When Bonnie and Clyde died, crowds swarmed the scene, desperate to grab anything they could carry away as a souvenir. One man went further than the rest, offering Clyde’s father thirty thousand dollars in cash for the body itself, a sum that today would be over six hundred thousand. For any couple, marriage means being a team and facing everything life throws at them. For Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, that meant danger, heartache, and a trail of unlawful acts that would end in a violent, bloody death.
Falling in love young, they pledged to spend the rest of their lives together, even though both knew the life they chose would never be ordinary. It would be easy to assume that the two most notorious outlaws in American history were rotten from birth. But Clyde, despite having the more extensive record, did not start on the wrong side of the law. Born in 1909, he had no brush with the authorities until he was seventeen, and even then, the only charge against him was returning a rental car late.
That mild offense, however, was just the beginning. He had tasted life outside the rules, and it did not take long before he was in trouble again. This time, authorities found him and his brother Buck with several stolen turkeys, charging them with theft and taking them into custody. Even as Clyde grew older and took on more lawful lines of work, he could not stop stealing on the side.
Bonnie did not struggle so early, but she would face her own hardships soon enough. Born in 1910, her childhood was turned upside down at age four when her father suddenly died, giving her a first, sharp taste of grief. Growing up in Texas, she went to school like every other kid, but that kind of life was not for her, especially after she found something she preferred to focus on. In her second year of high school, she met a younger classmate named Roy Thornton.
Together they dreamed of running away and leaving everything behind. Roy shared the feeling, so the two quit school and married in September 1926. It was not the fairytale ending she had hoped for. As a preview of the kind of lover Bonnie would spend the rest of her life with, Roy Thornton began his life as an outlaw too, except he left her out of it.
The couple grew estranged as he was always away on some illicit business, and eventually they separated. She did not seem too heartbroken, especially since someone was about to take his place. With Clyde released from behind bars and Bonnie single in every way but on paper, all that was left was for the pair to meet. A mutual friend introduced them in 1930, and Bonnie soon saw the same pattern of unlawful behavior in Clyde as she had seen in her ex.
That did not sway her. If anything, she wanted in on it. The authorities caught up with Clyde again and locked him up for stealing cars, but now he had someone he could count on. Bonnie smuggled a pistol into his cell, allowing him to brandish it and escape.
He did not get far before the authorities found him and sent him back. At twenty-one, he spent a few months in the state facility before being transferred to Eastham Farm, where Bonnie’s clever plans could not reach him. By the end of his career, Clyde would take the lives of countless people, but the first had nothing to do with his illicit activities. While incarcerated, another inmate forced himself on Clyde.
The trauma pushed him past the brink. Picking up a nearby pipe, he retaliated and took the life of his aggressor. He could not control how long his imprisonment would last, but he could at least make his stay easier, no matter the cost. Building up his courage, he had two of his toes amputated, making him unfit for hard labor.
The move helped him briefly, but his permanent limp would only make things harder as his life went on. Just six days after injuring himself, he was shocked to learn he was free to go, all thanks to his mother, who had petitioned for his release and succeeded. But the damage was done. Clyde was now determined to live the life of an outlaw.
Not long after his release, he met up with a former inmate pal named Ralph Fults, and the two robbed several small businesses. This was not just about money. Clyde had a vendetta against the system, and he was gearing up for something big. As for Bonnie, the time had come for her first brush with the law.
Reunited with her beloved Clyde, she was eager to help him. Partnering with Ralph Fults, she tried to hold up a hardware store to secure some firepower, but things did not go according to plan. The authorities stopped them and took her into custody, but the grand jury could not indict her, so her incarceration lasted only a few months. Now a full-time outlaw, Clyde was constantly on edge.
On the night of August 5th, 1932, he and a couple of friends attended a country dance in Oklahoma when the sheriff and his deputy walked up to them. Clyde did not respond well to their presence. Before the officers could get a word out, Clyde and another friend opened fire, beginning a quick shootout that resulted in the deaths of both lawmen. Luckily, the couple had a place where they could lay low, but they would not be alone.
While Clyde had managed an early release, his brother Buck was not so lucky, and it was not until 1933 that he received a full pardon. For several weeks, Buck and his wife Blanche hosted Bonnie and Clyde at their home in Missouri, also allowing their childhood friend W. D. Jones to stay with them.
Perhaps because he felt so safe with his older brother, Clyde began to let down his guard. He and Buck often hosted card games with friends, causing such a ruckus that neighbors were kept up well into the night. Then one accident ruined everything. Clyde accidentally fired his weapon while cleaning it, and the authorities, tipped off by a neighbor, descended on the house.
A firefight broke out, and Clyde and his brother took the lives of two more men. Bonnie kept a level head, and they likely would not have made it out alive without her. This shootout was not like the one in Oklahoma, and the gang soon realized how outnumbered they were. Thinking on her feet, Bonnie grabbed a weapon and began firing at the officers to cover everyone as they fled.
Clyde and the other men jumped in the car and sped off, picking up Bonnie and Blanche on the way. The latter was busy trying to catch their loose dog. Since the gang had not expected law enforcement to find them so soon, they had nothing prepared for a quick getaway. They left most of their belongings back at the house.
Some items were less incriminating, like Bonnie’s poetry, but the officers also discovered a whole arsenal and an undeveloped roll of film with intriguing photos. With this, the authorities had everything necessary to paint their own story, and America ate it up. Believing the film roll might hold invaluable evidence, the authorities brought it to the Joplin Globe to develop it. There were no photos of the gang committing thefts, but there were images of Bonnie and Clyde posing with various items from their arsenal.
The press ran with it, pasting the photos across front pages and turning the couple into infamous celebrities overnight. With their faces plastered all over major newspapers and the authorities hot on their trail, Bonnie and Clyde knew they could not settle down anywhere. The couple and their small gang spent the next few months on the run, traveling all over America and holding up several banks along the way. On several occasions, the gang would rob someone and then hold them captive for a while.
But they were not completely merciless. Most of the time, they let their hostages go, and they even gave a few of them money to get back home. The gang tried to stay away from large populations, which meant typical inns and restaurants were off the table. They had no choice but to remain out in the wild.
While driving across a bridge one day, Clyde missed the sign saying it was under construction and ended up driving off into a ravine. The effects were devastating. The gang was desperate to find somewhere to treat their injuries, eventually posting up in an Arkansas motel. They needed supplies, so while Clyde stayed behind, Buck and W.
D. Jones went to town. That was a mistake. The two men tried to rob a grocery store and ended up taking the life of the town marshal.
By some miracle, the gang managed to elude law enforcement for about a month, but they could only stay hidden for so long. Checking into the Red Crown Tourist Court in Missouri, none of them seemed concerned about anyone recognizing them. Perhaps they had grown tired of running, or maybe they just had bigger things to worry about. Whatever the case, the gang was getting sloppy again.
Blanche had already drawn strange looks due to her unusual dress, and the rest of them were not any better. They taped newspapers over their cabin windows, but this only made the owner, Neil Houser, more wary. Clyde knew that going into town would practically be asking for history to repeat itself, but Bonnie needed medicine, and they were out of options. Taking Jones with him, he stopped briefly at a drug store to pick up necessities, but that was enough to raise alarms.
The druggist alerted the authorities, and Highway Patrol Captain William Baxter sprang into action, calling for reinforcements to besiege the outlaws’ hideout. Thanks to Neil Houser, Captain Baxter knew exactly where to look. With an armored car in tow, a flurry of gunfire erupted, causing a massive shootout. In what seemed like divine intervention, a stray round hit the armored car in just the right spot to cause the horn to malfunction, tricking the officers into a ceasefire and allowing the outlaws to escape.
Although the gang escaped once again, they were not all in one piece. Buck had taken a round to the forehead, leaving a hole that went straight to his brain. Despite this, he was reportedly still talking and eating normally. Still, Clyde had to accept that his brother’s time was almost up, and he even dug a grave to prepare for Buck’s inevitable passing.
With such a loss on the horizon, Clyde would need time to grieve, but he did not even have that. Beaten, bloody, and on the run, the gang did not have the luxury of picking their next camp. They settled on a park they thought would be safe. They were sorely mistaken.
They hardly had time to catch their breath before bystanders noticed the sorry state of the group and the authorities received a tip. Suddenly, the outlaws were right back in the middle of a firefight and had no choice but to flee again. With the law bearing down on them, there was little chance of everyone making it out alive, but Bonnie and Clyde’s story was not over yet. Clyde tragically lost his brother, who suffered six more shots before the officers took him and Blanche into custody.
Even after the rest of the outlaws got away, Jones decided he had grown fed up with the lifestyle and parted ways with the couple once they recovered from their wounds. By this time, Bonnie and Clyde had stolen a lot of money and slain several law enforcement officers, but it was not until November 1933 that the government decided to take things truly seriously. At the beginning of the year, the couple had taken the life of Tarrant County Deputy Malcolm Davis, and the Dallas Grand Jury finally decided to use that to deliver an indictment against them, the first of its kind for Bonnie. This may have scared others into laying low for a while, but Bonnie and Clyde had bigger plans in motion.
As 1934 began, they had everything they needed to execute the plan Clyde had been working toward from the start. Raiding the Eastham Farm on January 16th, Bonnie and Clyde managed to free several inmates. Although most were eventually recaptured, the damage to the lockup’s reputation was done. A few escapees managed to evade the authorities long-term, and Bonnie and Clyde were happy to have their own gang again.
However, these new additions brought more than the couple bargained for, since one of them, Joe Palmer, had slain Major Joe Crowson during the raid. At this point, Bonnie and Clyde had survived no shortage of assaults by law enforcement, so the Department of Corrections knew they would have to bring out the big guns. They called up formerly retired Texas Ranger Captain Frank Hamer, explained the gravity of the situation, and told him his commission was still active. He had little choice but to accept.
With a full gang again, Bonnie and Clyde continued to terrorize the Texas justice system. On April 1st, 1934, two patrolmen stopped at what they thought was a vehicle in distress. They were caught by surprise as Clyde and new gang member Henry Methvin opened fire, ending both officers’ lives. This turned them into even bigger household names, and not in a good way.
Vowing to track down Bonnie and Clyde and bring them to justice, Captain Hamer knew he could leave no rock unturned, especially since Clyde now had sixteen warrants against him. Leading up to May 1934, Hamer spent every waking moment following the gang’s actions and alleged sightings, until he finally knew where they could be next and assembled a posse to catch them. While this information would have been enough on its own, the law still had one ace in the hole. Throughout their time as outlaws, Bonnie and Clyde’s gang never forgot about their families and tried to see them as much as possible.
Henry Methvin was no different. Unfortunately, this would spell their doom. After he became separated from the rest of the gang, he decided to meet up with his father. During the reunion, Methvin let slip that the plan was to meet back up with Bonnie and Clyde on a stretch of highway near Arcadia.
Once again, it all came down to the couple trusting the wrong people. While divulging their plans to anyone would have been unwise, Methvin’s father, Ivan, was one of the worst people he could have confided in. Not only had the law been breathing down Ivan’s neck, but they had also promised leniency for Henry if Ivan helped them catch Bonnie and Clyde. Seeing no better option, Ivan allegedly relayed the gang’s plans to the authorities, which was all Captain Hamer needed.
While Hamer had narrowed down where Bonnie and Clyde would be, he still did not know exactly when they would appear. Therefore, he stationed his posse alongside Louisiana State Highway 154 on May 21st and settled in for a stakeout. Arriving at 9:00 p. m.
, they watched the road all night and all of the next day, but no one showed up. Pulling another all-nighter, Hamer and his posse reached the morning of May 23rd, now exhausted and losing hope. Just as they were thinking of packing up, they heard the unmistakable sound of a vehicle speeding toward them. Ivan Methvin’s betrayal ran deeper than just giving up sensitive information.
He allegedly parked his truck near the hidden officers and staged a flat tire. Hamer’s persistence had paid off. Sure enough, Bonnie and Clyde came barreling down the highway, slowing down as they recognized Methvin’s truck. They had spent years getting the drop on law enforcement, but this time they were completely unaware of what was in store.
Slowing down to check out the situation, the couple barely had time to think before Hamer and his men jumped out and began firing. It later became clear that Clyde perished almost immediately, with Bonnie joining him shortly after. The lawmen were clearly trigger-happy that day, refusing to cease fire until they had to. Neither Hamer nor any man under him had anything left in his weapon by the end.
By the end of their lives, Bonnie and Clyde had earned a substantial bounty of about two thousand dollars. But even though Hamer and his posse were the ones to take the couple down, they did not get one penny. Instead, they received permission to take whatever they wanted from the car. The officers scavenged anything they could find, everything from Clyde’s saxophone to Bonnie’s clothes, and of course their stolen arsenal.
Whatever Bonnie did before meeting Clyde, he had become the love of her life, and she clearly remained dedicated to him right until the end. But her heart may have still had room for another. As the authorities examined her body after the ambush, they discovered that on her left hand she still wore a wedding ring from her estranged husband Roy Thornton. The public was infatuated with the couple.
When word got out about their deaths, people descended on the scene attempting to take souvenirs. Later, when the bodies were taken to the coroner’s office, the people went there too, just to get their hands on anything they could. There were those who wanted to cut off Clyde’s ear or fingers, and some wanted to cut off pieces of Bonnie’s dress, blood-soaked and all. One man offered Clyde’s father cash money for his body, thirty thousand dollars, which today would be well over six hundred thousand.
Thanks to the press, many saw Bonnie and Clyde as thieves who only targeted banks, but this could not be further from the truth. In reality, while they held up the odd bank every so often, they mostly took money from gas stations or small stores. According to historians, it was never Clyde’s intention to make it big as a notorious outlaw.
His one true goal had always been to pay the justice system back for the horrors he endured while locked up.