Their names have long become household names, and time has smoothed out the events of past years, softening incriminating details. And now they are already called outstanding personalities who challenged society and the "unjust" authorities, films about them, and poetry is dedicated. But who were Bonnie and Clyde really? What was their real life, not smoothed by Hollywood screenwriters?
Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow toured the southern states of the United States in the early 1930s. And they looked a little like the on-screen characters in the acclaimed 1967 Hollywood movie starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. The two were made legendary by the extreme cruelty, reckless audacity and complete senselessness of their murders.
Bonnie Parker was born on October 1, 1910 in the Texas town of Rowena and was the middle of three daughters of the bricklayer Charles Parker. In 1914, the father died, and the mother moved the girls to her parents' home in a suburb of Dallas.
Bonnie went to school and made some progress in her studies. In high school, she was considered one of the best students, even won a competition in literature. The girl enthusiastically read magazine stories about adventures, wrote poetry and was fond of photography.
Teachers and parents believed that Bonnie had a chance to hit a bigger jackpot in life. But six days before her 16th birthday, Bonnie, spit on all prospects, dropped out of school and jumped out to marry her classmate Roy Thornton.
18-year-old waitress Bonnie Parker before meeting Clyde Barrow.
In a fit of love, she even got a tattoo on her thigh - two connected hearts with the names Roy and Bonnie. However, the young wife was in a hurry with the tattoo. Soon Roy began to disappear from home for a long time. In 1929 he was imprisoned for robbery and Bonnie never saw her husband again.
Promotional video:
She was only 19, and her criminal husband turned out to be a terrible misunderstanding in Bonnie's life, or so, in any case, her family believed. And Bonnie Parker herself dreamed of another life filled with events and adventures. And fate has already prepared a sharp turn for her. In early 1930, while visiting a friend, Bonnie met him - Clyde.
Clyde Barrow, like Bonnie, was born in Texas, in the town of Teliko, on March 24, 1909. He was the fifth son of seven children of farmer Henry Barrow. The future gangster attended school very sporadically, he did not even finish the fifth grade.
17-year-old Clyde Barrow.
When Clyde was 12, the family moved to Dallas, where his father opened a gas station. The parents made a last attempt to send the unreasonable child to school, but soon the boy found a more interesting occupation: together with his older brother Marvin (Buck), he sold stolen turkeys and rode stolen cars at night.
On October 16, 1929, Clyde was arrested for the first time. Together with William Turner and Frank Hardy, he tried to commit a robbery at the Roosevelt Hotel in Waco, Texas. Shedding tears, Clyde (in his 20s and under 170 cm tall, he looked like a teenager) lied to the police chief that he did not know about the bad reputation of the men who agreed to give him a ride when he voted on the road. Clyde was released, and this was his last "respite" before "real" life.
Clyde Barrow.
He soon met Bonnie. The girl learned about the past of her lover when the police came for him to take him to Danton, where Clyde was suspected of stealing. But it was not possible to prove his guilt, and Clyde was transported to Waco, where he confessed to a couple of night robberies and theft of several cars. Clyde knew that tears would hardly help him this time. He was sentenced to two years in prison.
By some strange coincidence, Clyde's cellmate turned out to be William Turner, the one with whom the police "caught" them at the Roosevelt Hotel. Together they came up with an escape plan. Bonnie secretly carried a pistol to the prison and handed it to Clyde during the meeting. The next night, Clyde and Turner escaped.
But the freedom was short-lived. A few days later, the fugitives were seized, moreover, due to their own oversight: Clyde did not think to change the numbers on the stolen car (he never made a similar mistake). He was sentenced to 14 years in prison and sent back to prison.
Bonnie wrote long letters to her friend. It is not known how long Clyde would have had to languish in captivity if his mother Qumi, who also wrote letters, had not intervened. However, she sent her messages not only to her son, but also to the judge, complaining about the plight of the family. And maternal perseverance won out: on February 2, 1932, Clyde Barrow was released.
True, on the eve of his release, not knowing about his mother's efforts, Clyde decided to take the initiative and persuaded his partner to "accidentally" chop off a couple of toes on his leg with an ax - this is a mere trifle compared to the opportunity to take a break from the harsh prison routine when he had to work 16 hours per day. Clyde left prison on crutches.
At large, he made the first and last attempt to work honestly, but his good intentions lasted exactly two weeks. Clyde returned to Bonnie's and the couple escaped in a stolen car.
Soon Bonnie was hired: Clyde and his friends were cleaning the store opposite the courthouse in the serenely sleeping Texas town of Kaufman, and Bonnie was on guard at the door. Suddenly the alarm went off, but the burglars managed to sneak out with the proceeds. Everyone escaped except Bonnie. She was given three months in prison - these were the last months Bonnie and Clyde spent without each other.
Clyde, meanwhile, was very busy - he robbed and killed. He committed the first murder on April 13, 1932 during a robbery of a jewelry store. Clyde shot the shop owner, jeweler John Bucher. Although Clyde claimed to have been in the car during the shooting, he and Raymond Hamilton were found guilty of murder. Barrow was becoming a real bloody criminal.
In June 1932, Bonnie joined the Barrow gang to live with Clyde for two crazy years that made them legendary.
On August 5, 1932, the goldsmith's sad fate was shared by two police officers who were killed by Barrow and Hamilton in Attack, Oklahoma, when law enforcement officers approached their car to check documents. This was followed by several thefts and robberies, again ending in murder. And justice finally partially triumphed: Hamilton was arrested in Michigan, sent to Dallas, where he was sentenced to 264 years in prison.
One morning in Rustin, Louisiana, Bonnie and Clyde stole a car belonging to a certain Mr. Darby. He saw the kidnappers and asked neighbor Sophia Stone to borrow her car to catch up with the criminals. Soon Darby and Sophia realized that the chase was pointless. They turned the car around and drove back. However, they soon noticed that they were being pursued by a stolen car.
Darby and Sophia were taken hostage. Sofia later recalled that Bonnie pressed a loaded pistol to her side all the way. Upon learning that Mr. Darby works at a funeral home, Bonnie laughed and said that maybe one day he would prepare her body for the funeral. The hostages were released. But Bonnie was right - Mr. Darby did see her again in the morgue.
In March 1933, Bonnie and Clyde appeared in Joplin, Missouri. Here they stopped by the house of Herbert Farmer, who was rumored to have supplied weapons to gangsters. All they needed was the Browning automatic rifles that Farmer had recently stolen from the US Army's arsenal.
At that moment, there was another gangster in Farmer's house - James Henry Blakey Odette, who later told reporters:
They stroked the trunks gently, as if they were holding their own children. Clyde was even salivating with pleasure, and Bonnie was purring like a cat. These two tramps were insane killers. When I told Herbert that it would be better to quickly sell the weapons and get them out, Herbert replied: “Sell? Them? Yes, if I don't give them these rifles just like that, they will kill me, and you too."
Farmer gave Bonnie and Clyde their weapon of choice. And when they complained that the stolen car ran out of gasoline, the arms dealer immediately gave them money to buy gasoline, just to get rid of them as soon as possible.
Marvin Barrow.
In Joplin, the gang was joined by Marvin, Clyde's older brother, who had just freed himself from places not so distant, with his wife Blanche and 17-year-old thief W. D. Jones. The five of them rented an apartment and, not really caring about caution, had a rather noisy rest. The fun ended when they were suddenly visited by police officers tracking down a gang of bootleggers. During the shootout, Clyde and Jones were wounded and two police officers were killed.
In the apartment abandoned by the Barrow gang, the law enforcers found undeveloped films, among which were pictures of Bonnie and Clyde, which were soon published in many newspapers. At first glance, these are ordinary photos that friends take on vacation.
But in almost every picture there is a weapon: Bonnie in an elegant suit is at the car, Clyde is at the hood of the latest model of Ford. Bonnie with pistols in her belt or with a rifle. Bonnie and Clyde aim their rifles at each other. And not a single smile, even when they are fooling around, but only slightly grinning. And in the eyes of the fatigue of people doomed to flee the pursuit all the time.
The following months were the most difficult for the Barrow gang. They rushed along the roads of the southern states, without stopping in any city for more than a few days, ransacking the cash desks of local shops and banks. But at that time, even in banks it was often almost impossible to get hold of a large sum.
Their production generally did not exceed $ 10-20. None of the gang members, except Bonnie and Clyde, could not stand this frantic pace of life from start to finish. They tried to leave the gang, hoping to live longer.
The most incredible rumors circulated about this couple. So, they said that Bonnie was a nymphomaniac, and Clyde was a homosexual. What was really going on in their souls, one can only guess, but these two were truly devoted to each other.
On the night of June 10, 1933, the gang escaped the pursuit along country roads in northern Texas. Clyde did not notice the detour sign on the bridge being repaired, and their Ford V8 at 70 mph tore down the barriers, rolled over and fell off a cliff. Everyone except Bonnie got out of the car in time. The boiling acid from the car's battery burned her leg, so badly that in some places she could see bone. The wound remained unhealed. It was sometimes so hard for Bonnie to walk that Clyde carried her in his arms.
The accident was seen by local farmers, who provided first aid to Bonnie, but, noticing a whole arsenal of weapons in the car of the travelers in trouble, they called the police. I had to leave the chase again.
Motel "Red Crown" / ru.wikipedia.org.
The gang's next stop was the Red Crown Motel in Arkansas. They rented two houses connected by a garage. The police again paid a visit to the bandits. A firefight began, in which they had never been hit. They managed to escape, but at a terrible cost - Baku blew away part of the skull with two bullets, and his wife Blanche was almost blinded by the glass fragments that got into her eye.
A couple of days later, the police again approached them when the gang, spitting on any caution, settled in a park in Dexter, Iowa. They were handed over by a waiter at a roadside cafe, who told the police about a suspicious man who ordered a dinner for five and carried everything into the forest. Clyde and Jones managed to escape and take away the wounded Bonnie, but the dying Buck and Blanche, sobbing over his body, fell into the hands of the law enforcement officers.
Blanche Barrow's arrest / ru.wikipedia.org
Buck died a few days later at a hospital in Perry, Iowa, from complications from surgery. Blanche, arguably the most innocent of the gang (she was constantly trying to persuade Buck to return to Dallas to a normal life), was sent to the Missouri State Prison. The court sentenced her to 10 years in prison simply for being close to criminals.
Blanche Barrow.
Jones left the gang shortly after this story, he had enough. The pursuers were already breathing down their necks, but Bonnie and Clyde were not going to be easy prey. They knew they had nothing to lose, and in January 1934, after raiding Eastham prison in Texas, they freed Ray Hamilton and Henry Methvin. And they killed another police officer - Major Crowson.
In March, Hamilton left the gang after a quarrel over the division of the loot. He was later caught and sentenced to death in the electric chair in 1935. And the Barrow gang continued their journey along the "route of death".
On Easter Sunday, on a country road en route to Grapevine, Texas, Clyde and Methvin killed two more police officers who stopped thinking they needed their help. Five days later, police officer Col Campbell fell victim to the bandits, and police chief Percy Boyd was taken hostage in Commerce, Oklahoma, but was quickly released. They had less than a month to live.
The ring around Barrow's gang was shrinking every day. All police personnel were instructed to fire to kill and then ask questions. This was tantamount to declaring war. FBI Chief Edgar Hoover said: “Clyde is a psychopath. He needs to be destroyed like an enraged animal."
State Governor Miriam Ferguson instructed the head of the Texas correctional system, Lee Simmons, to hire a "special agent" to catch the criminals - former Texas ranger Frank Haymer, who has tracked down and neutralized dozens of gangsters during his career.
Haymer began tracking all the movements of the bandits. While they were being hunted, Clyde killed three more police officers, the "elusive" also robbed several banks. In May, Haymer finally managed to figure out another hideout for criminals - in Louisiana, in the house of Ivan Methvin (father of Henry Methvin). The ranger urgently went to him and made a deal: old man Methvin hands over Bonnie and Clyde to the police in exchange for his son's life.
On the night of May 23, 1934, Haymer and five other policemen ambushed in a dense forest, eight meters from the road. A truck belonging to the elder Metvin was parked by the side of the road. Clyde knew this car well, and one could expect that, seeing it, he would slow down. The police waited seven hours.
At 9:10 am, they noticed a car approaching at high speed. Clyde began to slow down, and suddenly fire fell on the car from six barrels at the same time. In a minute it was all over. The shooting was so loud that Haymer's squad suffered from temporary deafness all day. Firing 167 bullets at the target, the police approached the car with caution.
Bonnie and Clyde were dead, their bodies pierced with over 100 bullets. Bonnie's fingers were shot off completely. In her left hand she held a bloody pack of cigarettes, a pistol lay in her lap. Bonnie was 23 years old, Clyde was 24. Later, Frank Haymer told reporters: “It's a pity that I killed the girl. But it was like this: either we are theirs, or they are us."
Bonnie and Clyde's car.
The smoke from the shooting had not yet cleared away, and onlookers had already surrounded the ambush site in order to get hold of "souvenirs" - pieces of Bonnie's bloody dress or a lock of her hair. Someone tried to cut off Clyde's ear and the middle finger of his right hand with a penknife. The policeman who intervened stopped the "vultures" who had flown in.
The Death Machine was transported to the city of Arcadia, Louisiana, where a crowd of curious people had already gathered. At the funeral home, Bonnie and Clyde's bodies began to be prepared for the funeral ceremony. Ironically, the embalming was carried out by the same Mr. Darby, whose car Bonnie and Clyde had once stolen, taking him hostage.
Clyde was buried in Western Heights Cemetery in Dallas on May 25, 1934, next to his brother Marvin (Buck). Bonnie's mother refused to bury her daughter next to Clyde, and the ceremony took place on May 27, 1934, at Fishtrap Cemetery in West Dallas.
Bonnie and Clyde's bodies in the morgue.
The inscription on Bonnie's gravestone reads: "As flowers bloom under the rays of the sun and the freshness of dew, so the world becomes brighter thanks to people like you." Such an epitaph for the one who left behind such an unkind bloody memory sounds somewhat strange.
Who were Bonnie and Clyde? Victims of the Great Depression? A lost generation? Probably, all this can somehow explain the goal, but in no way can justify the means of achieving it. Time leaves its marks on everything.
It left the stamp of myth on Bonnie and Clyde's lives. And numerous stories, true and not very true, give criminals a romantic aura of extraordinary personalities who challenge the authorities. But Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were just ruthless killers.
Anastasia Smirnova
