My Life with Bonnie and Clyde (45 page)

2.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
, May 4, 1933;
Prague
(
Okla.
)
News Record
, May 10, 1933;
Dallas Daily Times-Herald
, May 12 and June 9, 1933.

3.
Dallas Daily Times-Herald
, May 12, 1933;
Pharos-Tribune
, May 12 and 15, 1933;
Dallas Daily Times-Herald
, May 17, 1933.

4.
Dallas Daily Times-Herald
, May 24, 25, and 27, 1933.

5.
Dallas Daily Times-Herald
, May 30, 1933. Just a few days later, Buck Barrow would use barbed wire to tie up two officers following their abduction by Clyde and W. D. Jones near Wellington, Texas. Reportedly, Buck’s use of the wire irritated Clyde. “You didn’t have to do that!” he snapped. Jones, “Riding with Bonnie and Clyde,” 165.

6.
This visit might actually be the visit mentioned by Cumie Barrow in her manuscript, the one she said took place three days after Mother’s Day (that is, on May 17, 1933). Cumie Barrow wrote that Bonnie and Clyde and Blanche and Buck drove to West Dallas and visited with her as they sat,
parked on the driveway outside the Barrow filling station. Cumie Barrow closed the passage by writing, “I never saw Buck but one more time after that before he was shot [in Platte City, Missouri, July 19, 1933].” The “one more time” mentioned by Cumie Barrow was probably the visit near Commerce, Texas, after Mother’s Day. However, there’s reason to believe Cumie Barrow is wrong about the date of the West Dallas meeting. For one thing, Blanche states that she and the other three fugitives were camped on a riverbank in Mississippi on May 17. Given this, it is likely that Cumie Barrow is confused about the date and that the visit she describes actually occurred in late April and is indeed the same one Blanche refers to here, especially since Blanche writes that the later Commerce visit was the only trip to Texas made by the four fugitives in May. Cumie Barrow, unpublished manuscript;
Fairmont
(
Minn.
)
Daily Sentinel
, May 19, 1933.

7.
This was probably the attempted robbery of the Lucerne State Bank in Lucerne, Indiana, on Friday, May 12, 1933. It was reported that two men broke into the bank the night before, climbed on top of the vault, and waited for morning. At 7:30
A.M
. on the twelfth, cashier Everett Gregg arrived and began setting up cash drawers and getting ready for business. Within minutes bookkeeper Lawson Selders arrived and also went to work. Approximately thirty minutes later Gregg stepped into the vault. At that moment Selders heard a noise and saw “a roughly-dressed young man” stand up and train two pistols at him, telling him to raise his hands. However, rather than obey, Selders dashed into the vault to join his colleague. The intruder fired a shot at Selders but only succeeded in attracting the attention of Ed Frushour, who happened to be walking past the bank.
Pharos-Tribune
, May 12, 1933.

8.
Several witnesses saw the bandits in Lucerne on May 11, the day before the robbery attempt. Then at 7
A.M
. on the morning of May 12, Ellsworth Hoover and Ura Witters both saw the soon-to-be getaway car, a Ford V-8, with Indiana plates, parked in front of their homes. Two women, one blonde and one brunette, were sitting in the car. Hoover, who walked to work each day, paused on his way and spoke briefly with the women. Witters would later try to stop the fleeing vehicle with a large chunk of wood. Ibid.

9.
The technique of hiding overnight in a bank was not particularly new. Eight days earlier, on May 4, 1933, the St. John Community Bank in eastern Missouri was similarly robbed by three men who waited all night in the bank. A fourth accomplice was in the car outside.
Dallas Daily Times-Herald
, May 4, 1933;
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
, May 4, 1933. On May 8, 1933, three unmasked men took only five minutes to grab $1,400 from the Prague National Bank in Prague, Oklahoma, lock most of the witnesses in the vault, and escape in a Ford V-8 with two hostages. The hostages were then released outside of town.
Prague
(
Okla.
)
News Record
, May 10, 1933.

There is no indication in the initial reports that either Everett Gregg or Lawson Selders, the two employees inside the bank, ever fired at the intruders. When one of the intruders fired the first shot inside the bank, Ed Frushour, who was walking past the bank, stopped and peered through the window. The
intruder spotted Frushour and shouted at him, ordering him to enter the bank. However, he too ran away. The intruder then fired approximately four shots at the fleeing witness, three through the glass pane and one into the window casing. By this time both bank employees had armed themselves, presumably with weapons kept in the vault for just such an occasion. After the shots were fired at Frushour, the employees heard both outlaws jump down from the vault. The intruders then fired seven shots at the vault, the slugs digging into the brick and concrete bunker surrounding the vault. Then both gunmen dashed out the rear door of the bank. In their haste, they left a “repeating shotgun” behind. Once outside, one of the bandits turned and fired nine more shots at the rear of the bank building before he and his companion climbed into a waiting car occupied by two women. The intruders then sped away.
Pharos-Tribune
, May 12, 1933.

Incredibly no one was hit inside the bank, nor was the man who stopped outside the bank after the first shot was fired. However, two bystanders, Doris Miner and Ethel Jones, were wounded when the occupants of the car slowed in front of the Christian Church and fired about forty shots toward a crowd of people who had poured out of their homes to see what the excitement was about. Some witnesses reported seeing both women firing weapons. “Those who saw the bandits leave town were alike in their stories that the women did a large part of the shooting, and probably all of it during the parting fusillade.” Ibid. If the statements of the eyewitnesses are true, this is the only known hard evidence that Bonnie Parker ever fired a weapon in anger, much less wounded someone. It is also an indictment of Blanche’s assertion that she never handled a weapon.

10.
Although Clyde usually drove, it is possible that Blanche was the driver of the car. As we shall see, she was a bit of a virtuoso, keeping up with Clyde Barrow in a second car as they sped through the countryside after a failed robbery. And according to at least one source, Bonnie Parker did not know how to drive. Bonnie’s sister, Billie Jean, has said, “I never saw her [Bonnie] drive and never heard her mention driving.” Billie Jean Parker Moon, unpublished handwritten observations.

11.
The “old man” described here, the one who “threw a large chunk of wood in front of the car” was Ura Witters. He had heard the shooting and had indeed tried to wreck the car. The driver, reported to have been a man, turned sharply to the right onto a “soggy lawn,” but successfully brought the car back onto the road and accelerated. Shortly thereafter, the fugitives encountered the crowd in front of the Christian Church and opened fire.
Pharos-Tribune
, May 12, 1933. Following the shooting, one of the women was heard to say, “This’ll learn ya!”
Dallas Daily Times-Herald
, June 9, 1933.

Because of the way it is described in Fortune’s
Fugitives
, it would be easy to confuse this attempted robbery with the successful robbery exactly one week later of the First State Bank in Okabena, Minnesota. Fortune seems to mix the events of both incidents here, identifying it as Okabena but actually describing what happened in Lucerne, right down to the old man with the
chunk of wood—although Fortune has Bonnie refusing to shoot the old man instead of Buck. Fortune,
Fugitives
, 163. Cumie Barrow, though brief in her description, identifies the events of the Okabena robbery with more accuracy, including the date, May 19, 1933. Cumie Barrow, unpublished manuscript. Fortune lists the date as May 16, three days early. However, this may have been due to her own confusion over the events of those two weeks in May 1933. Since she has described the discussion of the Lucerne fiasco at the “Mother’s Day” meeting near Commerce, Texas, but identified it as Okabena, Fortune may have reasoned that Okabena occurred before the meeting. But it did not. Lucerne happened before the meeting and seven days before Okabena.
Fairmont
(
Minn.
)
Daily Sentinel
, May 19, 1933.

12.
Two women were wounded during the shooting spree in front of the Christian Church in Lucerne. Doris Miner, twenty-two, was dressing in the bedroom of her parents’ home nearby when she was struck in the shoulder and grazed on the cheek. Ethel Jones, also twenty-two, was standing outside the house next door when she was wounded in the right arm. Other slugs became embedded at various points in the neighborhood around the church, one drilling straight through a telephone pole.
Pharos-Tribune
, May 12, 1933.

The car continued west out of town and turned north before reaching Road 29. It was followed by two Lucerne men, Les Powlen and Homer Hunter, in a “high-powered” car. At some point the fugitives encountered a herd of pigs and drove through them, killing two. The car then began “zig-zagging” down back roads until losing Powlen and Hunter on Road 14, west of Winamac. The Lucerne men described the bandit driver as an “expert at the wheel.” Ibid.

13.
This reportedly is true. No cash was stolen from the Lucerne State Bank. However, if they “had to rob another place the same day,” as Blanche goes on to say, it must have resulted in a lot of money because, as she notes, the group had several hundred dollars by the following Monday when they met with their families near Commerce, Texas.

Two Chicago women, Olga Bernaka and Josephine Gray, were eventually charged with the attempt on the bank at Lucerne. Gray, described as “a petite blonde” was the wife of bank robber Jack Gray. Bernaka was Gray’s sister. “There’s no way you’re hanging this on us,” Bernaka said. Three Lucerne eyewitnesses identified both women.
Dallas Daily Times-Herald
, June 9, 1933.

14.
This passage bears out what many who knew Blanche have said about her, that she was an excellent driver. She apparently loved to drive. In her later years, nearly dwarfed behind the wheel of her mammoth white LTD, dubbed “The Bomb”, Blanche could drive for hours, never getting lost and seemingly aware of every little back road in north Texas. Linder and Weiser interviews, October 5, 2002.

15.
This sounds very much like a similar robbery attempt in Rison, Arkansas, in June 1933. A gang reportedly consisting of four men and a woman tried unsuccessfully to burglarize a safe at Moore’s Grocery Store just after midnight June 5, 1933. In the process Deputy Sheriff Wright Fore and two
other local citizens were abducted and later released. No money was taken.
Cleveland County
(Ark.)
Herald
, June 7, 14, and 21, 1933.

16.
It should be recalled that, according to her sister, Bonnie Parker could not drive.

17.
This was probably in Okabena, Minnesota, located in the far south-western part of the state, near the Iowa line, and known as the “Nesting Place of Heron.” The bank involved was the First State Bank. The date of the robbery was May 19, 1933.
Fairmont (Minn.) Daily Sentinel
, May 19, 1933. That was seven days after the attempt in Lucerne, Indiana, and four days after the Mother’s Day meeting near Commerce, Texas. Although some of Blanche’s description varies from the facts of the incident, there are many similarities, not the least of which are the reports of devastating storms the night before the robbery, just like those Blanche describes.
Minneapolis Journal
, May 19, 1933. Also, in early spring 1932, Clyde Barrow, Ralph Fults, and Raymond Hamilton visited Okabena with the idea of robbing the bank there. But they abandoned the idea because the few roads in and out of the area were blocked by snow. They then drove south to Lawrence, Kansas, and robbed a bank there. Fults interviews, December 4, 1982, and June 12, 1984. And since the 1933 Okabena robbery is almost a carbon copy of the Lucerne attempt, it warrants consideration.

18.
Indeed on the night of May 18–19, heavy weather struck Minnesota, producing high winds, rain, and tornadoes in the vicinity of Okabena. Ten people were injured and fifty farms destroyed.
Minneapolis Journal
, May 19, 1933.

19.
This story is also related in Fortune,
Fugitives
, 160–61. Indeed, the provenance of the Barrow brothers’ involvement at Okabena appears to begin with
Fugitives
, but most of the details probably originated with one of the popular detective magazines of the day.
Fugitives
was supposedly written by Nell Cowan, Clyde’s sister, and Emma Parker, Bonnie’s mother, but it was actually written by a journalist for the
Dallas Evening Journal
named Jan Fortune. Although much of the information in that book really did come from the families of Bonnie and Clyde, such as the story of Bonnie’s fear of thunderstorms, there are known instances where Fortune lifted much from detective magazines. To further complicate matters, Fortune often combined details from separate incidents—for instance, the old man with the log in the Lucerne robbery attempt is transplanted by Fortune to the Okabena robbery. Fortune,
Fugitives
, 163–64;
Pharos-Tribune
, May 12, 1933;
Minneapolis Journal
, May 19, 1933. However, there is corroboration for parts of the Jan Fortune version, including that dealing with Okabena. Clyde’s mother, Cumie Barrow, started to write a book in 1934, but she never completed it and never published it. Cumie’s youngest daughter, Marie, allowed the editor unlimited access to that manuscript when he was working on his first book,
Running with Bonnie and Clyde
. Cumie mentions there the robbery at Okabena, listing the correct date and proper details, unlike Fortune who lists May 16 as the date of the robbery and, as previously stated, mixes a number of incidents with the attempted robbery at Lucerne, Indiana, on May 12. Cumie Barrow, unpublished manuscript.