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History and ethnology.
Evidence.
Events.
Fiction.
Bonnie and Clyde: Ruthless Killers
bolivar s wrote in hist etnol November 26th, 2015
Bonnie and Clyde: Ruthless killers Their names have long become household names, and time has smoothed out the events of the past years, softening the compromising details.
And now they are already called outstanding personalities who have challenged society and the "unfair" authorities, they make films about them, dedicate poems to them.
But who were Bonnie and Clyde really?
What was their real life, and not smoothed out by Hollywood screenwriters?
Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow traveled around the southern states of the United States in the early 1930s.
And they did not look much like the screen characters of the sensational Hollywood film of 1967 with Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway in the main roles.
This couple was made legendary by excessive cruelty, reckless audacity, and most importantly, the complete senselessness of the murders they committed.
A GIRL WITH PROSPECTS, Bonnie Parker was born on October 1, 1910 in the Texas town of Rowena and was the middle of three daughters of a bricklayer Charles Parker.
In 1914, the father died, and the mother moved the girls to her parents ' house, in the suburbs of Dallas.
Bonnie went to school and made some progress in her studies.
In high school, this fragile blonde (with a height of 150 cm, Bonnie weighed 44 kg) was considered one of the best students, even won a literature competition.
The girl enthusiastically read magazine stories about adventures, wrote poems and was fond of photography.
Teachers and parents believed that Bonnie had a chance to hit a bigger jackpot in life.
But ... six days before her 16th birthday, Bonnie, spitting on all prospects, dropped out of school and jumped out to marry her classmate Roy Thornton.
In a fit of love, she even got a tattoo on her hip — two connected hearts with the names Roy and Bonnie.
However, the young wife was a little hasty with the tattoo.
Soon Roy began to disappear from the house for a long time.
In 1929, he was sent to prison for robbery, and Bonnie never saw her husband again.
She was only 19, and her husband, a criminal, turned out to be a terrible misunderstanding in Bonnie's life — at least, so her family believed.
And Bonnie Parker herself dreamed of another life filled with events and adventures.
And fate has already prepared a sharp turn for her.
At the beginning of 1930, Bonnie met him — Clyde at a friend's house.
Clyde Barrow, like Bonnie, was born in Texas, in the town of Telico, on March 24, 1909.
He was the fifth son of seven children of farmer Henry Barrow.
The future gangster attended school very sporadically, he did not even finish the fifth grade.
When Clyde turned 12, the family moved to Dallas, where his father opened a gas station.
The parents made a last attempt to send the unreasonable child to school, but soon the boy found a more interesting occupation: together with his older brother Marvin (Buck), he sold stolen turkeys and drove stolen cars at night.
On October 16, 1929, Clyde was first arrested.
Together with William Turner and Frank Hardy, he tried to commit a robbery at the Roosevelt Hotel in Waco, Texas.
Bursting into tears, Clyde (in his 20s, with a height below 170 cm, he looked like a teenager) lied to the police chief that he did not know about the bad reputation of the men who agreed to give him a ride when he voted on the road.
Clyde was released, and this was his last "respite" before the "real" life.
PRISON AND FREEDOM Soon he met Bonnie.
The girl found out about the past of her lover when the police came to take him to Danton, where Clyde was suspected of theft.
But it was not possible to prove his guilt, and Clyde was transported to Waco, where he confessed to a couple of night robberies and the theft of several cars.
Clyde knew that tears would hardly help him this time — he was sentenced to two years in prison.
By some strange coincidence, Clyde's cellmate turned out to be William Turner, the same one with whom they were "caught" by the police at the Roosevelt Hotel.
Together they came up with an escape plan.
Bonnie smuggled a gun into the prison and gave it to Clyde during the date.
The very next night, Clyde and Turner escaped.
But the freedom was short lived.
A few days later, the fugitives were captured.
And by their own oversight: Clyde did not think to change the license plates on the stolen car (he did not make such a mistake again).
He was sentenced to 14 years in prison and sent back to prison.
Bonnie wrote long letters to her friend.
It is not known how long Clyde would have had to languish in captivity if his mother Kyumi, who also wrote letters, had not intervened.
However, she sent her messages not only to her son, but also to the judge, complaining about the family's plight.
And maternal perseverance won: on February 2, 1932, Clyde Barrow was released.
However, on the eve of his release, not knowing about his mother's efforts, Clyde decided to take the initiative and persuaded his partner to "accidentally" chop off a couple of toes with an axe — this is a mere trifle compared to the opportunity to take a break from the harsh prison everyday life, when he had to work 16 hours a day.
Clyde left the prison on crutches.
When he was free, he made his first (and last) attempt to work honestly, but his good intentions were enough for exactly two weeks.
Clyde returned to Bonnie, and the couple escaped in a stolen car.
Soon Bonnie was taken on a case: Clyde and his friends were robbing a store opposite the courthouse in the placidly sleeping Texas town of Kaufman, and Bonnie was watching at the door.
Suddenly the alarm went off, but the burglars managed to escape with the proceeds.
Everyone ran away except Bonnie.
She was given three months in prison — these were the last months spent by Bonnie and Clyde without each other.
Meanwhile, Clyde was very busy: he was robbing and ... killing.
He committed his first murder on April 13, 1932, during a robbery of a jewelry store.
Clyde shot and killed the owner of the jewelry store, John Boucher.
Although Clyde claimed that he was sitting in the car at the time of the shooting, he and Raymond Hamilton were found guilty of murder.
Barrow was becoming a real bloody criminal.
In June 1932, Bonnie joined the Barrow gang to live with Clyde for two crazy years that turned them into a legend.
On August 5, 1932, the sad fate of the jeweler was shared by two policemen whom Barrow and Hamilton killed in Ataka, Oklahoma, when law enforcement officers approached their car to check their documents.
Then several thefts and robberies followed, again ending in murder.
And justice finally partially prevailed: Hamilton was arrested in Michigan, sent to Dallas, where he was sentenced to 264 years in prison.
MEETING WITH MR. DARBY One morning in Rustin, Louisiana, Bonnie and Clyde stole a car belonging to a certain Mr. Darby.
He saw the kidnappers and asked his neighbor Sophia Stone to borrow her car to catch up with the criminals.
Darby and Sophia soon realized that the chase was pointless.
They turned the car around and drove back.
However, they soon noticed that they were being chased by ... a stolen car.
Darby and Sofia were taken hostage.
Sofia later recalled that Bonnie held a loaded pistol to her side all the way.
When Bonnie learned that Mr. Darby worked in a funeral home, she laughed and said that maybe one day he would prepare her body for burial as well.
But Bonnie was right: Mr. Darby did see her again... in the morgue.
In March 1933, Bonnie and Clyde appeared in Joplin, Missouri.
Here they looked into the house of Herbert Farmer, who, according to rumors, supplied weapons to gangsters.
All they needed was Browning automatic rifles, which Farmer had recently stolen from the arsenal of the American army.
At that moment, another gangster was in Farmer's house — James Henry Blakey Odette.
He later told reporters: "They gently stroked the trunks, as if they were holding their own children in their arms.
Clyde was drooling with pleasure, and Bonnie was purring like a cat.
These two tramps were real crazy killers...
When I told Herbert that it would be good to quickly sell the weapons and send them out, Herbert replied: "Sell?
To them?
Yes, if I donot give them these rifles just like that, they will kill me, and you too."
Farmer gave Bonnie and Clyde their chosen weapons.
And when they complained that the stolen car ran out of gasoline, the gun seller immediately gave them money to buy gasoline, just to get rid of them as soon as possible.
REAL FAME IN Joplin, Marvin joined the gang — Clyde's older brother, who was just released from places not so remote, with his wife Blanche and 17 year old thief W. D. Jones.
The five of them rented an apartment and, not really caring about caution, rested quite noisily.
The fun ended when they were suddenly visited by police officers tracking down a gang of bootleggers.
During the shootout, Clyde and Jones were wounded, two policemen were killed.
In the apartment left by the Barrow gang, the law enforcement officers found undeclared photographic films, among which were pictures of Bonnie and Clyde, which were soon printed in many newspapers.
At first glance, these are ordinary photos that friends take on vacation.
But almost every picture shows a weapon: Bonnie in an elegant suit standing by the car, Clyde at the hood of a late model Ford; Bonnie with pistols in her belt, with a rifle; Bonnie and Clyde are aiming rifles at each other.
And not a single smile — even when they are fooling around, they only grin slightly.
And in the eyes of the fatigue of people who are doomed to leave the chase all the time.
THE BEGINNING OF THE END The following months were the hardest for the Barrow gang.
They raced along the roads of the southern states, not stopping in any city for more than a few days, robbing the cash registers of local shops and banks.
But at that time, even in banks, it was often almost impossible to get hold of a large sum.
Their production mostly did not exceed 10-20 dollars.
None of the gang members, except Bonnie and Clyde, could not stand this frenzied pace of life from beginning to end.
They tried to leave the gang, hoping to live longer.
There were the most incredible rumors about this couple.
So, they said that Bonnie was a nymphomaniac, and Clyde was a homosexual... what was really going on in their souls, you can only guess, but these two were truly devoted to each other.
On the night of June 10, 1933, the gang was leaving the chase along country roads in northern Texas.
Clyde didnot notice the detour sign on the bridge being repaired, and their Ford V8 at 70 mph tore down the barriers, overturned and fell off the cliff.
Everyone, except Bonnie, managed to get out of the car in time.
Boiling acid from the car battery burned her leg, so much so that in some places the bone was visible.
The wound remained untreated.
Sometimes it was so hard for Bonnie to walk that Clyde carried her in his arms.
The accident was seen by local farmers who provided first aid to Bonnie, but after noticing a whole arsenal of weapons in the car of travelers in trouble, they called the police.
The next stop of the gang was the tourist camp Red Crown ("Red Crown") in Arkansas.
They rented two houses connected by a garage.
The police paid the bandits a visit again.
A firefight began, in which they had never been caught before.
They managed to escape, but at a terrible cost: Buck was blown off part of his skull by two bullets, his wife Blanche was almost blinded by glass fragments that hit her eye.
A couple of days later, the police came to them again, when the gang, spitting on all caution, settled in a park in Dexter, Iowa.
They were handed over by a waiter of a roadside cafe, who told the police about a suspicious man who ordered dinner for five people and took everything into the forest.
Clyde and Jones managed to escape and carry off the wounded Bonnie, but the dying Buck and Blanche, sobbing over his body, fell into the hands of the guards.
Buck died a few days later in a hospital in Parry, Iowa, from complications after surgery.
Blanche, perhaps the most innocent of the gang (she was always trying to persuade Buck to return to Dallas to a normal life), was sent to the Missouri state prison.
The court sentenced her to 10 years in prison just for being near the criminals.
Shortly after this story, Jones left the gang.
He had had enough.
The pursuers were already breathing down their necks, but Bonnie and Clyde were not going to become easy prey.
They knew that they had nothing to lose, and in January 1934, after raiding the Texas prison Eastham, they released Ray Hamilton.
And at the same time, Henry Methvin.
And another policeman was killed — Major Crowson.
In March, Hamilton left the gang after a quarrel over the division of the loot.
He was later caught and sentenced to death in the electric chair in 1935.
And the Barrow gang continued their journey along the "route of death".
On Easter Day, on a country road on the way to Grapevine, Texas, Clyde and Metwin killed two more policemen who stopped, thinking that their help was needed.
Five days later, police officer Col Campbell became a victim of the bandits, and the criminals took police chief Percy Boyd hostage in Commerce, Oklahoma, but quickly released him.
They had less than a month to live.
THE DEATH MACHINE Ring around the Barrow gang was shrinking every day.
All police personnel were instructed to fire to kill, and then ask questions.
This was tantamount to a declaration of war.
The head of the FBI, Edgar Hoover, said: "Clyde is a psychopath.
He must be destroyed like a mad animal."
The governor of the state, Miriam Ferguson, instructed the head of the Texas correctional system, Lee Simmons, to hire a "special agent" to catch criminals — former Texas ranger Frank Hamer, who has tracked down and neutralized more than a dozen gangsters during his career.
Hamer started tracking all the bandits ' movements.
While they were being hunted, Clyde killed three more policemen, the "elusive" also robbed several banks.
In May, Hamer finally managed to figure out another criminal hideout - in Louisiana, in the house of Ivan Methvin (Henry Methvin's father).
The ranger went to him urgently and made a deal: old man Metwin turns over Bonnie and Clyde to the police in exchange for his son's life.
On the night of May 23, 1934, Hamer and five other policemen set up an ambush in a dense forest, eight meters from the road.
A truck belonging to the elder Methvin was parked at the curb.
Clyde knew this car well, and it was possible to expect that when he saw it, he would slow down.
The police waited for seven hours.
At 9: 10 am, they noticed a car approaching at high speed.
Clyde began to slow down, and suddenly the car was hit by fire from six barrels at the same time.
In a minute it was all over.
After firing 167 bullets at the target, the police approached the car with caution.
Bonnie and Clyde were dead.
Their bodies were pierced by more than 100 bullets.
The fingers on Bonnie's right hand were completely shot off.
She was holding a bloody pack of cigarettes in her left hand, and a pistol was lying on her lap.
Bonnie was 23, Clyde was 24.
Later, Frank Hamer told reporters: "It's a pity that I killed the girl.
But it was like this: either we are them, or they are us."
The smoke from the shooting had not yet dissipated, and the ambush site was already surrounded by onlookers to get hold of "souvenirs": pieces of Bonnie's bloody dress or a strand of her hair.
Someone tried to cut off Clyde's ear and the middle finger of his right hand with a penknife.
The intervening policeman stopped the "vultures" who had swooped in.
The "death machine" was transported to Arcadia, Louisiana, where a crowd of curious people had already gathered.
At the funeral home, the bodies of Bonnie and Clyde began to be prepared for the funeral ceremony.
The embalming, ironically, was done by the same Mr. Darby, whose car Bonnie and Clyde once stole, taking him hostage...
Clyde was buried at the Western Heights Cemetery in Dallas on May 25, 1934 next to his brother Marvin (Buck).
Bonnie's mother refused to bury her daughter next to Clyde, and the ceremony took place on May 27, 1934 at Fishtrap Cemetery in West Dallas.
The inscription on Bonnie's tombstone reads: "As flowers bloom under the rays of the sun and the freshness of dew, so the world becomes brighter thanks to people like you."
Such an epitaph for someone who left behind such an unkind bloody memory sounds a little strange... who were Bonnie and Clyde?
Victims of the Great Depression?
A lost generation?
Probably, all this can somehow explain the goal, but it can not justify the means to achieve it in any way.
Time leaves its traces on everything.
It left a myth mark on the lives of Bonnie and Clyde.
And numerous stories, true and not so much, give criminals a romantic aura of outstanding personalities who challenge the authorities.
But Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were just ruthless killers.
Anastasia SMIRNOVA
http://oursociety.ru/publ/amerikanskaja istorija/bonni i klajd bezhalostnye ubijcy/3-1-0-169Tags: biographies, history
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Bonnie and Clyde: Ruthless Killers livejournal 2015-11-26 06: 35 pm (UTC)
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