The End is the Beginning

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,

“Some day, they’ll go down together

they’ll bury them side by side.

To few it’ll be grief,

to the law a relief

but it’s death for Bonnie and Clyde.”

Bonnie Parker

Today we look at the final days of Bonnie and Clyde.

Before Suicide Sal There Was Bonnie

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 was the second of three children to Henry and Emma Parker. 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. 

I’m going to skip over the details of Clyde Barrow and the Barrow gang. There’s a lot of information out there, and honestly I don’t have enough time on this video. So I am going to fast forward to May 1934. Now the Barrow gang consist of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, 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.

Final Days of Bonnie and Clyde

By May, Barrow had 16 warrants outstanding against him for multiple counts of robbery, auto theft, theft, escape, assault, and murder in four states. Frank 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. 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.

May 23 1934

At approximately 9:15 am on May 23 1934, 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. Henry Barrow identified his son’s body, then sat weeping in a rocking chair.

Separated In Death

Bonnie and Clyde wished to be buried side by side, but the Parker family would not allow it.
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.”

Aftermath

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 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.

Final Thoughts

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. 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