Bonnie and Clyde

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

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

Blanche was permanently blinded in her left eye during the 1933 shootout at Dexfield Park. She was taken into custody on the charge of "assault with intent to kill". She was convicted and sentenced to ten years in prison, but was paroled in 1939 for good behavior. She returned to Dallas, leaving her life of crime in the past, and lived with her invalid father as his caregiver. In 1940, she married Eddie Frasure, worked as a taxi cab dispatcher and a beautician, and completed the terms of her parole one year later. She lived in peace with her husband until he died of cancer in 1969. Warren Beatty approached her to purchase the rights to her name for use in the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde, and she agreed to the original script. However, she objected to her characterization by Estelle Parsons in the final film, describing the actress's Academy Award-winning portrayal of her as "a screaming horse's ass". Despite this, she maintained a firm friendship with Beatty. She died from cancer at age 77 on December 24, 1988, and was buried in Dallas's Grove Hill Memorial Park under the name "Blanche B. Frasure".

Hamer's posse discussed calling "halt" but the four Texans "vetoed the idea", telling them that the killers' history had always been to shoot their way out, as had occurred in Platte City, Dexfield Park, and Sowers. When the ambush occurred, Oakley stood up and opened fire, and the other officers opened fire immediately after. Jordan was reported to have called out to Barrow; Alcorn said that Hamer called out; and Hinton claimed that Alcorn did. In another report, each said that they both did. These conflicting claims might have been collegial attempts to divert the focus from Oakley, who later admitted firing too early, but that is merely speculation. In 1979, Hinton's account of the saga was published posthumously as Ambush: The Real Story of Bonnie and Clyde. His version of the Methvin family's involvement in the planning and execution of the ambush was that the posse had tied Methvin's father Ivy to a tree the previous night to keep him from warning off the couple. Hinton claimed that Hamer made a deal with Ivy: if he kept quiet about being tied up, his son would escape prosecution for the two Grapevine murders. Hinton alleged that Hamer made every member of the posse swear that they would never divulge this secret. Other accounts, however, place Ivy at the center of the action, not tied up but on the road, waving for Barrow to stop.

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

The 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde, directed by Arthur Penn and starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway in the title roles, revived interest in the criminals and glamorized them with a romantic aura. The 2019 Netflix film The Highwaymen depicted their manhunt from the point of view of the pursuing lawmen, and received middling reviews.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Barrow cohorts Hamilton and Palmer, who escaped Eastham in January 1934, were recaptured. Both were convicted of murder and executed in the electric chair at Huntsville, Texas on May 10, 1935.

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

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

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

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

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

Barrow's enthusiasm for cars was evident in a letter he wrote from Tulsa, Oklahoma on April 10, 1934, to Henry Ford: "While I still have got breath in my lungs I will tell you what a dandy car you make. I have drove Fords exclusively when I could get away with one. For sustained speed and freedom from trouble the Ford has got every other car skinned and even if my business hasn't been strictly legal it don't hurt anything to tell you what a fine car you got in the V-8."

W. D. Jones had been a friend of Barrow's family since childhood. He joined Parker and Barrow on Christmas Eve 1932 at the age of 16, and the three left Dallas that night. The next day, Christmas Day of that year, Jones and Barrow murdered Doyle Johnson, a young family man, while stealing his car in Temple. Barrow killed Tarrant County Deputy Malcolm Davis on January 6, 1933, when he, Parker, and Jones wandered into a police trap set for another criminal. The gang had murdered five people since April.

In July 1933, the gang checked in to the Red Crown Tourist Court south of Platte City, Missouri. It consisted of two brick cabins joined by garages, and the gang rented both. To the south stood the Red Crown Tavern, a popular restaurant among Missouri Highway Patrolmen, and the gang seemed to go out of their way to draw attention. Blanche registered the party as three guests, but owner Neal Houser could see five people getting out of the car. He noted that the driver backed into the garage "gangster style" for a quick getaway. Blanche paid for their cabins with coins rather than bills, and did the same later when buying five dinners and five beers. The next day, Houser noticed that his guests had taped newspapers over the windows of their cabin; Blanche again paid for five meals with coins. Her outfit of jodhpur riding breeches also attracted attention; they were not typical attire for women in the area, and eyewitnesses still remembered them forty years later. Houser told Captain William Baxter of the Highway Patrol, a patron of his restaurant, about the group.

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

Schmid had tried to arrest Barrow in Sowers, Texas in November 1933. Schmid called "Halt!" and gunfire erupted from the outlaw car, which made a quick U-turn and sped away. Schmid's Thompson submachine gun jammed on the first round, and he could not get off one shot. Pursuit of Barrow was impossible because the posse had parked their cars at a distance to prevent them from being seen.

Jones had left Barrow and Parker, six weeks after the three of them evaded officers at Dexfield Park in July 1933. He reached Houston and got a job picking cotton, where he was soon discovered and captured. He was returned to Dallas, where he dictated a "confession" in which he claimed to have been kept a prisoner by Barrow and Parker. Some of the more lurid lies that he told concerned the gang's sex lives, and this testimony gave rise to many stories about Barrow's ambiguous sexuality. Jones was convicted of the murder of Doyle Johnson and served a lenient sentence of fifteen years.

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

In order to avoid hard labor in the fields, Barrow purposely had two of his toes chopped off in late January 1932, by another inmate or himself. Because of this, he walked with a limp for the rest of his life. However, Barrow was set free six days after his intentional injury. Without his knowledge, Barrow's mother had successfully petitioned for his release. He was paroled from Eastham on February 2, 1932, now a hardened and bitter criminal. His sister, Marie, said, "Something awful sure must have happened to him in prison because he wasn't the same person when he got out." Fellow inmate Ralph Fults said that he watched Clyde "change from a schoolboy to a rattlesnake".

After Barrow's release from prison in February 1932, he and Ralph Fults began a series of robberies, primarily of stores and gas stations; their goal was to collect enough money and firepower to launch a raid against Eastham prison. On April 19, Parker and Fults were captured in a failed hardware store burglary in Kaufman in which they had intended to steal firearms. Parker was released from jail after a few months, when the grand jury failed to indict her; Fults was tried, convicted, and served time. He never rejoined the gang. Parker wrote poetry to pass the time in Kaufman County jail, and reunited with Barrow within a few weeks of her release.

The group ranged from Texas as far north as Minnesota for the next three months. In May, they tried to rob the bank in Lucerne, Indiana, and robbed the bank in Okabena, Minnesota. They kidnapped Dillard Darby and Sophia Stone at Ruston, Louisiana, in the course of stealing Darby's car; this was one of several events between 1932 and 1934 in which they kidnapped police officers or robbery victims. They usually released their hostages far from home, sometimes with money to help them return.

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

Barrow was sent to Eastham Prison Farm in April 1930 at the age of 21. He escaped from the prison farm shortly after his incarceration using a weapon Parker smuggled to him. He was recaptured shortly after and sent back to prison. Barrow was repeatedly sexually assaulted while in prison, and he retaliated by attacking and killing his tormentor with a pipe, crushing his skull. This was his first murder. Another inmate who was already serving a life sentence claimed responsibility.

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

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

In her second year in high school, Parker met Roy Thornton (1908–1937). The couple dropped out of school and married on September 25, 1926, six days before her 16th birthday. Their marriage was marred by his frequent absences and brushes with the law and proved to be short lived. They never divorced, but their paths never crossed again after January 1929. Parker was still wearing the wedding ring Thornton had given her when she died. Thornton was in prison when he heard of her death, commenting, "I'm glad they jumped out like they did. It's much better than being caught." Sentenced to five years for robbery in 1933 and after attempting several prison breaks from other facilities, Thornton was killed while trying to escape from the Huntsville State Prison on October 3, 1937.

Barrow was first arrested in late 1926, at age 17, after running when police confronted him over a rental car that he had failed to return on time. His second arrest was with his brother Buck soon after for possession of stolen turkeys. Barrow had some legitimate jobs during 1927 through 1929, but he also cracked safes, robbed stores, and stole cars. He met 19-year-old Parker through a mutual friend in January 1930, and they spent much time together during the following weeks. Their romance was interrupted when Barrow was arrested by Sergeant Bert Whisnand and convicted of auto theft.

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

Bonnie Elizabeth Parker (October 1, 1910 – May 23, 1934) and Clyde Chestnut (Champion) Barrow (March 24, 1909 – May 23, 1934) were an American criminal couple who traveled the Central United States with their gang during the Great Depression. The couple were known for their bank robberies, although they preferred to rob small stores or rural funeral homes. Their exploits captured the attention of the American press and its readership during what is occasionally referred to as the "public enemy era" between 1931 and 1934. They were ambushed by police and shot to death in Bienville Parish, Louisiana. They are believed to have murdered at least nine police officers and four civilians.

Bonnie Elizabeth Parker was born in 1910 in Rowena, Texas, the second of three children. Her father, Charles Robert Parker (1884–1914), was a bricklayer who died when Bonnie was four years old. Her widowed mother, Emma (Krause) Parker (1885–1944), moved her family back to her parents' home in Cement City, an industrial suburb in West Dallas where she worked as a seamstress. As an adult, Bonnie wrote poems such as "The Story of Suicide Sal" and "The Trail's End", the latter more commonly known as "The Story of Bonnie and Clyde".

Clyde Chestnut (Champion) Barrow was born in 1909 into a poor farming family in Ellis County, Texas, southeast of Dallas. He was the fifth of seven children of Henry Basil Barrow (1874–1957) and Cumie Talitha Walker (1874–1942). The family moved to Dallas in the early 1920s as part of a wider migration pattern from rural areas to the city, where many settled in the urban slum of West Dallas. The Barrows spent their first months in West Dallas living under their wagon until they got enough money to buy a tent.