July 3, 2024 • 37 mins
Bonnie and Clyde killed at least nine police officers and four civilians during their 21-month crime spree from 1932 to 1934. The couple were also responsible for several Bank robberies, gas stations hold-ups , and burglaries. They weren't very good thieves, as they rarely got away with more than $80. In this episode of Body Bags, Joseph Scott Morgan will explain how Bonnie Parker suffered so many bullet holes her body had to be plugged to hold embalming fluid, and Dave Mack will take you behind the scenes in the woods with Frank Hamer and Manny Gault as they brought down the murderous "Bonnie and Clyde".
Transcript Highlights
00:00:10 Introduction of human destruction
00:02:09 Description of Bienville Parish
00:05:24 Description of Bonnie and Clyde car on display
00:08:14 Discussion Bonnie 23, Clyde 25
00:11:15 Talk about Bonnie and Clyde murder young cop
00:15:11 Discussion about State Coroners convention
00:18:05 Discussion about transcribing
00:21:32 Talk about Bonnie and Clyde murdering cops
00:25:57 Discussion of BB Episode about Coroner system
00:28:21 Talk about autopsy of famous people
00:31:41 Discussion of Dr. Wade and others at the autopsy
00:35:00 Discussion of injuries suffered by Bonnie Parker
00:37:42 Conclusion: Bonnie and Clyde meet their end
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Body does, but Joseph's gotten more. There's an old adage
that says, throughout history, the victors write the story, that
they essentially put forth the narrative from their perspective of
how things happened. And you know, it can be stated
(00:23):
that that comment, if you will, that adage applies primarily
to the rise and fall of civilizations and to wars.
But there was a smaller war, very smaller war that
took place back in the thirties in Middle America. And
(00:48):
interestingly enough, even though the quote unquote good guys prevailed
in the end, history doesn't exactly reflect the truth today.
Looking back, we're going to discuss a period in time
(01:12):
ninety years ago. Today, we're going to talk about the
deaths of multiple police officers at the hands of two
of the most infamous cop killers in American history, Bonnie
(01:33):
and Clyde. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is body
packs Dave mac my friend. When I hear the name Bienville,
(01:54):
it evokes memories of my hometown of New Orleans.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
And how far is it from New Orleans.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Well, Bienville itself, there's multiple streets, are multiple locations in
New Orleans, that have the name Beingville and it's a
uniquely French name. But the odd thing about it is
we're going to talk about Benville Parish, and Benville Parish
is nowhere near New Orleans. As a matter of fact,
it would probably take you, because there's not a really
(02:24):
good director out. It probably takes you about four hours
to get there from from New Orleans. It's the parish itself.
And remember, you know, in my home state, they don't
have counties that parishes, and Benville Parish actually is closer
to the Arkansas border than it is Gulf of Mexico, and.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
That gives me a much better idea.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
And it's not near the Mississippi River. As a matter
of fact, if you were to show up in Benville
Parish day and ride through, and all of North Louisiana
has this kind of reputation, it doesn't remind most people
of what you commonly think of when you think about Louisiana,
which is swamps and Cajun culture and Creole culture. You
(03:18):
feel like you're in Texas, like an annex of Texas.
In North Louisiana along the Eye twenty corridor running through there,
there's horse farms everywhere and rolling hills. Now they're not
huge hills, but it's rolling hills. The soil is red clay.
It's not that dark, dark gumbos that they call it
gumbo soil that's down there, you know, that's associated with
(03:40):
the decay of vegetation and that sort of thing, very swampy.
It's not like that. It looks like more like you're
heading to Texas, and you are, because this is not
too far from Shreeport. And you know that Shreeport on
the E twenty corridor is kind of the gateway out
of Louisiana into Texas. You continue on down that road
out of Report headed westbound, and you'll be in Texas
(04:03):
pretty soon. So but you know, Benville Parish is where
Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker actually met their end in
a halo of gunfire. And I think that most people
understand that. And you know the infamous you know, desert
(04:24):
colored sedan that they were in that was bullet ridden.
But I got it. I know I've been prattling on,
but I got to tell you what initially got me
interested in this, other than the fact that it took
place in Louisiana, And and I actually have seen that car.
It used to when I was little, That car that
(04:46):
Bonnie and Clyde died in used to be placed up
on the back of a flatbed truck and they take
it all over the South to fairs and people could
see it. It's kind of a gruesome kind of thing.
But you know, that's compares to the world that we
inhabit now. It's kind of tame when you begin to
think about it.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
You know, you can still see the car.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
Yeah, yeah, John can't.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Play at the Prim Valley Resort and casino.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
Yeah, yeah, isn't that something? And I was telling you
about my son Noah the other day up in I
guess Ripley's I think the crime usum or something up
in Pigeon Forge. You see Ted Bundy's car right there,
the Volkswagen and John Wayne Gacy's clown suits and all
that sort of thing. So it's rather macabre. But yeah,
(05:32):
it's a it's a fascinating bit of certainly crime history,
and it's it's kind of woven its way through through
our tails. I think, you know when you think about it.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Well, when you mentioned the color of it, Joe, most
of us don't know because we've only seen black and
white photos unless you've seen it in person.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
I haven't.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
I've only seen it in pictures, and some of the
pictures that we've seen or that have been shown are
pretty graphic in terms of the bullets in the car
and the shots that were on Bonnie and Clyde. I
know there have been some over the years, not leaked
to the press, but published by newspapers all over the
country because this was at the era in the early
(06:14):
thirties where the Great Depression had set in and banks
were in disfavor with most Americans at the time. The
banks were blamed for a lot of the undoing of
our financial structure in this country. And so at first,
when you had these people that Bonnie and Clyde, Dillinger,
pretty Boy Floyd, you know, you had a whole litten.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Baby face Nelson.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
Yes, they all had nick they had nicknames that just
you know, there was they were celebrities in a way.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
They were no not no, you're absolutely right. And Capone
Oh yeah, I mean copone. I mean, and I know
that that's a little bit different, but they're all kind
of swirling around that same toilet bowl. Yeah, yeah, you're
absolutely right.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
And when this one on Capone was in Alcatraz by
Ben by the thirties, wasn't he?
Speaker 1 (07:07):
I think it was. It was a little bit later
in the thirties or maybe the early forties. Oh wow,
wound up Percy wound up dying of syphilis.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Why is that?
Speaker 3 (07:15):
You and I go right there every time he died
of the things they warned us about in health class
in seventh or eighth grade.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
There you go, all right?
Speaker 3 (07:24):
Anyway, Bonnie and Clyde, they were very young. Oh yeah
when they started their life of crime. Bonnie had already
been married and actually was currently married when she met
Clyde Barrow. I think she was like nineteen, she was nineteen, yeah, yeah,
and she was already married and her husband was in jail,
(07:45):
and they hit it off. But Clyde ended up in
the clink very shortly after he met Bonnie. He ended
up in jail and she actually they met and just connected.
You You hear of stories of people talking about love
sight and things like that. Yeah, Bonnie and Clyde very
close to that. Again, she was already married to somebody else.
He's in prison. Clyde had been in and out of
(08:07):
jail by the way. To give you an idea of
how old they were. Clyde was twenty five, Bonnie was
twenty three when they were killed.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
Yeah, and you're not talking about a huge amount of tom.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
No, very short window here. And it was Bonnie Parker
that smuggled the gun into Clyde in prison for him
to break out of jail. Yeah, that's they just connected
so fast and boom. She didn't do that for her husband,
but she did it for Clyde.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Did it for Clyde and he was and he's a
little bidial guy. She was tiny as well. I think
that people build these folks up so that they're you
know that you think that they're giants walking the earth,
and they're really not. And when you think about how
much devastation they reaked that it was roughly a two
(09:01):
year period.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Like twenty month.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
There's a twenty one month span from the beginning to
the end of killing.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
And by the way, they were.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
Not good thieves, you know, they were not bank robbers
that made a lot of money. They'd never actually scored
a lot of money. I think their average take was
like eighty bucks. What they were was they were soulless,
merciless killers who killed more police officers than civilians.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Think about that. Yeah, they did. And I think that's
an extension. And I've heard this reported before. You know that,
you know Clyde. Apparently he wound up in prison as
a result. They hooked him up on a beef over
stolen chicken, and that's kind of his first entree into this.
No pun intended there. And then I think he failed
(09:53):
to return a rental car of all things. But here's
what happened when he got in side with the penitentiary
or the jail in Texas. He wound up getting raped
multiple times inside of that institution. And so and like
(10:14):
I said, he was a really tiny guy and he
probably had a really hard time defending himself. There was
a prison guard that is counted on his scorecard as
a result of a death, you know, And so that
extension of police officers if you crossed his path, Because
(10:39):
let's face it, heat this is kind of an interesting take,
and I don't know if people have really thought about this.
We talk a lot about serial killers, and we have
now for decades. Can you, Dave Mack, my friend, remember
any serial killer that targeted police officers?
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Wow?
Speaker 1 (11:01):
No, And he found a compatriot in Bonnie. Yeah, and
they were out to kill cops. I mean, and these
these are young, young fellows that they're killing, and many
of them had families.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
And you know, you mentioned young Joe. Very quickly.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
The tide turned on Bonnie and Clyde because of the
killing of a police officer on Easter Sunday who was
on his second day on the job. Up until then,
they were folk heroes, you know, they were robbing banks
that had, you know, destroyed people's lives. Killing police officers.
I don't know what the I don't know what the
average take was on that in the nineteen thirties. I
(11:43):
don't know, but I do know this after there was,
like before the killing of the police officer on that
Easter Sunday, there was kind of a groundswell of support
entertainment value of watching the Shenanigans of Bonnie and Clyde
in the Barrow game. After that murder for no reason,
killing these two police officers, not in the shootout, not
(12:06):
in a shootout. That was when people, Okay, these are
evil people. We got to get them, you know, we
have to take them out now. And that's what led
to the beginning. That was the beginning of the end.
Granted they were being hunted, but.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
Yeah, they were, and they became you know, they used
to love to use the term mad dog. Yeah, I
mad dog Killer. And there was actually a guy who's
associated with the New York Underworld Underworld. I think it
was mad Dog McCall was his name. And as a
(12:40):
matter of fact, I think the movie The Cotton Club
back in the eighties, maybe eighty four, Nicholas Cage actually
played a character that's based on that guy and went
by that name, and so they used that term mad
and I think and it's an easy you know, when
you're a rural person and you've got a dog out
(13:03):
in the yard that's foaming at the mouth, that's baring
its teeth, and you know what's going on. It not
just indicates danger, but it also indicates a disease, a
level of lethality that you know that if you don't
(13:23):
put them down. And I'm gonna stop, Dave. I got
a question for you, brother, have you have you ever
done something that felt wrong when you were doing it
(13:51):
but it really wasn't wrong, but yet you had this
kind of feeling, you know, like and if somebody saw
me doing this or getting caught with this, I'd be
in trouble. Has that ever happened to you. I'm not
asking to reveal any deep dark secrets here, but.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Boy, okay, I'll go along with that and say yes.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
And that's all I'm going to get out of you.
Oh look, man, this is I tell you, this is bogus. Man.
I was really hoping we were going to open the
vault here on Dave mac No.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
I can't you know what, Joe.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
I look at now, a statue of limitations. You know,
you start thinking about I always said if I ever
ran for office, my slogan would be yes, I did
you know?
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Just because well, I.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
Gotta tell you something real quick that I felt I
had that feeling about myself when and it has to
do with Bonnie and Claude. Yeah, I guess it was
probably nineteen eighty eight or eighty seven. I can't recall.
(15:06):
Went to a state corners convention in Louisiana, where I
was working at the time, and it's kind of that's
as you can imagine, it's kind of an interesting event
to go to, particularly if you were not in that world,
if you were an observer and you could come in
because you can imagine all the stories that are being
told in this environment. I think that it might make
(15:27):
some people at crime con blush more than likely because
they you know you, and particularly during that time period,
all those years, all those years ago, there were you know,
so many things that were going on relative to serial
killings and just horrible crimes that a lot of people
had never heard of because you didn't have the vast
media coverage. But back to my big reveal here. When
(15:50):
I was there, I was with my mentor. It was
my first first time I'd ever been, and it was
my mentor that had trained me as a death investigator arguably,
in my opinion, probably the best forensic scientist and practitioner
I've ever been around in my life. That was Bill.
(16:12):
Bill introduced me to a group of people that were
Corners from North Louisiana. Now remember we're down in New
Orleans and we're chatting and I met the corner from
being vill Perish and he tells Bill, I've got something
(16:33):
for you, but don't tell anybody. You know. Bill says,
you know, he's like talking to me, and He's like,
I don't know what he's got, but he says, I
can't tell anybody, but I'm telling you. And the next
thing I knew, Bill's like waving me over to the side, right,
and this is we went we were tired somewhere for drinks,
(16:56):
all right, and we're kind of hold up in a
lounge and he says, you're not going to believe what
I've got. I was like, okay, hit me, I said,
does this have something to do with the guy from Benvilpairs.
He's like, yeah, You're not gonna believe what I got.
I was like, okay, what have you got? He says,
I've got a copy of the Corners records from Bonnie
(17:21):
and Clyde's examination post mortem. I was like what, because
you know, back during that time, Dave, as you well know,
you've been in the you've been in media for quite
quite a while. You remember, back you didn't have access
to this kind of stuff. Now you can just go
online like you can. And if you go online now
you can actually see the Corner's jury report that's written
(17:46):
out in longhand it looks like it's written in pencil.
It's the same one that I was given all those
years now and now it's everywhere, you know, and it's
been transcribed because I remember sitting down day when I
got this thing, because day day, I'm sorry, Bill made
a copy of it for me when we got back,
and it's on legal, legal sized paper, so you had
(18:06):
to load legal paper into the copier. He made me
copies of this thing, and I actually had to take
a magnifying glass out and try to make out because
this is all written in longhand none of this stuff
was typed up. And all of a sudden, the world
kind of burst open for me because for the first
(18:28):
time I'd seen images, you know, in publications and all
these sorts of things. I'd heard the tales as a kid,
I'd seen the car. But when you have that document
in front of you that recorded this event and these
people that were there and they're actually relaying what they
(18:50):
saw in regards to bonding, Clyde was it was quite amazing.
It really was, because you had a clothing description, you know.
The only only point of reference I had, I don't
know about you was Faye Dunaway and Warren Baby, you know,
in that movie from back in the sixties, which is
(19:11):
horrible because I think that it, you know, it further
propagated this idea that these people were were heroes and
isn't that isn't that horrible? You know, kind of how
they painted this relative to these people. And we've had
this this evolution over a period of time, and I
hope that it continues. But you know, in addition to
(19:36):
for folks that have never been to that area up there,
it's it's beenvil perish and it's it's obviously not populated
by the most wealthy people in the world. They're salt
of the earth people that grind a life out. They
make their they make their living, you know, in aggra
based stuff or their pulp witters. And here's something fascinating
(19:58):
that that I discovered becau. I went out to the site,
the location of where the ambush took place, because you know,
Kim and I we were on the road and we
were like, hey, here's Gibbsland, because that's the address that
it carries. But it's actually about eight miles outside of Gibbsland,
and so it's a two lane state highway and it's
(20:21):
got new growth pine forest on both sides of the
road that has obviously been harvested for pulpwood over the years.
And there is this stone monument that sits in this
kind of dusty red clay area just off the shoulder
of the road, and over the years it's been chipped away.
(20:41):
There's chunks of it that are missing because people show
up with a hammer or chisel and they'll take a
piece of it. And there's weird poetry that's been scribbled
or left in bottles that kind of occupies this space
around there. And then when you look across the road
from where this thing is, and this was kind of interesting,
(21:02):
there are these tiny, these tiny little wellheads that are
capped off that the field is just populated with and
those are natural gas wellheads, right, and you know, and
I find that there's a bit of irony I think
in that regarding their deaths. You know, they sought, they
sought this fantastic you know idea that yeah, we're gonna
(21:28):
murder cops, we're gonna try to pick up some money
along the way, and here they are, you know, they're
just absolutely riddled there in that spot, allegedly. And then
across the way is a field that is representative of
all the money in the world that you could ever
want if you had access to it. And so, you know,
(21:51):
I don't know, Serve God or mammon, I guess, but
you know, you look there and you see that and
it's kind of kind of a fascinating bit, but it's isolated, Dave.
This location is so far out there. And you know
when when Hamer, who is the retired UH Texas ranger.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
Frank Hammer, and many Gault that were out.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
There, yeah, in many gal and they they went out
there with a posse and it was it was a
posse and they they they sat and waited in that
brush line, and you know there's been reports. I don't know, Dave,
if you've ever gotten gotten covered in red bugs at
(22:34):
any point in time in your life, these guys had
red bugs on them. It's May, it's North Louisiana. It's hot,
it's humid, you're dehydrated, and you don't know when these
people are going to show up. Because they were going
actually to the home of the parent of one of
their compatriots.
Speaker 3 (22:52):
It was actually Henry Methlin. It was just Body and
Clyde at this point, and the Frank Hamer and many
Gaal knew that they were probably going to be paying
a visit to Henry Metfin or his family just didn't
need a place to sleep because Bonnie had been hurt
in a car accident in June of nineteen thirty three.
(23:13):
Her face was burned, her arms were burned, her chest
was caved in. According to Blanche, she had injuries from
this accident that she never recovered from, and they had
to take time for her to get off the road
for a little while. And that's where they thought they'd
be heading to Henry Methven's dad. And that's why Frank
Hammer Hamer and many gal actually camped out and waited.
(23:37):
And it was not hours, it was days.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
It was days.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
And you mentioned the bugs, and that's the one thing
that was written about these guys, Hammer Galt and a
couple other guys. They're waiting, They're waiting in the bushes.
They're waiting for Bonnie and Clyde to come driving by.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
So let me ask something. Do you know why they
were were waiting? Do you know why they were willing
to endure that heat and that humidity and red bugs
and skeeters and all manner of everything else that was
up in the brush there along along with them, maybe
copper heads and rattlesnakes and everything else that's in that area.
(24:19):
You're talking about spring they had had it up to hear.
I think what it comes down to is that Frank
Hamer and his posse wanted to be on one level
that reassurance that they were wearing white hats and that
(24:44):
they were going to do whatever they possibly could to
bring a resolution to this horror and quiet the public.
Because it's one thing for some newspaper and some far
flung place away from Beingville Parish, Louisiana, up in New
(25:06):
York or Chicago at the time, or maybe even La
to write a piece about how romantic this all is.
But when you're down on the ground and you're a
cop store owner or maybe working in a bank, you
live your life in terror. Hey, Dave, you remember a
(25:37):
couple of weeks ago when we did an episode of
body Bags on the Corner System. Yeah, do you recall that?
Speaker 3 (25:45):
I remember studying after the fact. That was the most
enlighten I learned so much on that episode, and a
number of people have actually sent in emails about how
much we all learned. It was like be any class.
But I just remember when you and I fail, I went, Okay,
I got to figure this out.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
It's a it's a it's a weird world that you
enter into when you walk to the door with Joseph
Scott Morgan. I'm sorry for I'm sorry for any trauma.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
It was awesome. I had no idea, Joe.
Speaker 3 (26:13):
I mean, it was one of those things where I
had no you know, one of the things you don't
know what you don't know.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
I had no idea what I didn't know.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
Well, the corner system in Louisiana is interesting. It's interesting everywhere,
but you know, unlike other states, in Louisiana there are
a couple others, but specifically I'm speaking to Louisiana. In
order to run for the office of corner there, you
have to be a physician, and that has always been
(26:43):
the case. It's not that's not something new under the sun.
And you know, when there was a uh an exam
that had to be conducted on the remain means of
Bonnie and Clyde, it was it fell to the corner
(27:05):
of beingvill parish at that particular time to you know,
to facilitate that, had to make it happen, and it was,
you know, it was it was done. Doctor Wade was
actually the corner there. And you know, go hey, let's
the old country.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
Doctor when you have like a case that is this big,
that has national, you know, international coverage of this these people,
is there not a way to bring in somebody at
the fact, you know, bigger, more educated. I mean, I
know that the law requires that it is handled like
right here, but kind of like when JFK was killed
(27:45):
thirty years later, they took his body out of Dallas
and got it to Washington, d C. Granted he was
the president, but these people are famous criminals. They've broken
the law in several states. Was there any thought that
we need to bring somebody else in to do the
autopsy or was he just get it done and get
them out.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
Yeah, hang on for a minute, because I got to
tell you, relative to JFK, they did not take take him,
certainly to the finest that was available. They went to
the bottom of the barrel. As far as I'm concerned with.
With Bonnie and Clyde, however it was, it was the
office of Corner and being Vialparish, you know, reflecting back,
(28:21):
I told you about the about the you know, the
report that that I'd been given, you know, all all
these many years ago that I wanted to talk about
and this sort of thing, and The thing is is handwritten.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
Which I could not understand when you told me you
got a magnifying glass.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
I looked at it. I looked at this ball you're
going over, and I'm like, how did you read that?
Speaker 1 (28:42):
I mean, yeah, yeah, it's it's it's something to see
and look. Anybody can see it. I recommend you know.
All you got to do is is you know, uh
is google search? Yeah, Google search office. You know, the
the Corners Report of the bodies of Bonnie and Clyde Parker,
and you'll find it. It's there and it's really it's
(29:02):
very difficult to kind of decipher. But you know, looking
back in time and when I saw this thing, I
thought that they did a pretty good job. But you
know what's really interesting about body in Clyde's case, Davis,
they didn't actually do an autopsy. I don't know if
you know that. No, they did not actually do an autopsy.
You had what was impaneled back then. It's called a
(29:26):
corner's jury, and it was a collection of men. Corner's
juries are a thing and it's almost like, I don't
know how to describe it other than kind of like
a grand jury where you're trying to where a grand
jury you're trying to decide if there is enough information
(29:48):
to indict somebody, if you're going to true bill or
no true bill. A case, right, a criminal case with
a corner's jury. Their purpose was to be there for
the corner to present evidence to them that how they
were going to rule the death. Okay, what are they
going to call this? Are they going to call this homicide? Suicide?
(30:11):
You know, what are they going to call this? And obviously,
you know, we sit here and we think about, uh
well it was pretty obvious, you know how Bonnie died there. Yes,
it is. This is a homicide. Yeah, absolutely, I mean
there's nothing there that wasn't accidental. It's not suicide. Uh
you know, yeah yeah. And it's just like just like
(30:33):
a you know, uh, an execution in a state penitentiary
is a homicide. Okay, you can't call it anything else.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
Period.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
And so they impaneled a jury, a corner jury, and
it's not that they had trouble determinant. But it goes
back to an interesting statement you made just a moment ago.
This is going to be the official record going forward,
forever and ever and ever and ever. Amen. And the
(31:06):
fascinating thing is that when they're looking at this, you've
got all of these men that are impaneled on this
jury with a corner being the leader of it, and
they're there to verify because who else is going to verify?
Remember the world that they're living in. They're living in
(31:28):
a world Dave that news. I mean, it doesn't move
move at the speed that say, the Pony Express moved at.
But you know, you're still working with telegraphs, they're using telephone.
I think there may have been a rudimentary facts by
that by that point in time, I think they called
it something else. But you still it moves slowly. You
(31:51):
had to have somebody there that would that would verify
that these people were in fact dead, and it's better
than just having one person to verify the death. You
got a whole group of people. And not only do
you have a group, all these guys are signing off
on this, and you can see the list of their signatures.
You know when you look down, when you look down
the page on this thing, they're all there and their
(32:13):
names are affixed to this documents. As odd as it is,
there were looking at it physically looking at it. Right now,
there's five people that have signed onto this, in addition
to doctor Wade who was there, and you know, they
go into, you know, great detail about describing the bodies
(32:36):
and the injuries. You know, Bonnie, Bonnie actually received the
worst of it. Not that what Clyde had received wasn't
wasn't bad, but there's a story that goes on out
there relative to Bonnie's body. And just imagine this. She
(32:59):
was hit so many times and I'll go into kind
of the nastiness of these wounds in just a second,
but just kind of let me set this up. She
was shot so many times that they actually had a
very difficult time embalming her body. So just imagine we
have to think about the way the embalming process works.
(33:19):
It's a profusion of embalming fluid, you know, in the
major vessels of the body. The bodies on a table,
it's kind of tilted from the head down. They've got
these trow cars that they go into the body with
and they start their little pump. In days gone past,
the mortician would use a foot pump, you know, to
(33:40):
infuse the body with the embalming fluid. Well, can you
imagine that, And they still have to do this today.
With multiple gunshot one cases, but they had she was
springing leaks and let that set in just for a second.
So you've got the vessels that carry the blood obviously
(34:00):
are now being perfused with embalming fluid. And the way
the thing works is through gravity. You're as as the
body is being profused with the embalming fluid. Traditionally you
can see the line coming out of the body and
the blood is being pushed out of the body. It
is being replaced by embalming fluid. Well, it wasn't getting
(34:21):
to that point. The holes were there and the body
had to be plugged in order to take on the
embalming fluid.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Joe, I was.
Speaker 3 (34:30):
Looking at the list of these injuries and it was
listed out on Bonnie. Okay, on Bonnie. I actually had
to look at this several times because you mentioned probably
written in pencil. Yeah, the penmanship is weak. But shot
in the left breast going into chest. This was a
description of a bullet wound shot four inches below the ear.
(34:54):
Another shot entering above the right knee, two shots front leg,
two shots right leg, gunshot wound around edge of hair
one and a half inches above the left ear. Another
threw the mouth on the left side, exiting at top
of jaw, another at middle just below left jaw, another
(35:20):
above clavical left side, going into the neck, another entering
chest two inches below the inner side of the left shoulder.
Two shots about two inches below the left shoulder, fracturing
the bone. Another wound on the elbow of the left arm,
another entering left chest above the heart, breaking ribs. Six
(35:44):
shots entering three inches on back region left side. Five
pellet wounds about the middle of the left side. Cuts
from glass on the ankle, cut on top of left foot,
apparently from glass cut on center of right thigh, cut
six inches in length, about three and a half inches
(36:07):
center of right leg. Eight metal fragments centering across the
front of face.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
There you go, wow, So it's yeah, it's.
Speaker 2 (36:20):
Now, I see, I get that. By the way, that's
not the complete list.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
No, No, it goes on, and you know, Clydes is
almost as robust. But you know, they wanted obviously, the
purpose here was to make sure that they were I
used the term neutralized just a month ago, and that's
a very clinical term. But they wanted. They were mad
dogs and they knew the importance of putting them down.
(36:43):
First off, I think probably and this is me projecting
because I you know, I wouldn't presume to get inside
their mind, but you know, I think that any right
there's right thinking person would probably conclude that not only
did they need to neutralize this threat, but they needed
(37:04):
to send a message. They need to send a message
to those individuals that thought that they could go out
and randomly do whatever they wanted to do, which includes
murdering police officers. And of course they brought this to
an end. And right quick, I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and
(37:29):
this is Bodybacks.
Body does, but Joseph's gotten more. There's an old adage
that says, throughout history, the victors write the story, that
they essentially put forth the narrative from their perspective of
how things happened. And you know, it can be stated
(00:23):
that that comment, if you will, that adage applies primarily
to the rise and fall of civilizations and to wars.
But there was a smaller war, very smaller war that
took place back in the thirties in Middle America. And
(00:48):
interestingly enough, even though the quote unquote good guys prevailed
in the end, history doesn't exactly reflect the truth today.
Looking back, we're going to discuss a period in time
(01:12):
ninety years ago. Today, we're going to talk about the
deaths of multiple police officers at the hands of two
of the most infamous cop killers in American history, Bonnie
(01:33):
and Clyde. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is body
packs Dave mac my friend. When I hear the name Bienville,
(01:54):
it evokes memories of my hometown of New Orleans.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
And how far is it from New Orleans.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Well, Bienville itself, there's multiple streets, are multiple locations in
New Orleans, that have the name Beingville and it's a
uniquely French name. But the odd thing about it is
we're going to talk about Benville Parish, and Benville Parish
is nowhere near New Orleans. As a matter of fact,
it would probably take you, because there's not a really
(02:24):
good director out. It probably takes you about four hours
to get there from from New Orleans. It's the parish itself.
And remember, you know, in my home state, they don't
have counties that parishes, and Benville Parish actually is closer
to the Arkansas border than it is Gulf of Mexico, and.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
That gives me a much better idea.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
And it's not near the Mississippi River. As a matter
of fact, if you were to show up in Benville
Parish day and ride through, and all of North Louisiana
has this kind of reputation, it doesn't remind most people
of what you commonly think of when you think about Louisiana,
which is swamps and Cajun culture and Creole culture. You
(03:18):
feel like you're in Texas, like an annex of Texas.
In North Louisiana along the Eye twenty corridor running through there,
there's horse farms everywhere and rolling hills. Now they're not
huge hills, but it's rolling hills. The soil is red clay.
It's not that dark, dark gumbos that they call it
gumbo soil that's down there, you know, that's associated with
(03:40):
the decay of vegetation and that sort of thing, very swampy.
It's not like that. It looks like more like you're
heading to Texas, and you are, because this is not
too far from Shreeport. And you know that Shreeport on
the E twenty corridor is kind of the gateway out
of Louisiana into Texas. You continue on down that road
out of Report headed westbound, and you'll be in Texas
(04:03):
pretty soon. So but you know, Benville Parish is where
Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker actually met their end in
a halo of gunfire. And I think that most people
understand that. And you know the infamous you know, desert
(04:24):
colored sedan that they were in that was bullet ridden.
But I got it. I know I've been prattling on,
but I got to tell you what initially got me
interested in this, other than the fact that it took
place in Louisiana, And and I actually have seen that car.
It used to when I was little, That car that
(04:46):
Bonnie and Clyde died in used to be placed up
on the back of a flatbed truck and they take
it all over the South to fairs and people could
see it. It's kind of a gruesome kind of thing.
But you know, that's compares to the world that we
inhabit now. It's kind of tame when you begin to
think about it.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
You know, you can still see the car.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
Yeah, yeah, John can't.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Play at the Prim Valley Resort and casino.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
Yeah, yeah, isn't that something? And I was telling you
about my son Noah the other day up in I
guess Ripley's I think the crime usum or something up
in Pigeon Forge. You see Ted Bundy's car right there,
the Volkswagen and John Wayne Gacy's clown suits and all
that sort of thing. So it's rather macabre. But yeah,
(05:32):
it's a it's a fascinating bit of certainly crime history,
and it's it's kind of woven its way through through
our tails. I think, you know when you think about it.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Well, when you mentioned the color of it, Joe, most
of us don't know because we've only seen black and
white photos unless you've seen it in person.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
I haven't.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
I've only seen it in pictures, and some of the
pictures that we've seen or that have been shown are
pretty graphic in terms of the bullets in the car
and the shots that were on Bonnie and Clyde. I
know there have been some over the years, not leaked
to the press, but published by newspapers all over the
country because this was at the era in the early
(06:14):
thirties where the Great Depression had set in and banks
were in disfavor with most Americans at the time. The
banks were blamed for a lot of the undoing of
our financial structure in this country. And so at first,
when you had these people that Bonnie and Clyde, Dillinger,
pretty Boy Floyd, you know, you had a whole litten.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Baby face Nelson.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
Yes, they all had nick they had nicknames that just
you know, there was they were celebrities in a way.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
They were no not no, you're absolutely right. And Capone
Oh yeah, I mean copone. I mean, and I know
that that's a little bit different, but they're all kind
of swirling around that same toilet bowl. Yeah, yeah, you're
absolutely right.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
And when this one on Capone was in Alcatraz by
Ben by the thirties, wasn't he?
Speaker 1 (07:07):
I think it was. It was a little bit later
in the thirties or maybe the early forties. Oh wow,
wound up Percy wound up dying of syphilis.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Why is that?
Speaker 3 (07:15):
You and I go right there every time he died
of the things they warned us about in health class
in seventh or eighth grade.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
There you go, all right?
Speaker 3 (07:24):
Anyway, Bonnie and Clyde, they were very young. Oh yeah
when they started their life of crime. Bonnie had already
been married and actually was currently married when she met
Clyde Barrow. I think she was like nineteen, she was nineteen, yeah, yeah,
and she was already married and her husband was in jail,
(07:45):
and they hit it off. But Clyde ended up in
the clink very shortly after he met Bonnie. He ended
up in jail and she actually they met and just connected.
You You hear of stories of people talking about love
sight and things like that. Yeah, Bonnie and Clyde very
close to that. Again, she was already married to somebody else.
He's in prison. Clyde had been in and out of
(08:07):
jail by the way. To give you an idea of
how old they were. Clyde was twenty five, Bonnie was
twenty three when they were killed.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
Yeah, and you're not talking about a huge amount of tom.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
No, very short window here. And it was Bonnie Parker
that smuggled the gun into Clyde in prison for him
to break out of jail. Yeah, that's they just connected
so fast and boom. She didn't do that for her husband,
but she did it for Clyde.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Did it for Clyde and he was and he's a
little bidial guy. She was tiny as well. I think
that people build these folks up so that they're you
know that you think that they're giants walking the earth,
and they're really not. And when you think about how
much devastation they reaked that it was roughly a two
(09:01):
year period.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Like twenty month.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
There's a twenty one month span from the beginning to
the end of killing.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
And by the way, they were.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
Not good thieves, you know, they were not bank robbers
that made a lot of money. They'd never actually scored
a lot of money. I think their average take was
like eighty bucks. What they were was they were soulless,
merciless killers who killed more police officers than civilians.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Think about that. Yeah, they did. And I think that's
an extension. And I've heard this reported before. You know that,
you know Clyde. Apparently he wound up in prison as
a result. They hooked him up on a beef over
stolen chicken, and that's kind of his first entree into this.
No pun intended there. And then I think he failed
(09:53):
to return a rental car of all things. But here's
what happened when he got in side with the penitentiary
or the jail in Texas. He wound up getting raped
multiple times inside of that institution. And so and like
(10:14):
I said, he was a really tiny guy and he
probably had a really hard time defending himself. There was
a prison guard that is counted on his scorecard as
a result of a death, you know, And so that
extension of police officers if you crossed his path, Because
(10:39):
let's face it, heat this is kind of an interesting take,
and I don't know if people have really thought about this.
We talk a lot about serial killers, and we have
now for decades. Can you, Dave Mack, my friend, remember
any serial killer that targeted police officers?
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Wow?
Speaker 1 (11:01):
No, And he found a compatriot in Bonnie. Yeah, and
they were out to kill cops. I mean, and these
these are young, young fellows that they're killing, and many
of them had families.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
And you know, you mentioned young Joe. Very quickly.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
The tide turned on Bonnie and Clyde because of the
killing of a police officer on Easter Sunday who was
on his second day on the job. Up until then,
they were folk heroes, you know, they were robbing banks
that had, you know, destroyed people's lives. Killing police officers.
I don't know what the I don't know what the
average take was on that in the nineteen thirties. I
(11:43):
don't know, but I do know this after there was,
like before the killing of the police officer on that
Easter Sunday, there was kind of a groundswell of support
entertainment value of watching the Shenanigans of Bonnie and Clyde
in the Barrow game. After that murder for no reason,
killing these two police officers, not in the shootout, not
(12:06):
in a shootout. That was when people, Okay, these are
evil people. We got to get them, you know, we
have to take them out now. And that's what led
to the beginning. That was the beginning of the end.
Granted they were being hunted, but.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
Yeah, they were, and they became you know, they used
to love to use the term mad dog. Yeah, I
mad dog Killer. And there was actually a guy who's
associated with the New York Underworld Underworld. I think it
was mad Dog McCall was his name. And as a
(12:40):
matter of fact, I think the movie The Cotton Club
back in the eighties, maybe eighty four, Nicholas Cage actually
played a character that's based on that guy and went
by that name, and so they used that term mad
and I think and it's an easy you know, when
you're a rural person and you've got a dog out
(13:03):
in the yard that's foaming at the mouth, that's baring
its teeth, and you know what's going on. It not
just indicates danger, but it also indicates a disease, a
level of lethality that you know that if you don't
(13:23):
put them down. And I'm gonna stop, Dave. I got
a question for you, brother, have you have you ever
done something that felt wrong when you were doing it
(13:51):
but it really wasn't wrong, but yet you had this
kind of feeling, you know, like and if somebody saw
me doing this or getting caught with this, I'd be
in trouble. Has that ever happened to you. I'm not
asking to reveal any deep dark secrets here, but.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Boy, okay, I'll go along with that and say yes.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
And that's all I'm going to get out of you.
Oh look, man, this is I tell you, this is bogus. Man.
I was really hoping we were going to open the
vault here on Dave mac No.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
I can't you know what, Joe.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
I look at now, a statue of limitations. You know,
you start thinking about I always said if I ever
ran for office, my slogan would be yes, I did
you know?
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Just because well, I.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
Gotta tell you something real quick that I felt I
had that feeling about myself when and it has to
do with Bonnie and Claude. Yeah, I guess it was
probably nineteen eighty eight or eighty seven. I can't recall.
(15:06):
Went to a state corners convention in Louisiana, where I
was working at the time, and it's kind of that's
as you can imagine, it's kind of an interesting event
to go to, particularly if you were not in that world,
if you were an observer and you could come in
because you can imagine all the stories that are being
told in this environment. I think that it might make
(15:27):
some people at crime con blush more than likely because
they you know you, and particularly during that time period,
all those years, all those years ago, there were you know,
so many things that were going on relative to serial
killings and just horrible crimes that a lot of people
had never heard of because you didn't have the vast
media coverage. But back to my big reveal here. When
(15:50):
I was there, I was with my mentor. It was
my first first time I'd ever been, and it was
my mentor that had trained me as a death investigator arguably,
in my opinion, probably the best forensic scientist and practitioner
I've ever been around in my life. That was Bill.
(16:12):
Bill introduced me to a group of people that were
Corners from North Louisiana. Now remember we're down in New
Orleans and we're chatting and I met the corner from
being vill Perish and he tells Bill, I've got something
(16:33):
for you, but don't tell anybody. You know. Bill says,
you know, he's like talking to me, and He's like,
I don't know what he's got, but he says, I
can't tell anybody, but I'm telling you. And the next
thing I knew, Bill's like waving me over to the side, right,
and this is we went we were tired somewhere for drinks,
(16:56):
all right, and we're kind of hold up in a
lounge and he says, you're not going to believe what
I've got. I was like, okay, hit me, I said,
does this have something to do with the guy from Benvilpairs.
He's like, yeah, You're not gonna believe what I got.
I was like, okay, what have you got? He says,
I've got a copy of the Corners records from Bonnie
(17:21):
and Clyde's examination post mortem. I was like what, because
you know, back during that time, Dave, as you well know,
you've been in the you've been in media for quite
quite a while. You remember, back you didn't have access
to this kind of stuff. Now you can just go
online like you can. And if you go online now
you can actually see the Corner's jury report that's written
(17:46):
out in longhand it looks like it's written in pencil.
It's the same one that I was given all those
years now and now it's everywhere, you know, and it's
been transcribed because I remember sitting down day when I
got this thing, because day day, I'm sorry, Bill made
a copy of it for me when we got back,
and it's on legal, legal sized paper, so you had
(18:06):
to load legal paper into the copier. He made me
copies of this thing, and I actually had to take
a magnifying glass out and try to make out because
this is all written in longhand none of this stuff
was typed up. And all of a sudden, the world
kind of burst open for me because for the first
(18:28):
time I'd seen images, you know, in publications and all
these sorts of things. I'd heard the tales as a kid,
I'd seen the car. But when you have that document
in front of you that recorded this event and these
people that were there and they're actually relaying what they
(18:50):
saw in regards to bonding, Clyde was it was quite amazing.
It really was, because you had a clothing description, you know.
The only only point of reference I had, I don't
know about you was Faye Dunaway and Warren Baby, you know,
in that movie from back in the sixties, which is
(19:11):
horrible because I think that it, you know, it further
propagated this idea that these people were were heroes and
isn't that isn't that horrible? You know, kind of how
they painted this relative to these people. And we've had
this this evolution over a period of time, and I
hope that it continues. But you know, in addition to
(19:36):
for folks that have never been to that area up there,
it's it's beenvil perish and it's it's obviously not populated
by the most wealthy people in the world. They're salt
of the earth people that grind a life out. They
make their they make their living, you know, in aggra
based stuff or their pulp witters. And here's something fascinating
(19:58):
that that I discovered becau. I went out to the site,
the location of where the ambush took place, because you know,
Kim and I we were on the road and we
were like, hey, here's Gibbsland, because that's the address that
it carries. But it's actually about eight miles outside of Gibbsland,
and so it's a two lane state highway and it's
(20:21):
got new growth pine forest on both sides of the
road that has obviously been harvested for pulpwood over the years.
And there is this stone monument that sits in this
kind of dusty red clay area just off the shoulder
of the road, and over the years it's been chipped away.
(20:41):
There's chunks of it that are missing because people show
up with a hammer or chisel and they'll take a
piece of it. And there's weird poetry that's been scribbled
or left in bottles that kind of occupies this space
around there. And then when you look across the road
from where this thing is, and this was kind of interesting,
(21:02):
there are these tiny, these tiny little wellheads that are
capped off that the field is just populated with and
those are natural gas wellheads, right, and you know, and
I find that there's a bit of irony I think
in that regarding their deaths. You know, they sought, they
sought this fantastic you know idea that yeah, we're gonna
(21:28):
murder cops, we're gonna try to pick up some money
along the way, and here they are, you know, they're
just absolutely riddled there in that spot, allegedly. And then
across the way is a field that is representative of
all the money in the world that you could ever
want if you had access to it. And so, you know,
(21:51):
I don't know, Serve God or mammon, I guess, but
you know, you look there and you see that and
it's kind of kind of a fascinating bit, but it's isolated, Dave.
This location is so far out there. And you know
when when Hamer, who is the retired UH Texas ranger.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
Frank Hammer, and many Gault that were out.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
There, yeah, in many gal and they they went out
there with a posse and it was it was a
posse and they they they sat and waited in that
brush line, and you know there's been reports. I don't know, Dave,
if you've ever gotten gotten covered in red bugs at
(22:34):
any point in time in your life, these guys had
red bugs on them. It's May, it's North Louisiana. It's hot,
it's humid, you're dehydrated, and you don't know when these
people are going to show up. Because they were going
actually to the home of the parent of one of
their compatriots.
Speaker 3 (22:52):
It was actually Henry Methlin. It was just Body and
Clyde at this point, and the Frank Hamer and many
Gaal knew that they were probably going to be paying
a visit to Henry Metfin or his family just didn't
need a place to sleep because Bonnie had been hurt
in a car accident in June of nineteen thirty three.
(23:13):
Her face was burned, her arms were burned, her chest
was caved in. According to Blanche, she had injuries from
this accident that she never recovered from, and they had
to take time for her to get off the road
for a little while. And that's where they thought they'd
be heading to Henry Methven's dad. And that's why Frank
Hammer Hamer and many gal actually camped out and waited.
(23:37):
And it was not hours, it was days.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
It was days.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
And you mentioned the bugs, and that's the one thing
that was written about these guys, Hammer Galt and a
couple other guys. They're waiting, They're waiting in the bushes.
They're waiting for Bonnie and Clyde to come driving by.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
So let me ask something. Do you know why they
were were waiting? Do you know why they were willing
to endure that heat and that humidity and red bugs
and skeeters and all manner of everything else that was
up in the brush there along along with them, maybe
copper heads and rattlesnakes and everything else that's in that area.
(24:19):
You're talking about spring they had had it up to hear.
I think what it comes down to is that Frank
Hamer and his posse wanted to be on one level
that reassurance that they were wearing white hats and that
(24:44):
they were going to do whatever they possibly could to
bring a resolution to this horror and quiet the public.
Because it's one thing for some newspaper and some far
flung place away from Beingville Parish, Louisiana, up in New
(25:06):
York or Chicago at the time, or maybe even La
to write a piece about how romantic this all is.
But when you're down on the ground and you're a
cop store owner or maybe working in a bank, you
live your life in terror. Hey, Dave, you remember a
(25:37):
couple of weeks ago when we did an episode of
body Bags on the Corner System. Yeah, do you recall that?
Speaker 3 (25:45):
I remember studying after the fact. That was the most
enlighten I learned so much on that episode, and a
number of people have actually sent in emails about how
much we all learned. It was like be any class.
But I just remember when you and I fail, I went, Okay,
I got to figure this out.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
It's a it's a it's a weird world that you
enter into when you walk to the door with Joseph
Scott Morgan. I'm sorry for I'm sorry for any trauma.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
It was awesome. I had no idea, Joe.
Speaker 3 (26:13):
I mean, it was one of those things where I
had no you know, one of the things you don't
know what you don't know.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
I had no idea what I didn't know.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
Well, the corner system in Louisiana is interesting. It's interesting everywhere,
but you know, unlike other states, in Louisiana there are
a couple others, but specifically I'm speaking to Louisiana. In
order to run for the office of corner there, you
have to be a physician, and that has always been
(26:43):
the case. It's not that's not something new under the sun.
And you know, when there was a uh an exam
that had to be conducted on the remain means of
Bonnie and Clyde, it was it fell to the corner
(27:05):
of beingvill parish at that particular time to you know,
to facilitate that, had to make it happen, and it was,
you know, it was it was done. Doctor Wade was
actually the corner there. And you know, go hey, let's
the old country.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
Doctor when you have like a case that is this big,
that has national, you know, international coverage of this these people,
is there not a way to bring in somebody at
the fact, you know, bigger, more educated. I mean, I
know that the law requires that it is handled like
right here, but kind of like when JFK was killed
(27:45):
thirty years later, they took his body out of Dallas
and got it to Washington, d C. Granted he was
the president, but these people are famous criminals. They've broken
the law in several states. Was there any thought that
we need to bring somebody else in to do the
autopsy or was he just get it done and get
them out.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
Yeah, hang on for a minute, because I got to
tell you, relative to JFK, they did not take take him,
certainly to the finest that was available. They went to
the bottom of the barrel. As far as I'm concerned with.
With Bonnie and Clyde, however it was, it was the
office of Corner and being Vialparish, you know, reflecting back,
(28:21):
I told you about the about the you know, the
report that that I'd been given, you know, all all
these many years ago that I wanted to talk about
and this sort of thing, and The thing is is handwritten.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
Which I could not understand when you told me you
got a magnifying glass.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
I looked at it. I looked at this ball you're
going over, and I'm like, how did you read that?
Speaker 1 (28:42):
I mean, yeah, yeah, it's it's it's something to see
and look. Anybody can see it. I recommend you know.
All you got to do is is you know, uh
is google search? Yeah, Google search office. You know, the
the Corners Report of the bodies of Bonnie and Clyde Parker,
and you'll find it. It's there and it's really it's
(29:02):
very difficult to kind of decipher. But you know, looking
back in time and when I saw this thing, I
thought that they did a pretty good job. But you
know what's really interesting about body in Clyde's case, Davis,
they didn't actually do an autopsy. I don't know if
you know that. No, they did not actually do an autopsy.
You had what was impaneled back then. It's called a
(29:26):
corner's jury, and it was a collection of men. Corner's
juries are a thing and it's almost like, I don't
know how to describe it other than kind of like
a grand jury where you're trying to where a grand
jury you're trying to decide if there is enough information
(29:48):
to indict somebody, if you're going to true bill or
no true bill. A case, right, a criminal case with
a corner's jury. Their purpose was to be there for
the corner to present evidence to them that how they
were going to rule the death. Okay, what are they
going to call this? Are they going to call this homicide? Suicide?
(30:11):
You know, what are they going to call this? And obviously,
you know, we sit here and we think about, uh
well it was pretty obvious, you know how Bonnie died there. Yes,
it is. This is a homicide. Yeah, absolutely, I mean
there's nothing there that wasn't accidental. It's not suicide. Uh
you know, yeah yeah. And it's just like just like
(30:33):
a you know, uh, an execution in a state penitentiary
is a homicide. Okay, you can't call it anything else.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
Period.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
And so they impaneled a jury, a corner jury, and
it's not that they had trouble determinant. But it goes
back to an interesting statement you made just a moment ago.
This is going to be the official record going forward,
forever and ever and ever and ever. Amen. And the
(31:06):
fascinating thing is that when they're looking at this, you've
got all of these men that are impaneled on this
jury with a corner being the leader of it, and
they're there to verify because who else is going to verify?
Remember the world that they're living in. They're living in
(31:28):
a world Dave that news. I mean, it doesn't move
move at the speed that say, the Pony Express moved at.
But you know, you're still working with telegraphs, they're using telephone.
I think there may have been a rudimentary facts by
that by that point in time, I think they called
it something else. But you still it moves slowly. You
(31:51):
had to have somebody there that would that would verify
that these people were in fact dead, and it's better
than just having one person to verify the death. You
got a whole group of people. And not only do
you have a group, all these guys are signing off
on this, and you can see the list of their signatures.
You know when you look down, when you look down
the page on this thing, they're all there and their
(32:13):
names are affixed to this documents. As odd as it is,
there were looking at it physically looking at it. Right now,
there's five people that have signed onto this, in addition
to doctor Wade who was there, and you know, they
go into, you know, great detail about describing the bodies
(32:36):
and the injuries. You know, Bonnie, Bonnie actually received the
worst of it. Not that what Clyde had received wasn't
wasn't bad, but there's a story that goes on out
there relative to Bonnie's body. And just imagine this. She
(32:59):
was hit so many times and I'll go into kind
of the nastiness of these wounds in just a second,
but just kind of let me set this up. She
was shot so many times that they actually had a
very difficult time embalming her body. So just imagine we
have to think about the way the embalming process works.
(33:19):
It's a profusion of embalming fluid, you know, in the
major vessels of the body. The bodies on a table,
it's kind of tilted from the head down. They've got
these trow cars that they go into the body with
and they start their little pump. In days gone past,
the mortician would use a foot pump, you know, to
(33:40):
infuse the body with the embalming fluid. Well, can you
imagine that, And they still have to do this today.
With multiple gunshot one cases, but they had she was
springing leaks and let that set in just for a second.
So you've got the vessels that carry the blood obviously
(34:00):
are now being perfused with embalming fluid. And the way
the thing works is through gravity. You're as as the
body is being profused with the embalming fluid. Traditionally you
can see the line coming out of the body and
the blood is being pushed out of the body. It
is being replaced by embalming fluid. Well, it wasn't getting
(34:21):
to that point. The holes were there and the body
had to be plugged in order to take on the
embalming fluid.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Joe, I was.
Speaker 3 (34:30):
Looking at the list of these injuries and it was
listed out on Bonnie. Okay, on Bonnie. I actually had
to look at this several times because you mentioned probably
written in pencil. Yeah, the penmanship is weak. But shot
in the left breast going into chest. This was a
description of a bullet wound shot four inches below the ear.
(34:54):
Another shot entering above the right knee, two shots front leg,
two shots right leg, gunshot wound around edge of hair
one and a half inches above the left ear. Another
threw the mouth on the left side, exiting at top
of jaw, another at middle just below left jaw, another
(35:20):
above clavical left side, going into the neck, another entering
chest two inches below the inner side of the left shoulder.
Two shots about two inches below the left shoulder, fracturing
the bone. Another wound on the elbow of the left arm,
another entering left chest above the heart, breaking ribs. Six
(35:44):
shots entering three inches on back region left side. Five
pellet wounds about the middle of the left side. Cuts
from glass on the ankle, cut on top of left foot,
apparently from glass cut on center of right thigh, cut
six inches in length, about three and a half inches
(36:07):
center of right leg. Eight metal fragments centering across the
front of face.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
There you go, wow, So it's yeah, it's.
Speaker 2 (36:20):
Now, I see, I get that. By the way, that's
not the complete list.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
No, No, it goes on, and you know, Clydes is
almost as robust. But you know, they wanted obviously, the
purpose here was to make sure that they were I
used the term neutralized just a month ago, and that's
a very clinical term. But they wanted. They were mad
dogs and they knew the importance of putting them down.
(36:43):
First off, I think probably and this is me projecting
because I you know, I wouldn't presume to get inside
their mind, but you know, I think that any right
there's right thinking person would probably conclude that not only
did they need to neutralize this threat, but they needed
(37:04):
to send a message. They need to send a message
to those individuals that thought that they could go out
and randomly do whatever they wanted to do, which includes
murdering police officers. And of course they brought this to
an end. And right quick, I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and
(37:29):
this is Bodybacks.
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.