Bonnie & Clyde, The Story Of - Love & Death

Bonnie & Clyde, The Story Of - Love & Death

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
She was a lonely waitress longing for excitement and romance.
He was a volatile ex khan who vowed he would
never go back to prison. They found each other in
the slums of Dallas, Texas in the early nineteen thirties
and proceeded to go on a crime spree that shocked
the nation. Fueled by passion and love, the desire to

(00:36):
escape poverty, and utter contempt for authority, Bonnie Parker and
Clyde Barrow united.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
You know it was love at first sight then because
they never did, you know, want anybody else but each other.

Speaker 3 (00:51):
Bonnie joined Clyde and stayed with him because she knew
he was going to die. She wanted to die by
his side.

Speaker 1 (01:01):
Since their death sixty years ago, the lives of Bonnie
and Clyde have been romanticized and glamorized in films, in books,
in music, and on television. Love and Death the Story
of Bonnie and Clyde. For two incredible years, Bonnie and
Clyde led their notorious gang on a bloody crime wave

(01:23):
that stretched across five states. Bonnie and Clyde robbed banks,
pulled a string of armed robberies, and left a bloody
trail of murder victims in their wake. All the while,
hundreds of law enforcement personnel from five Southwestern states hotly
pursued the couple. Yet the pair was able to elude
authorities and avoid capture until they were taken out in

(01:46):
a hail of bullets.

Speaker 4 (01:50):
Cops hate cop killers, and they were not popular. They
were highly highly sought, and everybody wanted a piece of
Bonnie and Clyde.

Speaker 5 (02:00):
But the undertaker will ever get me. If officers cripple
me where I see, they'll take me alive. I'll take
my own life. Clyde Barrow a tough.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
Man who lived in tough times. Clyde Barrow was born
in Tellicote, Texas, on March twenty first, nineteen o nine.
He was the sixth child of Henry and Cueby Barrow.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
He was a wonderful boy. I thought, I you know,
he loved his mother better than anything in the world.
I guess he was quite a mama's boy, and he
was real close to all of us.

Speaker 1 (02:41):
There was plenty of love in the Barrow family, but
very little money. Henry Barrow was a poor tenant farmer.
When Clyde was twelve years old, the family was forced
to give up farming. They moved to Dallas, Texas.

Speaker 6 (02:56):
There was a lot of economic prosperity, but there was
just as much economic despair in the twenties, especially in
the rural areas. That's where Clyde Barrow came from. He's
from a rural farming background. I think it was as
early as nineteen nineteen or nineteen twenty when the Barrows
moved to Dallas. Dallas was somewhat of a mecca or

(03:16):
rural farmers. We were having trouble making ends meet in
their farming profession.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
When I grew up with my brother, it wasn't very
nice place where we grew up. We lived on a campground.
We was real poor and didn't have no money, you know,
no home or nothing. And finally my sister bought a
place upon eagle Ford Road they called it, and my
daddy had built this little house that we moved in,
you know there, and we drug it up there on

(03:45):
this place, and he put in a filling station.

Speaker 1 (03:51):
By age sixteen, Clyde had quit school. He was slender
and small in stature, barely five seven, and possessed an
innocent look. Following the example of his older brother Buck
Clyde embarked in a life of crime. It started with
small transgressions.

Speaker 2 (04:10):
He rented this car and he kept this car too
long and the police come looking foreign. And that's started
at first. And then I thank my brother Buck, and
he in bought some turkeys from somebody, and these turkeys
was hot, and they caught them trying to sell these turkeys,
and then they put them in jail for hot turkeys.

Speaker 1 (04:31):
Buck spent a week in prison, but authorities chose not
to incarcerate Clyde. However, this first brush with the law
did not deter Clyde. He continued his petty thievery. He
also started stealing cars. Clyde quickly became well known to
the Dallas police. In October of nineteen twenty nine, police

(04:54):
were searching for Clyde in connection with a number of
local robberies. He was trying to elude police and hiding
when he met the woman who had become his soulmate,
Bonnie Parker. Bonnie Parker was born on October first in
nineteen ten. She had an older brother and a younger sister.
Her father, Henry, died when Bonnie was just four years old.

(05:18):
Her mother, Emma, then moved the family to a suburb
of Dallas known as Cement City.

Speaker 6 (05:26):
There was a lot of poverty in Westellness. There were
a lot of young people with a lot of energy
that they had no place to blow off steam. They
saw things that they wanted that they couldn't get, and
they just started taking it. And so in that environment,
that's where Bonnie came from.

Speaker 7 (05:46):
Really, Bonnie's family managed to get her through high school
and she seems to have been, by all the reports,
a rather nice girl, attractive girl. She worked as a waitress.
She was married when she was very young, but her
husband was convicted and sent to prison before she barely

(06:06):
met Clyde.

Speaker 6 (06:08):
She married Roy Thornton when she was sixteen. She and
apparently were very much in love, but he was abusive
to her. He beat her, he drank heavily. He would
take to disappearance for weeks at a time. After several
of his disappearances, when he showed up again, she told

(06:31):
him just shove off. She didn't want anything to do him.
But she never divorced him, and she always wore his
wedding room and she still had it on the day
she was killed.

Speaker 1 (06:43):
Roy Thornton was arrested and convicted of bank robbery. He
was sent to the notorious Eastham Prison Farm. In January
nineteen thirty, Bonnie Parker met another dangerous man who would
be her true love at her undoing Clyde Barrel.

Speaker 6 (07:11):
I think he came along at just the right time
for her. She was looking for a wild card like
Clyde girl, and she sure found him.

Speaker 1 (07:21):
Clyde was twenty years old, Bonnie just nineteen. Their first
encounter took place when Bonnie came to the aid of
a sick girlfriend.

Speaker 8 (07:35):
Bonnie was a wonderful personality. She was a kind person.
We had a good friend and she had an accident.
Bonnie wasn't working at the time, so she went out
to take care of the lady and she met Clyde
through this lady. Bonnie's sister Billy Jean Parker nineteen sixty eight.

Speaker 6 (08:00):
He was already wanted for several burglaries at the time.
He was hiding at the time, and he and Bonnie
really fell for each other immediately, and upon meeting were
almost always together for the next two weeks until he
was finally arrested.

Speaker 1 (08:18):
Clyde was convicted and sentenced to two years for five
auto thefts and received a twelve year suspended sentence for
two bipular reasons. But once imprisoned, Clyde's thoughts immediately turned
to escape. Lovesick Bonnie was more than willing to help him.

Speaker 3 (08:37):
Bonnie Parker smoked it in thirty two cold automatic. He
managed to escape and he left the state, but within
a couple of weeks he was recaptured of Minnesota. He
was brought by tried received fourteen years.

Speaker 1 (08:55):
Since Clyde was remanded to Huntsville Penitentiary, where he met
fellow inmate Ralph Fults. The pair formed an immediate alliance.
The men were then allocated to work in Eastam Prison Farm.

Speaker 6 (09:12):
At Eastam, it was like going to another planet, really,
especially for somebody like Barrol. As much as much as
he'd been involved in he wasn't expecting what he had
found out.

Speaker 1 (09:26):
Easton prisoners were regularly beaten and abused. Guards allegedly routinely
shot and killed convicts to keep the other inmates in line.
Soon Foults found himself on the receiving end of a
guard beating. They were exacting revenge on Fults, who had

(09:46):
previously escaped from Eastam.

Speaker 6 (09:48):
And was later recaptured. It was just kind of a tradition.
Fuals knew it was coming. Two guards closed in and
held him down while they were pistol whipping.

Speaker 9 (10:00):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (10:01):
At one point the guard that was beaten him stopped
and and Fulks was almost unconscious. You you could barely see,
and he could see Clyde standing over there with his
fists clinch like he was gonna jump on his guard.
His guards were like six three sixty four and he
was a little five foot seven one hunds. When he
found Clyde's standing over lookers and UH, Ralph said he

(10:21):
could still see the veins in his neck holding out
like he was gonna jump on that guard. And that
guard said, what do you want, boy? You want some
of this too? And Clyde never said a thing. He
just stood there and all of that UH called attention
away from what they were doing with Folks. And UH
later on Fulkes thought that that I he may have

(10:41):
saved his life by uh by standing there like that.
And UH they stopped uh beating Fulkes, and they left
him and they went on and Clyde never backed down.
And UH this really impressed Ralph Falkes and Right after that, Uh,
Clyde said, you know what we ought to do. We

(11:01):
ought to get out of this place, get a gang up,
come back in here, raid this place, and turn everybody
loose and shoot every damn one.

Speaker 1 (11:10):
Of these cards. This was more than just big talk
from Clyde. It would only take three years before Clyde
was able to put his plan for revenge into action. Meanwhile,
Clyde's relationship with Bonnie intensified as the pair regularly corresponded

(11:30):
through letters.

Speaker 10 (11:34):
Sugar, I never really knew I really cared for you until.

Speaker 11 (11:38):
You got in jail.

Speaker 10 (11:40):
And Honey, if you get out okay, please don't ever
do anything to get locked up again. I can't think
of anything to say, only that I love you more than.

Speaker 12 (11:51):
Anything on earth.

Speaker 11 (11:53):
Excerpt of a letter from Bonnie to Clyde, February fourteen,
nineteen thirty.

Speaker 5 (11:59):
Do you, baby. I just read your letter, and I
was sure glad to get it for I'm awfully lonesome
and blue.

Speaker 13 (12:07):
Honey.

Speaker 5 (12:07):
If I could just spend just one week with you,
I'd be ready to die for I love you. Excerpt
of a letter from Clyde de Bonnie, April nineteenth, nineteenth thirty.

Speaker 2 (12:20):
The only thing he would ever say to my mother.
It was a burning hail. It was horrible on my mother.
She'd liked to went crazy because that's one thing her
kids come first with her, and she it'd almost throw
her crazy.

Speaker 5 (12:36):
Mother went down to Waco to talk to the judge
and he said he'd help her get my sentence cut
back two years. If everything works out like I hope
it will, I won't have to stay away from my
baby much longer. Every Merry Christmas, I sent all my
love to you. Excerpt of a letter from Clyde to

(12:57):
Bonnie December twenty first, nineteenth.

Speaker 1 (13:03):
Fourteen months later, Clyde was still at the Gruesome prison farm.
He was growing impatient waiting for his mother to convince
authorities to give her son an early release, so Clyde
decided to take matters into his own hands.

Speaker 3 (13:19):
One day, he convinced a fellow convict to lob off
a couple of toes so that he could get out
of work.

Speaker 6 (13:25):
Detail.

Speaker 3 (13:27):
The funny thing about it is his mother and sister
were at the governor working on his pardon, and two
weeks later he was pardoned and walked out of Eastern
Prison on crutches.

Speaker 1 (13:44):
In February nineteen thirty two, Clyde came home to Dallas.
Prison life had had a devastating effect on him.

Speaker 2 (13:54):
I think it changed him a lot, made him hard.
He used to talk a lot, and he was a
lot of fun. He liked tos and he played all
kinds of instruments. Nearly and they'd done a lot to
Clyde down there. It was just really a living ail
bar him.

Speaker 1 (14:08):
Clyde faced an almost insurmountable struggle when he returned home.

Speaker 8 (14:15):
He served his time, he came out. Clyde started to
work at that time. It was during the Depression, and
each time that something happened, the police went to Clyde's job. Well,
after so many times on the job questioned him he
would lose that job time after time, and jobs were scarce.

(14:40):
Clyde just finally gave up. Billy Jean Parker nineteen sixty eight.

Speaker 1 (14:47):
While not everyone chose a life of crime, the Great
Depression drove many people to acts of desperation. Prosperity is
just around the co I want to say, the hopeful headlines,
but around the corners wind the lengthening breadlines, and a
whole new class of citizens appears in American society, the

(15:10):
new poor.

Speaker 9 (15:13):
The country had been racked by its worst economic decline.
A quarter of the population was unemployed. People were on
the road, Hobos were jumping trains. Dislocation was going on everywhere.

Speaker 14 (15:28):
You had great disparities between wealth and poverty. A lot
of farmers were losing their farms. There was a lot
of resentment against banks and big business, and the railroads
and other heavy industry at this time.

Speaker 1 (15:45):
The Great Depression. The time seemed to fill the air
with a heavy apathy born of frustration, helplessness, and suppressed anger.
In many ways, Body and Clyde were a product of
those desperate, dreary times, and the public responded.

Speaker 15 (16:04):
I think many people had the idea that Bonnie and
Clyde were doing something that they would have liked to
have done at times, and anybody who rob banks or
fought the law was really living out some secret fantasies
on the part of a large part of the population
of the country.

Speaker 1 (16:24):
The depression gave rise to a new class of criminal
while organized crimes and it gets led by men like
alcohopol and prospered in the Prohibition era twenties. During the depression,
a new breedom criminal was born.

Speaker 14 (16:38):
In a way. Clyde, Burrow and other outlaws from the
Midwest and the Southwest represented a certain kind of robin
hood ethic attacking some of these institutions.

Speaker 7 (16:52):
At the same time that Bonning and Clyde were active,
we had John Billinger, who was much more famous Law
on Time, pretty Boy, Floyd mal Barker and her Boys,
Machine Gun Kelly, baby Face Nelson. A whole raft of
these people were roaming around the country.

Speaker 1 (17:14):
The depression sparked the public's fascination with bad guys in
real life and in the movies. Actors like Edward G.
Robinson and James Cagney gave crime a lot of class.
Gangster films became so popular the government officials became alarmed.
This is one of the reasons the Hayes Office Hollywood
Self Censorship Board was born. Yet, for all their infamy,

(17:39):
Bonnie and Clyde were not very efficient thieves.

Speaker 9 (17:44):
Bonnie and Clyde never seemed to plan. They were predatory
robbers that simply moved about the countryside, and when they
ran out of money, they robbed whatever was convenient. This
meant that they usually took very little money, and they
were risking their lives sometimes for ten dollars, twenty dollars,
fifty dollars. Two thousand dollars was a huge haul for.

Speaker 1 (18:04):
Them, but it wasn't so much the money. Clyde fancied
himself of modern day Jesse James.

Speaker 14 (18:14):
I'm sure Clyde Barrow did think of himself as modern
day Jesse James. Instead of a fast getaway into the
rural hinterland on a horse, used a car, and in
many ways his crimes were similar. He tried to avoid
killing any innocent victims. He shot mostly a lawman, and

(18:35):
very often even with lawman, he would capture, take for
a ride, and then release unharmed, adding certain kind of
romantic panache to his crows.

Speaker 1 (18:48):
The public's fascination with both fictional gangsters and the genuine
article was spurred by the emptiness of the depression years.
But Bonnie and Clyde were truly unique. The couple's passionate
love affair and put them in a class by themselves.

Speaker 9 (19:05):
The saga of Bonnie and Clyde is an irresistible one.
It's the stuff of legend attractive young people, totally realistic,
totally without fear, totally antisocial, breaking all the rules, all
the conventions, define all the forces of authority, and on
numerous occasions they showed that they were willing to risk their.

Speaker 13 (19:28):
Lives for each other.

Speaker 11 (19:38):
I know you can't ever live in Dallas, honey, because
you can't live down the awful name you got here.
But Sugar, you could go somewhere else and get a
job and work.

Speaker 10 (19:48):
I want you to be a.

Speaker 11 (19:49):
Man, honey, and not a thug. I know you were good,
and I know you can make good. Excerpt of a
letter from Bonnie to Clyde.

Speaker 1 (20:01):
But Clyde did not heed Bonnie's advice. Now in ex
con the police continued to routinely bring Clyde in for questioning.
It took just two weeks to end Clyde's half hearted
attempt to go straight.

Speaker 15 (20:16):
It was hard enough for anybody to make the honest
living back then, much less somebody who had been in jail,
And once a person had been in jail, it was
real tough to go out and get honest work.

Speaker 2 (20:27):
When they started picking him up and he just thought, well,
I'm not going back to that prison. I'll just just
start a life of crime, I guess.

Speaker 1 (20:39):
In March of nineteen thirty two. Traveling in a stolen car,
Bonnie and Clyde went on the road together for the
first time. Ralph Folks joined them for the trip. fALS
discussed the couple's attitude in this interview he gave in
nineteen eighty four, two years before his death.

Speaker 16 (20:57):
And there was a game then got sick.

Speaker 17 (21:00):
You know, I figured out with them, it's hard to
turn around when you go snowballing you.

Speaker 14 (21:07):
Bonnie participated in her first robbery with Clyde and his
partner at that time, Ralph Foltz, in April of nineteen
thirty two. The robbery evidently was badly botched, and in
an escape attempt, Bonnie was captured by the police and
taken into custody.

Speaker 1 (21:28):
Bonnie and Ralph were captured. Bonnie cooled her heels in
a jail sale in Kaufman, Texas for two months. Ralph
Folds was sent back to the penitentiary. Clyde escaped. I
knew Clyde wasn't on gilla. He he done showed me
then he wasn't back to give up.

Speaker 8 (21:47):
And I knew bonn and be with me.

Speaker 13 (21:51):
Well.

Speaker 1 (21:51):
Bonnie was in jail, Clyde kept busy. He teamed up
with another prison pal, Raymond Hamilton. The pair decided to
rob John Butcher, a shopkeeper in Hillsboro, or Texas, but
the heights did not go as planned. This documentary filled
in nineteen thirty four shows a reenactment of the crime.

Speaker 18 (22:11):
And about midnight on April thirtieth, nineteen thirty two, they knocked.

Speaker 13 (22:14):
On the door of a small store owned by j. N.

Speaker 1 (22:17):
Boucher.

Speaker 13 (22:22):
Clyde Beryl murdered Jane.

Speaker 18 (22:23):
Boucher, a defenseless man, shot him in the back, and
then continued to pour a hot lead into his body
as it lay on the floor.

Speaker 3 (22:31):
At that point in time, Clyde could have turned back
because even though missus Butcher identified them as the two abandons,
there was still it was circumstantial evidence, so they could
have turned back. But Clyde felt like that it was
he was a call at that time period they gave

(22:53):
you the lecturer chair. He knew he was facing the
death sentence and he just kept on at it.

Speaker 1 (23:02):
In June nineteen thirty two, Bonnie was acquitted for lack
of evidence and released from jail. She quickly rejoined her lover,
but Clyde now had a price on his head. The
governor of Texas had offered a two hundred and fifty
dollars reward for his capture. Clyde Barrow was front page news,
and the headlines turned from bed to worse. Clyde and

(23:26):
Ray Hamilton were hiding out in Stringtown, Oklahoma, after robbing
a packing company payroll. On the night of August fifth,
nineteen thirty two, at a country dance, the fugitives senselessly
killed Deputy Eugene Moore and seriously wounded the Sheriff of
c Gen. Maxwell.

Speaker 9 (23:45):
Clyde, Hamilton and two others had come to the dance,
probably looking for some body to rob. They were liquored up.
Two officers walked over to them. One of them said,
we don't allow that here. Prohibition was still going on,
And suddenly he was killed and his associate mortally wounded, and.

Speaker 14 (24:08):
The outlaws roared off in the car.

Speaker 3 (24:13):
They didn't make it very far down the road after
the big exchange of gunfire, before they overturned the car
in a covert. They unloaded a lot of their guns
and run across a railroad track and managed still another car,
and in the toll of all they abandoned three cars

(24:34):
and finally escaped on foot, and that really was the
end of it. As far as it was concerned. Clyde
was a hunted man.

Speaker 1 (24:54):
Bonnie and Clyde survived twenty two more months after the
stream towns, but life on the run was far from glamorous.

Speaker 7 (25:03):
They certainly were not living well. They were camping out,
they were living in third rate tourist camps, and I'm
sure they were paying bribes in some cases or outrageous
sums of money to people to hide them. In other cases,
they needed money and they did perform more robberies to
get it.

Speaker 1 (25:24):
For the families of Bonnie and Clyde, these were tough times,
but the two outlaws tried to keep in touch with
their concerned relatives.

Speaker 2 (25:33):
Mama used to write it down on the side of
the wall the time when he come by in all December, January,
February March, at least ten or twelve times each one
of them months he can buy home.

Speaker 1 (25:45):
The outlaws had a unique way of setting up meetings
with their families. Clyde would put a note in a
cola bottle and toss the bottle from the car as
he passed by his father's Philly station. Henry Barrow would
retrieve the bottle and navoo was set.

Speaker 2 (26:02):
We went every time that he come to town. My
mother cooked him some beans or you know, or something.
We'd take him something to eat and clean clothes to him.

Speaker 8 (26:11):
We usually met the men a field and we had
a signal, just turned the lights on and off so
many times, and they know it was us, and we
know it was Then Billy Jean Parker nineteen sixty eight.

Speaker 2 (26:24):
My mother wasn't met at him. She just, you know,
she tried to get him to not do things, you know,
but he just said he'd done got in too deep
then he couldn't get out of it.

Speaker 1 (26:37):
Raymond Hamilton was also close to his relatives, but during
a family visit in Michigan, Ray was apprehended and was
sentenced to two hundred and sixty four years an eastern
prison farm. Clyde about to get Ray out. By this time,
the Barrel Gang had already established a reputation of dubious
distinction in the Southwest, but the path to nation went

(27:02):
in for me began in late March of nineteen thirty three,
when Buck Barrow was released from prison. Buck and his
wife Blanche had made arrangements to rendezvous with Bonnie and Clyde.

Speaker 2 (27:14):
He was really intending to go on straight and there
he was going to try to talk Clyde into coming back,
and then he got off and got in trouble a
safe and then he wasn't nothing he could do.

Speaker 1 (27:27):
For two weeks, the two couples lived quietly in an
apartment in Joplin, Missouri. W. D. Jones, a childhood neighbor
and accomplice of Clyde's, was also with the group, but
by April thirteenth, money was running low.

Speaker 6 (27:43):
Bern WD. Jones had just come back from a trip
out casing new places to burgarize, and Buck had met
him at the door. There the garage door, and Buck
was just closing the garage drawer when the police drove up,
and Buck said, it's the law.

Speaker 1 (27:58):
Suspicious neighbors heard the local police that bootleggers might be
hiding in the apartment. When Detective Wes Harriman and Constable
Harry McGinnis went to the front door, they had no
idea who they were really confronting. Clyde and W.

Speaker 6 (28:15):
Jones grabbed your shotguns and just met him right there
at the door and killed the first two that came
up to the door as quick as.

Speaker 14 (28:22):
That, and with that Bonnie grabbed the automatic rifle and
started firing out of the kitchen window. Well from there
the gunfire became a widespread. Buck Barrow started firing. Other
police were firing a W. D. Jones, who was hit
by around in the head, blood spurted. Bonnie came running
down the stairs. Blanche Buck's wife ran crazily into the

(28:46):
street with their little dog yapping at her heels. Clyde
managed to get everybody but Blanche into a car in
the garage and flung the doors open, firing shotguns and
automatic wife. They roared out of the garage and down
the street, leaving one dead, one dyeing policeman behind them,

(29:08):
and the others firing after them.

Speaker 1 (29:14):
This was just one of the many times that Bonnie
and Clyde managed to escape justice, but a role of
film the group left behind produced indelible images of the gang.
Newspapers printed the sensational photos and reported the group's triumph
over the law. The public sordid interests were peaud They
clamored for more of the astonishing gang story. Any intention

(29:40):
book had to go straight was finished. The gang's fate
was sealed by this heinous crime. The beginning of the
end took place in Wellington, Texas on June nineteen thirty three,
when Bonnie was seriously injured.

Speaker 15 (29:59):
She and Clyde W. D. Jones were driving out near Wellington,
Texas to meet Bucking Blanche in Oklahoma. And they were
crossing the Red River, and they were unaware that that
a bridge was out, and they went off the road
into the riverbed, and the part temple a few times
caught on fire and Bonnie was burned in the fire.

Speaker 8 (30:18):
There Bonnie's leg all the muscle. She was burned to
the bone on her.

Speaker 19 (30:24):
Calf of her leg.

Speaker 8 (30:26):
She never walked anymore straight. She walked with a limp,
a bad limp. She never got over that. That was
one of the time I went to her. Clyde came
after me. They were in Arkansas, Billy Jean Parker nineteen
sixty eight.

Speaker 1 (30:45):
Bonnie, Clyde, and W. D. Fled to Fort Smith, Arkansas,
were they met up with Blanche and Buck. Despite Bonnie's injuries,
the game kept on the move.

Speaker 3 (30:57):
Clyde Barrow's driving was what kept him alive for the
two years that Bonnie and Clyde made their names influence.
He thought nothing of driving thousand miles in one stretch
with a no two way radios stuff. Clyde Burrow knew
that he could escape criminal prosecution by across the state lines.

Speaker 7 (31:24):
The idea that you could conduct a robbery jump in
the car and speed away and actually escape was real.
It could be done because if you got out of sight,
you might very well escape.

Speaker 1 (31:40):
Finally, in July in nineteen thirty three, the gang settled
down at the Red Crown tourist camp in Platte City, Missouri.
But the law had been tipped off. The gang was there,
and soon the Barrows were completely surrounded.

Speaker 9 (31:56):
They had overpowering force. Still, being polite gentleman, they went
up to the cabin door and knocked, asked who was there.
Blanche sort of sweetly said, I'm not dressed. Just wait
a moment while, of course, Buck and Clyde and Jones
armed themselves to the teeth and then commenced blazing away,

(32:17):
taking the policeman totally by surprise. They also hit the
horn of the armored car that was there, and it
set off to roaring through the night, and all the
officers thought that it was a signal, so they rushed forward,
which exposed themselves caused utter confusion. They all got in
the car, which was soon engulfed in a fuselage of
fire from the officers. Windows were shattered, Blanche got shards

(32:42):
of glass in her eyes and began to scream. Buck
took a bullet through the brain, which went in one
temple and out the other, and fell mortally wounded into
the car. Clyde machine gun in one hand, driving like
a demon, went right through the police line, and they
still made it away.

Speaker 1 (33:02):
On July twentieth, the Cripple Gang arrived at an abandoned
amusement park near Dexter, Iowa, but after four days police
discovered the hideout and moved in on them. Bonnie, Clyde
and w d once again managed to escape. They're critically injured.
Buck and Blanche surrendered to authorities near death. Buck was hospitalized.

Speaker 2 (33:27):
My mother went up there.

Speaker 1 (33:28):
He lived.

Speaker 2 (33:29):
I think part of his brains was even shot. I
don't know. Hey talk was just so long, you know
that he did. But he was my mother's there when
he died.

Speaker 1 (33:42):
Buck Barrow died on July thirtieth, nineteen thirty three. Blanche
was sent to jail and spent ten years in prison.

Speaker 14 (33:50):
W D.

Speaker 1 (33:50):
Jones left Bonnie and Clyde shortly thereafter. Police apprehended w D.
After his capture. In order to receive a lighter sentence,
Jones anounced his fellow outlaws and claimed he was an
unwilling participant when he gave this statement.

Speaker 20 (34:06):
I have been indicted along with Clyde and Bonnie for
the murder of Malcolm Davis fort Worth Debuty shared. I
was forced along on a threat of death with Clyde
Barr for many of his gun battles and saw him
killed fireman clad Barn never seemed to care for killing anyone.

Speaker 13 (34:23):
All he thought of was himself.

Speaker 20 (34:25):
That's really not tried to escape, just didn't kill me
as anyway.

Speaker 1 (34:32):
Bonnie and Clyde continued to make headlines. On January sixteenth,
nineteen thirty four, Clyde kept his promise to Raymond Hamilton
and fulfilled his dream. He masterminded a daring breakout at
Eastern Prisoner Farm. Clyde enlisted the help of Hamilton's brother Floyd.
Floyd and an accomplice hit the guns.

Speaker 6 (34:54):
The guns are planted on this woodpile, the very Woodpower
where Ralph Foltz's pistol with years earlier, one of the
convicts named Joe Palmer, retrieved. The convicts went out to
the fields to work. Joe Palmer had two guns.

Speaker 13 (35:11):
He slipped one.

Speaker 6 (35:12):
To Raymond Hamilton, and knowing that Clyde Burrow was parked
near near these fields, and indeed Clyde Burrow's parked, Bonnie
waited behind the wheel. Clyde went down in this little
gully near where these workers are gonna work with Browning
automatic rifles, and they.

Speaker 1 (35:31):
Wait, they just wait. Around seven am, gunfire erupted. One
guard was killed. The three remaining guards ran.

Speaker 8 (35:41):
For cover, but.

Speaker 6 (35:43):
Bonnie is blowing a home because it's so foggy, so
they know where the car is, and they all run
up the car and Barrog gets behind the wheel and
here comes the four escaping prisoners and they dive.

Speaker 1 (35:54):
In Hamilton, and four other prisoners escaped. One of the
escapees was Henry Methvin, but helping Methvin would prove to
be a critical mistake for Bonnie and Clyde.

Speaker 18 (36:16):
After a series of murders and bank jobs, Bonnie and
Clyde were boldly keeping a rendezvous with some of their henchmen.

Speaker 13 (36:22):
They're Grapevine, Texas.

Speaker 1 (36:25):
This nineteen thirty four film footage is a recreation of
the notorious duo's last two murders.

Speaker 18 (36:31):
Presently, two state Highway patrol officers sighted the pair, they
decided to investigate.

Speaker 7 (36:40):
A couple of Texas Highway patrolmen from the newly created
Texas Highway Patrol came along on their motorcycles, and the
end result was two dead Highway patrolman.

Speaker 13 (36:58):
This approachous murders over the doom of Body and Clyde.
For every peace officer in the.

Speaker 18 (37:03):
Entire Southwest became so enraged over this killing they p
pledged themselves to sleepless days and nights in their search
for this.

Speaker 1 (37:10):
Murdering part, hundreds of law enforcement personnel desperately wanted to
catch these criminals and put an end to their reign
of terror. The most famous was former Texas Ranger Frank Damer.

Speaker 4 (37:29):
He took came one hundred and two days to finally
track down Bonnie and Clyde. And what he did he
fell back on his early early ranger training and he
set out, it's sort of a lone wolf, just himself
to learn as much as he could about them and
their habits. And he versually did track them down single handedly.

Speaker 2 (37:49):
We knew he was gonna get killed sooner or later,
but he just didn't know when. But it really didn't
surprise any of us when he did get killed.

Speaker 19 (37:56):
I prayed only last night that I might see him
alive again, just once more. Kille Me Barrow, May twenty third,
nineteen thirty four.

Speaker 1 (38:10):
But Clyde's mother would not get her wish. On the
morning of May twenty third, nineteen thirty four, and unsuspecting,
Bonnie and Clyde were driving down a country road near Arcadia, Louisiana,
close to Henry Metfin's father's home, Texas rangers and sheriffs
awaited them. It was a carefully planned ambush. Henry Mefin's

(38:31):
father had betrayed the pair in exchange for amnesty for
his son.

Speaker 18 (38:38):
For three days and nights, these officers lay in wait
on this road.

Speaker 1 (38:43):
Frank Hamer suspected the weakening criminals would seek the protection
of home ground. Returning to Dallas was out of the question,
but Bonnie and Clyde had previously sought refuge at the
Methfinn farm. The officers commandeered old Man Methfin's truck and
jacked it up. Clyde slowed down to his friend's father.

Speaker 17 (39:02):
I looked like the car fellow. That's dam for sure.

Speaker 13 (39:07):
I'll guarantee you get ready.

Speaker 6 (39:09):
Now, that's Jim Ballard.

Speaker 17 (39:12):
Believe the boy.

Speaker 3 (39:13):
Let him have him good bother.

Speaker 1 (39:22):
This incredible film footage was shot by one of the
officers on the scene.

Speaker 18 (39:28):
The inevitable end retribution. Here is Clyde, Beryl and Bonnie Parker,
who died as they lived by the gun. Bonnie is
seen leaning against Clyde.

Speaker 13 (39:41):
Clyde was a master gun.

Speaker 18 (39:46):
Seldom did anyone ever live when Clyde got the first shot.

Speaker 16 (39:52):
As accustomed as I am to slaughter of humans, I
was sickened at the sight of Bonnie's body nearly torn
to pieces with bullets. Frank Hamer May twenty third, nineteen
thirty four.

Speaker 1 (40:08):
Dallas deputies Bob Alcorn and Ted Hinton, who participated in
the ambush, later publicly spoke about the event.

Speaker 17 (40:18):
Each and ever also prayed him at the time the
capture that runner the same credit as we all did
our best. I regret they couldn't have couldn't have taken
them alive, but that was impossible. Our father regrets that
there was a woman that had to be killed, which

(40:38):
couldn't have been held. There has not much to say
now it is all over. The ends of law and
justice have been served.

Speaker 1 (40:49):
Scores of people rushed to the small Louisiana town hoping
to catch a glimpse of the dead outlaws. It was
a scene of absolute pandemonium.

Speaker 2 (41:00):
We had tried to do everything to him, cut his
ears off, and tried to do that and everything else
just to get pieces of him. People's crew of I
know they worse than he was.

Speaker 1 (41:14):
There were separate funerals and grave sites for the lovers
who in life had been inseparable.

Speaker 13 (41:22):
Thousands of ten the homecoming of Clyde Beryl.

Speaker 1 (41:26):
In this Dallas funeral home, a never ending line of men,
women and children from every walk of life came to
catch a glimpse of the body of the criminal who
had brought so much death and destruction.

Speaker 13 (41:38):
Clyde's body is born to the grave again.

Speaker 18 (41:41):
Tragedy and shame descend upon his aged father and mother,
while his brother Buck he died at the hands.

Speaker 1 (41:47):
Of the law at another funeral home in Dallas, three
miles across the city from where Clyde's body lay lay
the body of his lover. For Bonnie, the crowd was
even larger. There had never been a woman outlaw as
notorious as Bonnie, and she was the only woman ever
to be shot down by officers of the Law in
attempted capture.

Speaker 18 (42:10):
Bonnie's burial was attended only by close friends and relatives,
which numbered about one hundred and fifty people. Clyde, Beryl's
mother and father, also pay their respects to the girl
who was Clyde's only friend and who died by his side.

Speaker 1 (42:25):
With the exception of how they were buried, Bonnie accurately
predicted what would become of her and Clyde in a
poem she penned before their deaths.

Speaker 12 (42:36):
They don't think they're too smart or desperate. They know
that the Law always wins. They've been shot at before,
but they do not ignore that death is the wages
of sin. Someday they'll go down together. They'll bury them
side by side. To few, it'll be grief to the law,

(42:57):
a relief, But it's death for Bonnie and Clas