At approximately 9:15 am on May 23, 1934, six men waited as a vehicle slowed to approach a fellow driver parked on the shoulder of Louisiana State Highway 154 south of Gibsland. Suicide Sal, as newspapers dubbed her, was heard to scream as her lover was shot fatally in the head by one of the officers concealed in the bushes. Suddenly, all six officers fired 130 rounds into the stolen Ford V8. That came to an eery stop about 50 yards from the posse. After officers emptied the last round into the getaway car, the group approached. The officers inspected the vehicle and discovered an arsenal of weapons, including stolen automatic rifles, sawed-off semi-automatic shotguns, assorted handguns, several thousand rounds of ammunition, and fifteen sets of license plates from various states. 

Two weeks before Suicide Sal would write to her mother, penning her fate. Writing, 

 Today on Wicked Dual. We’re looking into the Life and Crimes of Bonnie Elizabeth Parker. 

Bonnie Parker was a petite girl, only 4’11” and weighing 90 pounds. With her strawberry blonde curls, Bonnie was described as very pretty, born on October 1, 1910, in Rowena, Texas. She had an older brother, Hubert (Buster), and a younger sister, Billie. She was the second of three children to Henry and Emma Parker. The family lived comfortably off her father’s job as a bricklayer. Still, when he died unexpectedly in 1914, Emma moved the family in with her mother in Cement City, Texas (now part of Dallas). She did well in school and loved writing poetry. In her second year in high school, Parker met Roy Thornton. The couple dropped out of school and married on September 25, 1926, six days before her 16th birthday. Their marriage was marred by his frequent absences and brushes with the law, which proved to be short-lived. They never divorced, but their paths never crossed again after January 1929. Parker was still wearing Thornton’s wedding ring when she died. Thornton was in prison when he heard of her death, commenting, “I’m glad they jumped out like they did. It’s much better than being caught.” 

Separating from her husband, Parker moved back in with her mother and worked as a waitress in Dallas. One of her regular customers was postal worker Ted Hinton. In 1932, he joined the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department and eventually served as a posse member that killed Bonnie and Clyde. Parker briefly kept a diary early in 1929 when she was 18, writing of her loneliness, her impatience with life in Dallas, and her love of photography.

First Meeting

Several accounts describe Parker and Barrow’s first meeting. The most credible states that they met on January 5, 1930, at the home of Barrow’s friend, Clarence Clay, at 105 Herbert Street in West Dallas. Barrow was 20 years old, and Parker was 19. Parker was out of work and staying with a female friend to assist her recovery from a broken arm. Barrow dropped by the girl’s house while Parker made hot chocolate in the kitchen. Both were smitten immediately; most historians believe that Parker joined Barrow because she had fallen in love with him. Clyde Chestnut Barrow was an attractive man with thick brown hair and around 5’4″. She remained his loyal companion as they committed their many crimes and awaited the violent death they viewed as inevitable. 

But before we go further into the life of Bonnie Parker. Let’s look briefly into the life of her fated lover Clyde Chestnut Barrow. Born in 1909 to a poor farming family in Ellis County, Texas, southeast of Dallas, he was the fifth of seven children of Henry Basil Barrow and Cumie Talitha Walker. The family moved to Dallas in the early 1920s as part of a broader migration pattern from rural areas to the city, where many settled in the urban slum of West Dallas. The Barrows spent their first months in West Dallas living under their wagon until they got enough money to buy a tent. 

Barrow’s first arrest was in1926, at age 17, after running when police confronted him over a rental car that he had failed to return on time. His second arrest was with his brother Buck for possession of stolen turkeys. Barrow had some legitimate jobs from 1927 through 1929, but he also cracked safes, robbed stores, and stole cars. He met 19-year-old Parker through a mutual friend in January 1930, and they spent much time together during the following weeks. Their romance was interrupted when Barrow was arrested and convicted of auto theft.

Barrow was sent to Eastham Prison Farm in April 1930 at 21. He escaped from the prison farm shortly after incarceration using a weapon Parker smuggled to him. He was recaptured soon after and sent back to prison. Barrow was repeatedly assaulted while in prison. Retaliating by attacking and killing his tormentor with a pipe. This was his first murder. Another inmate who was already serving a life sentence claimed responsibility. To avoid hard labor in the fields, Barrow purposely had two of his toes chopped off in late January 1932 by another inmate or himself. Because of this, he walked with a limp for the rest of his life. However, Barrow was set free six days after his intentional injury. Without his knowledge, Barrow’s mother had successfully petitioned for his release. He was paroled from Eastham on February 2, 1932, now a hardened and bitter criminal. His sister, Marie, said, “Something awful sure must have happened to him in prison because he wasn’t the same person when he got out.” Fellow inmate Ralph Fults said that he watched Clyde “change from a schoolboy to a rattlesnake.”

In his post-Eastham career, Barrow robbed grocery stores and gas stations at a rate far outpacing the ten bank robberies attributed to him and the Barrow Gang. His favorite weapon was the M1918 Browning Automatic Rifle. According to John Neal Phillips, Barrow’s goal in life was not to gain fame or fortune from robbing banks but to seek revenge against the Texas prison system for the abuses he had sustained while serving time.

The Barrow gang was an American gang active between 1932 and 1934. They were well-known outlaws, robbers, murderers, and criminals who traveled the Central United States during the Great Depression as a gang. Their exploits were known all over the nation. They captured the attention of the American press and its readership during what is sometimes referred to as the ‘public enemy era.’ Though the gang was notorious for their bank robberies, they preferred to rob small stores or gas stations over banks. The gang was believed to have killed at least nine police officers, among several other murders.

The gang was best known for two of its members, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, but Other members included: Clyde’s older brother Marvin “Buck” Barrow. Buck Barrow’s wife Blanche Barrow, W. D. Jones, Henry Methvin, Raymond Hamilton, Joe Palmer, and Ralph Fults.

After Barrow’s release from prison in February 1932, he and Fults began a series of robberies, primarily of stores and gas stations; their goal was to collect enough money and firepower to launch a raid against Eastham prison. On April 19, Parker and Fults were captured in a failed hardware store burglary in Kaufman, where they had intended to steal firearms. Parker was released from jail after a few months when the grand jury failed to indict her; Fults was tried, convicted, and served time. He never rejoined the gang. Parker wrote poetry to pass the time in Kaufman County jail. Penning poetry such as Suicide Sal. A nickname the public would pick up in the years to come.

By March 22, 1933, the Barrow gang had taken the life of at least 5 individuals and set up temporary housing at 3347 1/2 Oakridge Drive in Joplin, Missouri. They are differing accounts of what happened next. According to family sources, Buck and Blanche Barrow were there to visit the gang’s hideout, attempting to persuade Clyde to surrender to law enforcement. The rowdy, rambunctious group played card games late into the night against a quiet neighborhood; Blanche later wrote that they “bought a case of beer a day.”The men came and went noisily at all hours, and Clyde accidentally fired an automatic rifle in the apartment while cleaning it. No neighbors went to the house, but one reported suspicions to the Joplin Police Department.

The police assembled a five-man force in two cars on April 13 to confront what they suspected were bootleggers living at the Oakridge Drive address. The Barrow brothers and Jones opened fire, killing Detective Harry L. McGinnis outright and fatally wounding Constable J. W. Harryman. Parker opened fire with an automatic rifle as the others fled, forcing Highway Patrol Sergeant G.B. Kahler to duck behind a large oak tree. The .30 caliber bullets from the gun struck the tree and pushed wood splinters into the sergeant’s face. Parker got into the car with the others, pulling Blanche from the street where she was pursuing her dog Snow Ball. The surviving officers later testified that they had fired only fourteen rounds in the conflict; one hit Jones on the side, one struck Clyde but was deflected by his suit-coat button, and one grazed Buck after ricocheting off a wall.

The group escaped the police at Joplin but left most of their possessions at the apartment, including Buck’s parole papers (three weeks old), a large arsenal of weapons, a handwritten poem by Bonnie, and a camera with several rolls of undeveloped film. Police developed the film at The Joplin Globe and found many photos of Barrow, Parker, and Jones posing and pointing weapons at one another. The Globe sent the poem and the images over the newswire. Including a picture of Parker clenching a cigar in her teeth and a pistol in her hand. All evidence shows, however, that Bonnie was a cigarette smoker like Clyde (Camels seemed to be their preferred brand). These photographs and Bonnie’s poems, also found at the hideout, were primarily responsible for making Bonnie and Clyde famous. Stories of such encounters made headlines, as did the more violent episodes. The Barrow Gang did not hesitate to shoot anyone who got in their way, whether a police officer or an innocent civilian. Other gang members who committed murder included Hamilton, Jones, Buck, and Henry Methvin. Eventually, the cold-bloodedness of their murders opened the public’s eyes to the reality of their crimes and led to their ends.

The photos entertained the public for a time, but the gang was desperate and discontented, as described by Blanche in her account written while imprisoned in the late 1930s. Their new notoriety made their daily lives more difficult as they tried to evade discovery. Restaurants and motels became less secure; they resorted to campfire cooking and bathing in cold streams. The unrelieved, round-the-clock proximity of five people in one car led to vicious bickering. Jones was the driver when he and Barrow stole a vehicle belonging to Darby in late April, and he used that car to leave the others. He stayed away until June 8.

Barrow failed to see warning signs at a bridge under construction on June 10 while driving with Jones and Parker near Wellington, Texas, and the car flipped into a ravine. Sources disagree on whether there was a gasoline fire or if Parker was doused with acid from the car’s battery under the floorboards, but she sustained third-degree burns to her right leg, so severe that the muscles contracted and caused the portion to “draw up.” Jones observed: “She’d been burned so bad none of us thought she was gonna live. The hide on her right leg was gone, from her hip to her ankle. I could see the bone at places.”

Parker could hardly walk; she either hopped on her good leg or was carried by Barrow. They got help from a nearby farm family. They kidnapped Collinsworth County Sheriff George Corry and City Marshal Paul Hardy, leaving the two handcuffed and barbed wired to a tree outside Erick, Oklahoma. The three rendezvoused with Buck and Blanche and hid in a tourist court near Fort Smith, Arkansas, nursing Parker’s burns. Buck and Jones bungled a robbery and murdered Town Marshal Henry D. Humphrey in Alma, Arkansas. The criminals had to flee, despite Parker’s grave condition.

 In July 1933, the gang checked in to the Red Crown Tourist Court south of Platte City, Missouri. It consisted of two brick cabins joined by garages, and the crew rented both. Barrow and Jones went into town to purchase bandages, crackers, cheese, and atropine sulfate to treat Parker’s leg. The druggist contacted Sheriff Holt Coffey, who put the cabins under surveillance. Coffey had been alerted by Oklahoma, Texas, and Arkansas law enforcement to watch for strangers seeking such supplies. The sheriff contacted Captain Baxter, who called for reinforcements from Kansas City, including an armored car. Sheriff Coffey led a group of officers toward the cabins at 11pm, armed with Thompson submachine guns. A gunfight ensued, and the gang evaded the law once more, but Buck had been wounded by a bullet that blasted a large hole in the bone of his forehead and exposed his injured brain, and Blanche was nearly blinded in both eyes by glass fragments.

The Barrow Gang camped at Dexfield Park, an abandoned amusement park near Dexter, Iowa, on July 24. Buck went in and out of consciousness. His massive head wound and blood loss were so severe that Barrow and Jones dug a grave for him. Local residents noticed their bloody bandages, and officers determined that the campers were the Barrow Gang. Local police officers and approximately 100 spectators surrounded the group, and the Barrows soon came under fire. Barrow, Parker, and Jones escaped on foot. Buck was shot in the back, and the officers captured him and his wife. Buck died of head wound and pneumonia after surgery five days later at Kings Daughters Hospital in Perry, Iowa.

By early September, the gang risked a run to Dallas to see their families for the first time in four months. Jones parted company with them, continuing to Houston, where his mother had moved. He was arrested there without incident on November 16 and returned to Dallas. Through the autumn, Barrow committed several robberies with small-time local accomplices while his family and Parker’s attended to her considerable medical needs. On November 22, they narrowly evaded arrest while trying to meet with family members near Sowers, Texas. Dallas Sheriff Smoot Schmid, Deputy Bob Alcorn, and Deputy Ted Hinton lay in wait nearby. As Barrow drove up, he sensed a trap and drove past his family’s car, at which point Schmid and his deputies stood up and opened fire with machine guns and an automatic rifle. The family members in the crossfire were not hit, but a bullet passed through the car, striking the legs of both Barrow and Parker. They escaped later that night.

On November 28, a Dallas grand jury delivered a murder indictment against Parker and Barrow for the killing – in January of that year, nearly ten months earlier – of Tarrant County Deputy Malcolm Davis; it was Parker’s first warrant for murder.

On January 16, 1934, Barrow orchestrated the escape of Hamilton, Methvin, and several others in the “Eastham Breakout.” The brazen raid generated negative publicity for Texas, and Barrow seemed to have achieved what historian Phillips suggests was his overriding goal: revenge on the Texas Department of Corrections.

Barrow Gang member Joe Palmer shot Major Joe Crowson during his escape, and Crowson died a few days later in the hospital. This attack attracted the full power of the Texas and federal government to the manhunt for Barrow and Parker. As Crowson struggled for life, prison chief Lee Simmons reportedly promised him that all persons involved in the breakout would be hunted down and killed. All of them eventually were, except for Methvin, who preserved his life by turning on the gang and setting up the ambush of Barrow and Parker.

The Texas Department of Corrections contacted former Texas Ranger Captain Frank Hamer and persuaded him to hunt down the Barrow Gang. He was retired, but his commission had not expired. He accepted the assignment as a Texas Highway Patrol officer, secondarily assigned to the prison system as a special investigator, and given the specific task of taking down the Barrow Gang. 

Frank Hamer was born on March 17, 1884, in Fairview, Texas, the second son of a blacksmith. Hamer’s reputation as a man of strong morals became widely known in the late 1920s when he challenged the Texas Bankers Association for a bounty system that encouraged the killing of bank robbers. He also earned renown for defending African-American suspects from lynch mobs, though his efforts weren’t enough to ward off catastrophe in May 1930, when an angry crowd in Sherman burned a courthouse to the ground to get a suspect. 

On Easter Sunday, April 1, 1934, at the intersection of Route 114 and Dove Road, near Grapevine, Texas (now Southlake), highway patrolmen H.D. Murphy and Edward Bryant Wheeler stopped their motorcycles thinking a motorist needed assistance. Barrow and Methvin or Parker opened fire with a shotgun and handgun, killing both officers. An eyewitness account said that Parker fired the fatal shots and this story received widespread coverage. Methvin later claimed that he fired the first shot after mistakenly assuming that Barrow wanted the officers killed. Barrow joined in, firing at Patrolman Murphy.

During the spring season, the Grapevine killings were recounted in exaggerated detail, affecting public perception; all four Dallas daily papers seized on the story told by the eyewitness, a farmer who claimed to have seen Parker laugh at the way that Murphy’s head “bounced like a rubber ball” on the ground as she shot him. The stories claimed that police found a cigar butt “with tiny teeth marks”, supposedly those of Parker. Several days later, Murphy’s fiancée wore her intended wedding dress to his funeral, attracting photos and newspaper coverage. The eyewitness’s ever-changing story was soon discredited, but the massive negative publicity increased the public clamor for the extermination of the Barrow Gang. The outcry galvanized the authorities into action, and Highway Patrol boss L.G. Phares offered a reward of $1,000 for “the dead bodies of the Grapevine slayers”—not their capture, just the bodies. Texas Governor Ma Ferguson added another reward of $500 for each of the two killers, which meant that, for the first time, “there was a specific price on Bonnie’s head since she was so widely believed to have shot H.D. Murphy”.

Public hostility increased five days later when Barrow and Methvin murdered 60-year-old Constable William “Cal” Campbell, a widower, and father, near Commerce, Oklahoma. They kidnapped Commerce police chief Percy Boyd, crossed the state line into Kansas, and let him go, giving him a clean shirt, a few dollars, and a request from Parker to tell the world that she did not smoke cigars. Boyd identified both Barrow and Parker to authorities, but he never learned Methvin’s name. The resultant arrest warrant for the Campbell murder specified “Clyde Barrow, Bonnie Parker, and John Doe”. Historian Knight writes: “For the first time, Bonnie was seen as a killer, actually pulling the trigger—just like Clyde. Whatever chance she had for clemency had just been reduced.” The Dallas Journal ran a cartoon on its editorial page, showing an empty electric chair with a sign on it saying “Reserved”, adding the words “Clyde and Bonnie”.

By May 1934, Barrow had 16 warrants outstanding against him for multiple counts of robbery, auto theft, theft, escape, assault, and murder in four states. Hamer, who had begun tracking the gang on February 12, led the posse. He had studied the gang’s movements and found that they swung in a circle skirting the edges of five mid-western states, exploiting the “state line” rule which prevented officers from pursuing a fugitive into another jurisdiction. Barrow was consistent in his movements, so Hamer charted his path and predicted where he would go. The gang’s itinerary centered on family visits, and they were due to see Methvin’s family in Louisiana. Unbeknownst to Hamer, Barrow had designated Methvin’s parents’ residence as a rendezvous in case they were separated. Methvin had become separated from the rest of the gang in Shreveport. Hamer’s posse was composed of six men: Texas officers Hamer, Hinton, Alcorn, and B.M. “Maney” Gault, and Louisiana officers Henderson Jordan and Prentiss Morel Oakley.

At approximately 9:15 am on May 23, the posse was still concealed in the bushes and almost ready to give up when they heard a vehicle approaching at high speed. In their official report, they stated they had persuaded Methvin to position his truck on the shoulder of the road that morning. They hoped Barrow would stop to speak with him, putting his vehicle close to the posse’s position in the bushes. The vehicle proved to be the Ford V8 with Barrow at the wheel and he slowed down as hoped. The six lawmen opened fire while the vehicle was still moving. Oakley fired first, probably before any order to do so. Barrow was shot in the head and died instantly from Oakley’s first shot and Hinton reported hearing Parker scream. The officers fired about 130 rounds, emptying each of their weapons into the car. The official report by parish coroner J. L. Wade listed seventeen entrance wounds on Barrow’s body and twenty-six on that of Parker, including several headshots to each, and another severed Barrow’s spinal column. Undertaker C.F. “Boots” Bailey had difficulty embalming the bodies because of all the bullet holes. The posse towed the Ford, with the dead bodies still inside, to the Conger Furniture Store & Funeral Parlor in downtown Arcadia, Louisiana. Preliminary embalming was done by Bailey in a small preparation room in the back of the furniture store, as it was common for furniture stores and undertakers to share the same space. The population of the northwest Louisiana town reportedly swelled from 2,000 to 12,000 within hours. Curious throngs arrived by train, horseback, buggy, and plane. Beer normally sold for 15 cents a bottle but it jumped to 25 cents, and sandwiches quickly sold out. Barrow had been shot in the head by a .35 Remington Model 8. Henry Barrow identified his son’s body, then sat weeping in a rocking chair in the furniture section.

H.D. Darby was an undertaker at the McClure Funeral Parlor and Sophia Stone was a home demonstration agent, both from nearby Ruston. Both of them came to Arcadia to identify the bodies because the Barrow gang had kidnapped them in 1933. Parker reportedly had laughed when she discovered that Darby was an undertaker. She remarked that maybe someday he would be working on her;

Darby did assist Bailey in the embalming.

Bonnie and Clyde wished to be buried side by side, but the Parker family would not allow it. Her mother wanted to grant her final wish to be brought home, but the mobs surrounding the Parker house made that impossible. More than 20,000 attended Parker’s funeral, and her family had difficulty reaching her gravesite. Parker’s services were held on May 26. Dr. Allen Campbell recalled that flowers came from everywhere, including some with cards allegedly from Pretty Boy Floyd and John Dillinger. The largest floral tribute was sent by a group of Dallas city newsboys; the sudden end of Bonnie and Clyde sold 500,000 newspapers in Dallas alone. Parker was buried in the Fishtrap Cemetery, although her body was moved in 1945 to the new Crown Hill Cemetery in Dallas.

Thousands of people gathered outside both Dallas funeral homes, hoping for a chance to view the bodies. Barrow’s private funeral was held at sunset on May 25. He was buried in Western Heights Cemetery in Dallas, next to his brother Marvin. The Barrow brothers share a single granite marker with their names on it and an epitaph selected by Clyde: “Gone but not forgotten.”

The American National Insurance Company of Galveston, Texas, paid the life insurance policies in full on Barrow and Parker. Since then, the policy of payouts has changed to exclude payouts in cases of deaths caused by any criminal act by the insured.

Parker’s niece and last surviving relative is campaigning to have her aunt buried next to Barrow.

The posse never received the promised bounty on the perpetrators, so they were told to take whatever they wanted from the confiscated items in their car. Hamer appropriated the arsenal of stolen guns and ammunition, plus a box of fishing tackle, under the terms of his compensation package with the Texas DOC. In July, Clyde’s mother Cumie wrote to Hamer asking for the return of the guns: “You don’t ever want to forget my boy was never tried in no court for murder, and no one is guilty until proven guilty by some court so I hope you will answer this letter and also return the guns I am asking for.”There is no record of any response.

Alcorn claimed Barrow’s saxophone from the car, but he later returned it to the Barrow family. Posse members also took other personal items, such as Parker’s clothing. The Parker family asked for them back but were refused, and the items were later sold as souvenirs. The Barrow family claimed that Sheriff Jordan kept an alleged suitcase of cash, and writer Jeff Guinn claims that Jordan bought a “barn and land in Arcadia” soon after the event, thereby hinting that the accusation had merit, despite the complete absence of any evidence to the existence of such a suitcase.

By the summer of 1934, new federal statutes made bank robbery and kidnapping federal offenses. The growing coordination of local authorities by the FBI, plus two-way radios in police cars, combined to make it more difficult to carry out a series of robberies and murders than it had been just months before. Two months after Gibsland, Dillinger was killed on the street in Chicago; three months after that, Floyd was killed in Ohio; and one month after that, Baby Face Nelson was killed in Illinois.

Parker’s niece and last surviving relative is campaigning to have her aunt buried next to Barrow.

Jordan attempted to keep the death car, but Ruth Warren of Topeka, Kansas, the vehicle’s legal owner, sued him. Jordan relented and allowed her to claim it in August 1934, still covered with blood and human tissue. The engine still ran, despite the damage the vehicle took during the ambush. Warren picked up the car in Arcadia and drove it to Shreveport, still in its gruesome state. From there, she had it trucked to Topeka.

The bullet-riddled  1934 Ford Model 40 B Fordor Deluxe sedan became a popular traveling attraction. The car was displayed at fairs, amusement parks, and flea markets for three decades, and once became a fixture at a Nevada race track. There was a charge of one dollar to sit in it.

In 1988, a casino near Las Vegas purchased it for about $250,000. As of 2022, the car and the shirt Barrow was wearing when killed are displayed at Primm Valley Resort & Casino in Primm, Nevada alongside Interstate 15.

Barrow’s enthusiasm for cars was evident in a letter he wrote from Tulsa, Oklahoma on April 10, 1934, to Henry Ford:

“While I still have got breath in my lungs I will tell you what a dandy car you make. I have drove Fords exclusively when I could get away with one. For sustained speed and freedom from trouble the Ford has got every other car skinned and even if my business hasn’t been strictly legal it don’t hurt anything to tell you what a fine car you got in the V-8.”

In February 1935, Dallas and federal authorities arrested and tried twenty family members and friends for aiding and abetting Barrow and Parker. This became known as the “harboring trial” and all twenty either pleaded guilty or were found guilty. The two mothers were jailed for thirty days; other sentences ranged from two years’ imprisonment (for Floyd Hamilton, brother of Raymond) to one hour in custody (for Barrow’s teenage sister Marie). Other defendants included Blanche, Jones, Methvin, and Parker’s sister Billie.

Blanche was permanently blinded in her left eye during the 1933 shootout at Dexfield Park. She was taken into custody on the charge of “assault with intent to kill“. She was convicted and sentenced to ten years in prison but was paroled in 1939 for good behavior. She returned to Dallas, leaving her life of crime in the past, and lived with her invalid father as his caregiver. In 1940, she married Eddie Frasure, worked as a taxi cab dispatcher and a beautician, and completed the terms of her parole one year later. She lived in peace with her husband until he died of cancer in 1969. She died from cancer at age 77 on December 24, 1988, and was buried in Dallas’s Grove Hill Memorial Park under the name “Blanche B. Frasure”. Barrow cohorts Hamilton and Palmer, who escaped Eastham in January 1934, were recaptured. Both were convicted of murder and executed in the electric chair at Huntsville, Texas on May 10, 1935.

Jones had left Barrow and Parker, six weeks after the three of them evaded officers at Dexfield Park in July 1933. He reached Houston and got a job picking cotton, where he was soon discovered and captured. He was returned to Dallas, where he dictated a “confession” in which he claimed to have been kept a prisoner by Barrow and Parker. Jones was convicted of the murder of Doyle Johnson and served a lenient sentence of fifteen years.

He gave an interview to Playboy magazine during the excitement surrounding the 1967 movie, saying that in reality, it had not been glamorous.

He was killed on August 4, 1974, in a misunderstanding by the jealous boyfriend of a woman whom he was trying to help.

Methvin was convicted in Oklahoma of the 1934 murder of Constable Campbell at Commerce. He was paroled in 1942 and killed by a train in 1948. He fell asleep drunk on the train tracks, although some have speculated that he was pushed by someone seeking revenge. His father Ivy was killed in 1946 by a hit-and-run driver. Parker’s husband Roy Thornton was sentenced to five years in prison for burglary in March 1933. He was killed by guards on October 3, 1937, during an escape attempt from Eastham prison.

Hamer returned to a quiet life as a freelance security consultant for oil companies. According to Guinn, “his reputation suffered somewhat after Gibsland” because many people felt that he had not given Barrow and Parker a fair chance to surrender. He made headlines again in 1948 when he and Governor Coke Stevenson unsuccessfully challenged the vote total achieved by Lyndon Johnson during the election for the U.S. Senate. He died in 1955 at the age of 71, after several years of poor health. Bob Alcorn died on May 23, 1964, 30 years to the day after the Gibsland ambush.

Prentiss Oakley admitted to friends that he had fired prematurely. He succeeded Henderson Jordan as sheriff of Bienville Parish in 1940.

Officials of the Texas Rangers, Texas Highway Patrol, and Texas Department of Public Safety honored the memory of patrolman Edward Bryan Wheeler on April 1, 2011, who was murdered along with officer H. D. Murphy by the Barrow gang on Easter Sunday, April 1, 1934. They presented the Yellow Rose of Texas commendation to his last surviving sibling, 95-year-old Ella Wheeler-McLeod of San Antonio, giving her a plaque and framed portrait of her brother.

Researching Bonnie, I found she was noticeably absent in much of her own Tale. My aim in making this video was to highlight Bonne outside the infamy of Bonnie and Clyde. To tell her story. I could not. Somehow I feel like I failed at my task. That as I continued telling the story of Bonnie. It grew more and more of the ill-fated lovers made in the stars. And yet, strangely, maybe that is the point. Perhaps that’s how Bonnie wanted it. She was bound to him when she met Clyde; call it fate or science. From that day on, she was no longer Bonnie Elizabeth Parker but Bonnie, Suicide Sal. The Bonnie to his Clyde. Sometimes a story forces you to tell a story outside of your desire. And Bonnie and Clydes doomed pairing fain stronger than my desire to tear them apart. To keep them separated as they are currently in death. To be reunited. If for a moment. To share a story. Often disturbing but hauntingly poetic.

Bonnie and Clyde killed eleven people, including nine law enforcement officers, during their two years of criminal activity from February 1932 to May 1934. Here are the names of the victims

• John Napoleon “J.N.” Bucher of Hillsboro, Texas: murdered April 30, 1932, in Hillsboro, TX
• Deputy Eugene Capell Moore of Atoka, Oklahoma: murdered August 5, 1932, in Stringtown, OK
• Howard Hall of Sherman, Texas: murdered October 11, 1932, in Sherman, TX
• Doyle Allie Myers Johnson of Temple, Texas: murdered December 26, 1932, in Temple, TX
• Deputy Malcolm Simmons Davis of Dallas, Texas: murdered January 6, 1933, in Dallas, TX
• Detective Harry Leonard McGinnis of Joplin, Missouri: murdered April 13, 1933, in Joplin, MO
• Constable John Wesley “Wes” Harryman of Joplin, Missouri: murdered April 13, 1933, in Joplin, MO
• Town Marshal Henry Dallas Humphrey of Alma, Arkansas: murdered June 26, 1933, in Alma, AR
• Prison Guard Major Joseph Crowson of Huntsville, Texas: murdered January 16, 1934, in Houston County, TX
• Patrolman Edward Bryan “Ed” Wheeler of Grapevine, Texas: murdered April 1, 1934, near Grapevine, TX
• Patrolman Holloway Daniel “H.D.” Murphy of Grapevine, Texas: murdered April 1, 1934, near Grapevine, TX
• Constable William Calvin “Cal” Campbell of Commerce, Oklahoma: murdered April 6, 1934, near Commerce, OK