My Life with Bonnie and Clyde (53 page)

27.
This contradicts Blanche’s earlier description of Buck as being someone who “loved life and didn’t want to take it away from others.”

28.
According to a member of the posse, Kirt Piper, Blanche said, “My husband’s on the ground and he can’t move.” The posse demanded he get up and asked Blanche if he was armed. She did not answer. The posse kept demanding that Buck get up. Piper said through it all, “She [Blanche] was pretty hysterical.” Piper interview,
Remembering Bonnie and Clyde
. At last the posse was able to approach Barrow. As Buck was lying there on the ground behind the log, a member of the posse mashed the outlaw’s throat with his boot and poked a shotgun in his face. “I thought that was a little too much, and unnecessary,” one bystander said.
Des Moines Register
, January 22, 1968. Buck Barrow was finally coaxed to his feet. He would walk for a while, then collapse. The posse would “drag him a few feet then he’d get his feet under him again and he’d walk a little ways. Buck had a bad pallor, a ghastly-looking pallor. His head wound was not bandaged . . ., his brain was exposed and you could tell this was a man on his last leg.” Piper, video interview,
Remembering Bonnie and Clyde
.

29.
Just before she was allowed to go to Buck, Blanche was photographed at least three times by Herb Schwartz of the
Des Moines Register
. The location was about one quarter of a mile from where Buck and Blanche were apprehended. Blanche is being held by Sheriff Loren Forbes in all three shots. In two of the shots she is standing quietly, looking toward Buck, who is lying on the ground nearby with a group of armed men stooping over him. In the third shot, which has been widely published, Blanche is struggling with Forbes and looking directly at the camera, screaming dramatically. In his notes, Schwartz commented that Blanche, in her semiblind state, saw him raising his camera and apparently thought it was a gun and that he was about to shoot Buck. Blanche is screaming at Schwartz. Herb Schwartz, notes, July 24, 1933.

30.
Some sources indicate that Buck was shot more than once at Dexfield Park. Many years later, Blanche was still unsure how many times he was hit, only that he was shot “several times.” Blanche Barrow interview, November 3, 1984. Fortune is more specific, stating that Buck was shot five times in Iowa. Fortune,
Fugitives
, 193. The doctor who treated Buck in Dexter, and later operated on him at King’s Daughter’s Hospital in Perry, Iowa, only mentioned one wound in addition to the head wound sustained in Platte City. The bullet causing the new wound had entered through the back, ricocheted off a rib, and become “lodged in the chest wall, posteriorly, close to the pleural cavity.” Chapler, letter to Sanborn May 3, 1974.

31.
Chapler-Osborn Clinic in Dexter, Iowa.

32.
The physician described Blanche as “a highly tense, nervous person, . . . highly hysterical and uncooperative at times.” But her demeanor changed considerably when she was allowed to sit beside Buck. “As you watched her sitting on the floor of the reception room in my office with Buck, . . . she would become quite subdued.” Chapler, letter to Sanborn, May 3, 1974.

33.
Buck told the doctor that the head wound sustained at Platte City did not bother him at all. Initially he had experienced headaches, but aspirin had since controlled that symptom. The doctor was amazed at how clean the head wound was, describing it as a “through-and-through head wound in the front part of the skull where no vital centers are contained.” Buck told him it had been treated three or four times a day with hydrogen peroxide. The only pain Buck mentioned was that which was caused by the fresh gunshot wound in his back. Chapler, letter to Sanborn, May 3, 1974.

Chapter 14.
Mob

1.
Blanche tried to escape from the clinic. When she was taken to the examining room, she asked to go to the bathroom. A nurse had her remove all her clothes and put on a hospital gown and wrap a sheet around herself. She was then led by the nurse to the bathroom, which was located in the basement. When she reached a landing on the stairway, Blanche apparently spotted a doorway leading to the alley outside. She made a break for the door, struggling with the much larger nurse who held on tight. Soon officers arrived to help and Blanche was subdued. Thereafter, guards were posted all around
the clinic. Chapler, letter to Sanborn, May 3, 1974. Later, Blanche had no recollection of this incident. Indeed, she had no memory whatsoever of the time between her surrender in Dexfield Park and just before she was escorted from the clinic, including the moments recorded by Herb Schwartz’s camera. The first thing she remembered was being suddenly aware of bruises on her arms and that she was in a clinic somewhere. She also remembered the handcuffs, and that they cut her wrists. Shortly thereafter she was removed to a cell. Blanche Barrow interview, November 3, 1984.

2.
Things were different when it came time to transport Buck to a hospital in Perry, twenty miles away. Fearing the crowd would pose a problem, one of the officers went to the front door of the Chapler-Osborn Clinic and using a bullhorn announced that a call had just been received from a reliable source stating that Bonnie and Clyde were on their way to Dexter to free Buck. Within minutes the streets were cleared. “[Y]ou could have shot a cannon ball down through Main Street and never touched a soul,” Dr. Chapler said later. Chapler, letter to Sanborn, May 3, 1974.

3.
Adel, Iowa, just west of Des Moines. That same day she was transferred to the Polk County jail in Des Moines and booked. Her weight was listed at eighty-one pounds, down thirty-three and a half pounds from January. However, Blanche herself indicates in this memoir that just five days earlier, when she stepped on those scales at the Red Crown Tavern, she weighed ninety-one pounds. Regardless, she had lost a considerable amount of weight while on the run. Polk County (Iowa) Arrest Record, Blanche Barrow, July 24, 1933; Blanche’s letter to her mother, January 14, 1933, quoted in Baker,
Blanche Barrow
, 25.

4.
Holt Coffey was the one knocking on the door in Platte City and talking with Blanche when Clyde Barrow opened fire and grazed Coffey in the neck. Clarence Coffey, the sheriff’s sixteen-year-old son, was watching from the kitchen of the Red Crown Tavern with a waitress when gunfire erupted. Young Coffey and the waitress took cover behind a cast-iron stove, but an armor-piercing bullet penetrated the hiding place, struck the boy, and broke his arm. Crawford interview, April 19, 1983;
The Landmark
, May 28, 1982.

5.
The authorities may have been trying to clear up one or more crimes. For instance, the First National Bank of Clinton, Oklahoma, was robbed of $11,000 on July 3, 1933.
Chandler
(
Okla
.)
News-Publican
, July 13, 1933. And in another crime that sounds more like the bumbling Barrow gang, the Proctor State Bank of Proctor, Texas was burglarized by a group that first tried to take the 3,000-pound safe with them. But in transit to the waiting truck, the safe slipped off the dolly and literally crashed through the floor, becoming impossibly wedged. In response, the burglars took $123 in small change, 500 three-cent envelopes, and 1,000 one-cent postcards.
Comanche
(
Tex
.)
Chief
, July 7, 1933;
Stephenville
(
Tex
.)
Empire-Tribune
, July 7, 1933.

6.
Another thing Blanche was questioned about was the identity of the third man in the group. Blanche may have forgotten a lot, but she certainly had not forgotten who W. D. Jones was. But she was not about to reveal his
name. Eventually she made up a name, Hubert Bleigh, no doubt to get the officers to leave her alone. The power of her words became immediately apparent when a man bearing the same name was arrested in Oklahoma.
Dexter
(
Iowa
)
Sentinel
, July 25, 1933. However, it didn’t take authorities long to realize they’d been duped. Blanche said the director of the U. S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Criminal Investigation J. Edgar Hoover, personally interrogated her at one point. Blanche Barrow interview, November 3, 1984.

7.
Buck Barrow’s death was reported to have occurred at two o’clock the previous afternoon, twelve hours earlier. Fortune,
Fugitives
, 203.

8.
Buck Barrow died of pneumonia on July 29 at King’s Daughters Hospital in Perry, Iowa. Pneumonia developed after surgery had been performed to remove the bullet from his chest. Apparently throughout his stay at the hospital, Barrow vacillated between delirium and complete lucidity. A number of official visitors paraded past his bed, asking questions. One of those visitors was A. M. Salyers of Alma, Arkansas. Barrow told Salyers that he had killed Marshal Humphrey, adding that Salyers was lucky to be alive. “We were shooting to kill you both,” Barrow said of the gunfight on June 23, 1933.
Dallas Dispatch
, February 24, 1935. Among those with Barrow when he died were Cumie Barrow, his mother; LC Barrow, his younger brother; Emma Parker, Bonnie Parker’s mother; and Billie Jean Parker. Their trip to Iowa was paid for by a Dallas County deputy sheriff. Marie Barrow interview, August 24, 1984.

Chapter 15.
Court

1.
Platte County Circuit Court, Judge R. B. Bridgeman presiding. David R. Clevenger prosecuted the case. Blanche Barrow had no attorney. Armed officers surrounded the courthouse. Visitors unknown to the officers or other officials were not allowed inside the courthouse during the trial.
The Landmark
, June 4, 1982.

2.
Upon hearing Blanche Barrow’s plea, Judge Bridgeman asked if she wanted an attorney. “No,” she said. Then Bridgeman asked if she knew of any reason why sentence should not be passed. “No,” she said. After she was assessed the ten-year sentence, Sheriff Coffey transported her immediately to the penitentiary at Jefferson City, Missouri.
The Landmark
, June 4, 1982.

3.
Apparently many local people visited Blanche Barrow in the Platte County jail during the weeks before her trial, Kermit Crawford among them. “She [Blanche] spoke so soft and was so quiet, you wouldn’t think she could harm a flea,” Crawford observed later. Crawford interview, April 19, 1983. This view was shared by others, including Ann Tatman Clevenger, the wife of David Clevenger, the prosecuting attorney, who described Blanche Barrow as “a very small woman, very soft-spoken, and mild. She was so very tiny that it was hard to visualize her having the strength to lift a very large weapon. Blanche Barrow probably got into trouble because she fell in love with the wrong man.”
The Landmark
, June 4, 1982.

4.
Here in the original manuscript Blanche first wrote, “The warden and other prison Board members have tried in vain,” then crossed it out. One source
states that Blanche Barrow had at least four operations on her eye in the Missouri State Penitentiary. Fortune,
Fugitives
, 188.

5.
Blanche Barrow wrote a letter to David Clevenger, Platte County prosecuting attorney, thanking him for his kindness.
The Landmark
, June 4, 1982.

6.
After becoming separated from Blanche and Buck Barrow, Bonnie Parker, Clyde Barrow, and W. D. Jones continued north on foot until they reached the South Raccoon River. There was a bridge to the west, near the old access to Dexfield Park’s north entrance. Barrow left Jones and Parker briefly to examine the bridge. Deputy Evan Burger and E. A. Place of the
Dexter Sentinel
were guarding the bridge and briefly engaged Barrow in a gunfight. This occurred approximately fifteen minutes after the initial gunfight at the camp. Feller interview, May 5, 1983. Barrow’s BAR was disabled by gunfire and he retreated to the east, rejoining Parker and Jones. The three fugitives, all wounded, then swam across the river to the north bank. Parker later commented that “the water around us was red with our mingled blood.” Moon and Huddleston, “Bonnie, Clyde, and Me,” 11. Once across, Barrow used an empty gun to hijack a farmer’s car. The blood-stained car was abandoned in Polk City, Iowa, and another was stolen. The second car, also blood-stained, was found in Broken Bow, Nebraska. Feller interview, May 5, 1983;
Dallas Evening Journal
, July 29, 1933. Sometime later W. D. Jones left Parker and Barrow. Jones, interview by Biffle, June 1969. Barrow and Parker were ambushed in Dallas County on November 22, 1933, but they escaped. On January 16, 1934, Barrow finally fulfilled his desire to raid the Eastham prison farm, twenty miles north of Huntsville, Texas. Five prisoners, including Raymond Hamilton, were released and one guard was killed. The raid, often Barrow’s sole focus, would ultimately lead to the deaths of both him and Parker later that spring. For the full story see Phillips,
Running with Bonnie and Clyde
, 159–78; and: Phillips, “Raid on Eastham,” 54–64; McConal,
Over the Wall
, 82–120; and Simmons,
Assignment Huntsville
, 114–147. Clyde Barrow returned to Iowa frequently in the first months of 1934, robbing at least four banks there: in Rembrandt on January 23, Knierim on February 1, Stuart on April 16, and Everly on May 3. Interestingly, Stuart is only five miles from Dexter, Iowa. On April 1, Barrow and one of the Eastham escapees, Henry Methvin, murdered two Texas highway patrolmen near Grapevine, Texas. Two witnesses identified “the taller of two men (Methvin)” firing into the prone bodies of the two officers.
Dallas Morning News
, April 2, 1934. On April 6, Barrow and Methvin murdered an Oklahoma constable, some witnesses identifying Barrow as the shooter. State of Oklahoma,
Methvin v. State
, A-9060, September 18, 1936. Others testified that both Barrow and Methvin had weapons and that both were shooting at the victim, Constable Cal Campbell.
Methvin v. State
, A-9060, September 18, 1936. In Louisiana, on May 23, 1934, a second attempt was made to ambush Parker and Barrow. It was successful. With the help of Henry Methvin, who arranged the trap in exchange for a pardon from the State of Texas, six lawmen opened fire on Barrow and Parker as they sat in their car on a country road eight miles south of Gibsland, Louisiana. They were killed instantly. For the full story, see Phillips,
Running with Bonnie and Clyde
, 196–219.