Bonnie and Clyde

Bonnie and Clyde (Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow) were infamous bank robbers who traveled the central United States during the Great Depression, often with various members of the Barrow gang.

Prison and release

By mid-February 1930, Clyde and Bonnie were seeing each other regularly, to the point where the police staked out her mother's house hoping to catch the wanted Barrow. They arrested him there, and he was sentenced to prison for two years (seven concurrent two-year terms for burglary and auto theft). Except for a one-week escape ending with his recapture in Ohio, Clyde remained incarcerated in the Texas state prison at Eastham Farm until early 1932. It was there, at Eastham Camp 1, that it appears he first killed another man — a fellow prisoner named "Big Ed". According to historian John Neal Phillips in his author's notes for the book My Life with Bonnie and Clyde by Blanche Barrow, Big Ed was a serial rapist who was notorious at Eastham for anally raping smaller prisoners and forcing them to perform fellatio. Big Ed, at the least, is known to have sodomized Clyde, though the full extent of the sexual assault is not known; some historians have speculated that the rapes he suffered at Eastham had a permanent psychological effect on Clyde and were the primary instigator for the violent acts that followed. After being sodomized, Clyde began to formulate a plan to murder Big Ed. In the 1930s, prison murder was not a capital offense in Texas, and often overlooked when it was committed by prisoners serving long sentences. Clyde struck a deal with a fellow inmate who was serving 30 years for bank robbery, wherein Clyde would kill Big Ed and the other inmate would take the blame; in exchange, Clyde offered to one day help break the other inmate out. The next night, Clyde cracked open Big Ed's skull with a lead pipe. The inmate whom Clyde struck the deal with approached Big Ed, cut himself across the stomach with a knife, and then stuck the knife in Big Ed's hand, calling out to the guards, "I killed Ed!" Guards on duty that night recall the chief guard replying, "Good riddance!" This was Clyde Barrow's first murder.

Related Topics:
Ohio - Texas state prison - Eastham Farm - Fellatio

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

After his release in 1932, Clyde moved to Massachusetts, purportedly to make a clean start. However, he returned to Texas within weeks, embroiled in a plan to raid Eastham prison and free associate Raymond Hamilton and others. He recruited help and set about arming and financing the operation.

Related Topics:
Massachusetts - Raymond Hamilton

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In April, a night watchman saw Barrow and Ralph Fults breaking into a hardware store (the location of the store is disputed; local newspapers reported that it was Mabank, Texas). They escaped after exchanging fire, rejoined Bonnie, and attempted to leave the "hot" area. The incident followed a pattern for Bonnie and Clyde that persisted until their deaths — desperate evasion at high speed down sometimes impassable roads, stealing cars and swapping stolen plates regularly. Though Clyde's astounding driving skill and ability to evade capture were later grudgingly respected by law enforcement, this situation ended poorly, perhaps because the gang was finally reduced to stealing mules for transportation in the Texas farm country. Clyde escaped, and Bonnie and Fults were arrested. She claimed to have been kidnapped, and a grand jury failed to indict her. Having spent two months in the Kaufman, Texas, jail, Bonnie returned to Dallas in June 1932, and was soon back on the road with Clyde.

Related Topics:
Mabank, Texas - Mule - Kaufman, Texas - Dallas

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~