Bonnie and Clyde Read online

  CHRONOLOGY

  1903

  3/14

  Buck born in Jones Prairie, TX.

  1909

  3/24

  Clyde Barrow born in Telico, TX.

  1910

  10/1

  Bonnie Parker born in Rowena, TX.

  1914

  12/31

  Bonnie’s father, Charles Parker, dies in Rowena.

  1915

  Parker family moves to Cement City, TX.

  1921

  Barrow family moves to West Dallas, TX.

  1925

  12/21

  Buck arrested for tire theft; charges dropped.

  1926

  9/23

  Bonnie marries Roy Thornton.

  c. 12/1

  Clyde rents car and visits Eleanor in Broaddus, TX; “forgets” to return it. Arrested; charges dropped.

  1928

  Blanche Caldwell moves to West Dallas.

  1929

  10/13

  Clyde, Buck, and Frank Clause arrested in Dallas on burglary charges; charges dropped.

  11/11

  Buck and Blanche meet in West Dallas.

  11/29

  Clyde, Buck, and Sidney burgle gas station in Denton, TX. Buck shot, arrested. Clyde hides under house.

  1930

  1/14

  Buck begins five-year term in Texas prison system at Ferguson Prison Farm, just north of Huntsville.

  1/14–30

  Clyde meets Bonnie in West Dallas.

  2/7–14

  Clyde arrested at Bonnie’s mother’s house.

  3/2

  Clyde convicted in Waco, TX, of two burglaries and five car thefts. Sentenced to two years in prison.

  3/8

  Buck escapes from Ferguson Prison Farm.

  3/11

  Clyde escapes from the Waco jail with three others using gun smuggled in by Bonnie.

  3/18

  Clyde arrested in Middleton, OH; returned to Texas where sentences revert from concurrent to consecutive—from a two- to fourteen-year total.

  3/25

  Clyde charged with murder; charges eventually dropped.

  5/1

  Clyde arrives at Eastham Prison Farm in Weldon, TX.

  Oct–Dec

  Clyde moved to camp 2.

  1931

  10/29

  Clyde murders Ed Crowder at Eastham Prison Farm.

  12/27

  Buck turns himself back into prison.

  1932

  1/27

  Clyde cuts off his own toes to get transferred back to Huntsville, where Buck is imprisoned.

  2/2

  Clyde released on parole.

  Apr

  Clyde, Ralph Fults, and Ray Hamilton commit a series of robberies, including their first bank job, in Lawrence, KS.

  3/18

  Clyde, Bonnie, and Fults steal two cars in Tyler, TX.

  3/19

  Bonnie arrested with Fults after shootout in Kaufman County, TX. Clyde escapes.

  3/30

  John N. Bucher murdered during robbery in Hillsboro, TX, for which Clyde was the driver.

  4/14

  Clyde and Fults kidnap Chief of Police James Taylor in Electra, TX. Later the same day they kidnap postman W. N. Owens in Fowlkes, TX.

  6/15

  Bonnie released from jail.

  6/29

  Clyde and Hamilton rob train station in Grand Prarie, TX.

  7/1

  Clyde robs the Neuhoff Meat Packing Company in Dallas.

  7/5

  Clyde and Hamilton murder Eugene Moore at an outdoor dance in Stringtown, OK.

  7/13–14

  Clyde, Hamilton, and Bonnie kidnap Deputy Sheriff Joe Johns in Carlsbad, NM.

  7/15

  Shootout at the bridge in Wharton, TX.

  10/11

  Howard Hall murdered in his grocery store in Sherman, TX. Clyde implicated.

  11/30

  Clyde, Bonnie, and others rob a bank in Oronogo, MO.

  12/25

  Clyde, traveling with Bonnie and W. D. Jones, murders Doyle Johnson in Temple, TX.

  1933

  1/6

  Clyde, traveling with Bonnie and W. D. Jones, murders Deputy Sheriff Malcolm Davis outside the home of Ray Hamilton’s sister in West Dallas.

  1/13

  Clyde, Bonnie, and W. D. Jones implicated in bank robbery in Ash Grove, MO.

  1/26

  Clyde, Bonnie, and W. D. Jones abduct officer Thomas Persell in Springfield, MO, and release him later outside Joplin, MO.

  3/22

  Buck receives a full pardon from Governor Miriam Fergusson of Texas. Within days, he and Blanche rejoin Clyde, Bonnie, and W. D. Jones.

  4/13

  Shootout at Joplin, MO, leaves lawmen Wes Harryman and Harry McGinnis dead. Clyde, Buck, and W. D. Jones are all wounded.

  4/27

  Gang abducts Sophie Stone and H. D. Darby in Ruston, LA, and later releases them unharmed.

  5/12

  Clyde and Buck fail in bank robbery attempt in Lucerne, IN.

  5/19

  Gang robs a bank in Okabena, MN, and shoot their way out of town.

  6/10

  Bonnie nearly killed in car wreck in Wellington, TX.

  6/23

  Buck kills Henry Humphrey during shootout in Alma, AR.

  7/7

  Clyde and Buck burgle the National Guard Armory in Enid, OK.

  7/18

  Gang robs three gas stations in one half-hour in Fort Dodge, IA.

  7/19

  Shootout at Platte City, MO, leaves Buck gravely wounded and Blanche half-blind.

  7/24

  Blanche and Buck are captured during shootout at Dexfield Park near Dexter, IA. Bonnie, Clyde, and W. D. Jones are wounded.

  7/29

  Buck dies in Perry, IA.

  8/20

  Clyde and W. D. Jones burgle a National Guard Armory in Plattsville, IL.

  c. 8/21

  W. D. Jones flees from Bonnie and Clyde.

  9/4

  Blanche sentenced to ten years in prison.

  11/22

  Ambush at Sowers, TX, leaves Bonnie and Clyde wounded.

  1934

  1/16

  Raid by Bonnie and Clyde at Eastham Prison Farm leaves guard Major Crowson dead and guard Olin Bozeman wounded. Five convicts, including Ray Hamilton and Henry Methvin, are freed.

  1/23

  Gang robs bank in Rembrandt, IA.

  1/25

  Gang robs bank in Poteau, OK.

  2/1

  Gang robs bank in Knierim, IA.

  2/2

  Texas Ranger Frank Hamer begins hunt for Bonnie and Clyde.

  2/12

  Shootout at Reed Springs, MO.

  2/27

  Gang robs bank in Lancaster, TX. Hamilton leaves gang.

  4/1

  At Grapevine, TX, Clyde and Methvin, with Bonnie present, murder motorcycle officers E. B. Wheeler and H. D. Murphy of the Texas State Highway Patrol.

  4/6

  Clyde and Methvin, with Bonnie present, murder Constable Cal Campbell in Commerce, OK.

  4/13

  Hamer and FBI agent Kindell visit Sheriff Jordan of Bienville Parish, LA, hoping to set up a trap with the aid of Methvin’s family.

  4/16

  Gang robs bank in Stuart, IA.

  4/23

  Second meeting between Hamer, Kindell, and Dallas Deputy Sheriff Bob Alcorn and John Joyner, who represents Methvin’s parents. The Methvins want it in writing that Henry will be pardoned if they cooperate.

  4/28

  Third meeting between lawmen and the Methvins seals deal for a trap at Gibsland, LA.

  5/3

  Gang robs bank i
n Everly, IA.

  5/23

  Bonnie and Clyde killed in an ambush near Gibsland.

  BONNIE

  AND

  CLYDE

  THE LIVES

  BEHIND THE LEGEND

  PAUL SCHNEIDER

  A JOHN MACRAE BOOK

  A HOLT PAPERBACK

  HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

  NEW YORK

  For Nina

  and Nathaniel

  I’m going to tell the truth about these rats. I’m going to tell the truth about their dirty, filthy, diseased women. I’m going to tell the truth about the miserable politicians who protect them and the slimy, silly, or sob-sister convict lovers who let them out on sentimental or ill-advised paroles.

  —J. EDGAR HOOVER

  People only live happily ever after in fairy tales.

  —BLANCHE BARROW

  CONTENTS

  ALSO BY THE AUTHOR

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  A NOTE ABOUT SOURCES

  1. EASTHAM

  2. TELICO, TEXAS

  3. CEMENT CITY

  4. UNDER THE VIADUCT

  5. WEST DALLAS

  6. ROOT SQUARE, HOUSTON

  7. WACO

  8. MIDDLETOWN, OHIO

  9. WACO, AGAIN

  10. HUNTSVILLE, TEXAS

  11. BURNIN’ HELL

  12. THE TANK

  13. BACK IN BUSINESS

  14. FUN WHILE IT LASTED

  15. THE BEGINNING OF THE ROAD

  16. MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR

  17. JOPLIN, MISSOURI

  18. THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD

  19. PLATTE CITY

  20. SOWERS

  21. EASTHAM, AGAIN

  22. ON THE SPOT

  23. THE END OF THE ROAD

  NOTES

  SOURCES

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  INDEX

  A Note About Sources

  The following is a work of nonfiction in which nothing has been created out of whole cloth by the author and everything has a reasonably acceptable pedigree as a “fact.” That said, some sources are better than others, a situation that is true for every work of nonfiction and is even more unavoidable in stories as rife with rumor and lacquered with legend as that of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow.

  For now, all the reader needs to know is that no dialogue has been made up: all statements surrounded by quotation marks are direct quotes from the sources identified (and often qualified!) in the endnotes.

  CHAPTER 1

  EASTHAM

  Fog rolls off the Trinity River in East Texas in the hours before dawn, especially in winter, and lies on the land like Vaseline. It’s thick and calm and quiet and peaceful in the fog, there where the piney woods that stretch on east into Louisiana give way somewhat abruptly to blackland prairies that spread west all the way to Dallas and beyond. She almost can’t see her hand held out of the open car door in front of her own face. It’s that thick.

  And even better, surely no one can see her sitting here in this car on this dirt side road off another dirt side road, not far from the river bottoms. Sure, her leg that was burned badly a few months back still hurts and the other hip hurts even more from the rheumatism that flared up only recently. Rheumatism, at only twenty-three years old, no less. Too much sitting in cold cars. Too much sleeping in cold cars! But even with the pain, it’s a comfort to know she can’t be seen parked here in a cloud at daybreak, like a ghost in heaven. It’s chilly, this cloud on the ground, but it’s safe, and if death is like this fog it might not be so bad.

  Only it’s not worth thinking about death. That’s the rule. “Let’s don’t be sad,” she said to her mother only a few months before when the subject came up. We’re here now. We’re alive.

  “Let’s don’t be sad” is what she said.

  It’s like thinking about air, for God’s sake. And why think about air? Death and air. Fog, though, is good. Thick and quiet, except for now and then an occasional tick ticka tick of the steel in the car that says the sun has risen, even if she can’t see it rising.

  When you’re standing in a cold ditch in fog so thick you can’t even see the car only a few yards away it’s amazing where your mind will want to wander. Standing there with a fat automatic rifle in your hand waiting, what has it been now, ten minutes, an hour? Could be either. But you don’t let your mind wander for the same reason you don’t drink much moonshine even when everyone else does. Or, rather, you don’t drink it especially when everyone else does. Even when Bonnie does. She likes it sometimes, but you know it dulls the senses, slows you down, gets you caught, gets you killed. So you don’t drink much moonshine and you don’t let your mind wander through the fog.

  Where are they? Should be any minute now.

  Eastham Farm, burnin’ Eastham, bloody burnin’ Eastham Prison Farm. This breakout was your idea in the first place, you and Fults thought it up together. But that was back a few years, back when you were still a prisoner on the inside. Not out here and free. Ha! FREE! As much as being on the run from the laws is freedom. Yeah, what a wonderful freedom this is: being wanted, being wounded, being hot as hell in three states, four, five states, whatever. Feels like you and Bonnie are hot as hell everywhere. Hot right in this ditch in the chilly fog a mile from the burnin’ hell. Oh they’d love to find you here, for sure.

  But you weren’t thinking how it would feel to get this close to this place again when you said let’s do it. No way. And you weren’t thinking you would be here with this pathetic drug addict Mullins instead of Fults or Raymond or someone you don’t have to watch every second, someone who’s likely to turn rat just for another hit of dope.

  It’s amazing what a man can force himself not to remember most days and nights, except when it creeps up. And standing here in a ditch so close to it all, to where most of it all happened anyway, some of it does creep up no matter how you fight it. Burnin’ Eastham. Burnin’ hell.

  Sure, you have killed a few men, more than a few, but you’re not a killer at heart. Not according to your friends, anyway. This is not to say that you’re afraid to pull the trigger when it has to be pulled. And not to say that you don’t like the look of fear in big cops’ faces when a gun’s pointing their way. (If they’d look a little more afraid and not be reaching for their own guns all the time, you tell your friend, the trigger might not need pulling so often.) You pull the trigger, sure. It’s just that there’s no pleasure in it, even when it has to happen. So you’re not a killer, right?

  But when those memories do creep up, you start to think about those guards and their finks, their chains and their bats. And their “trusties” who will sit on your head while the man—the “captain”—whips you with the strap. And even worse sometimes is what goes on when the guards aren’t around.

  When those memories creep up. . . . Those guys, well, they deserve whatever comes their way. At least as much as you do.

  The guards at Eastham Prison Farm, some thirty miles north of the main Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville, hate that fog but are pretty well used to it. Running the boys out the two miles or so to the work site from the building in dim dawn light and fog means riding closer to the jogging squad than the guards want to ride, just so they can see the boys clearly. Closer to the convicts means the convicts are closer to the guards, closer to their reins and closer to their bridles. Closer to the loaded Smith & Wesson .38s in their holsters. Closer to the shotguns, though with those right in a guard’s lap all day, he is damned well likely to get a blast off if a prisoner is stupid enough to try to come near it.

  Or not. Trouble comes fast in fog. On a foggy morning just like this, in fact, an Eastham guard named John Greer rides into the middle of his squad, all fired up to give the lazy bastards a piece of his mind, and maybe a piece of the bat for milling around instead of chopping weeds. Only instead of pistol-whipping some sorry two-time loser across the side of the head as planned, it’s suddenly Greer who is pulled off his horse and passed
around a circle of convicts, like some Julius Caesar, to be stabbed one at a time with homemade dirk knives. Greer doesn’t even get a single shot off and he winds up dead with no witnesses as to who exactly did it. Funny how you can have lots of killers but no witnesses at all. Not that someone at burnin’ Eastham won’t be made to pay hell for the killing of a guard.

  This foggy morning another guard, whose name is Olin Bozeman, isn’t going to make that particular mistake. He’ll make a different one, which he’ll live to regret, and one of his fellow guards, Major Crowson, will make an even dumber move that he won’t live to regret because he won’t live. No, as a general rule the guards don’t ever want to be too close to a squad of felons armed with hoes and other tools, not to mention guns snuck in from outside. Guns that the guards know nothing about until the cold barrel is pointed straight at them by a man who may hate them enough to kill them or may not, but who is desperate to get out by whatever means necessary.