Bonnie & Clyde: It’s been 75 years

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This article was published 24/05/2009 (6165 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

DALLAS — They pilfered banks and mom-and-pop ­stores, killed police of­ficers — and captivated the nation.

But Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, raised in the West Dallas slums, may have been their own biggest fans.

Sure, Depression-era America was enamoured of the love-struck outlaws, but Hollywood hype, intense media interest and the passage of time have ways of distorting reality.

Their life on the run, for the most part, was far from glamorous, historians say.

They were clumsy criminals.

They didn’t always rob banks, often resorting to stealing small sums of cash from filling stations and grocery stores, while living out of their stolen cars.

A car accident sprayed battery acid over Bonnie, burning one of her legs to the bone, effectively crippling her during her last year on the lam.

But none of that seems to matter. Yesterday marked the 75th anniversary of their deaths, their bloody, bullet-riddled finale. And decades later, we’re still fascinated with Clyde, a hardhearted killer, and Bonnie, his more-than-willing accomplice.

 

Writers have churned out countless books. Producers have filmed one famous movie — and another is in the works. History buffs have opened museums and organized tours of the robbers’ trails. Fanatics have filled websites with their pictures.

Bonnie and Clyde would be pleased with the attention, said Jeff Guinn, the Fort Worth, Texas author of a new book, Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde.

Bonnie, who liked to write poetry, wanted to be famous, Guinn said. Clyde wanted to be important and influential.

"They would be thrilled because they mattered for a little while," he said. "For two poor kids who were destined to grinding poverty and no hope in life, for a brief time in life people knew their name.

"And three-quarters of a century later, they still do."

In fact, we know them on a first-name basis, as a team, inseparable: Bonnie and Clyde.

But that’s the romantic side. Sometimes forgotten are the people who suffered at the hands of Bonnie and Clyde, including their families.

For decades after the couple were gunned down on May 23, 1934, on a dirt road in Louisiana, their kin rarely talked about family history. Only in recent years have they opened up.

"We hid from who we were," said Bonnie Parker’s niece, Rhea Leen Linder, 74, of Dallas.

Perhaps the saddest story that came out of the couple’s two-year crime spree was that of a young woman whose fiancé was killed by the Barrow gang. Instead of getting ready for a wedding, she planned her beloved’s funeral.

At the services, she wore her wedding dress.

Near Grapevine, Texas, on Easter Sunday 1934, the Barrow gang killed two young highway patrolmen — E.B. Wheeler and H.D. Murphy.

Wheeler’s young widow, Doris Brown Edwards, remarried and went on to have a family.

Edwards wasn’t consumed by Wheeler’s death, rarely talking about it, said Robert Jefferson "Jeff" Sandlin, her son from her second marriage. Edwards died in 2007.

"The (passage) of time can reduce the sharp edges of pain," said Sandlin, who lives in Dallas. "She was a positive person. She didn’t sit there and wallow in self-pity or worry."

Easter, however, was always upsetting for Edwards. And the 1967 movie Bonnie and Clyde, featuring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, "stirred her up," Sandlin said. Edwards was invited to attend a movie première, but she declined.

"She wasn’t going to contribute to the sideshow that was glorifying them," Sandlin said. "She didn’t think that thieves and murderers ought to be glamorized and held up."

Some Bonnie and Clyde family members shared that sentiment.

Linder, Bonnie’s niece, was born Bonnie Ray Parker. But her family changed her name after kids wouldn’t play with her.

Buddy Barrow Williams, 61, Clyde’s nephew, said whenever his family moved, a sheriff or officer would knock on the door and check in.

"People looked down on us for the family history," said Williams, who lives in Sunnyvale, Texas.

He said his stepfather, L.C. Barrow, rarely talked about his brother. "It would break him up inside," Williams said.

When an officer stopped L.C. in the ’50s for a traffic violation at Fair Park, the cop quickly learned of the family ties.

The officer ordered L.C. to get out of the car so he could search him.

"You’re one of those badass Barrow boys," the officer said.

When Clyde Chestnut Barrow and Bonnie Elizabeth Parker met at a party in 1930, they were smitten.

Bonnie didn’t mind that Clyde had a criminal history that included burglaries and stealing cars. At one point, she even smuggled in a gun to help him escape a jail cell.

Their partnership began in earnest in 1932, shooting and looting their way across Texas and most of the country’s midsection.

They stopped their lives of crime only long enough to sneak into Dallas to see their families.

"Clyde was family-oriented," Williams said. "He had to see his mom."

Though their robbing sprees weren’t as successful as those of the competing criminals of the day — including John Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd — the Dallas duo stuck out in the ’30s for one reason: Bonnie.

One photograph sealed the deal, author Guinn said. Film left behind at the Joplin, Mo., apartment featured Bonnie with a pistol in one hand and a cigar dangling from her mouth.

The picture, which Bonnie would later regret, made a splash nationwide.

Reading about Bonnie and Clyde gave a country stuck in the Depression a chance to escape their own grim lives, Guinn said.

The couple were targeting police and banks — two enemies of the day since people were losing their money and being kicked out of their homes.

"Everyone has huge problems and they want to take their minds off the trouble," Guinn said.

But on Easter Sunday 1934, when the Barrow gang killed the two young highway patrolmen near Grapevine, the public soured on Bonnie and Clyde.

A month later, on May 23, they were dead.

 

— The Dallas Morning News.