Bonnie and Clyde

1
Bonnie and Clyde

• The Romeo and Juliet of the Crime World

2
Star Crossed Lovers

• Like Shakespeares teenage lovers this couple
  were doomed to die tragic deaths
• This was however a tad expected due to their
  lifestyle.

3
Their eyes met

• Bonnie and Clyde met in Texas, 1930.
• Clyde was serving time for burglary.
• Bonnie was due to be married to a murderer.
• He was 21, she, a sweet 19

4
Their first date

• Their relationship grew and she helped break him
  out of prison by smuggling in a gun.
• He was recaptured and then paroled in 1932
  Bonnie joined him

5
Bonnie

• Bonnie stood at 411
• She had Shirley Temple-coloured strawberry-blond
  ringlets, was freckle-faced and, according to
  those who knew her,very pretty.

6
The Deprived Childhood

• Her father died when she was young so her mother
  was forced into taking lowly paid jobs to make
  ends meet.
• Her poverty made her want things she couldnt
  afford hats especially.
• She wasnt stupid, when she was at school she was
  a good students with a flair for English.

7
Clyde Barrow

• At 57 he was deemed to be quite attractive to
  the women who knew him.
• He was born into dire poverty tenant farmers
  for parents.

8
The Crimes begin

• He tried to go straight but failed
• Clyde made a half-hearted attempt at work in
  Massachusetts. That lasted all of two weeks.
• He returned to Bonnie and off they went -- in a
  stolen car.

9
Bonnie in Porridge

• The "laws" caught up with them, Clyde escaped and
  Bonnie ended up in the Kaufman, Texas jail for a
  couple of months. It was at this time that Bonnie
  wrote the poem "The Story of Suicide Sal."

10

• Meanwhile, Clyde kept busy. He robbed the Sims
  Oil Company in Dallas and escaped.
• The turning point came on April 13 when the
  robbery of a jewellery store owned by John Bucher
  ended up with Bucher's death.
• Although Clyde claimed he was in the car at the
  time of the shooting, he and Raymond Hamilton, a
  childhood friend, were then known as the killers
  of John Bucher. Clyde's career had began in
  earnest. A series of gas station robberies
  followed and Clyde was identified as one of the
  perpetrators.

11
Bonnie joins in

• Bonnie was released from jail in June and joined
  Clyde. On August 5, while he was in Atoka,
  Oklahoma with Hamilton (it is unclear why Bonnie
  was not with them), they killed two policemen,
  C.G. Maxwell and Eugene Moore, who went to
  investigate them while they were drinking inside
  the car.

12
The Bizarre Car Theft

• Bonnie and Clyde stole a car belonging to a Mr.
  Darby from a boarding house. He saw them. He
  asked Miss Sofia Stone if he could borrow her car
  to give chase. They did, but realized they could
  not keep up and turned their machine around. When
  they looked in the rear view mirror, they saw
  they were being pursued by their own stolen car.

13

• They were taken in Mr. Darby's own car as
  captives. As Miss Stone tells it, a gun was kept
  in her side all the time by Bonnie and she was
  told that if they weren't so likable they would
  have been killed. Bonnie laughed when she asked
  Mr. Darby his profession and found out it was an
  undertaker. She said maybe someday he would be
  working on her. As it turned out, Bonnie couldn't
  have been closer to the truth. They were let go.
  But Mr. Darby would see Bonnie one more time

14
The Gang Grows

• W.D. Jones, a petty thief, was Bonnie and Clyde's
  newest member on their road to nowhere. Malcolm
  Davis was the next police officer to lose the
  draw to Clyde's deadly aim.

15
And again

• In March of 1933, Marvin (Buck) Barrow was
  released from the Texas Penitentiary after
  serving a short term for burglary and, with his
  second wife Blanch, joined his brother, Bonnie
  and W.D. Jones in Joplin, Missouri. The five set
  up house in a garage apartment and stayed there
  until April when the police, thinking they had
  found a gang of illegal gin brewers, closed in.
  In the ensuing gun battle, Clyde was shot as was
  Jones but two more officers bit the dust.

16
Must be love

• In the apartment, officers found Buck's pardon
  and a guitar. A newspaperman found some
  undeveloped film. When developed, one of the
  shots was Bonnie holding a shotgun on Clyde

17
Fleeing the Scene

• By now, it was all downhill. Near Wellington,
  Texas, their stolen Ford plunged off a bridge
  under construction and Bonnie was pinned
  underneath. The machine caught fire. Rescued by
  some farmers, who saw the arsenal of weapons in
  the car, one ran off to call police.

18
Help on the way

• One of the women neighbours who came to help was
  shot by a nervous W.D. Jones.
• He blew her hand off. When two policemen came to
  investigate, the Barrow gang overpowered them.
  Along with Bonnie, they were loaded into the car
  and later released. Bonnie's leg would never be
  the same.

19
The Police close in

• Their next place of residence was the Red Crown
  Tourist Camp in Platte City, Missouri. They
  rented a double cabin with a garage in between.
  The police paid them another visit. In this gun
  battle Buck was hit in the forehead. Blanche was
  hit in the eyes with flying glass. The gang put a
  set of sunglasses on her face.

20
Continued

• Once again, they escaped but were found three
  days later in a park in Dexter, Iowa on a tip
  from a waiter who informed police that a man had
  for the past few days ordered five meals and
  taken them into the woods. Clyde, in his haste to
  escape, ran his car into a stump and the police
  proceeded to riddle it with bullets. Buck was hit
  several more times -- in the hip and shoulder.

21
The Gang is split

• Clyde and Jones took Bonnie and escaped through a
  stream and proceeded through a cornfield to a
  farm. Holding the farmer and his son at bay, they
  took his car. Buck was captured and died from his
  wounds a few days later in an Iowa hospital.
  Blanche, probably the most innocent of all (she
  was constantly trying to reform Buck) was sent to
  the Missouri State Penitentiary.

22
The Police close in again

• Bonnie's leg became deformed for lack of good
  medical attention. In November, while trying to
  visit their parents, sheriff Smoot got wind of
  it, set up an ambush and with other law officers,
  blasted the car. Bonnie and Clyde, both hit in
  the legs, once again escaped. Clyde had more
  lives than a cat.

23
The Gang Grows

• In January, Clyde and Bonnie sprang Raymond
  Hamilton from Prison
• Along with Hamilton was one Henry Methvin.

24
Crime Spree (again)

• Another police officer, Major Crowson, would not
  see the days end. Between January and March,
  several banks were robbed and were attributed to
  the Barrow gang.

25
More Police Dead

• On Easter Sunday, 1934, on a side road off
  Highway 114 in Texas, Clyde and Methvin killed
  two police officers who thought they needed help.
  
• Five days later they kill police officer Cal
  Campbell and kidnap Chief Percy Boyd in Oklahoma.
  They let Percy go but not before Bonnie asks him
  to tell the public she does not smoke cigars.

26
The Chase Heats Up

• The Texas Governor hired a special agent. That
  special agent was retired Texas Ranger Frank
  Hamer.
• Hamer, working for a salary of 150 a month, took
  to Clyde's trail on February 10. He used a Ford
  V8 which he knew Clyde was partial to. He picked
  up their trail in Texarkana but always seemed to
  be a day late. While the chase was on, Clyde
  killed three more policemen.

27
The Trap

• Ivan Methvin, Henry's father, had in the past let
  Bonnie and Clyde use his place to hide. Now
  fearing for his son's life, made a deal.
• A full pardon for his son in Texas for
  information on the Barrow gang. Hamer was
  informed of a "post office" that was used by the
  Barrows. It was a large board which lay on the
  ground near a large stump of a pine tree.

28
The Ambush is set

• At this time, Hamer picked up his old friend B.M.
  Gault. The other men who were in on the kill were
  Bob Alcorn, Ted Hinton, Henderson Jordan and Paul
  Oakley. At 130 a.m. they set up blinds with tree
  branches approximately 25 feet from the road on
  the east side so that they could look down on the
  road. They placed themselves approximately ten
  feet apart. Then they waited.

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• They waited for approximately seven hours when at
  about 910 a.m. they heard a machine approaching
  at a high rate of speed. It is unclear whether
  Hamer or Alcorn stepped into the road to
  challenge them. When the car stopped they were
  told to give up.
• They reached for their guns but never had a
  chance to use them. The posse opened fire with
  steel jacketed, high velocity bullets. The car
  leaped ahead and came to a halt in a ditch beside
  the road. The firing continued after the car came
  to a halt.

31
The Final Scene

• The officers, even after pumping 167 rounds into
  the car, approached the machine carefully. Bonnie
  Parker and Clyde Barrow couldn't have been any
  deader. Fifty rounds had smashed into their
  bodies. Some through the driver's door, through
  Clyde, through Bonnie and out the passenger door.
  
• The fingers on Bonnie's right hand had been shot
  away. Her left hand held a bloody pack of
  cigarettes. She died with her head slumped
  between her legs, a gun across her lap. Bonnie
  was 23 years old, Clyde 24.

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The Deadly Find

• Inside the car, Hamer found the following 1
  saxophone, 3 Browning automatic rifles, 1 10
  gauge Winchester lever action, sawed-off shotgun,
  1 20 gauge sawed-off shotgun, 1 Colt 32 caliber
  automatic, 1 Colt 45 caliber revolver, 7 Colt
  automatic pistols, and approximately 3,000 rounds
  of ammunition.

34
Famous or Infamous?

• The car was towed with the bodies in it to
  Arcadia, Louisiana. The crowds were already
  waiting
• Their bodies were placed in the undertaker's
  parlour, which was the rear room of a furniture
  store. The crowds were uncontrolled to the point
  where the undertaker had to squirt embalming
  fluid on them to keep them back.

35
The Aftermath

• Clyde was buried in a West Dallas cemetery on May
  25 next to his brother Buck. Thousands of thrill
  seekers were present, some snatching the flowers
  from his grave.

36
And Bonnie

• Was she buried next to her love?
• Bonnie's mother had refused to have Bonnie buried
  next to Clyde and so she was buried on May 27 at
  the West Dallas Fishtrap cemetery.

37
The Pardon

• Henry Methvin received his pardon from Texas as
  promised -- but not from Oklahoma. He was
  arrested for murder, sentenced to death which was
  later commuted to life. He served 12 years, was
  released and run over by a train in 1948.

38
The Trade on Crime

• Twenty-three persons were brought to trial on
  charges of harbouring Bonnie and Clyde.
• Clyde's and Bonnie's families tried to gain
  ownership of the guns that they were found with
  because they realized their worth to collectors.
  They did not receive them
• The gray V8 Ford was shown for years after that
  at State Fairs for 25 cents a look.

39
Robin Hood and Maid Marian

• While they terrorised banks and store owners in
  five states -- Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri,
  Louisiana, and New Mexico -- Americans thrilled
  to their "Robin Hood" adventures. The presence of
  a female, Bonnie, escalated the sincerity of
  their intentions to make them something unique
  and individual -- even at times heroic -- and
  above similar activities of all-male motor
  bandits like John Dillinger, "Baby Face" Nelson
  and "Pretty Boy" Floyd

40
Why?

• "Anybody who robbed banks or fought the law were
  really living out some secret fantasies on a
  large part of the public."
• Historian Jonathan Davis

41
The Poem

• You've read the story of Jesse James, of how
  he lived and died. If you're still in the need
  of something to read, here's the story of
  Bonnie and Clyde.

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• But the 'laws' fooled around, kept taking him
  down and locking him up in a cell 'till he said
  to me "I'll never be free so I'll meet a few of
  them in Hell.

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• Now Bonnie and Clyde are the Barrow gang. I'm
  sure you have all read how they rob and steal
  and those who squeal are usually found dying or
  dead.
• If they try to act like citizens and rent them
  a nice little flat about the third night,
  they're invited to fight by a sun-gun's
  rat-tat-tat.

44

• The road gets dimmer and dimmer Sometimes you
  can hardly see but it's flight, man to man, and
  do all you can, for they know they can never be
  free.
• If a policeman is killed in Dallas and they
  have no clue or guide If they just can't find a
  fiend they just wipe their slate clean and hang
  it on Bonnie and Clyde.

45

• A newsboy once said to his buddy I wish old
  Clyde would get jumped in these awful hard
  times we'd make a few dimes if five or six cops
  would get bumped.
• They don't think they're too smart or desperate.
  They know that the 'laws' always wins They've
  been shot at before, but they do not ignore
  that death is the wages of sin.

46

• Some day they'll go down together. They'll bury
  them side by side. To few it'll be grief - To
  the law a relief - but it's death for Bonnie and
  Clyde