S3 Ep34: Bonnie and Clyde: The Real Story of the Notorious Duo

(Buzzer) One iced coffee? 99 cents please. For real? No way. (Buzzer) Hmm. (Buzzer) (Buzzer) Hmm. One iced coffee? 99 cents please. For real? No way. Hmm. (Buzzer) What a deal! Your new morning groove. Ice coffee from McDonald's any size for just 99 cents to 11 a.m. Pricing participation may vary. Can I be combined with any other offer? (Buzzer) Hi this is Alex Cantrowicz. I'm the host of Big Technology podcast, a long time reporter and an on air contributor to CNBC. And if you're like me, you're trying to figure out how artificial intelligence is changing the business world and our lives. So each week on Big Technology, I bring on key actors from companies building AI tech and outsiders trying to influence it. Asking where this is all going, they come from places like Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, and plenty more. So if you want to be smart with your wallet, your career choices, and meetings with your colleagues and at dinner parties, listen to Big Technology podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Some crimes are so heartbreaking or shocking that they change laws, change society, or even earn the label "Crime of the Century". The stories that made headlines and decades passed aren't necessarily remembered today. I member Hunt, a journalist and author, and in each episode of this show, I'll examine a case that's maybe lesser known today, but was huge when it happened. This is "Crimes of the Centuries". Crowds swarm the truck as it towed the bullet-ridden car in town, onlookers hopping up and down, hoping to see the bodies still inside. The truck stopped at a funeral home in Arcadia, Louisiana, to transfer custody of the corpses to the undertakers. No one in Arcadia was prepared for the onslaught of people about to arrive for a mere look, or even to buy a genuine souvenir. The two bodies had been shot a combined total of more than 100 times, making it difficult to embalm them. The lovers had previously made it known that they wanted to be buried next to each other, but their family subjected, separating them for eternity. The country moved on, the era of the gangster faded, but the ballad of Bonnie and Clyde refuses to die. "Pasaga Bonnie and Clyde is an irresistible one. It's the stuff of legend." This is from a biography channel documentary. "Attractive young people, totally nihilistic, totally without fear, totally anti-social, breaking all the rules, all the conventions, defying all the forces of authority. And on numerous occasions, they showed that they were willing to risk their lives for each other." "At least that's how they're remembered and largely portrayed in popular culture, but just how much of that is rooted in truth? That's what we'll take a look at in today's episode of Cramps This Centuries, as we tell the real story of the infamous Bonnie and Clyde." Hi, this is Alex Cantrowitz. I'm the host of Big Technology Podcast, a longtime reporter and an on-air contributor to CNBC. So each week on Big Technology, I bring on key actors from companies building AI tech and outsiders trying to influence it, asking where this is all going. They come from places like Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, and plenty more. So if you want to be smart with your wallet, your career choices, and meetings with your colleagues and at dinner parties, listen to Big Technology Podcast or ever you get your podcasts. Clyde Barrow, did you know his middle name was Chestnut, was born in 1909, the fifth of seven children. The Barrow family lives southeast of Dallas until Clyde was about 11 years old when they moved to the city proper. Incredibly poor, the family was forced to live in and even under their wagon until they were able to scrounge together enough money to buy a tent, not a house or an apartment, a tent. This made for neither a comfortable nor a stable upbringing, which was evident by the time Clyde reached his mid teens. By age 16, Clyde had quit school. He was slender and small in stature, barely five seven, and possessed an innocent look. Inspired by his law breaking older brother Buck, Clyde soon began running into legal trouble. Although these run-ins didn't start how you probably imagined, he was 17 when he was arrested for the first time for returning of rental car late. Clyde's second arrest, which was alongside brother Buck, was even more ridiculous. Possession of stolen turkeys. This is Marie Barrow, one of Clyde's sisters talking about the incident to biography. My brother Buck and he involved some turkeys from somebody and these turkeys was hot and they called them trying to sell these turkeys and then they put them in jail for hot turkeys. While Buck spent a week behind bars for stealing them turkeys, Clyde avoided jail time. He attempted a string of legitimate jobs between 1927 and 1930, but the siren song of crime continued to call him and those three years he robbed stores, broken a safe, and stole cars. In the spring of 1930, Clyde was convicted of auto theft and sentenced to Eastern prison farm, also known as the ham. Known as a horrific, isolated prison in labor camp, many horrors awaited Clyde at East him. His sister now described one of her visits and fugitives, the story of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, which was published within months of he and Bonnie's deaths. Now visited Clyde at East him and said she found him with both eyes blackened. She said she got the details from him later and learned that he'd been beaten by guards for complaining that the pay set for chopping cotton in the field was too fast. Before horrifically, Clyde was repeatedly and violently sexually assaulted. Eventually, he reportedly killed his rapist with a pipe. This was his first murder. If he had been convicted for it, he never would have gotten to leave East him. But another inmate who already had been sentenced to life without parole took responsibility for the murder, sparing Clyde altogether. Inside the prison walls was only one part of life at East him. And in the other inmates were also forced to work in the fields that surrounded the prison. Working on those crews also brought with it the attention of the guards who patrolled on horseback, waiting for the opportunity to punish any inmate who stepped out of line. To avoid all this, Clyde decided to take a drastic step, purposefully mutilating himself. One day, he convinced a fellow convict to lob off a couple of toes so that he could get out of work detail. This is John Neal Phillips, author of Running with Bonnie and Clyde. The funny thing about it is his mother and sister were at the governor working on his pardon. And two weeks later, he was pardoned and walked out of East him prison on crutches. Released on February 2, 1932, Clyde returned to his family and friends, a change man. According to Phillips book, Clyde's sister Marie said that, quote, "Something awful sure must have happened to him in prison because he wasn't the same person when he got out." I think it changed him a lot. Made him hard. He used to talk a lot and he was a lot of fun. He liked to dance and he played all kinds of instruments nearly. And they'd done a lot to Clyde down there. It was just a really a living hell for him. Fellow and mate Ralph Foltz said Clyde changed, quote, "from a schoolboy to a rattlesnake." That's according to Phillips book in which the author posited a theory. He said Clyde's rationale for all of his crimes following his thin and East him was revenge. Revenge against the Texas prison system for everything that had happened to him at the ham. It didn't help matters that Clyde's attempts to hold legitimate jobs were always thwarted by police stopping by his places of employment harassing him about crimes they thought he might be involved in, whether he actually had been or not. This was happening during the Great Depression when jobs were scarce to begin with. Clyde being harassed by the police often led to him being fired by his employers who were happy to find replacement workers with far less baggage. Clyde was trying to avoid the police who wanted him for allegedly stealing a car when he met a woman who would forever alter his life. Born in 1910, Bonnie Parker, middle name Elizabeth, was the middle child of a Rewena Texas couple. Her father died when she was four and her mother Emma moved her family back into her parents' house in cement city, a suburb in West Dallas. Emma worked as a seamstress to support her children as they began school and Dallas public schools. As a sophomore in high school, Bonnie met Roy Thornton, a year older than she. Dropping out of school, the two married on September 25th, 1926, when Bonnie was just 15. Her 16th birthday was only six days away, which is obviously still super young, but Roy was young too, also just 16, and marriages at that age in this era weren't unusual, especially when she was a child. especially in Great Depression rural Texas. Also fairly common for the era, were the reports of Roy's domestic violence against Bonnie. - She and Roy apparently were very much in love, but he was abusive to her. He beat her, he drank heavily. He would take the disappearance for weeks at a time. After several of his disappearances, when he showed up again, she told him just to show off. She didn't want everything to do. But she never divorced him. He always wore his wedding ring. - She was still legally married to Roy, and even wearing his ring when she died in 1934, author Frank Prasel. - She seems to have been by all the reports, a rather nice girl, attractive girl. She worked as a waitress. She was married when she was very young, but her husband was convicted and sent to prison before she barely met Clyde. Much later, after Bonnie and Clyde became famous, many in West Dallas tried to connect themselves to the infamous bandits by saying that the couple met at their house party. But many historians agree that it's most likely the two met on January 5th, 1930, when Clyde stopped by a friend's house where Bonnie happened to be staying. To those paying attention, this would have been just before Clyde was sent to Eastham. During that imprisonment, Bonnie stayed with him, even traveling the 175 miles to Love Lady Texas to visit. Once Clyde was released, they were reunited and began to plan an assault against the prison, along with that fellow former inmate that I mentioned earlier, Ralph Foltz. Bonnie and Ralph were arrested on April 19th, 1932, while trying to steal guns from a hardware store in Kaufman, Texas. Foltz was tried, convicted, served his time, and never rejoined the Barrow gang. Bonnie, on the other hand, spent a few weeks in jail writing poetry, but was soon released when the grand jury failed to indict her. Reunited, Bonnie and Clyde would not be separated again, but several others would join them as they grew the Barrow gang and started their spree across the Midwest. Through the spring and summer of 1932, Bonnie and Clyde and their gang casually committed crimes as they traveled through Texas, in Oklahoma, during which Clyde would commit his first murders outside prison walls. At the end of April, he was the getaway driver in a robbery in Hillsboro, Texas. During the robbery, the store owner was killed. While Clyde didn't leave the car, the victim's wife identified him as one of the shooters. Three months later, on August 5th, Clyde and two others were drinking moonshine outside of a dance in Stringtown, Oklahoma, when the sheriff and a deputy walked up to them, approached by two men who were clearly police, Clyde and a buddy named Raymond Hamilton, pulled out their weapons and opened fire. According to the book, "Going Down Together," the true untold story of Bonnie and Clyde by Jeff Quinn, Sheriff C.J. Maxwell was seriously wounded and deputy Eugene Seymour was killed. Deputy Moore marked the first law enforcement officer killed by the Barrow gang, but he wouldn't be the last. Now Bonnie and Clyde are often referenced as a pair, but they had a rotating cast of accomplices along the way. Around the time of Moore's killing, the two were joined by a childhood friend of the Barrow family, a 16-year-old named W.D. Jones, who arrived on Christmas Eve, 1932. The next day, Clyde and W.D. murdered Doyle Johnson while stealing his car in Temple, Texas on Christmas Day. Six days into the new year, the group accidentally wandered into a trap set by the police for another criminal in Texas, and in their escape, Clyde killed Deputy Malcolm Davis. If you keep in count, that made five murders since April. By March 1933, the gang set up camp in a hideout in Joplin, Missouri, living at 3347 and a half Oak Ridge Drive. Bonnie, Clyde, and W.D. were soon joined by Clyde's brother, Buck, and Buck's wife, Blanche. Buck had recently been issued a pardon and was released from prison. According to a book eventually written by the Barrow and Parker families, Buck and Blanche's visit was supposedly an attempt to get Clyde to surrender to law enforcement, but their efforts didn't go well or last long. Instead, the apartment above a garage in Joplin quickly turned into a bit of a Fred house with all night card games. Blanche recalled the men bought a case of beer each day. This noisy parting was not welcomed in the sleepy neighborhood, especially after Clyde accidentally fired a rifle in the apartment while he was cleaning it, cleaning the gun, not the apartment. No one in the neighborhood dared approach the gang, but they did report the activity to the police. - Bear on, W.D. Jones had just come back from a trip out, casing new places to burglarize, and Buck had met him at the door, there at the garage door, and Buck was just closing the garage door when the police drove up, and Buck said it's the law. Five officers piled into two cars pulled into the drive on April 13th. The three men of the Barrow gang opened fire, immediately killing detective Harry L. McGinnis and mortally wounding Constable J.W. Harryman. According to Going Down Together, as a county constable, Harryman did not receive a salary, but instead was paid for each warning served. That left three officers returning fire at the second story windows. Bonnie grabbed the browning rifle and began firing, forcing Sergeant GB Kailer to take cover behind a tree, but bullets from the rifle struck the large oak and splinters flew into Kailer's face. The chaos allowed the Barrow gang to get into a car and speed away. Left in the aftermath, the Joplin Police Department had only fired 14 rounds at the outlaws. One hit W.D. in the side, Buck was grazed by a ricochet, and one nearly hit Clyde, but was deflected off a button on a suit coat. And they're rushed to escape the five members of the Barrow gang were forced to leave nearly all of their possessions in the apartment. They could of course get more clothes or even more guns, but there were irreplaceable items left behind, like Buck's pearl papers that were only three weeks old and several rules of undeveloped film. Developed by the Joplin Globe newspaper, the film included the infamous photos of Bonnie and Clyde posing in front of a car with a rifle and cigar. The Globe, as payment for developing the photos, published them, sending them across the country on the newswire. One of the best known photos to this day showed Bonnie standing with a foot propped on the bumper of a car, a pistol in one hand, and a cigar in her mouth. With this one photo, Bonnie Parker became one of the most famous women in the country. She also became the poster girl for what many believed was wrong with America in 1933. She clearly smoked, she committed crimes, she probably drank a legal alcohol, and she also likely had a list of sex with Clyde. According to Family Accounts, Bonnie hated that photo. She supposedly preferred cigarettes to cigars, but she did love the attention. And got a thrill seeing her pictures and magazines in newspapers. - Hi, this is Alex Cantrowitz. - After they narrowly escaped, Joplin, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, knew Missouri was no longer safe, and their gang spent the next few months burning a path from Texas to Minnesota, robbing banks as always, but also picking up new tricks. Like kidnapping. Their kidnappings were often a consequence of carjacking. And since the kidnapping part wasn't their main objective, the gang usually let their victims go, even giving a few some cash to get back home. These cute stories of dropping off accidental kidnapped victims were printed alongside stories of the gang murdering indiscriminately, no matter if the victim was civilian or law enforcement. Their luck took a turn for the worse on June 10th, 1933, when Clyde didn't see a sign warning the bridge ahead was under construction. Seeing it far too late, he flipped the car down a hill and into a ravine. According to a 1968 article written by Gang member W.D. Jones for Playboy Magazine, the wreck caused a fire that injured Bonnie's leg, though historians wonder if it may have been leaking battery acid rather than an actual blaze. Regardless, after being freed from the car, W.D. and Clyde were able to see the severity of Bonnie's wounds, Jones said, "She'd been burned so bad none of us thought she was going to live. The hide on a right leg was gone from her hip down to her ankle. I could see the bone in places." End quote. not willing to chance a trip to the hospital. Clyde decided to take care of Bonnie himself, stealing the medical supplies he needed. Such severe burns left untreated caused the muscles to begin to heal improperly and she could no longer stretch her right leg straight. Unable to walk, she had to be carried until eventually she could hop on her good leg. Newspapers at the time reported that she had taken a bullet to the knee, but that turned out to be false. A month after that car accident, the gang of five, Bonnie, Clyde, Buck, Blanchand WD, began hiding in a tourist court, aka a motel outside of Platt City, Missouri. Clyde's plan was to rent two cabins, telling the clerk he was traveling with his wife, Bonnie, and his mother-in-law, passing off his sister-in-law, Blanch, as Bonnie's mother. Ouch. But then, N.D. Howzer, the owner/operator of the Red Crown Tavern, noticed all five of them getting out of the car to go into the cabins. He also took note of Blanch's pants. Author Jeff Quinn wrote that Blanch was incredibly fond of a style of writing breaches that weren't out of ordinary at a country club, but certainly unusual in this part of Missouri. Whether the citizens of Platt City were especially observant, or the gang members were getting lazy, the bottom line is that the town's folk found the group suspicious. Blanch paid their bill with loose change, likely stolen from cash registers earlier that day, when she went to the associated tavern to pick up their dinners, she again paid in loose change, another red flag. That peak, Howzer's already raised concerns, causing him to write down the license plate on Clyde's stolen Ford. Even the way they parked the car was suspicious. Did anyone else know that backing your car into a garage was, at least in this day known as "Gangster Style"? You know, because it facilitated a quick escape. Not only did they have the bad luck to pick a motel with such an observant owner, but to the gang's surprise, the associated tavern was the local watering spot of the Platt City Police Department and the Missouri State Highway Patrol. When Clyde and WD went to town to get supplies, it wasn't long before the police were alerted. Sheriff Holt Coffee had received communications from Oklahoma, Texas, and Arkansas law enforcement to be on the lookout, although for a group who needed supplies, especially of the medical variety. Setting up surveillance on the cabins at the motel, Coffee contacted the Missouri Highway Patrol, who brought in reinforcements from Kansas City. By the time the group moved quietly toward the cabins that night to 11 p.m., they not only had Thompson submachine guns, but they also had an armored car. Thing was, though, Clyde had recently stolen a 30-calibre, browning automatic rifle from the National Freaking Guard. The police's semi-automatic was no match for a fully automatic. The police couldn't even capture them with armor-piercing shells when hit the motel's brick wall in the kitchen, passed through the cast iron stove and struck young coffee, the sheriff's 16-year-old son. When a bullet took out the armored car's horn, the police thought it was signaling a ceasefire. The break allowed the Barrow gang to escape once again, but not without casualties. Blanche had been nearly blinded in both eyes when glass shattered nearer. Clyde's brother, Buck, had been shot in the head. He was still alive, but barely. Witnesses said in a documentary called "Remembering Bonnie and Clyde." "He'd been shot to the cheekbone and grazed and he'd been shot to the shoulder and when you're 19 years old you see blood running down the guy's face and been shot a couple times. You kind of do as he tells you, too." The shocked and frightened witnesses helped the gang escape. Reeling from Platt City, the group made it as far as Dexfield Park and abandoned amusement park in Iowa. Rather than the apartments or homes they'd been in so far, they were forced to camp. This was especially brutal as three of the five were critically wounded. Remember this was only six weeks after the car accident, so Bonnie was still injured too. Clyde and W.D. made makeshift beds, probably more like cots. They then made runs into town for supplies, but according to Phillips, they were still driving the same car from Platt City. Clyde used mud to cover the dozen bullet holes in the car and planned on stealing a new one as soon as he could. Even though the site was abandoned, people noticed a group covered in bloody bandages and contacted the police. Surrounding them, the Iowa police opened fire. Buck was shot again this time in the back. Blanche stayed with them rather than try to escape. Both were arrested and Buck died five days later. The remaining three gang members ran and somehow managed to get away. Needing supplies and money, they committed more robberies over the coming months, traveling as far as Colorado to the west and Mississippi to the east, hoping to avoid any bollows. The gang robbed an armory in Illinois where they got three browning automatic rifles, some pistols, and as much ammunition as they would ever need. Bonnie and Clyde returned to West Dallas while W.D. continued on to see his mother who had moved to Houston. Clyde committed several robberies around Dallas with local friends while their families took care of Bonnie. 1934 seemed to begin with a bang for the Barrow gang, but in truth, it ultimately was their downfall. Satisfying a long-held grudge, Clyde helped several friends break out of Eastham on January 16th. Among the escapees was Henry Methven Jr., more about him later. Another, Joe Palmer, shot an officer during the escape, and that officer died a few days later. While Clyde got his vengeance on the prison that abused him so cruelly, the officer's death also guaranteed that local state and now the federal government would be on his tail. The Texas Department of Corrections went as far as hiring former Texas Ranger Frank Hamer, most recently played by Kevin Costner and a Netflix movie. Hamer would spend the rest of Bonnie and Clyde's lives chasing them down. Hi, this is Alex Cantrowitz. Easter Sunday fell on April 1st in 1934. Texas Highway Patrolman, H.D. Murphy, an Edward Wheeler, had drawn the undesirable shift and were on patrol along Route 114. Seeing a car on the side of the road, they stopped, thinking someone needed help. They were both killed for their efforts. Henry Methven eventually confessed to killing Murphy and Wheeler, thinking that Clyde wanted any law enforcement killed. But a farmer claiming to be an eyewitness told several newspapers that not only did Bonnie kill them, but she laughed, saying that she liked the way Murphy's head, "Bounce like a rubber ball." Whether or not that was true, the papers aided up. They had already been using Bonnie as social commentary and a sign of the dangerous times. No, they had another story to reprint as a cautionary tale. This is what happens when your women step out of line, Marie Barrow again. And I don't think they did a half of the things that the newspaper said they did. Clyde was a, I think he was a tender-hearted boy. I loved him very much. He was very good to me. But what kind of headline does that make? And boy, were Bonnie and Clyde making headlines, not only were there exploits in newspapers worldwide, but I found a Fort Worth newspaper story printed May 1st, 1934, that describes a theater review, starring a couple of actors portraying Bonnie and Clyde, while they were still alive. If you're curious, James Calvert and Louise Dorset were applauded as giving outstanding performances as the outlaw couple. That same day, another Kansas newspaper ran a brief on its front page, headlined "A Barrow Scare." It read, "Officers surrounded a house on Morrison Avenue, here after hearing reports that the notorious outlaw Clyde Barrow and his cigar-smoking consort, Bonnie Parker, were in the house. The occupants of the house were sitting calmly about a table, improved to be a family who had lived there for many years." Anyway, by this time, May 1934, every member of the gang, Clyde, Bonnie, WD, and the Escapies from Easton, Henry Methman and Joe Palmer, had warrants out for their arrests. But Clyde led the group with a total of 16 warrants. According to his FBI file, four states wanted him for robbery, car theft, regular theft, escape, assault, and, of course, murder. Hammer and his posse of six lawmen chased the gang around five states in the Midwest, learning their patterns. After mapping out the gang's seemingly circuitous route, he realized that they were visiting their families. With this pattern, Hammer predicted their next stop would be Methman's parents in Behanville, Parish, Louisiana. This was more insightful than he knew as Clyde had designated the Methman House as a rendezvous if the group were ever separated. Henry Methman had gotten separated from Bonnie and Clyde, so they were going to Louisiana one where the other. Arriving first, Hammer met with Sheriff Henderson. Jordan told him that there was some wanted to meet with him, someone who was willing to help set a trap for Bonnie and Clyde. Ivan Methven, father of gang member Henry, was willing to do a lot to help his son. Ivy, as he was called in his wife, Ava, had worked for years to secure their son's release from Eastham, where he had been sent in 1930 after a conviction for intent to murder and car theft. They believed they were close to getting him out when Henry escaped in January 1934 in Clyde's prison break. Now their son was running all over the Midwest with the ultimate bad influence, the Barrow Gang. Ivy would help Hamer if he could pull his son from the clutches of Clyde Barrow. He agreed to cooperate, giving Jordan and Hamer information about the gang's movements to try to help bring them back to Louisiana. But by May, nothing had happened, and they were getting impatient. They pressured Henry's father, Ivy, to agree to being bait. He would pull his truck off the side of State Highway 154 near the Posse's hiding spot. Given the time spent at the Methven farm, Clyde would recognize the truck and pull over to help his friend's father. The Posse hid in the bushes for two days, waiting for Bonnie and Clyde's car to come down the dirt road. On the morning of the third day, May 23rd, 1934, they were contemplating giving up and reassessing. But then they heard a car, and it was driving fast. While Hamer and his men crouch for the third morning in a row, their target stopped by Ma Canfield's cafe in Gibblend. Bonnie was wearing a pretty red dress while Clyde wore a suit with a blue western dress shirt. Jeff Gwynne wrote that it was likely Clyde went in to order them all sandwiches. A meal Clyde had no idea might be his last. Some remembered Clyde ordering BLTs, while others remembered in order of fried baloney sandwiches. Based on the examination of the car afterward, law enforcement was able to determine that Bonnie ate a few bites before wrapping her sandwich in an napkin. Food for the road had been put in the back along with Bonnie's hat and the arsenal of weapons just out of reach that they had on hand for whatever may come. And what was waiting for them were six men heavily armed. Knowing what Clyde typically carried with them, they stockpiled comparable weapons, rounding rifles, a Winchester lever action rifle, two Remington Model 8s typically used to bring down big game of Remington Model 11 shotgun, a cult monitor machine rifle, and an assortment of handguns. Recognizing the stolen Ford, police tensed for the ambush. Clyde did slow down as they expected, but it was the posse who jumped the gun, shooting while the car was still moving. It's generally accepted that Louisiana police officer Prentice Oakley fired first, and it was that bullet that traveled through Clyde's brain, killing him instantly. Hammer's fellow Texas Ranger Ted Hinton reported hearing Bonnie scream as they fired 130 rounds into the 1934 Ford Deluxe V8. These are some after the fact witnesses talking and that remembering Bonnie and Clyde's documentary. And well the news started spreading that some desparators had been killed. For me, what's that? We come on back and they finally, I'm trying to think what time they come picked up the car. Had a little little T-model record, but they come and pick it up and hit with a shot all that call it shot up. Then people were shot up and lost a blur in there and everything. News of the deaths did spread quickly, especially as the lawmen traveled into town to make reports to their superiors. Two were left to guard the bodies, but they were soon overrun by the crowd. From a documentary online episode of serial killer series. People started coming in, clipping off pieces of clothing. One man took a pocket and I was trying to cut off Clyde's trigger finger as a trophy. One person was stopped by one of the officers from trying to take Bonnie's wedding ring off her hand. The infamous Ford was towed into Arcadia, Louisiana, with the bodies still inside. The couple was taken to a local funeral parlor to be identified by family and to be embalmed. The town of Arcadia exploded from 2,000 people to more than 12,000 within a day, all to see the killer couple. According to Gwynns Book, going down together, Clyde's father Henry and brother Jack arrived in Arcadia in the afternoon, called to identify the body. Buster Parker, Bonnie's brother, didn't arrive until late in the evening. Both families had learned of the deaths when journalists called them for comment. After identification, the families were given Bonnie and Clyde's possessions and the funeral parlors released the remains. The families arranged for the remains to be transported to different funeral homes in Dallas. The first indicator they would not be buried together. The following day, the families allowed for visitations. A decision they immediately regretted. 10,000 showed up at the Sparkman Holt's funeral home to look at Clyde. One drunken visitor offered Henry Barrow $10,000 for the remains of his son. The parkers were dealing with similar badlum at the McKeeley Campbell funeral home, with Bonnie's mother estimating 15,000 to 20,000 people filed past her daughter's open casket. Emma Parker, Bonnie's mother, made an interesting choice for Bonnie's burial clothes, a blue neglige with a white veil covering her bullet-mutilated face. Emma described it herself in fugitives. She wrote that she carried small life insurance policies on all of her children, and this was why she was able to afford Bonnie's funeral. Emma continued, saying Bonnie, quote, "had the loveliest blue silk neglige that money could buy." Emma matched her blue eyes. Her hair was marcelled and her nails polished. Her casket was silver, and she was buried holding the lilies from an unknown sender. Clyde's funeral came first, though, held on May 25th at Western Heights Cemetery in Dallas, from a news report to the event. "In life, his very presence would have struck fear to their heart, but now they fear him not. "Light body is born to the grave. Again, tragedy and shame just end upon his aged father and mother." Clyde was buried alongside his brother, Buck, who'd been buried just months earlier. Grin described flowers being dropped from a plane during the internment, but without any information on who may have orchestrated it. Bonnie's burial was held the next day at the fish-trap cemetery in Dallas. Her family, who refused to allow Bonnie to be buried next to Clyde, had a hard time actually getting to the grave site because of the more than 20,000 people who showed up for the funeral. Flowers circled the grave site, though none fell from the sky. The largest flower arrangement came from Dallas newspaper vendors, if you can believe it. They had sold half a million copies of special editions printed to cover the ambush in funerals. According to the book "Funerals of the Famous," Bonnie's remains were eventually moved to the new Crown Hill Cemetery in 1945. Now there's still a chance that the couple's last wish could be carried out. Bonnie's last living relative is trying to get Bonnie moved into the plot next to Clyde. Ria-Leen Linder, 84 years old in 2018, was Bonnie's niece and said she didn't blame her grandmother for not allowing the pair to be buried together, quote, "but it's been 84 years," end quote. Now not excusing Bonnie's actions as part of the Barrow Gang, it's worth noting that there have been several pop culture iterations over the years that have twisted history. In the various films produced over the last decades, Bonnie has been portrayed as vapid, childish, love-sick, psychotic, and worse. Even in the press of the day, Bonnie was referred to as the "gun-toting mall" instead of calling her, you know, by her name. And several articles from the El Paso Times from 1934 when Bonnie was a well-known figure. She often was not mentioned at all, only Clyde was. While her name wasn't used, she was called "gun woman," "woman companion," "worklides frequent companion," "Jeff Gwynn chucked it up to Texas showvinism," but it wasn't limited to Texas and it wasn't limited to 1934. This is a footnote to the story, but it's worth mentioning. Film and TV portrayals do influence how we understand history after all. After the actions of Bonnie and Clyde, John Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, Babyface Nelson, and others, laws and policing in the U.S. were forced to change. Bank robberies and kidnappings were made federal offenses, as Jeff Gwynn pointed out, "With these crimes now classified as federal, criminals would not be able to avoid the law by simply crossing state lines." Strictor laws were passed to enforce stricter punishments for using machine guns while committing criminal acts. The introduction of two-way radios and police cars also made it more difficult to carry out a series of crimes. And the cooperation between the FBI and local law enforcement was encouraged and implemented. J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the FBI, began referring to criminals like Bonnie and Clyde as "America's most wanted," essentially branding their fight against celebrity criminals. States that were hard hit by these gangs, like Texas, took steps to combat future gangs. Texas created a Bureau of Identification and Records to provide all Texas law enforcement officers to "fingerprints, mugshots, and other key data, as well as staff to carry out ballistic tests." And quote, "The combination of these made it far more difficult to carry out what the Barrow gang did only a year earlier." The Bonnie and Clyde story is a tale told. many many times. People get their dose of true crime plus a love story. A messed up love story, but a love story nonetheless. But if it's the romance that draws you in, that means the entire story is romanticized. More time is spent on romance than the victims of the Barrow Gang. Bonnie and Clyde killed 12 people in 26 months, nine of them law enforcement officers. Many had nothing to do with the commission of a crime. They just happened upon the Barrow Gang. To research this case, Jen Erdman read a bunch of books mentioned throughout the episode as well as contemporary news accounts. And we're also proves the headlines and watched a few documentaries most notably one produced by the biography channel and another by the BBC. Crimes of the centuries is a production of the Obsessed Network. To learn more about it shows go to ObsessedNetwork.com. This episode was written by me Amber Hunt and produced by Garrett Teediman. Steve Tipton edited the script original music is by Bruce Hunt and Andrew Higley. Other music comes from blue dot sessions and universal music productions. If you like us, help us out by rating and reviewing us on Apple podcasts. For more information or to recommend a case, go to centuriespod.com on Instagram and Twitter where at centuriespod and checkout are Crimes the centuries podcast Facebook page. I'm the host of Big Technology podcast, a longtime reporter and an on air contributor to CNBC. Asking where this is all going, they come from places like Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon and plenty more. So if you want to be smart with your wallet, your career choices, and meetings with your colleagues and at dinner parties, listen to Big Technology podcast wherever you get your podcasts.