The Top 5 Most Notorious Outlaws (18 page)

To an extent, the deaths of Bonnie and Clyde signaled the apex of the “Public Enemies Era”, and in the next few months, Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson and Pretty Boy Floyd would all be shot dead as well. To help prevent more public enemies, the federal government stepped up their efforts by making bank robbery and kidnapping federal offenses, thus allowing the FBI to get involved in those kinds of crimes.

By then, of course, Bonnie and Clyde had become legends, and their romance, whirlwind lives and ultimate fates made their story a natural on the silver screen. Within decades, Hollywood had depicted their story several times, books had been written, and musicians wrote songs referencing them. In 1967, Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway added their starpower and striking good looks to the outlaws.

While their story is certainly worth telling, though perhaps not in the sensationalized, romantic way the criminals are often depicted, the portrayals of Bonnie and Clyde are (not surprisingly) often at odds with reality. Far from being swashbuckling, W.D. Jones described Clyde as a young, serious man with a small build:

I was in the joint when word came on May 23, 1934, that Clyde and Bonnie was killed near Arcadia, Louisiana. I’ve heard stories since that Clyde was homosexual, or, as they say in the pen, a “punk,” but they ain’t true. Maybe it was Clyde’s quiet, polite manner and his slight build that fooled folks.

He was only about five feet, six inches tall and he weighed no more than 135 pounds. Me and him was about the same size, and we used to wear each other’s clothes. Clyde had dark hair that was wavy. He never had a beard. Even when he didn’t shave, all he had on his chin was fuzz.

Another way that story might have got started was his wearing a wig sometimes when him and Bonnie had to drive through a town where they might be recognized. He wore the wig for disguise and for no other reason.

Clyde never walked right, either. He’d chopped off his big toe and part of the second toe on his left foot when he was in prison, because he couldn’t keep up, with the pace the farm boss set.

Or the story could have come from sensation writers who believed anything dropped on them and who blew it to proportions that suited their imagination.

Jones also described Clyde as both polite and even not above praying:

Clyde had good manners, just naturally. It fooled lots of folks, like that policeman in Missouri. We was driving over a bridge and the motor law rolled up beside us and told us to pull over, Clyde smiled and told him, “Just a minute, sir.”

It was night and Clyde wanted to get off that bridge before he stopped. But that policeman come on real nasty. “Stop right here now,” he said.

Clyde kept right on going and saying, “Just a minute, sir.” When we got off the bridge, Clyde turned up a little street and stopped. The policeman come up to the door. That’s when Clyde throwed that little shotgun in his face, and that law done a turn around.

Clyde liked to stay sharp and would sometimes hit the car brakes of a sudden, bounce out to the roadside and open up with that cutoff automatic rifle on a tree or a sign for practice. He was never more than an arm’s reach from a gun, even in bed, or out of bed on the floor in the night, when he thought we was all asleep and couldn’t see him kneeling there. I seen it more than once. He prayed. I reckon he was praying for his soul. Maybe it was for more life. He knowed it would end soon, but he didn’t intend for it to be in jail.

Fittingly, it was Jones who dispelled much of the myth-making surrounding the two in his interview with Playboy shortly after the popular 1967 movie about Bonnie and Clyde. “That Bonnie and Clyde movie made it all look sort of glamorous, but like I told them teenaged boys sitting near me at the drive-in showing: ‘Take it from an old man who was there. It was hell.’”

Clyde and Jones

You’ve read the story of Jesse James

of how he lived and died.

If you’re still in need;

of something to read,

here’s the story of Bonnie and Clyde.

Now Bonnie and Clyde are the Barrow gang

I’m sure you all have read.

how they rob and steal;

and those who squeal,

are usually found dying or dead.

There’s lots of untruths to these write-ups;

they’re not as ruthless as that.

their nature is raw;

they hate all the law,

the stool pidgeons, spotters and rats.

They call them cold-blooded killers

they say they are heartless and mean.

But I say this with pride

that I once knew Clyde,

when he was honest and upright and clean.

But the law fooled around;

kept taking him down,

and locking him up in a cell.

Till he said to me;

“I’ll never be free,

so I’ll meet a few of them in hell”

The road was so dimly lighted

there were no highway signs to guide.

But they made up their minds;

if all roads were blind,

they wouldn’t give up till they died.

The road gets dimmer and dimmer

sometimes you can hardly see.

But it’s fight man to man

and do all you can,

for they know they can never be free.

From heart-break some people have suffered

from weariness some people have died.

But take it all in all;

our troubles are small,

till we get like Bonnie and Clyde.

If a policeman is killed in Dallas

and they have no clue or guide.

If they can’t find a fiend,

they just wipe their slate clean

and hang it on Bonnie and Clyde.

There’s two crimes committed in America

not accredited to the Barrow mob.

They had no hand;

in the kidnap demand,

nor the Kansas City Depot job.

A newsboy once said to his buddy;

“I wish old Clyde would get jumped.

In these awfull hard times;

we’d make a few dimes,

if five or six cops would get bumped”

The police haven’t got the report yet

but Clyde called me up today.

He said,"Don’t start any fights;

we aren’t working nights,

we’re joining the NRA.”

From Irving to West Dallas viaduct

is known as the Great Divide.

Where the women are kin;

and the men are men,

and they won’t “stool” on Bonnie and Clyde.

If they try to act like citizens

and rent them a nice little flat.

About the third night;

they’re invited to fight,

by a sub-gun’s rat-tat-tat.

They don’t think they’re too smart or desperate

they know that the law always wins.

They’ve been shot at before;

but they do not ignore,

that death is the wages of sin.

Some day they’ll go down together

they’ll bury them side by side.

To few it’ll be grief,

to the law a relief

but it’s death for Bonnie and Clyde.

We each of us have a good “alibi”

For being down here in the “joint”

But few of them really are justified

If you get right down to the point.

You’ve heard of a woman’s glory

Being spent on a “downright cur”

Still you can’t always judge the story

As true, being told by her.

As long as I’ve stayed on this “island”

And heard “confidence tales” from each “gal”

Only one seemed interesting and truthful-

The story of “Suicide Sal”.

Now “Sal” was a gal of rare beauty,

Though her features were coarse and tough;

She never once faltered from duty

To play on the “up and up”.

“Sal” told me this tale on the evening

Before she was turned out “free”

And I’ll do my best to relate it

Just as she told it to me:

I was born on a ranch in Wyoming;

Not treated like Helen of Troy,

I was taught that “rods were rulers”

And “ranked” as a greasy cowboy.

Then I left my old home for the city

To play in its mad dizzy whirl,

Not knowing how little of pity

It holds for a country girl.

There I fell for “the line” of a “henchman”

A “professional killer” from “Chi”

I couldn’t help loving him madly,

For him even I would die.

One year we were desperately happy

Our “ill gotten gains” we spent free,

I was taught the ways of the “underworld”

Jack was just like a “god” to me.

I got on the “F.B.A.” payroll

To get the “inside lay” of the “job”

The bank was “turning big money”!

It looked like a “cinch for the mob”.

Eighty grand without even a “rumble"-

Jack was last with the “loot” in the door,

When the “teller” dead-aimed a revolver

From where they forced him to lie on the floor.

I knew I had only a moment-

He would surely get Jack as he ran,

So I “staged” a “big fade out” beside him

And knocked the forty-five out of his hand.

They “rapped me down big” at the station,

And informed me that I’d get the blame

For the “dramatic stunt” pulled on the “teller”

Looked to them, too much like a “game”.

The “police” called it a “frame-up”

Said it was an “inside job”

But I steadily denied any knowledge

Or dealings with “underworld mobs”.

The “gang” hired a couple of lawyers,

The best “fixers” in any mans town,

But it takes more than lawyers and money

When Uncle Sam starts “shaking you down”.

I was charged as a “scion of gangland”

And tried for my wages of sin,

The “dirty dozen” found me guilty-

From five to fifty years in the pen.

I took the “rap” like good people,

And never one “squawk” did I make

Jack “dropped himself” on the promise

That we make a “sensational break”.

Well, to shorten a sad lengthy story,

Five years have gone over my head

Without even so much as a letter-

At first I thought he was dead.

But not long ago I discovered;

From a gal in the joint named Lyle,

That Jack and his “moll” had “got over”

And were living in true “gangster style”.

If he had returned to me sometime,

Though he hadn’t a cent to give

I’d forget all the hell that he’s caused me,

And love him as long as I lived.

But there’s no chance of his ever coming,

For he and his moll have no fears

But that I will die in this prison,

Or “flatten” this fifty years.

Tommorow I’ll be on the “outside”

And I’ll “drop myself” on it today,

I’ll “bump ‘em if they give me the “hotsquat”

On this island out here in the bay…

The iron doors swung wide next morning

For a gruesome woman of waste,

Who at last had a chance to “fix it”

Murder showed in her cynical face.

Not long ago I read in the paper

That a gal on the East Side got “hot”

And when the smoke finally retreated,

Two of gangdom were found “on the spot”.

It related the colorful story

Of a “jilted gangster gal”

Two days later, a “sub-gun” ended

The story of “Suicide Sal”.

Barrow, Blanche Caldwell and John Neal Phillips. My Life with Bonnie and Clyde. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004.)

Burrough, Bryan. Public Enemies. (New York: The Penguin Press, 2004.)

Friedman, Lester D., Bonnie and Clyde. (BFI Publishing. 2000.)

Guinn, Jeff. Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009.)

Hinton, Ted & Grove Larry, Ambush; The Real Story of Bonnie and Clyde.

Knight, James R. and Jonathan Davis. Bonnie and Clyde: A Twenty-First-Century Update. (Austin, TX: Eakin Press, 2003.)

Milner, E.R. The Lives and Times of Bonnie and Clyde. (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996.)

Nash, Jay Robert, Bloodletters and Badmen. (New York: M. Evans & Co., 1995.)

Parker, Emma Krause, Nell Barrow Cowan and Jan I. Fortune. The True Story of Bonnie and Clyde. (New York: New American Library, 1968.)

Penn, Arthur, Bonnie and Clyde. Edited by Lester D. Friedman. (Cambridge University Press. 2000.)

Phillips, John Neal. Running with Bonnie and Clyde, the Ten Fast Years of Ralph Fults. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996, 2002)

Ramsey, Winston G., ed. On The Trail of Bonnie and Clyde. (London: After The Battle Books, 2003).

Steele, Phillip, and Marie Barrow Scoma. The Family Story of Bonnie and Clyde. (Gretna, LA: Pelican Publishing Company, 2000.)

Toland, John, The Dillinger Days. (New York: Random House, 1963.)

Treherne, John. The Strange History of Bonnie and Clyde. (New York: Stein and Day, 1984.)