyde,
(05:40):
you know, they're they're famous for being robbers and being
murderers and turning over gas stations and restaurants and banks, um.
But they weren't really that great at more. They they
never made more than hundred dollars. Sometimes they would rob
an establishment and get anything at all. Usually they just
(06:03):
got enough to you know, buy them off unites in
a motel and a little bit of food. And when
I think Great Depression robbers, I think more of say
John Dillinger or baby Face and also exactly who held
up banks and got thousands and thousands of dollars and
we're living the glamorous life during the Great Depression, But
not so much for Bonnie and Clyde Well. And I
(06:25):
think since they didn't have the big, you know, gangster
image that you know, somebody like Dillinger had, they're almost
considered more like Robin Hood figures until they get into
more and more murder. But you know, banks the Depression,
they're not held in that high esteem. I think people were,
you know, kind of intrigued by the couple. But of course,
(06:48):
instead of targeting these major institutions, they were more going
towards little mom and pop stores and you know, little
filling stations and smaller banks, so they weren't even targeting demand,
so to speak, the people who are really part of
their own group. They continued on the little crime spree
after that shooting at the dance. They drove to Bonnie's
(07:09):
aunts house in New Mexico and Clyde was speeding and
that's what caught a police officer's eye and he came
looking for them, and so they kidnapped him, which became
another part of their They liked kidnapping police officers and
then releasing them several hours later. Take him on a
little joy ride, I think, just for kicks. That's actually
(07:31):
even though they weren't great robbers, Clyde was actually really
good at hot wiring Ford V eights and it was
his favorite card. There was a letter purported to be
by Clyde that he sent to Ford that said, I
have drove forwards exclusively when I could get away with one,
and it said that John Dillinger sent them a similar
letter because with the new V eight engine you could
(07:51):
get places with that. Where he was a fast driver.
They did make their way around the country. Um and
Bonnie also really liked taking pictures of the ing, which
some of the roles of film were found in some
of their stolen cars. And that's part of how this
like great mythic, you know, glamorous couple to the deaf
thing came because of these pictures when they got them developed.
(08:13):
It's all great pictures of them closing with you know,
cigars and guns, and Bonnie's always really nicely turned out
in these cheek clothes and um, she wore a lot
of makeup when women didn't really wear much at the time,
and it's all very posed and you know they're trying
to kind of assume this glamour. Yeah, like she'll she
(08:35):
was posing. This one picture you'll find easily on Google
images where she's posing pretending she's shooting Clyde. And the
other one of her smoking a cigar, which apparently she
really disliked because she smoked cigarettes and nice girls didn't smoke.
One of they're one of their officers who they kidnapped
and later released. He asked her if there was anything
(08:56):
she wanted to tell the press, and she was like,
tell them, I don't smoke scars. It was this one
point of vanity that bothered her more than you know,
all the killings. So the killings and the robberies continue,
and the thing I think is interesting is that they
kept going back to Texas to see their families, so
they would do these hold ups and these kidnappings, and
(09:16):
they would drive back to Texas and you know, eventually
at some point this is going to catch up with them,
but not quite yet. In ninety two W. D. Jones
joins their gang and things start to go a bit
awry again. They stole a car. The FBI kind of
starts to get onto them. At this point, Uh, they
find uh stolen Ford, of course in Michigan that had
(09:40):
been taken from Oklahoma. And then in Oklahoma they find
another stolen Ford. Clyde really liked to sports, and uh
they start to trace these cars and they find one
has a prescription bottle in it. Um and after tracing
the prescription, it goes back to Clyde Barrows Aunt and
(10:04):
um that's when the FBI issues a warrant for him, um,
charging him with interstate transportation of a stolen automobile. And
in nineteen thirty two, the police try to ambush them
in Dallas and it doesn't work. Policemen are killed, and
they go right back to more robberies and they robin
Armory and get a whole bunch of weapons exactly. And
(10:27):
then in Missouri they kill another policeman and that brings
us up to about March nineteen thirty three, when Clyde's
brother is released from prison, so what's better than one barrow?
So he and his wife, who Blanche, joined the gang
and they all got a little placed together, Bonnie and
Clyde and W. D. Jones and Blanche and Buck. But
(10:49):
their behavior is so suspicious they're quickly put under surveillance.
The neighbors noticed that they never came out of the house. Well,
and is this when Bonnie was burned? Not quite yet,
that's like a year a year later, I think, but
there was. Of course, they figure out who it is,
there's a gunfight, all of them escaped, and they leave
behind more rules of film with more pictures of Bonnie
(11:11):
and Clyde, which just feeds the media flame. And after this,
they steal another car and the man pursues them in
someone else's car, so way to be feistating and still
in car, and he was kidnapped, of course, because again
that's what we do. And then the car wreckt you
were talking about happened in nineteen thirty three, and things
really start to go south for them because Bonnie's severely injured.
(11:32):
She was pinned under the car and her whole leg
was burned and it was a really really nasty yeah,
and she needed to be in a hospital, but of
course she was an outlaw and she couldn't, so they
had to do the best they could on their own.
And it said that um Clyde called her sister to
come and also hired a nurse to watch over Bonnie.
(11:53):
But this injury plagued her through their next several escapades.
She you know, she couldn't get around like she's too well.
And it also raised fur their suspicions, like them buying
medical supplies right um, the local pharmacy has been alerted
to people buying certain burn supplies and exactly so if
(12:15):
you saw a guy and you thought he was Clyde,
but you weren't entirely sure, and then he picked up
a big thing of burn ointment, and it's a good
chance it's Clyde Barrow. And again in July nineteen thirty
three they set up shop and a tourist camp, and
an officer came to visit figured out who they were.
Another gunfight in sues, Big surprise, because it seems to
happen a lot. Gun fights are kidnappings and Buck Abarrow
(12:37):
is seriously wounded to the head and blanches blinded by
glass in her eye, and they managed to escape, but
you know, they aren't doing very well, and someone else
spies them, turns them in and Clyde, Bonnie, and w. D.
Jones are all shot. They left Blanche and Buck behind.
They didn't know what else to do. Um. Bonnie and
Clyde left together, and then w D left all by himself.
(13:00):
Didn't exactly treat to meet up with him again. I
think he'd had enough. He was the weak. They're working
relationship was over. Not too long after that, Clyde starts
to return to this idea of busting out prisoners from
ast him. Uh. He he had kind of let the
plan fall by the wayside over the past few years,
(13:21):
and he was a little worried he was actually getting
led into a trap when he was first approached about it. Um.
But he starts the operation January nineteen thirty four. He
and Bonnie and a few of their accomplices drop off
an inner tube filled with two CULT forty five's in
a ravine outside of the prison. Then there's an elaborate
(13:45):
exchange where the prisoners, you know, they're sent out on
a work detail, and they know that this one particular
guard is he doesn't follow protocol because instead of doing
his job, he'd rather beat up the prisoners and harass
them instead of up stand back and guard them with
(14:05):
his rifle. And knowing this, they have him come over.
They grabbed the guns. By then they shoot the guard
and chaos and sues. Uh. Four prisoners have planned to
escape working with the gang. They rush out. Clyde covers
(14:26):
them with machine gun fire. Uh. All the guards freak out,
you know, they almost all of my avand in there, Um,
only one actually holds his post and he's kind of
credited with preventing what probably would have been a mass
escape at Eastham. Uh. This imagine this one guy, you know,
(14:46):
just standing there against the Barrel gang. And then this,
I love this one extra convict like sneaks out with
the gang and hides in the woods for a day
and then seazing opportunity. He thought it would be a
good chance. Um. And then the officials realized pretty soon
that uh, you know, looking at the prisoners who escaped,
(15:09):
looking at the Nan gang members, they realized Bonnie and Clyde,
and there was even a little bit of h I know,
some people were disturbed that the Barrow Gang would have
such easy access to a prison where all their buddies are. Yeah,
and it's you know, looking back, I remember I wrote
(15:31):
a blog post about John Dillinger and he escaped from
more than one prison as well. And I'm thinking maximum
security didn't quite mean the same thing then as it
does not. Yeah, some of these guys who escape in
thirty four when they're captured, they escape again later from
other prisons or from the same one. It seems like
most of these guys escape from prisons several times. Bonnie's
(15:55):
no good prison also yeah, yeah, he escaped for east Ham,
didn't he. Yeah. Also no good husband from way back
in the day. Yeah. So but anyways, uh, they they
shoot a guard during this, well not Bonnie and Clyde,
but members of their gang inside the prison shoot a
guard and kill another guard. And after that, I mean,
(16:19):
their their fade is really sealed. The prison director Lee
Simmons kind of has it out for him. He's been
obviously hugely embarrassed by this stunt and by the murder
of one of his guards, so he commissions a retired
Texas ranger Frank Hammer or Hammer. Yeah, we're not sure
(16:41):
um to be a state highway patrolman and have a
temporary detail to find Bonnie and Clyde. So now they've
got a bounty hunter on their tail. And also two
of the men they'd help escape, Ray Hamilton's and Henry
Methven have joined the gang, so they've increased their numbers
since they've lost us to Bucking Blanche Buck ended up
dying from his injuries, and Blanche was sent to a
(17:03):
women's penitentiary. And they are out on the hunt again,
and they robbed another bank, and then the event that
gets them that probably turns the tide of public opinion
against that Robin Hood perception that I mentioned earlier, really
changes with is gone there in Grapevine, Texas and patrolmen
(17:23):
are walking up to their car to question them, and
without even any warning, they shot them and killed them.
And there's a little contention over that because the their accomplice,
m Henry Methven, Uh, he apparently fired the first shot
and Bonnie and Clyde had wanted to, you know, do
(17:45):
their normal thing and kidnapped the car instead. Um, but
you know, once they once the shot was fired, it
was all, you know, they were committed to it. At
that point. A couple accounts I read said that Clyde
had said, let's take them, and Henry took that to
mean let's get rid of them, where as Clyde meant it, no,
let's actually physically take them, you know, like we like
(18:07):
to do with visers in the law, regardless of what
happened to young police officers who were killed in cold blood,
with at least one of them leaving a wife behind,
I'm not sure about the other. And two more men
joined the bounty hunter, and so there were now four
people who were just dedicated to catching Bonnie and Clyde.
So it's only a matter of time. So after this
(18:29):
there's another robbery, and then another attempted car theft, and
another officer killed, and they stole another four d v
ate their faith in Kansas and went to see their
families again. And this is where Bonnie's poem comes in.
She wrote a poem called the Story of Bonnie and Clyde,
and she gave it to her mother, and it begins
(18:51):
with you read the story of Jesse James of how
he lived and died. If you're still in need of
something to read, here's the story of Bonnie and Clyde
and goes on to say that basically the newspapers are
lying and they're not so ruthless as that their nature
is raw. They hate the law, the stool pigeons, spotters
and rats. So again, probably not going to win you
a whole lot of something. No, we should say to
(19:12):
Bonnie would sit in the backseat of the car when
she wasn't navigating for Clyde or participating in a shootout.
Um and type poetry. She's known for that one and
one more called the Suicide of sal Yeah, I think
so that creative writing and Clyde played sex. Then that
was another thing found in their car, in addition to
(19:35):
lots of license plates and some money and lots of guns.
Clyde sack and like humanizing detailers pay home. Especially at
this point. Methven, the accomplice who participated in the murder
of the two highway patrolmen, ends up being there undoing.
(19:56):
And remember we were talking about Frank Hammer or Hammer earlier,
and in his search for Bonnie and Cloud Clyde, he
eventually gets connected with Henry Methven, or rather his father,
who is seeking a pardon from the state of Texas
for his son, and at this point Methven betrays Bonnie
(20:18):
and Clyde and sets them up for the eventual police ambush. Right,
and Henry Methven's father gets the guarantee for leniency for
his son because Methven was the one who would probably
be in the most trouble after those grape fine killings,
and his father knew it, so he agrees to help
them set the two up and they are ambushed in
(20:41):
Louisiana on May nine. Yeah. Uh, Methven finds a pretext
to part company with Bonnie and Clyde for a little bit,
knowing that they're going to reconvene his parents house, and
the police wait near near the house. This is in Giveslyn, Louisiana,
(21:06):
about a mile off of twenty and uh, they wait.
Some accounts say they waited for a couple of days,
and then others say it was just overnight. These are
the ones I read were saying overnight. Yeah, there's a
little controversy there too. But um, by nine ten in
the morning, they hear a roar of a V eight
(21:28):
and they know it's got to be Clyde like driving
that fast. Um, and they start shooting pretty much as
soon as they get an I d on Clyde. It's
no warning. They don't say stop that, don't say you're
under arrest. They just start shooting. And one hundred and
sixty seven bullet holes were found in the car and
more than fifty in the bodies of the two. When
(21:51):
they opened the door, they saw bloody cigarettes in um
in Bonnie's lap, along with a gun and um Clyde
went first. Bnvil Parish Deputy Prentice Oakley fired the first
shot hit Clyde in the head. That was he was
killed pretty much instantly, but Bonnie apparently took longer to
(22:13):
kill and a lot of the policemen later said they
were haunted by hearing her scream after Clyde had been
shot and before she died. Well, especially since there weren't
any warrants out. I don't think against Bonnie warrants and yeah,
she wasn't ever accused of being a murderer, just you know,
someone who was along for the ride, so while she
(22:34):
was in trouble, there was nothing out saying. That's kind
of become an interesting question to did did Bonnie ever
kill anyone? Or did she even fire a gun? And uh,
even one of their own gang members w g Jones
later said that in the five shoot outs he participated
in with her, he never saw her fire, but said
(22:56):
she was a hell of a loader, so helpful. If
really the worst one, it was complete pan ammonium. At
the site where they were shot and killed, there's actually
you can see video right after the shoot someone came
up just to see everyone rushing around and see the bodies.
People were taking pictures and taking pieces of them. From there,
(23:17):
it gets pretty coolish trying to take pieces of her
bloody hair and pieces of her gear. And they tow
the car into town to show the school kids, and
it's all rather grizzly. And then in the car they
found a bunch of bunch of guns and a bunch
of license plates because well, and the saxophone because they
(23:38):
tried to change license plates after every single robbery they committed.
They actually realized that after they lost one of their
roles of film left it behind and the police got
ahold of it, they decided they wanted to start covering
up the license plates on their stolen cars. Not documenting
that um but an interesting fact about Methven to the Informer.
(24:02):
He was later sentenced to death for killing a police officer,
something that happened after he signed his part in agreement. Um.
But after hearing about his role in catching Bonnie and Clyde,
the court commuted it to life and he was released
from prison in nine And then a few years after that,
(24:25):
an unknown person knocked him unconscious and placed him on
a railroad track where he was cut in half. So
I guess you know, somebody like Methven has probably made
quite a number of enemies over his life. That's um.
I wonder it's still quite a creative way to to
get rid of someone another rather cartoonish, cartoonishly violent thing
(24:49):
to do. I think the sad fact that keeps sticking
with me is that Bonnie's mother wouldn't let her be
buried next to Clyde, which of course is where she
wanted to be. Clyde is buried next to his brother,
end Bonnie is home, and then you know, they may
have died in nineteen thirty four, but the legend really
only grew from there. We talked about the movies, and
(25:12):
there's actually a new one in the works. If you
haven't seen the sixty seven original, soon there will be
a film starring Hillary Duff and Kevin the diggers. So
you see, and I remember hearing some really snotty quotes
back and forth from Hillary Duff and Fade Unaway. They
done away did not really approve, did she? Not that
I read celebrity gossip? But if I did that, that's
(25:34):
what I would have heard. Um. And there are still
people who want a piece of Bonnie and Clyde. You
can buy a square inch of Clyde's pants for two
hundred dollars um in the car that they died in.
You know, that's that's what I want. My birthday is
coming up, y'all. Just kidding um. And you can see
(25:55):
the car that they died in at a Las Vegas
casino along with Clyde's shirt. So if you'd like to
learn the real story of a bunch of criminals and
not buy a bunch of kids memorabilia, you can check
out the Stuff you missed in History class blog on
our homepage at www dot how stuff works dot com.
(26:15):
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dot com home page
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Katie Lambert and joining me today is Sarah Dowdy.
How are you, Sarah. I'm doing good. How are you,
Katie good? We were talking about rearranging our Netflix cues earlier,
(00:23):
and you brought up a specific film, Bonnie and Clyde exactly,
and that's who we're going to talk about today. But
not the Warren Batty and Faye Dunaway version. No. And
if you've seen that, you probably remember it being very
glamorous there, you know, gangsters, well dressed gangsters. Um. But
reality is a little different as it usually is. Clyde
(00:45):
Barrow was born in nineteen ten in Texas to a
sharecropper father. He was one of eight kids, and he
wasn't particularly interested in school. Some accounts say that he
never made it past the fifth grade and he was
always a troublemaker. My favorite story is that like to
sell stolen turkeys with his brother. Oh well, and Bonnie
came from similarly humble backgrounds Um born in nineteen ten, Rowena, Texas. UM.
(01:11):
Both of these are really tiny towns, kind of on
the outskirts of Dallas. Um. Maybe today you'd call them suburbs,
but back then they were probably just dusty stops on
the road, you know. Um. And she after her father died.
She had a pretty rough upbringing, but still managed to
do really well in school. And she was a pretty girl.
(01:35):
There are in different accounts as to what she looks like.
We keep finding things that say she was four eleven,
and other things that say she was five ft, and
then a wanted poster that says she's five fives apparently
no one knows. Was sort of red, gold hair and freckles.
And miss Bonnie Parker decided she wanted to get married
when she was sixteen and eloped with a no good man. Yeah,
(01:55):
it kind of started off a kick and taste for
bad men for poor Bonnie because her husband soon landed
in jail and she actually never divorced him. Interestingly enough,
supposedly she was wearing his wedding ring still when she
was found with Clyde. Not to be too much of
a spoiler, but they don't live. Yeah, they might make
(02:16):
it if you haven't seen the movie. Yeah, so things
kind of fall together for the pair in nineteen thirty
when they meet at the home of a mutual friend
and it was love at first sight. According to accounts,
Bonnie Parker's friend had broken her arm and she was
there taking care of her, and the story goes that
Clyde came over to see this girl and saw Bonnie
(02:40):
and that was the end of that. And Clyde actually
already had a criminal past of his own, and he
had barely known that. They've known each other for like
a couple of months, and he gets arrested and put
into prison. She helps break him out at one point,
this is my favorite part. She'd been writing letters to
him where she addressed him sugar and being very supportive,
(03:01):
and then he and his cellmate convinced her to smuggle
him in a gun, so it's like a cartoon. She
she brings him a gun in jail, and both he
and his cellmate escape where they still cars started robbing again,
And of course he was recaptured in Ohio and stuck
in a Texas prison called Eastern Prison Farm, which he
(03:22):
ends up calling a hell hole for good reason. It
sounds like it was pretty bad. And imagine this is
depression era Texas to that kind of compounds everything. But
you know, it's a place where the prisoners are regularly beaten.
He saw people put into tin sweat boxes in the
Texas heat um and even prisoners were murdered sometimes. Uh
(03:48):
so the guards could collect a twenty dollar reward for
captured inmates. And even if you weren't being murdered, you
were still picking cotton from sun up to sundown again
in the Texas heat. And stories say that he left
prison even worse than he started. He came out in
a much more bitter many. But he starts to thinking
in prison that you know, his dream when he gets
(04:10):
out is he's gonna really stick it to him. You know,
he wants to form a gang come back and you know,
turn everybody loose. And while he's in prison, Bonnie is
still writing to him, and his mother is actually writing
to the state and asking for leniency for her son
and her please work. But not before he's already gotten
two of his toes cut off as a sort of
(04:32):
get out of jail free pass. But by February ninety
two he works at a conditional pardon because Eastam is
so crowded that they've got to let some people out.
Um and he meets up with the guy who Ralph Folts,
who he was sort of planning a future escape and
(04:56):
break out with, meets up with him again and starts
bringing his gang to together. And this is about when
the Barrow Gang forms. And he goes right back into
robbery after he's released, of course, because that's what you do.
It's what he does. And the first one didn't go
so well, he killed a store owner. In the next one,
and this is where the bad stuff starts there and
he stolen Ford and he's in Oklahoma and they're drinking
(05:19):
whiskey in the car and pull up to a dance
and decide, you know, maybe they'd like to have a
little fun. And a couple of police officers walk over
to talk to them because drinking and driving generally frowned upon,
and they shot them. One of the officers died and
one was wounded, and one of the gang members folded
and turned Bunny and Clyde in. Yeah, and Bunny and Clyde,
(05:40):
you know, they're they're famous for being robbers and being
murderers and turning over gas stations and restaurants and banks, um.
But they weren't really that great at more. They they
never made more than hundred dollars. Sometimes they would rob
an establishment and get anything at all. Usually they just
(06:03):
got enough to you know, buy them off unites in
a motel and a little bit of food. And when
I think Great Depression robbers, I think more of say
John Dillinger or baby Face and also exactly who held
up banks and got thousands and thousands of dollars and
we're living the glamorous life during the Great Depression, But
not so much for Bonnie and Clyde Well. And I
(06:25):
think since they didn't have the big, you know, gangster
image that you know, somebody like Dillinger had, they're almost
considered more like Robin Hood figures until they get into
more and more murder. But you know, banks the Depression,
they're not held in that high esteem. I think people were,
you know, kind of intrigued by the couple. But of course,
(06:48):
instead of targeting these major institutions, they were more going
towards little mom and pop stores and you know, little
filling stations and smaller banks, so they weren't even targeting demand,
so to speak, the people who are really part of
their own group. They continued on the little crime spree
after that shooting at the dance. They drove to Bonnie's
(07:09):
aunts house in New Mexico and Clyde was speeding and
that's what caught a police officer's eye and he came
looking for them, and so they kidnapped him, which became
another part of their They liked kidnapping police officers and
then releasing them several hours later. Take him on a
little joy ride, I think, just for kicks. That's actually
(07:31):
even though they weren't great robbers, Clyde was actually really
good at hot wiring Ford V eights and it was
his favorite card. There was a letter purported to be
by Clyde that he sent to Ford that said, I
have drove forwards exclusively when I could get away with one,
and it said that John Dillinger sent them a similar
letter because with the new V eight engine you could
(07:51):
get places with that. Where he was a fast driver.
They did make their way around the country. Um and
Bonnie also really liked taking pictures of the ing, which
some of the roles of film were found in some
of their stolen cars. And that's part of how this
like great mythic, you know, glamorous couple to the deaf
thing came because of these pictures when they got them developed.
(08:13):
It's all great pictures of them closing with you know,
cigars and guns, and Bonnie's always really nicely turned out
in these cheek clothes and um, she wore a lot
of makeup when women didn't really wear much at the time,
and it's all very posed and you know they're trying
to kind of assume this glamour. Yeah, like she'll she
(08:35):
was posing. This one picture you'll find easily on Google
images where she's posing pretending she's shooting Clyde. And the
other one of her smoking a cigar, which apparently she
really disliked because she smoked cigarettes and nice girls didn't smoke.
One of they're one of their officers who they kidnapped
and later released. He asked her if there was anything
(08:56):
she wanted to tell the press, and she was like,
tell them, I don't smoke scars. It was this one
point of vanity that bothered her more than you know,
all the killings. So the killings and the robberies continue,
and the thing I think is interesting is that they
kept going back to Texas to see their families, so
they would do these hold ups and these kidnappings, and
(09:16):
they would drive back to Texas and you know, eventually
at some point this is going to catch up with them,
but not quite yet. In ninety two W. D. Jones
joins their gang and things start to go a bit
awry again. They stole a car. The FBI kind of
starts to get onto them. At this point, Uh, they
find uh stolen Ford, of course in Michigan that had
(09:40):
been taken from Oklahoma. And then in Oklahoma they find
another stolen Ford. Clyde really liked to sports, and uh
they start to trace these cars and they find one
has a prescription bottle in it. Um and after tracing
the prescription, it goes back to Clyde Barrows Aunt and
(10:04):
um that's when the FBI issues a warrant for him, um,
charging him with interstate transportation of a stolen automobile. And
in nineteen thirty two, the police try to ambush them
in Dallas and it doesn't work. Policemen are killed, and
they go right back to more robberies and they robin
Armory and get a whole bunch of weapons exactly. And
(10:27):
then in Missouri they kill another policeman and that brings
us up to about March nineteen thirty three, when Clyde's
brother is released from prison, so what's better than one barrow?
So he and his wife, who Blanche, joined the gang
and they all got a little placed together, Bonnie and
Clyde and W. D. Jones and Blanche and Buck. But
(10:49):
their behavior is so suspicious they're quickly put under surveillance.
The neighbors noticed that they never came out of the house. Well,
and is this when Bonnie was burned? Not quite yet,
that's like a year a year later, I think, but
there was. Of course, they figure out who it is,
there's a gunfight, all of them escaped, and they leave
behind more rules of film with more pictures of Bonnie
(11:11):
and Clyde, which just feeds the media flame. And after this,
they steal another car and the man pursues them in
someone else's car, so way to be feistating and still
in car, and he was kidnapped, of course, because again
that's what we do. And then the car wreckt you
were talking about happened in nineteen thirty three, and things
really start to go south for them because Bonnie's severely injured.
(11:32):
She was pinned under the car and her whole leg
was burned and it was a really really nasty yeah,
and she needed to be in a hospital, but of
course she was an outlaw and she couldn't, so they
had to do the best they could on their own.
And it said that um Clyde called her sister to
come and also hired a nurse to watch over Bonnie.
(11:53):
But this injury plagued her through their next several escapades.
She you know, she couldn't get around like she's too well.
And it also raised fur their suspicions, like them buying
medical supplies right um, the local pharmacy has been alerted
to people buying certain burn supplies and exactly so if
(12:15):
you saw a guy and you thought he was Clyde,
but you weren't entirely sure, and then he picked up
a big thing of burn ointment, and it's a good
chance it's Clyde Barrow. And again in July nineteen thirty
three they set up shop and a tourist camp, and
an officer came to visit figured out who they were.
Another gunfight in sues, Big surprise, because it seems to
happen a lot. Gun fights are kidnappings and Buck Abarrow
(12:37):
is seriously wounded to the head and blanches blinded by
glass in her eye, and they managed to escape, but
you know, they aren't doing very well, and someone else
spies them, turns them in and Clyde, Bonnie, and w. D.
Jones are all shot. They left Blanche and Buck behind.
They didn't know what else to do. Um. Bonnie and
Clyde left together, and then w D left all by himself.
(13:00):
Didn't exactly treat to meet up with him again. I
think he'd had enough. He was the weak. They're working
relationship was over. Not too long after that, Clyde starts
to return to this idea of busting out prisoners from
ast him. Uh. He he had kind of let the
plan fall by the wayside over the past few years,
(13:21):
and he was a little worried he was actually getting
led into a trap when he was first approached about it. Um.
But he starts the operation January nineteen thirty four. He
and Bonnie and a few of their accomplices drop off
an inner tube filled with two CULT forty five's in
a ravine outside of the prison. Then there's an elaborate
(13:45):
exchange where the prisoners, you know, they're sent out on
a work detail, and they know that this one particular
guard is he doesn't follow protocol because instead of doing
his job, he'd rather beat up the prisoners and harass
them instead of up stand back and guard them with
(14:05):
his rifle. And knowing this, they have him come over.
They grabbed the guns. By then they shoot the guard
and chaos and sues. Uh. Four prisoners have planned to
escape working with the gang. They rush out. Clyde covers
(14:26):
them with machine gun fire. Uh. All the guards freak out,
you know, they almost all of my avand in there, Um,
only one actually holds his post and he's kind of
credited with preventing what probably would have been a mass
escape at Eastham. Uh. This imagine this one guy, you know,
(14:46):
just standing there against the Barrel gang. And then this,
I love this one extra convict like sneaks out with
the gang and hides in the woods for a day
and then seazing opportunity. He thought it would be a
good chance. Um. And then the officials realized pretty soon
that uh, you know, looking at the prisoners who escaped,
(15:09):
looking at the Nan gang members, they realized Bonnie and Clyde,
and there was even a little bit of h I know,
some people were disturbed that the Barrow Gang would have
such easy access to a prison where all their buddies are. Yeah,
and it's you know, looking back, I remember I wrote
(15:31):
a blog post about John Dillinger and he escaped from
more than one prison as well. And I'm thinking maximum
security didn't quite mean the same thing then as it
does not. Yeah, some of these guys who escape in
thirty four when they're captured, they escape again later from
other prisons or from the same one. It seems like
most of these guys escape from prisons several times. Bonnie's
(15:55):
no good prison also yeah, yeah, he escaped for east Ham,
didn't he. Yeah. Also no good husband from way back
in the day. Yeah. So but anyways, uh, they they
shoot a guard during this, well not Bonnie and Clyde,
but members of their gang inside the prison shoot a
guard and kill another guard. And after that, I mean,
(16:19):
their their fade is really sealed. The prison director Lee
Simmons kind of has it out for him. He's been
obviously hugely embarrassed by this stunt and by the murder
of one of his guards, so he commissions a retired
Texas ranger Frank Hammer or Hammer. Yeah, we're not sure
(16:41):
um to be a state highway patrolman and have a
temporary detail to find Bonnie and Clyde. So now they've
got a bounty hunter on their tail. And also two
of the men they'd help escape, Ray Hamilton's and Henry
Methven have joined the gang, so they've increased their numbers
since they've lost us to Bucking Blanche Buck ended up
dying from his injuries, and Blanche was sent to a
(17:03):
women's penitentiary. And they are out on the hunt again,
and they robbed another bank, and then the event that
gets them that probably turns the tide of public opinion
against that Robin Hood perception that I mentioned earlier, really
changes with is gone there in Grapevine, Texas and patrolmen
(17:23):
are walking up to their car to question them, and
without even any warning, they shot them and killed them.
And there's a little contention over that because the their accomplice,
m Henry Methven, Uh, he apparently fired the first shot
and Bonnie and Clyde had wanted to, you know, do
(17:45):
their normal thing and kidnapped the car instead. Um, but
you know, once they once the shot was fired, it
was all, you know, they were committed to it. At
that point. A couple accounts I read said that Clyde
had said, let's take them, and Henry took that to
mean let's get rid of them, where as Clyde meant it, no,
let's actually physically take them, you know, like we like
(18:07):
to do with visers in the law, regardless of what
happened to young police officers who were killed in cold blood,
with at least one of them leaving a wife behind,
I'm not sure about the other. And two more men
joined the bounty hunter, and so there were now four
people who were just dedicated to catching Bonnie and Clyde.
So it's only a matter of time. So after this
(18:29):
there's another robbery, and then another attempted car theft, and
another officer killed, and they stole another four d v
ate their faith in Kansas and went to see their
families again. And this is where Bonnie's poem comes in.
She wrote a poem called the Story of Bonnie and Clyde,
and she gave it to her mother, and it begins
(18:51):
with you read the story of Jesse James of how
he lived and died. If you're still in need of
something to read, here's the story of Bonnie and Clyde
and goes on to say that basically the newspapers are
lying and they're not so ruthless as that their nature
is raw. They hate the law, the stool pigeons, spotters
and rats. So again, probably not going to win you
a whole lot of something. No, we should say to
(19:12):
Bonnie would sit in the backseat of the car when
she wasn't navigating for Clyde or participating in a shootout.
Um and type poetry. She's known for that one and
one more called the Suicide of sal Yeah, I think
so that creative writing and Clyde played sex. Then that
was another thing found in their car, in addition to
(19:35):
lots of license plates and some money and lots of guns.
Clyde sack and like humanizing detailers pay home. Especially at
this point. Methven, the accomplice who participated in the murder
of the two highway patrolmen, ends up being there undoing.
(19:56):
And remember we were talking about Frank Hammer or Hammer earlier,
and in his search for Bonnie and Cloud Clyde, he
eventually gets connected with Henry Methven, or rather his father,
who is seeking a pardon from the state of Texas
for his son, and at this point Methven betrays Bonnie
(20:18):
and Clyde and sets them up for the eventual police ambush. Right,
and Henry Methven's father gets the guarantee for leniency for
his son because Methven was the one who would probably
be in the most trouble after those grape fine killings,
and his father knew it, so he agrees to help
them set the two up and they are ambushed in
(20:41):
Louisiana on May nine. Yeah. Uh, Methven finds a pretext
to part company with Bonnie and Clyde for a little bit,
knowing that they're going to reconvene his parents house, and
the police wait near near the house. This is in Giveslyn, Louisiana,
(21:06):
about a mile off of twenty and uh, they wait.
Some accounts say they waited for a couple of days,
and then others say it was just overnight. These are
the ones I read were saying overnight. Yeah, there's a
little controversy there too. But um, by nine ten in
the morning, they hear a roar of a V eight
(21:28):
and they know it's got to be Clyde like driving
that fast. Um, and they start shooting pretty much as
soon as they get an I d on Clyde. It's
no warning. They don't say stop that, don't say you're
under arrest. They just start shooting. And one hundred and
sixty seven bullet holes were found in the car and
more than fifty in the bodies of the two. When
(21:51):
they opened the door, they saw bloody cigarettes in um
in Bonnie's lap, along with a gun and um Clyde
went first. Bnvil Parish Deputy Prentice Oakley fired the first
shot hit Clyde in the head. That was he was
killed pretty much instantly, but Bonnie apparently took longer to
(22:13):
kill and a lot of the policemen later said they
were haunted by hearing her scream after Clyde had been
shot and before she died. Well, especially since there weren't
any warrants out. I don't think against Bonnie warrants and yeah,
she wasn't ever accused of being a murderer, just you know,
someone who was along for the ride, so while she
(22:34):
was in trouble, there was nothing out saying. That's kind
of become an interesting question to did did Bonnie ever
kill anyone? Or did she even fire a gun? And uh,
even one of their own gang members w g Jones
later said that in the five shoot outs he participated
in with her, he never saw her fire, but said
(22:56):
she was a hell of a loader, so helpful. If
really the worst one, it was complete pan ammonium. At
the site where they were shot and killed, there's actually
you can see video right after the shoot someone came
up just to see everyone rushing around and see the bodies.
People were taking pictures and taking pieces of them. From there,
(23:17):
it gets pretty coolish trying to take pieces of her
bloody hair and pieces of her gear. And they tow
the car into town to show the school kids, and
it's all rather grizzly. And then in the car they
found a bunch of bunch of guns and a bunch
of license plates because well, and the saxophone because they
(23:38):
tried to change license plates after every single robbery they committed.
They actually realized that after they lost one of their
roles of film left it behind and the police got
ahold of it, they decided they wanted to start covering
up the license plates on their stolen cars. Not documenting
that um but an interesting fact about Methven to the Informer.
(24:02):
He was later sentenced to death for killing a police officer,
something that happened after he signed his part in agreement. Um.
But after hearing about his role in catching Bonnie and Clyde,
the court commuted it to life and he was released
from prison in nine And then a few years after that,
(24:25):
an unknown person knocked him unconscious and placed him on
a railroad track where he was cut in half. So
I guess you know, somebody like Methven has probably made
quite a number of enemies over his life. That's um.
I wonder it's still quite a creative way to to
get rid of someone another rather cartoonish, cartoonishly violent thing
(24:49):
to do. I think the sad fact that keeps sticking
with me is that Bonnie's mother wouldn't let her be
buried next to Clyde, which of course is where she
wanted to be. Clyde is buried next to his brother,
end Bonnie is home, and then you know, they may
have died in nineteen thirty four, but the legend really
only grew from there. We talked about the movies, and
(25:12):
there's actually a new one in the works. If you
haven't seen the sixty seven original, soon there will be
a film starring Hillary Duff and Kevin the diggers. So
you see, and I remember hearing some really snotty quotes
back and forth from Hillary Duff and Fade Unaway. They
done away did not really approve, did she? Not that
I read celebrity gossip? But if I did that, that's
(25:34):
what I would have heard. Um. And there are still
people who want a piece of Bonnie and Clyde. You
can buy a square inch of Clyde's pants for two
hundred dollars um in the car that they died in.
You know, that's that's what I want. My birthday is
coming up, y'all. Just kidding um. And you can see
(25:55):
the car that they died in at a Las Vegas
casino along with Clyde's shirt. So if you'd like to
learn the real story of a bunch of criminals and
not buy a bunch of kids memorabilia, you can check
out the Stuff you missed in History class blog on
our homepage at www dot how stuff works dot com.
(26:15):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
how stuff works dot com. Let us know what you think.
Send an email to podcast at how stuff works dot
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