The self-mutilation, which permanently crippled his walking stride and prevented him from wearing shoes while driving, ultimately proved unnecessary as he was released on parole six days later.
On the night of June 10, , Clyde, with Bonnie in the passenger seat, was speeding along the rural roads of north Texas so quickly that he missed a detour sign warning of a bridge under construction.
As a result of the third-degree burns, Bonnie, like Clyde, walked with a pronounced limp for the rest of her life, and she had such difficulty walking that at times she hopped or needed Clyde to carry her. On May 23, , a six-man posse led by former Texas Ranger captain Frank Hamer ambushed Bonnie and Clyde and pumped more than rounds of steel-jacketed bullets into their stolen Ford V-8 outside Sailes, Louisiana. After dozens of robberies and 13 murders in their name, Bonnie and Clyde's crime spree had finally come to an end.
With acrid gunsmoke still lingering in the air, gawkers descended upon the ambush site and attempted to leave with macabre souvenirs from the bodies of the outlaws still slumped in the front seat.
A federal judge, however, ruled that the automobile stolen by Bonnie and Clyde should return to its former owner, Ruth Warren of Topeka, Kansas. Although linked in life, Bonnie and Clyde were split in death. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! They approached a car sitting in a driveway and WD jumped out and attempted to start the vehicle. He was having difficulties, and, after hearing the failed attempts, neighbors began coming out of their houses.
The owner of the car heard the commotion and ran to stop them from stealing it. By that time, Clyde had gotten out of his car and was attempting to start it himself. Once he was able to get it started, the owner tried to get him out of the car and remove the keys. When the owner did this, Clyde drew his weapon. During the struggle, Clyde accidentally shot the owner of the car, pushed his body to the curb and sped off, with Bonnie following in the other car. Bonnie and Clyde were able to get away most of the time because they were shielded by people who understood their actions, people who also had lost a great deal in the Depression.
However, following the killing of a patrolman in Oklahoma, the police doubled their efforts to catch the Barrow Gang. In an attempt to capture Bonnie, Clyde, and WD, the police forced the gang to shoot their way out and kill yet another policeman.
Over the next few weeks the gang held up several more banks and even broke into a government armory. While traveling through Missouri, a motorcycle officer decided to stop them. During the stop, they drew their guns and ordered the officer into their car.
After quite a bit of driving, their car battery died. Putting Bonnie on look-out at the car, they took the police officer into a store and made him steal a battery. Not only did they make him steal the battery, they made him carry it to the car and install it too. Once the battery was put into the car, they sped off, leaving the officer behind. As expected, he joined up with Clyde and brought along his bride Blanche.
The gang decided to rent an apartment in Joplin, Missouri. They figured they could stick around for a few months before taking off again. However, their unusual activity caught the attention of the neighbors and they reported them to the police. The cars in the driveway came up as stolen vehicles, incriminating the gang. On April 13, police and detectives approached the apartment. Clyde, noticing the commotion, alerted the rest of his gang, and WD began shooting. Blanche was too hysterical to comprehend what was going on, and went running out of the back door.
Clyde got everyone into the Ford truck and roared the engine. After soaring through the garage door, he was able to smash right through the blockade. Just as they pulled away, they spotted Blanche fleeing down the street. Clyde slowed down just enough for Buck to pick her up and pull her into the truck. Realizing that the police were becoming wise to their actions, the gang decided they needed to steal a new car and to change their license plates more frequently.
They chose a black Chevrolet and in broad daylight, stole the vehicle. When he happened upon his car, he only saw WD , until the rest of the Barrow Gang arrived in a second car.
The two people were taken hostage and driven around the rest of the night, only stopping for food. The next morning, they were dropped off miles from home with some money but no car. After dropping the two hostages off, the gang gunned down the highway toward Wellington, unaware of recent road maintenance. Ahead, a bridge had been removed for repairs and none of the members in the car noticed any signs alerting them. Unable to stop in time, Clyde braked but slid into the ravine.
Bonnie was thrown and pinned by the frame of the car, but the others all escaped without harm. A fire began and they had to pull Bonnie out from under the hood just before it exploded. She had a bad burn on one of her thighs and her dress had been ripped. It was a severe injury, with the skin burnt all the way to the bone. A nearby farmer heard her cries and ran over to help. He carried her into his home before seeing the guns and recognizing her face from the wanted posters as Bonnie Parker.
Clyde soon realized that the farmer had gone to the neighbors to alert the police while his wife tended to Bonnie. Knowing that Bonnie needed real attention, he took a risk and called a doctor. The doctor recommended hiring a nurse, and Clyde did just that. He was so worried he even called her sister Jean to come up and try to help Bonnie recover. While this was going on, Buck and WD robbed both a bank and a grocery store.
Their escapade quickly turned into a police chase and shoot out, killing a Marshal. Clyde knew they had to take off in a hurry. The next car they stole belonged to a doctor and contained necessary medical supplies they needed for Bonnie. They continued to ride around, state after state, but hunger and tiredness were starting to catch up to them.
Blanche obtained keys to two cabins so they could stay the night. Suspicious, the night clerk watched the gang unload an injured Bonnie while carrying rifles.
The clerk phoned the police to alert them and a few days later the police raided their cabins. Clyde carried Bonnie to the car in the garage and Blanche put a fatally wounded Buck in the back. Clyde knew he had to bust through the doors to get past the police. WD attempted to help move the armored car that blocked them by shooting out the door until it had to retreat.
In the four active years of the Barrow gang, they robbed less than 15 banks, some of them more than once. The few successful bank robberies associated with Bonnie and Clyde were mostly committed by Clyde and criminal associate Raymond Hamilton.
Bonnie would sometimes drive the getaway car, but often she was not involved at all, staying at a hideout while the rest of the gang robbed the bank. Banks were a complicated proposition for Bonnie and Clyde, and when they were on their own, they rarely attempted bank jobs. They more commonly robbed small grocery stores and gas stations, where the risk was lower and the getaways easier. The frequency of these robberies made Bonnie and Clyde easier to track, and they found it more and more difficult to settle anywhere for very long.
The most famous picture of Bonnie shows her holding a pistol, her foot up on the bumper of a Ford, a cigar clamped in her mouth like Edward G. Robinson in Little Caesar. Newspapers all over the country reprinted the cigar picture. All evidence shows, however, that Bonnie was a cigarette smoker like Clyde Camels seemed to be their preferred brand.
The mythic image of Bonnie as a mean mama puffing away on a stogie is just that: an image. On the other hand, Bonnie liked to drink whiskey, and several eyewitnesses from the time remember seeing her drunk. Clyde shied away from alcohol, feeling that it was important for him to be alert in case they needed to make a fast getaway. Not generally known is the fact that Bonnie got married when she was Her husband's name was Roy Thornton, and he was a handsome classmate at her school in Dallas.
The decision to marry was not hard for the young girl to make; her father was dead, her mother worked a hard job at a factory, and Bonnie herself had little prospect of doing much else but waiting tables or working as a maid.
Marriage seemed like a way out. The marriage was a disaster. Bonnie died with her wedding ring still on her finger. Divorce was not really an option for a known fugitive. Convicted on multiple counts of stealing cars and robbing stores as well as one jailbreak , Clyde was sentenced to 14 years at Eastham Prison Farm, a notoriously harsh hard-labor penitentiary, in Using an ax, he or a fellow inmate chopped off two toes on his left foot.
Clyde was driving in his socks in the summer of when Bonnie would suffer an even greater injury. He missed the turn and plunged down into a dry riverbed. Bonnie was carried to a nearby farmhouse, and only the quick application of baking soda and salve stopped the burning away of her skin and tissue. Because the couple had a lot of experience with nursing gunshot wounds, the leg eventually healed, but not properly, since Clyde could not take her to a real doctor.
Witnesses described Bonnie as hopping more than walking for the last year of her life, and often Clyde would simply carry her when she had to get somewhere. Unlike many of their contemporaries in the criminal world, Clyde and Bonnie were not lone wolves depending only on each other and a small group of like-minded criminals. They both had devoted families who stuck by them through their worst times, and they constantly made every effort to stay in touch with and support their relatives.
Bonnie and Clyde made frequent trips back to the West Dallas area, where their families lived, throughout their criminal career. Sometimes they would return for visits multiple times in one month. When Bonnie and Clyde had money, their families benefited from their largesse; when they were struggling, wounded or destitute, their families helped them with clean clothes and small amounts of money.
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