Bonnie and Clyde were the most prolific criminal couple in all of American history. They're known for traveling throughout the United States, committing countless bank robberies and shooting at police officers. However, the duo had a gripping story that historians often overlook. Who really were Bonnie and Clyde behind closed doors?
Bonnie Elizabeth Parker
Bonnie Elizabeth Parker was born in 1910 to two parents in the town of Rowena, Texas. She was the middle child and often felt trapped in between her two other siblings. Her father, Charles Robert Parker, was a bricklayer who passed away while Bonnie was just four years old. Her mother, Emma, was tasked with raising her three children all on her own. She was forced to make some choices...
The Power of Words
Bonnie Parker and her family moved to Cement City, located on the west side of Dallas, so Bonnie's mother could get help from her parents. Emma worked as a seamstress to support the kids. When her mother was away, Bonnie turned to books and writing as a way to express her emotions. She wrote poetry that worried her mother, with titles like "The Story of Suicide Sal" and "The Trails End." However, the trail had far from ended...
Bonnie and Roy
In high school, Bonnie was popular among the men, but there was one boy, in particular. She and classmate Roy Thornton had something special, or at least they were convinced they did. The couple was married on September 25, 1926, six days before Bonnie turned sixteen. They dropped out of school together and were excited for long and happy lives spent side by side. Things didn't go according to plan...
Roy's Downfall
Roy and Bonnie had some trouble in paradise. Roy wasn't a great husband. He often got in tough spots with the law and wound up in jail on more than one occasion. He also disappeared for weeks at a time, with no trace of where he had gone or what he had been doing. Bonnie became irate with this blatant disrespect. Eventually, Roy disappeared for good. The couple never officially divorced, but soon, Bonnie lived alone...
The Life of Bonnie
After Bonnie realized that her time with her husband was over, she moved back in with her mother and grandparents in Dallas. She worked as a waitress to help out with the bills, but always thought of the job as tedious and difficult for such a short final payout. It was then that she started considering crossing over into a life of crime, but she'd need a bit of a push...
The Write Stuff
Bonnie kept a journal throughout her early years when she met Clyde, which gave historians a lot of her love story. She also wrote about how lonely she felt before him, how lost and alone she felt in Dallas, and how much she loved taking photographs. These were traits that made her ripe for the picking from Clyde, who she'd meet in only a few short years...
Clyde Champion Barrow
Clyde Barrow was only a year older than his soon to be lover, born in the year 1909 in Ellis County, Texas. He was the fifth child of Henry Basil Barrow and Cumie Talitha Walker, who had seven children in total. The family moved to Dallas as part of a migration pattern that urged rural area workers into city slums. West Dallas became his new home in the 1920s, and soon, he'd meet a very special lady...
A Rough Start
The Barrow family lived in an overturned wagon for months until they saved up enough to buy a tent for the family. Clyde got his first arrest in 1926 when he was just seventeen. He had failed to return a rental car on time. After that, the arrests became more frequent, like when he and brother Buck stole turkeys to feed their family. He tried normal jobs, but those didn't last as long as his run-ins with the law...
Rule Breaker
The man stole cars, robbed local convenience stores, and cracked open safes from 1927 to 1929. He was twenty years old when he finally ran into the person that would change his life forever. Bonnie Parker, aged 19, became a fast friend to Clyde when they met through a mutual friend. The spent every day together after meeting, and love came shortly following...
First Meeting
Though there's no record of the couple's first meeting, the story goes like this: apparently the two met thanks to friend Clarence Clay at a party. Parker had a broken arm at the time and was struggling to make hot chocolate when Barrow first saw her and fell in love instantly. The location of the party was 105 Herbert Street in West Dallas, and that's where this piece of history was born...
Head Over Heels
The couple were instantly smitten with each other and spent every moment of every day together. Their love story was briefly cut off when Clyde was arrested for auto theft. He was sure that Bonnie would leave him because of this rule break, but she stood by his side. He was sent to Eastham Prison Farm in April of 1930, aged 21. Instead of leaving him though, Parker decided to help out...
Sneaking Inside
Parker smuggled a weapon into the imprisoned Barrow. Using this, he was able to escape incarceration, but he was captured and returned to prison again shortly after. While imprisoned the second time, he was repeatedly sexually assaulted. This humiliation caused Barrow to lash out and kill his assaulter with a lead pipe, cracking open his skull. This opened up a new door for Barrow...
Safe for Now
This murder was Barrow's first kill, but another inmate offered to take the fall for the crime. He was already doing a lifetime sentence, so the kill wouldn't add any more time. Barrow accepted this offer, and the man saved Barrow from a life behind bars. There were other things inmates did to help Barrow out with returning to his one true love, but they weren't very pretty...
Chopped Toes
Hard labor is how many of the prisoners made their money or passed their time, but Barrow wanted no part of this work. He asked other inmates to chop his toes off so he could avoid the fields, and the prisoners obliged with his requests. Because of this, the killer would walk with a limp for the rest of his life, one of his most defining descriptions later in his criminal history...
Walking Free
No thanks to his dramatic toe injury, Barrow was released from prison only six days after the loss. His mother had petitioned for his release and had won in the courts, which allowed him to leave early. When he left, he was described as a hardened and bitter criminal. His friend and inmate in the prison said he had watched Barrow "change from a schoolboy to a rattlesnake..."
A New Man
His sister, Marie, described the change as "Something awful sure must have happened to him in prison because he wasn't the same person when he got out." He took back to a life of crime almost instantly, robbing gas stations and grocery stores for petty cash and a quick buck. His weapon of choice became an M1918 Browning Automatic Rifle. The gang started around then too...
Getting the Gang
Following his release in February of 1932, Barrow returned quickly to a life of crime. He, Parker, and friend Ralph Fults began robbing local stores and gas stations for the purpose of getting enough money to retaliate against the Eastham Prison Farm. However, they were captured and taken into custody after a bad burglary in Kaufman. Barrow got off, but Fults went back to jail and never rejoined the gang. Parker also went to prison...
Together Forever
While incarcerated, Parker wrote poetry about Barrow. She was released in only a few months and returned to Clyde. While she was gone, Clyde had added Raymond Hamilton, Ross Dyer, and W.D Jones to the crew of criminals. They became a real gang, even going so far as to kill nine police officers in a shoot out. These were the first, though not the last, people killed by the Barrow Gang...
The Family Business
After killing five more people and countless more robberies, the gang was well known in the community. Barrow's brother, Buck, wanted in on the action and joined his family business. He and wife Blanche became part of the gang and provided the group with a fully furnished hideout at 3347 1/2 Oakridge Drive in Joplin, Missouri where they could organize bigger and better robberies...
The Other Side
Buck and Blanche had tried to get Clyde to turn himself in, but there was no way that was happening. Together, the group ran big alcohol-fueled parties with gambling and loud music. Despite being in a residential area, no one ever risked reporting the house to the police. They had earned a status. Only one person ever complained about the noise, but this turned out pretty poorly...
The Great Escape
When the police came to the door, Buck and Clyde opened fire on Detective Harry McGinnis, who passed away from the shots. Soon a full shoot-out broke out between the gang and Joplin Police officers on the scene. Parker and Blanche got into the car to escape, picking up the brothers as they drove away. The downside was that everything they owned was still in the hideout, and it exposed a lot of secrets...
Hidden Inside
Inside the hideout, the police found a lot of evidence pointing to who these criminals were. Among the objects, they discovered Buck Barrow's three-week-old parole papers, a large collection of violent weapons, a poem written by Bonnie, and a camera with several rolls of undeveloped film that could later be run in newspapers. Bonnie and Clyde were about to become famous...
National Headlines
Police gave the photos to The Joplin Globe to run. Now, the couple would become a public image and maybe come closer to being caught. A photo of Bonnie became very popular, as it had the beautiful young woman holding a cigar in her mouth and a gun in her grip. Overnight, the couple became the first-ever criminal celebrities. Everyone was fascinated with the criminals in love...
Crime Never Rests
Despite this new popularity, the gang kept moving. They robbed a bank in Lucerne, Indiana and another in Okabena, Minnesota. They kidnapped two strangers in the process of stealing their car. They kidnapped police officers and robbery hostages often as well, though the hostages were usually dropped off in random locations with enough money to get home safe...
Legendary Love
Stories of the lovers told by released hostages and crime scene witnesses only made the gang more popular and more revered. People were enamored with a couple who loved each other and treated people with kindness but also shot at anyone who got in their way. Though it was fun for a while, eventually their ruthless murders outweighed their interesting storyline, and the public lost interest...
All Eyes Watching
The group was always on edge with their new publicity. Hotels and motels were no longer safe houses, their photos were in every establishment. They tried living in the cars together, but such close quarts made the group become irritable and annoyed with each other. Eventually, Jones stole one of the cars and drove off, staying away from the group for a few months...
Car Crash
Once, when driving to another location, the car the crew was riding flipped over, causing Bonnie's leg to become trapped. She suffered third-degree burns on the limb, and one gang member said: "She'd been burned so bad none of us thought she was gonna live. The hide on her right leg was gone, from her hip down to her ankle. I could see the bone at places."
Overcoming
After this incident, Parker could barely stand, much less walk around. She managed to get by on her feet by hopping on one leg. She was often carried from one location to another by Clyde. A family of farmers helped heal her, and shortly after, the group kidnapped two police officers. This way, they could afford to keep Bonnie alive and healing while still keeping up their reputation...
Red Crown Tourist Court
It was July of 1933 when the crew members checked into Platte City's Red Crown Tourist Court. The gang was staying in cabins joined by garages, and despite the privacy, they drew quite a lot of attention. They registered as a group of three, but after five people got out of the car, owner Neal houser knew something strange was happening in his family resort court...
Unusual Suspects
Neal took extra notice of the new tenants who inhabited the court. He noted in later reports that they backed up their car into the garage like gangsters would for a quick getaway. He also later recalled that Blanche paid for the group using coins instead of bills or credit. She did the same later when paying for their five dinners and five beers from the tavern next door...
A Different Style
Blanche became famous at the site for jodhpur riding breeches, a style of pants that wasn't very popular on women at the time. Eyewitnesses of the later events remembered her look almost forty years after the fact. Neal Houser was worried about the group so it wasn't long until the police were called. This call would lead to one of the wildest shoot-outs in American history...
Out On the Town
Barrow went with Jones into town to buy bandages, cheese, crackers, and medications for Bonnie's leg injury. While there, they were alerted to the local Sheriff's office. The reinforcements brought an armored car and several officers armed with Thompson submachine guns. They approached the gang at 11 pm so that they wouldn't be able to outrun the police force...
The Gunfight
When the police raided the room, armed with .45 caliber Thompson's, they hadn't expected Barrow to be ahead of the game. His .30 caliber BAR allowed him and the group to escape as a bullet short-circuited the alarm on the aforementioned armored car. Luckily for the Barrow gang, police thought it was a cease-fire alarm instead, so they allowed Barrow and company to escape easily.
Buck's Bullet
The gang was safe for now, but they knew their time was almost up. Buck had sustained a bullet wound to the skull, right through the forehead, that miraculously didn't kill him. Blanche had also been severely hurt, being blasted with glass from the shot windows and had shards and fragments in her eyes. Things were only going to get more dangerous from here...
Camping Out
The gang escaped to a nearby abandoned amusement park in Dexter, Iowa. This park was known to locals as Dexterfield Park. Buck kept falling in and out of consciousness and was losing a lot of blood. He talked and ate well enough, but Barrow knew his time was limited. He dug up a grave for his brother, convinced he wouldn't make it. Over 100 people crowded around the park's edge to observe the criminals before capture...
Under Fire
While digging the grave, the Barrow gang came under fire. Barrow, Bonnie, and Jones were all able to run away in time, but such was not the case for Buck and Blanche. Buck was shot in the back while Blanche was captured by the officers. She was wearing her riding Breeches at the time. Buck died in the hospital five days after the shooting due to pneumonia and head wound surgery...
Running Around
The three escape artists ran to locations they had never braved before, like Colorado, Minnesota, and Mississippi. They might have been safe longer if they hadn't been committing robberies in all these locations as well. They kept their ammunition stocked by stealing from armories in Illinois. They left with handguns, BARs, and more bullets than they ever had had before...
Risk to Run
After four months on the run, the three of them decided to risk returning to Dallas to see their families and loved ones. Jones left Bonnie and Clyde during this time to visit family in his hometown of Houston. This was a mistake on his part, as he was promptly arrested without difficulty as soon as he returned to his mother's house. Now, only Bonnie and Clyde were left...
Small Victories
Without Bonnie or Jones, Clyde continued robberies during the group's break. He used the autumnal months to teach accomplices his methods. During this time, Bonnie returned to her mother's home to heal her still damaged leg. He continued to visit her, deliver medical supplies and use the robberies to support them both financially. There were a couple of close calls...
Car Catastrophe
Once, when Clyde and Bonnie were driving to meet family members. Three officers were laying in a bush nearby to attack once they got out of the car. Sensing a trap, Clyde kept driving past his family's car. The officers shot at the car anyway, which didn't stop them, but both criminals were hit in the leg. No family members were hurt, but the couple knew they had to leave again for everyone's safety...
Late Warrant
In January of 1933, Bonnie Parker had killed Tarrant County Deputy, Malcolm Davis. Ten months after this act, on November 28th the same year, Bonnie Parker was indicted for murder (along with Barrow, who had also helped with the killing.) Though she had killed several people by this point, this was Bonnie's first warrant for murder. Soon, she wouldn't have to worry about this though...
The Final Run
Throughout his criminal run, Barrow had one ultimate goal. He wanted to tear down the Eastham Prison where he had been humiliated and mutilated so many years ago, but time was running out and he knew it. He decided to orchestrate the act finally with new gang members Hamilton, Methvin, and others. This raid, which would later be known as the Eastham Breakout, would become his most famous run...
Out for Revenge
Apparently, Clyde had always wanted to get revenge on the Texas Department of Corrections. After the raid's success, the Texas department knew it was time to get serious about their capture. A manhunt began across the entire state. One of the officers who had been shot in the raid struggled for life, and officer Lee Simmons reportedly promised to take down all of the gang members...
Frank Hamer
Frank was a retired police captain, but he was the best in the business. Officers persuaded him to leave retirement to track down the Barrow Gang. He agreed. The man was tall, burly, and a rebel of the law. He didn't follow rules or listen to authority. He told reporters that he was only driven by an "inflexible adherence to right, or what [he] thinks is right." He was a man to be feared for sure...
Final Shots Fired
Barrow and Methvin killed highway patrolmen on Easter Sunday of 1934. It was long believed that both Bonnie and Clyde fired the final shots that killed them, but Methvin later admitted that it was him who started shooting. Parker had actually hoped to help the patrolmen, and Clyde was often unhappy with needless killing but went along with it. Bonnie was asleep in the backseat when it all happened...
Public Opinion
After this murder, everyone in Texas wanted Bonnie and Clyde to pay for their wrongdoings. Bonnie had been seen as a lovestruck girl up to this point, but the popular story that she was the killer took hold, and everyone was rooting against the couple. They knew there was a target on their backs, but they never expected their closest friend to be the one to turn them in...
Methvin Delivers His Friends
On May 23, 1934, Methvin organized with police to deliver his coworkers to his parent's house. They shot Barrow's car as it drove into the driveway. The officers at the scene said "After shooting the shotguns, we emptied the pistols at the car, which had passed us and ran into a ditch about 50 yards on down the road. It almost turned over. We kept shooting at the car even after it stopped. We weren't taking any chances..."
Hit and Done
Both Bonnie and Clyde were shot between 25-50 times each, several of which were to the head. In their car, the officers couldn't believe what they found. Inside, stolen automatic rifles, sawed-off semi-automatic shotguns, various handguns, and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. They also found over 15 license plates from an assortment of states and cities...
Put a Ring On It
Despite her overwhelming love for Clyde, Bonnie Parker never removed her ring from her first husband, Roy Thorton. The snake ring was found still on her hand when she was shot. When he was told of his wife's death, Roy Thornton said "I'm glad they went out as they did. It's much better than being caught." Roy was in prison at the time of her and Clyde's death...
News Travels Fast
Word of the murders traveled fast, and everyone wanted a piece of the action. People came from far and wide to see the slain villains. Two officers were tasked with guarding the bodies, but between the rowdy crowds, the evidence was mangled. People cut off pieces of hair and bits of clothing as keepsakes. They were sold later as souvenirs to locals who couldn't go view the corpses...
Keeping Keepsakes
"Nearly everyone had begun collecting souvenirs such as shell casings, slivers of glass from the shattered car windows, and bloody pieces of clothing from the garments of Bonnie and Clyde," said one eyewitness officer, "One eager man had opened his pocket knife and was reaching into the car to cut off Clyde's left ear." It seemed they were more loved in death than in life...
Undertaker Tale
H.D. Darby was an undertaker from Bonnie's hometown. He was also one of the two people who were called in to identify the bodies since he had been kidnapped by them at one point. He recalled a moment when Bonnie discovered he was an undertaker. She had said that someday he would likely be working on her body, and laughed at the idea. H.D. was, in fact, one of the people who worked on her...
Rise in Population
Following the deaths, true crime fans from across the country visited to see the site of the shoot-out. The population had jumped from 2,000 to 12,000 only hours after the news broke. People arrived via car, horse, train, plane, and walking. Beer that was normally only 15 cents jumped in price to 25 cents. Food everywhere sold out. But one visitor wasn't so pleased...
Henry Barrow
Henry Barrow was one of the last to arrive on the scene. Allegedly he came to identify the body of his son, and as soon as he laid his eyes on the body, he broke down in tears. He moved to a rocking chair where he sobbed while officers hauled the corpse away. He couldn't believe that he had lost two sons in just a year's time. He couldn't believe what happened next either...
Bonnie's Burial
Despite their wishes to be buried together, Bonnie's family decided to bury the couple separated. Her mother tried to bring the body to be buried at their home, but the crowds of people surrounding the site made this impossible. Her services were held on May 26th. The crowds, again, were so deep that the family had difficulty reaching the front of the service...
Peace Offerings
Flowers were sent in from across the nation for the fallen gunwoman. The largest floral arrangement came from a group of Dallas city newsboys, who had sold over 500,000 newspapers due to the criminal activity. Her epitaph read "As the flowers are all made sweeter by the sunshine and the dew, so this old world is made brighter by the lives of folks like you..."
Clyde's Burial
Barrow's funeral was held in private on May 25. He was placed to rest in the Western heights Cemetary in Dallas, TX. He joined his brother Marvin (Buck), and the brothers shared a tombstone. Their epitaph said "Gone but not forgotten." This was pre-selected by Clyde in the years leading up to his and his brother's death, who always knew they'd be killed early...
Bonnie & Clyde Ambush Museum
Today, the bullet-destroyed Ford and the suit Barrow wore are on display in the Whiskey Pete Casino in Primm, Nevada. Though many of the officers were promised large sums of money, one, in particular, was offered $26,000 ($498,630 today). However, none of these debts were fulfilled. Barrow and Parker's insurances were paid in full to their families, which changed the law for future criminal insurance policies.
Blanche's Fate
As for the rest of the crew, their fates were not as dramatic. Blanche was never seen carrying a gun, so she was convicted of attempted murder. For this crime, she only served for six years. She was permanently blinded in her left eye due to the glass shards from the amusement park shoot-out. She never returned to crime and spent her life as a caregiver to her invalid father...
Blanche's Normal Life
Blanche remarried to Eddie Frasure in 1940. She spent the remainder of her life very normally, becoming a taxi driver and beautician. She lived in peace until her husband's death from cancer in 1969. She died in 1988 from cancer at age 77. Her gravesite is in Dallas's Grove Hill Memorial Park where she is listed as "Blanche B. Frasure". Some believe the B stands for Barrow...
Beatty and Blanche
Blanche was approached by Warren Beatty for the rights to her name when he was making Bonnie and Clyde in 1967. She agreed and approved the script, though disliked Estelle Parson's depiction of her, saying she made her look like "a screaming horse's ass." Despite her distaste for the film, she and Warren Beatty remained good friends until her death...
Methvin's Fate
Henry Methvin was the one who tipped off police and helped them take down the culprits. He was convicted in 1934 for the murder of Constable Campbell at Commerce. He was paroled only 9 years later, and then killed by a train only 6 years after that. He had fallen asleep drunk on train trucks, though some speculate he was pushed by someone out for revenge...
Jones' Fate
W.D Jones was the friend who had been captured during the gang's break in Dallas. While captured, he tried to convince the police that he had been kidnapped by the couple. He also spread rumors about the couple's sexual activities and Barrow's ambiguous sexuality. He served fifteen years in prison. He was killed by a jealous boyfriend of a woman he was trying to help...
Movie Magic
Unsurprisingly, the story of Bonnie and Clyde has garnered quite a lot of attention and has been made into three major motion pictures. First, William Whitney's The Bonnie Parker Story starring Dorothy Provine in 1958. Next, Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde in 1967, which starred Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. Most recently, a 2019 film called The Highwaymen shows the police officers' perspective.
TV Time
The story has also been replicated for television series such as Bonnie and Clyde: The True Story in 1992, which starred Tracey Needham as Bonnie and Dana Ashbrook as Clyde. There was also a television miniseries called Bonnie & Clyde which was airing on A&E, the History Channel, and Lifetime. There have also been multiple song references to the couple...