1935, May 23, morning - a dark red Ford was driving along a country road. Six riflemen armed with carbines were waiting for him behind the tall bushes. Inside the Ford were a man and a girl, whose heads the American police estimated at $ 50,000. When the car arrived at the ambush site, all six gunners rose to their full height and opened heavy fire.
More than a hundred bullets riddled the car and everyone in the cabin. "Ford" drove a few more meters, stood on the side of the road. Two bloody bodies just a minute ago were legendary raiders Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. They were ranked among the most famous US bandits. The reasons for this were more than sound.
The law pursued Bonnie and Clyde in a dozen states. They did not hesitate to shoot at everyone who tried to stop them. The news of their death flew through all the world's newspapers, but no one believed it. “This is another police duck,” said a respected American newspaper. "Someone needs political dividends in the upcoming elections, and he (and most likely" they ") intends to receive them even with official recognition based at best on gossip." And only when photos of corpses and an expert opinion on death were presented to the public, the Americans were convinced that they had lost their unlucky heroes.
• Bonnie and Clyde became famous in two short years. They really were to become folk heroes - modern Robin Hood and the maiden Mariam. But not for their victims, and not for the policemen who tracked down and killed them. For the police, they were simply trophies that could be shown to the whole world. Naked and unwashed, they were laid on tables in the morgue and photographed for history. Bonnie Parker is only 23, her partner is a year older.
• Clyde Barrow was born on March 24, 1909 in Teleco (Texas), in a small town near Dallas. He was the sixth, penultimate child in the family. At the age of nine, Clyde was sent to an institution for juvenile delinquents as an incorrigible truant and petty thief. Teleko was located in a sandy basin. This was the name of the vast territory in the Southwest of America, devastated by drought and intensive farming. 2/3 of the residents left in search of a better life. Among them was Clyde's father, who sold the farm for almost nothing. Clyde tried to provide for his family, but all his noble attempts went beyond the law.
1929 young Clyde Barrow meets young Bonnie Parker. Petite and slender, funny and smart, she was able to charm anyone. Bonnie's father died when she was only 4 years old. The mother, taking the children, moved to live in Dallas, in a gloomy area that was called "cement city". Bonnie and her sister Billy married early, and both were petty criminals. A year after the wedding, the first spouse of the future raider Roy fled with his mistress.
Bonnie did not yearn for long: after three months she sheltered Clyde, whom the police were hunting with might and main. Clyde Barrow, a thief and a crook, spent only one night in bed with his beloved. As soon as dawn dawned, the door fell off its hinges with a crash and three guys in uniform fell together on the sleepy thief. Clyde received 2 years in prison and 12 years on probation.
And although the prison sentence looked ridiculous for a professional thief, the energetic Clyde decided not to serve it out. His faithful Bonnie, hiding a loaded Colt under a dress, during the next date was able to pass the weapon through the bars. The stern jailer at the checkpoint was ashamed to search a sweet and friendly girl, from whom genuine timidity and chastity breathed.
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On the same night, armed Clyde escaped from prison, but two days later he was already caught and again yearned behind bars. Now he was facing a full sentence of 14 years. I had a chance to resort to a small but painful operation. The local chamber "surgeon" chopped off two toes on the leg of his cellmate with a homemade knife, moreover, at his own request. The wounded prisoner was released.
• In the United States at that time, banditry flourished thanks to Prohibition. In large cities, the mafia ruled, and in the provinces, bandits like John Dillinger were hunted. The country was gripped by a depression that followed the Wall Street crash. More than three million families were forced to live on welfare. Employers were not interested in yesterday's prisoners.
Bonnie and Clyde, armed with revolvers, began to loot commercial establishments throughout Texas. Bonnie, covering her face with a dark silk handkerchief, fearlessly fired upwards, while her partner hastily packed the money into a bag. This went on for several months, until the hijackers got into a police ambush in Kaufman.
Clyde, firing back, ran away and escaped with only a slight wound in the shoulder. The police roughly twisted Bonnie, who was screeching and biting, and dragged her to the car. When the judges looked at the young pretty raider, they did not believe for a long time that they were in fact the object of criminal proceedings. Appearance and touching notes took their toll: the raider was sentenced only to three years.
• Bonnie after serving two, married ahead of schedule for good behavior. Behind the prison walls, all her virtue vanished again. Bonnie and Clyde were still together. The raid followed the raid. During the breaks, they had fun and posed for the camera. The pictures only increased their popularity. The press portrayed the bandits as ruthless lovers who, roaming the cities of Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Missouri, robbing and killing, at the same time remained a romantic couple.
In reality, everything was much more prosaic and even more piquant. The prison made a bisexual out of an ardent Clyde. Very soon the formidable gang was replenished with a third member - Ray Hemilton, with whom Clyde whiled away his prison term in love joys. Jealous Bonnie for a long time could not treat same-sex sex with understanding, then she got used to it and tried to simply not notice it.
• During the year, the criminal trio killed 4 people, the first of whom was a jeweler. The hijackers stole weapons, stole cars and even swung at banks. Bank locks and employees, whose hands lay a few centimeters from the red button, could not resist their insolence. Ray Hamilton, although he considered himself lucky, was caught first.
Bonnie and Clyde hid for a month and decided to leave the state. A few days before leaving, they were ambushed again and opened revolving fire. In a desperate firefight, a sheriff's deputy was killed. The raiders managed to escape again, but now the entire Texas police were hunting them. Bonnie, who sensed the imminent demise, decided to play with death in the open. The gang was joined by Clyde's brother Buck and a certain 16-year-old boy named Wu De.
The raiders needed firearms. Bonnie suggested organizing a raid on the federal arsenal in Springfield, Missouri. The operation went brilliantly. The success was immediately celebrated with a robbery of a credit company in Kansas City. While the police were looking for gangsters in six states, they made their way back to Dallas to visit their relatives. After robbing a jewelry store in Neos, Bonnie and Clyde rented a house nearby, but a neighbor managed to notice how suspicious trunks moved into the house along with bags and boxes.
The police arrived 15 minutes later and immediately began to suffer losses. The first volley from the window of the surrounded house killed two policemen. The police did not expect such a rebuff. Taking advantage of the confusion, the bandits jumped out of the house, got into their car and rushed along the dusty road. They drove nearly 400 miles from Neos to Texas that night. Clyde's hand was bleeding, it was bandaged right on the go. Before that, Bonnie was able to pull a bullet out of the wound with a hairpin.
Despite all their fame, the money the bandits got was tiny. The biggest prize - $ 2,500, they captured in May 1933 in the Okobino bank. Legendary John Dillinger commented on the event as follows: “A couple of scum. They dishonor the bank robbers. A week later, Clyde was driving at his usual crazy speed when the accident happened. The car caught fire and overturned.
Clyde was able to open the door and jumped out of the blazing salon. Bonnie was less agile. She received serious burns and was barely able to limp to the nearest village. A compassionate family that sheltered a young couple offered to call a doctor. Bonnie refused. Then the owner called the police.
• Two officers arrived at the house and were ambushed a few minutes later. The hijackers declared them hostages, got into a police car with them and rushed to the state border at the same breakneck speed. At the border the officers were released.
Bonnie was recovering slowly. The hijackers went into hiding in Kansas and Iowa. Despite their caution, the police tracked them down again. Early in the morning, a dozen police officers surrounded the house, where Clyde and his Bonnie were basking in their early morning slumber.
Sensitive Bonnie heard a slight noise, looked out from behind the curtain and was horrified. She woke Clyde, and together they tried to sneak out of the house. The first shots rang out, and the bandits, firing right and left, rushed ahead. They were able to get to the river and started swimming. Fortune helped Bonnie and Clyde again and again, who seemed drunk with the risk.
In the next 4 months, they shot four more police officers. By that time, Brother Buck had already rested in a better world, hit by a bullet from a carbine. Kid Woo De, caught at the border, was able to avoid the electric chair. At the trial, he cried and shouted that he was forced to shoot and cut. Wu De asked for a pardon and was sent to federal prison for 15 years.
The elusive Bonnie and Clyde were taken care of by Sheriff Schmidt, who ordered his best agents to get the bandits dead or alive. The same ones, inspired by luck, attacked the farm where the prisoners worked, killed the guards and took five prisoners from the striped crowd. The new team began to smash banks, leaving corpses behind. Everything would be fine, but Clyde's sexual orientation manifested itself again.
Shameless Clyde flirted with two gang members, and they reciprocated. The third bandit brought his girlfriend to the group, and away we go. While the press treated the gangsters as a sensation, a quarrel developed among them not so much because of sexual partnerships, but because of prey. The raids gave a meager catch. Having quarreled and nearly shooting each other, the bandits split into two camps and dispersed.
• Bonnie and Clyde toured the states looting and killing. During an extended rally, they stopped between cornfields to take a break. The loving couple drank whiskey, shot birds and made love. She was soon spotted by two Highway Patrol officers. The officers drove up to the car, not even suspecting who they would have to deal with. Smiling affably, Bonnie and Clyde opened fire together. After this cold-blooded murder, they signed their own verdict: the romantic and sentimental part of the United States turned its back on them. Now a reward has been announced for the capture of Bonnie and Clyde.
Federal authorities have joined forces to capture the daring hijackers. The search was led by mounted policeman Frank Haymer, who at one time shot 60 bandits. Having insured himself with two fighters, he followed the trail of the raiders, not giving them a break and gaining strength and ammunition. Bonnie and Clyde went northeast towards Oklahoma.
A random police patrol tried to stop a suspicious car with bullet holes in the windshield. But a machine gun shot from the window. Two policemen fell onto the road. One of them fell already dead. Local police chief Percy Boyd received minor wounds in the head and was taken hostage. The bandits kept him for 24 hours. In the end, they somehow liked him and was generously released.
• Percy Boyd began to share his impressions. According to him, Clyde stood out for his vanity and arrogance. As for Bonnie, the police chief liked her:
- She is not at all the same as shown in the picture with a revolver in her hands and a cigar in her mouth. She was annoyed by the caption under the photo "Clyde Barrow's girlfriend smokes cigars," and she regretted having once posed. Bonnie looks like herself in another shot. Where there is a smiling and cheerful girl. And you know, she really loves Clyde. This couple constantly carries with them in the car a little rabbit named Sonny Boy. They are going to give it to Bonnie's mother.
The last fact was a clue. A small squad of police headed to Dallas and visited the mother of Texas's most famous raider. The aging lonely woman went through photographs and stared blankly at the armed policemen. “I haven't seen Bonnie in 5 years,” she said. “And if I knew where she was, I wouldn't say it anyway. A mother cannot betray her child, whatever it is and whatever is written about him."
The deadly tired officers hoped for the raiders' mistake and waited. Clyde's Ford was spotted outside a cafe in Louisiana. The police suggested that the bandits were looking for a meeting with their former accomplice Henry Methven, whose father lived on a local farm. For some reason, all the local robberies were attributed to Bonnie and Clyde.
• Six police officers are hiding near the farm of Methven Sr. There was an arsenal of automatic weapons in their car, but there was nothing to brighten up the long wait. The officers were deadly tired, drenched, exhausted by mosquito bites. For three days and three nights they sat in ambush. Bonnie and Clyde, however, were on their toes. On May 23, at 4 am, officers stopped the car where Henry Methven's father was driving. The old man was dragged out of the car, handcuffed to a tree, and the car was left in the middle of the road as bait.
At ten o'clock in the morning, a familiar Ford appeared on the horizon. Clyde was driving. Noticing the bait, he slowed down, but the next second he squeezed the gas again. But it was too late. A friendly volley of carbines burst out from the bushes. The Ford, shot almost point-blank, stopped. Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker died a violent death, died as they lived. Bonnie fell on Clyde's shoulder.
Clyde was an excellent marksman. Rarely did anyone manage to stay alive if Clyde fired the first shot. The pistols and carbine lay next to Bonnie, but the ambush caught her by surprise. A few hours later, the first onlookers appeared at the scene of the shooting. A bullet-riddled Ford escorted a long escort of 50 vehicles to the police station.
The dark red Ford was put on public display behind a high wire mesh fence. This fence appeared after souvenir hunters tried to disassemble the car for parts. Some even got bits of clothes and locks of Bonnie's hair before they took her body out of the car. In the back seat, three light machine guns, two shotguns, a dozen pistols and at least 1,000 rounds of ammunition were found. They were not useful to the bandits. More than a hundred bullets stuck in two corpses.
• The officers who shot the hijackers became national heroes. Chaos reigned around the morgue. The crowd was eager to see the famous corpses. The morgue was filmed to visually witness death. Bonnie's body, on display in Dallas, could be seen by almost 40,000 onlookers. A little less came to gawk at Clyde's corpse. The most curious were shown Clyde's tattered jacket and his carbine, which had seven notches on the butt - one for each victim.
20 people were brought to trial on charges of harboring criminals. They were relatives and friends. The men were chained in one long chain to prevent an attempted attack on the guards.
Clyde was buried next to his brother Buck in West Dallas Cemetery. A huge flower wreath was dropped from an airplane on his grave. Bonnie wanted to be buried next to Clyde, but her body was taken to Fishtrap Cemetery.
Between robberies and murders, Bonnie sent her poems to many newspapers. Expertise has proven their authenticity. Among them was her own prophetic epitaph:
They don't think they are too cruel
They know that the law always wins.
They've been shot before
And they remember that death is the punishment for sin.
Someday they'll be killed together
And buried side by side.
It will be a sorrow for a few
And it will be a relief for the law, And it will be death for Bonnie and Clyde.
On Bonnie's grave, someone's hand carved the inscription: "As flowers become sweeter from the sun and dew, so our old world is getting better thanks to people like you."
And yet she was America's most cold-blooded and brutal raider.
A. Kuchinski, M. Korets
