My Life with Bonnie and Clyde (29 page)

There were other suitors, some from Blanche Barrow’s past, and some late arrivals, many no doubt drawn to her as much by her notoriety as by her exceptional good looks. Indeed, she apparently received numerous letters from men interested in her eventual post-prison life. Cards and letters from these numerous boyfriends she relegated to her scrapbooks.
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These correspondences begin with salutations like “Honey,” “Darling,” and “Dearest Blanche,” and conclude with statements such as “Lovingly yours, Howard”; “Wish you were leaving with me, Rick”; and “I love you too much, Freddie.” Other boyfriends included Mike, Eddy (not her future husband), Charles, Frank, Jack, Ray, and Tom. Another man named Bill had quite a sense of humor. Bill wrote often from some unspecified and apparently quite remote location in California. In one letter he mentions a Christmas-time visit of the wives and girlfriends of “some of these guys . . . Santa Claus sure emptied his old sack when he brought those gals to see their men. We had quite a show!” He also mentioned “mountain air” and echoes, writing, “last night I heard this guy over in the next county making love to his wife. Good old echo.” In other letters Bill discusses cold nights, relatives in Houston, and his love of a certain photograph Blanche sent to him. “Just between you and I, this is strictly confidential, I am plenty proud of that picture. I will always be a sucker for white dresses on dark girls from now on!”
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Blanche Barrow in prison. “. . . white dresses on dark girls.” (Courtesy of Rhea Leen Linder)

One intriguing postcard in Blanche Barrow’s collection is signed simply “N. C.” Postmarked May 24, 1940, the message is a lonely lament about having been forgotten by Blanche. The unhappiness continues on the front of the card where lines like “A friend in need,” “Someone cares for you,” and “Why don’t you write?” are written across the picture. Of course, this card was sent more than a year after Blanche’s release from prison and a month after her marriage to her third and final husband, which certainly accounts for the lack of return correspondence.
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During her prison days Blanche Barrow’s longest pen-and-ink relationship seems to have been with a young man named “Freddie.” He seems to have been employed in the world of professional horse racing, although neither his exact function nor the identity of his employer is clear. There is some evidence that he may have been associated with the legendary horse War Admiral. Whatever the case, he appears to have been involved in training, writing, “terribly busy as I am running a horse.”
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Freddie wrote often between 1936 and 1938. From the postmarks—Cincinnati, Cleveland, Lancaster (Ohio), Kansas City, Laurel (Maryland), New Orleans, and Dallas—it is clear that he traveled extensively in his job. He wrote of spending off-hours at the movies, reading, or catching up on
his sleep. He sent money to Blanche and drove her mother to see her in prison at least once. And although Blanche Barrow implies in an undated letter to her mother that Freddie had in essence led her on and then abandoned her (“guess he has gone the way all fair weather friends go”), it appears from many of his correspondences to her that the reverse was actually the case. On October 9, 1937, he wrote, “I am still wondering why I have not heard a word from you. Let me know what is the matter.” Then on November 1, 1937, he added, “Dearest, Please don’t wait so long to write.” Eight days later he sent another letter: “Dearest Sweetheart, . . . I did not receive a letter from you last week as I expected to do. What is the matter? Are the other boyfriends taking too much of your time?” The latter question is interesting considering the fact that in the same letter Freddie mentions Blanche’s jealousy over his writing to one of the other women imprisoned with her. She eventually forced him to stop writing to the other inmate.
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An extremely unusual postcard, featuring a photograph of the U.S.S.
Arizona
, sent by a boyfriend to Blanche long before the attack on Pearl Harbor (Courtesy of Rhea Leen Linder)

By December 26, 1937, Freddie seemed resigned, writing that he suspected Blanche no longer wanted to hear from him. He mentioned having written four previous letters with no answer, but he had nonetheless written her again because he could not get her out of his mind. He closed by wishing
her a merry Christmas and by stating that he had always suspected she would lose interest in him one day: “whatever happens remember I love you always.” He wrote sporadically throughout much of 1938, then the letters ended.

Lillian Pond Horton (Blanche’s mother), Blanche Barrow, and Cumie Barrow during a prison visit on August 5, 1934. Blanche chided her mother and Cumie Barrow for not helping her gain her parole. (Courtesy of Rhea Leen Linder)

Total strangers frequently wrote to Blanche Barrow. One young lady, Alba Chapman, was a friend of the daughter of J. M. Sanders, at the time warden of the Missouri State Penitentiary and later chairman of the Missouri Board of Probation and Parole. A well-known Kansas City, Missouri, good Samaritan affectionately referred to as “Mother Clark”—in her nineties at the time—kept in close contact with Blanche, writing frequently, visiting her in prison, and sending her inspirational items. But most strangers were like “Harry” from San Francisco, who wrote in 1937, “I would like to become acquainted with you very much.”
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Blanche also heard from her first husband, John Callaway, while she was in prison. He wrote at least once and sent a gift. Her response to him, however, resulted in his never attempting to contact her again. Blanche Barrow then wrote to her mother, “I looked at John’s picture and just wondered how I
was ever fool enough to stay with him as long as I did. I hope he does not come near me when I am a free woman.”
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Reporters occasionally visited Blanche. On September 10, 1936, Blanche was quoted in the
Kansas City Star
as having said, “I’ve seen enough of that rough and tumble life. And when I get out of here, I’m going back to my father in Oklahoma where I hope the world forgets me. Everyone who ever associated with my husband and Clyde has forgotten me, and it is no use for them to look me up.”

In the first months of her prison term Blanche heard frequently from her mother and father, as well as Cumie Barrow. She also received visits at various times from all three, including one on August 5, 1934, that included Blanche’s mother Lillian, Marie Barrow Francis, Joe Francis, LC Barrow and his wife, Audrey Faye Barrow, and Cumie Barrow. However, by 1935 Blanche was complaining that she had not received a letter from either her mother or Cumie Barrow in a long time. She wrote to her mother, “You can not realize how much a letter means to anyone in a place like this.” She also tried repeatedly to find out about her half-sister Lucinda, who had given birth to a child in 1934. But Blanche was unable either to learn the name of the child or to obtain a picture until much later.
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Blanche Barrow mentioned “fair-weather friends” like “Freddie,” whom she basically accused of abandoning her. She also rather angrily chided her mother and Cumie Barrow for not helping her build a file for her first parole hearing, scheduled for October 7, 1935. Among other things, she needed offers of employment, which both women had evidently first promised to help with and had then forgotten about it. “I guess he [Matt Caldwell, her father] is the only one I have left now who will try to help me get out [of prison],” she wrote her mother. Then three weeks before the hearing Blanche wrote again, “If she [Cumie Barrow] is not interested, ok. Just forget it. If she would turn me down now, she would turn Buck down. . . . I will be free from here in 1939 (with good behavior) if I have to do it all, which I am sure I will have to do.”
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There is also a cryptic reference to an alternative identity once used by Blanche Barrow. In a letter to her mother dated April 10, 1934, Blanche wrote, “can I ever make you understand that I left that name ‘Lua Talb’ and the past that went with it and that I will never go by that name anymore.” We can only speculate about the full meaning of this passage. It could very well have been an alias used by Blanche during her time on the run with her husband, either following his escape from the Ferguson prison
farm in March 1930 or during the flight with Bonnie and Clyde. Regardless, in yet another letter to her mother, Blanche reveals more feelings about her past life: “and don’t worry about this place [prison] hurting me. I have already been hurt all they can hurt me. Nothing hurts me anymore. As for the past, I am dead too.” The latter part of this statement is particularly interesting considering the inscription on the inside flap of Blanche Barrow’s first scrapbook: “News of the Dead—News of the Living Dead.”
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Blanche’s half-sister Lucinda, West Dallas. Texas, 1934, (Courtesy of Rhea Leen Linder)

By spring 1936, Blanche was on better terms with her mother, perhaps because she had persuaded boyfriends like Freddie to drive Lillian to Missouri for visits. However, her relationship with Cumie Barrow seems to have come to an end (even though she is listed in Blanche’s parole file as offering a place for her daughter-in-law to live). Other members of the Barrow family kept in touch, particularly LC, the youngest brother of Buck and Clyde. She had a very cordial letter from LC, written from his own
prison cell in Huntsville, Texas, in 1938, neatly tucked away in her scrapbooks at the end of her life. At the time, Blanche lamented LC’s robbery conviction and subsequent sentencing to five years in the Texas penitentiary. And she expressed interest in other family members, like the youngest Barrow sibling, Marie. She clipped numerous newspaper articles related to members of the family and former gang members and placed them in her scrapbooks, including stories about Cumie Barrow’s injury during a gunfight at the family service station in 1938, and LC Barrow’s arrest at the East Texas farmhouse of his uncle Jim Muckleroy (the same place Blanche and Buck hid after the latter’s escape from the Ferguson prison farm in 1930). There were other articles as well, including one about former Barrow cohorts Frank Hardy and Hollis Hale, accomplices in the 1932 Oronogo, Missouri, bank robbery and friends of Blanche’s.
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