The Texas Department of Corrections hired retired, Texas Ranger Senior Captain Francis Augustus Hamer (“Frank” or “Pancho”) and persuaded him to hunt down the Barrow Gang. They viewed Barrow and his followers as Robin Hood figures, instead of the cold-blooded killers they really were. Most of the American public in the Midwest realized that the Barrow Gang were dangerous outlaws, but they also considered the gang to be folk heroes, robbing those same banks that were foreclosing on so many Depression-era farmers. They were ultimately responsible for the deaths of 13 law enforcement officers and civilians. They robbed banks and stores across a seven-state area encompassing Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Louisiana, Missouri, Indiana, and even Minnesota. Over the next two years, the infamous Barrow Gang grew to include Barrow’s brother Ivan (“Buck”) and his wife Blanche, young William Daniel “W.D.” Jones (age 18), Henry Methvin, Joe Palmer, and Raymond Hamilton, Barrow’s childhood buddy. Bonnie was captured and jailed for a few months, while Ralph Fults went to prison and left the gang for good. Photo: Rock Island AuctionĪfter his release, Barrow, Parker, and Fults began robbing gas stations, grocery stores, and hardware stores at an alarming rate. Inmate, fellow criminal, and gang member Ralph Fults later stated that he watched Clyde “change from a schoolboy to a rattlesnake.”Ĭlyde Barrow was a dangerous and very well-armed criminal. Clyde was released from prison on February 2, 1932, as a hardened and bitter criminal. Handsome Clyde Barrow, from a poor, farming family, had been in trouble with the law since age 17, quickly becoming a store robber, car thief, and safecracker fit her “bad-boy type.” He was sent to prison in April 1930, soon after meeting Bonnie, for automobile theft, where he attacked and killed a fellow inmate who sexually assaulted him, creating his first murder. Thornton became a robber, was imprisoned in 1933 and was killed while trying to escape in 1937.īonnie Parker clearly developed a serious, “bad-boy” fascination (psychologists call it “hybristophilia” today) at an early age. Then, she had a chance meeting with Clyde Chestnut (or Champion) Barrow, age 20, a laborer, on that fateful day, and the couple was forever enamored with each other, in the Great Depression era of “failed banks, failed farms, lost hope, and dust,” as one writer would later describe the desperate circumstances. She married Roy Thornton in 1926, and separated in 1929, but never legally divorced and she wore his wedding ring for the remainder of her short life. On January 5, 1930, young Bonnie Elizabeth Parker, age 19, was a waitress in West Dallas, Texas. Bonnie Parker’s poem, “The End of the Line,” 1934. To a few, it’ll be grief-to the law a relief. They’ve been shot at before, but they do not ignore “They don’t think they’re too smart or desperate.
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