Public Enemies (15 page)

Clyde had found the field three days earlier, on Thursday, the afternoon after fleeing the shoot-out at Platte City. Their campsite, a collection of blankets and seat cushions scattered on the grass, resembled a field hospital. Somehow Buck was still alive. His head bandaged, he lay on the ground semiconscious, nearing death. Blanche was blinded in one eye. Bonnie could barely walk. Clyde couldn’t risk a motel, much less a doctor. Their car had been so riddled with bullets that even the most myopic sheriff would notice. W.D. had slathered mud across the damage, then stolen a car in the town of Perry.

Clyde used the car that Friday to drive into Dexter. He bought five chicken dinners and a block of ice at Blohm’s Meat Market, gauze and alcohol at Pohle’s Pharmacy, and shirts and shoes at a clothing store. He repeated his errands the next day. That Sunday morning, they woke to find Buck still alive. No one could see how. Occasionally Blanche would press her hands against the wound in his temple in an effort to keep his brains from oozing out. He didn’t have long.

By Sunday afternoon, word of the bloodied campers at Dexfield Park was relayed to the sheriff in the town of Adel. He had read of the Platte City shoot-out and immediately thought of the Barrow Gang. The sheriff drove to Dexter and questioned the merchants who had sold items to Clyde. Their descriptions of the man matched those on the Wanted posters in his office. He called the state police in Des Moines, asking for help. A pair of officers arrived at nightfall. By then word had spread of the approaching raid. Farmers began arriving in beat-up pickups, birdguns on their hips, looking for action. By nightfall dozens of people lined the dirt roads leading to Dexfield Park. It was an oddly festive atmosphere. Some boys brought dates. More than a few brought bottles. In the darkness around forty men with guns began moving into the woods, waiting for daylight.

A heavy dew lay across the field. Clyde woke a few minutes after five to find Blanche already up, still attired in the tight riding breeches and sunglasses she had worn since fleeing Platte City. W.D. was roasting frankfurters over the fire. Clyde sat beside Bonnie on a seat cushion. He was ready to leave. He and W.D. had serviced the car and cleaned the guns the night before.

“Where are we going?” asked Bonnie, still in her nightgown.

“
We
aren’t going anywhere,” Clyde said. “I’m taking Buck home to Mother’s.” They had promised Cumie Barrow that should anything happen to one of them, the wounded brother would be brought home.

“You aren’t going without me,” Bonnie whispered. “And why should you drive all that way to take Buck back? You know he’s dying, honey. He’ll be dead by night.”

“I’m taking him back
because
he’s dying,” Clyde said.
⁵

As they talked Clyde glanced up and saw movement in the trees: men were approaching, maybe a half-dozen. Clyde grabbed his favorite Browning, aimed it over the men’s heads, and began firing, trying to scare them off. But if he thought they were farmers out for a morning walk, he immediately realized his mistake. His shots were answered by a rolling fusillade of gunshots from the surrounding trees; within moments the campsite was engulfed by a swarm of flying bullets. W.D. was standing at the campfire, a skillet still in his hands, when a buckshot pellet struck him in the chest and knocked him down. As Clyde returned fire, he yelled for everyone to get into the car they had stolen in Perry.

As Clyde sprayed the trees with bullets, W.D. stumbled into the car, but he was unable to get the engine started. Shooting the Browning from his hip, Clyde scrambled to W.D.’s side, shoving him in the backseat. Bonnie limped in to join them, and a moment later Blanche half-carried the semiconscious Buck in as well. The moment they were inside, Clyde threw the car into reverse, heading for the field’s only exit, a narrow dirt path leading to the paved road that ran along the west side of the clearing. Bullets smashed into the car, shattering the windows. Clyde saw a half-dozen men with guns blocking his exit. Reversing course, he drove back toward the center of the field, crashing through bushes and underbrush. A bullet struck him in the shoulder, and he lost control of the car and ran over a tree stump.

W.D. leaped out and tried to shove the car off the stump. It was no use. “Everybody outta the car!” Clyde hollered. “Pile out—for God’s sake, pile out!”

Clyde ran for the Platte City car, but by the time he reached it the black Ford was a wreck; sixty-four bullets had ripped up the tires, blown out the windows and cracked the engine block. Clyde scanned the trees for an escape route. Beyond the camp, a hundred yards to the north, rose some scrubby trees beside the river; there seemed to be no gunfire emanating from that quarter. Clyde lit out for the river. The others did their best to follow. As they ran, a bullet struck W.D. a glancing blow to the forehead. He fell, then scrambled forward. Bonnie took two shotgun pellets in the stomach and fell hard in the grass. W.D. grabbed her and together the two made it to a ravine leading down to the river’s edge. Before they reached it, Buck fell. Blanche screamed. Clyde hurried to his brother’s side. “Take Blanche and run for it,” Buck rasped. “I’m done for.”
⁶
Clyde ignored him, dragging Buck into the thick underbrush beside the river.

Miraculously, Clyde seemed to have chosen an escape route unblocked by possemen. Down in the riverside thicket, no one was shooting at them. Heading for the paved road with thoughts of stealing a car, they thrashed west along the river for several minutes until they came to a rise. Buck collapsed. “Take Blanche,” he whispered to Clyde. “I can’t make it.” Clyde peered down the river. In the distance he could just make out a bridge. “I’m going after a car,” he said. “Hide here. They’ll never find you in these thickets.”
⁷

As the others crawled beneath some bushes, Clyde climbed the little hill and trotted through the trees toward the bridge. As he emerged from the woods, he saw two deputies standing on the road beside it, one of them leaning against the concrete archway that marked the entrance to the old amusement park. The deputies saw Clyde first, raised their guns, and fired. Clyde ducked behind a tree.

“Hey, don’t shoot!” he hollered. “I’m a state man!”
⁸

When the deputies lowered their guns, Clyde stepped out and fired. The deputies fired back, one of their bullets knocking the Browning from his hands. Clyde grabbed a pistol from his waistband and retreated into the thicket. A minute later he reached the others. “You okay?” he asked Bonnie. She nodded, hugging him.

“They’ve got the bridge blocked,” Clyde said to W.D. “Can you help Bonnie cross the river? We’ll have to swim for it.” Abandoning Buck and Blanche to their fates, the trio slid into the shallow river and swam the twenty yards across, Bonnie holding on to W.D.’s neck. On the far side, Clyde looked up through the trees and saw a farmhouse. Leaving Bonnie and W.D. sitting by the river, he made for it.

The first indication of trouble eighteen-year-old Marvelle Feller had as he walked out to feed his father’s cattle was his German shepherd, who began growling and baring its teeth. Suddenly the dog raced toward the Feller family’s cornfield. A moment later Feller saw a man emerge from the corn-stalks, his tattered shirt streaked with mud and blood. Standing behind a barbed-wire fence, Clyde brandished his pistol.

“Call that dog off,” he yelled, “or I’ll kill him.”

Feller ran to the dog and grabbed its collar. Feller’s father and a hired hand came out to see what the commotion was about. “Y’all get down here!” Clyde yelled, pointing the pistol. They obliged.

Clyde placed his fingers to his lips and let out a loud wolf-whistle. Moments later W.D. and Bonnie appeared behind him. W.D., wiping blood from his eyes, was bleeding from several flesh wounds. The front of Bonnie’s nightgown was red with blood.

“Help me get her over the fence,” Clyde ordered the elder Feller, who stepped forward and lifted Bonnie over the barbed wire.

Just then Mrs. Feller and her daughter ran out of the farmhouse. “They’ve got a bunch of outlaws cornered in the park,” she started to say, and then she lost the words. “We ain’t gonna hurt you folks,” Clyde said. “We just need a car.”

The Fellers had three cars; unfortunately, two sat up on blocks. Clyde waved his gun at a Plymouth in the garage. “Okay,” he said. “Back it out.” The Fellers placed Bonnie in the backseat. Marvelle had to show Clyde how to start the car. With the teenager’s help, Clyde drove to the road outside and headed north, away from Dexfield Park.

An hour later the possemen combing the woods around Dexfield Park found Buck and Blanche in the thicket and took them into custody. Buck was taken to King’s Daughters Hospital in the town of Perry. His mother and other family members soon arrived. He lasted almost a week before dying the following Saturday afternoon, July 29. He was taken back to Dallas and buried. Blanche was thrown into jail. Bonnie and Clyde, meanwhile, eluded roadblocks and vanished. Bonnie later told her mother that they stole a car in Polk City, Iowa, and headed west toward Denver. It would be a long time before they were seen again.

 

 

All that week, as posses fanned out across Iowa in search of Bonnie and Clyde, reporters and photographers swarmed the streets around the Urschel mansion in Oklahoma City. The kidnapping was the biggest national crime story since the Lindbergh case a year before, capturing the public’s attention in a way William Hamm’s brief weekend detention had not. The mansion, the millions, the interruption of a simple bridge game—it was irresistible to the nation’s press.

On Wednesday morning, July 26, two days after Bonnie and Clyde escaped from Dexfield Park, a Tulsa oilman named John Catlett was standing in the bathroom of his home, shaving. One of his servants walked into the adjoining bedroom with a manila envelope; a Western Union messenger had brought it to the front door. “Put it down,” Catlett said, and continued shaving. When he was finished, Catlett rinsed his face, walked over to the envelope, and opened it. Out tumbled three of Charles Urschel’s business cards. Inside Catlett found three typewritten letters. One was from Urschel, asking him to take the other two to his wife. Catlett jammed the letters into his coat pocket, trotted to his car, and drove to Oklahoma City.

Berenice Urschel cried as she read her husband’s letters. A typewritten note from the kidnappers demanded a ransom of $200,000 for Urschel’s return. The letter included the text of a bogus classified advertisement for the sale of a ranch that was to be placed in the
Daily Oklahoman
each day for a week. When the kidnappers saw the ad, they would make contact once more. One of Urschel’s friends, a tall, sinewy oilman named E. E. Kirkpatrick, placed the ad that night.

The next day, a letter from the kidnappers arrived at the newspaper. It instructed Kirkpatrick to take the 10:10 P.M. train to Kansas City that Saturday night. At some point along the way, he would see a signal fire. When a second fire came into view, he was to toss a Gladstone bag containing the ransom money from the train. If anything went wrong, he was to proceed to the Muehlebach Hotel in Kansas City to await further instructions.
^p

Reading the letter in her drawing room, Mrs. Urschel paused as she considered the ransom demand: $200,000. “That’s a lot of money,” an FBI man said. “Yes, but we’ll have to spend it,” she replied. “Charlie’s life is at stake. There’s no other way.”

As the ransom negotiations advanced, Ed Weatherford, the Fort Worth detective, continued pestering the FBI’s Dallas office to investigate the Kellys. Had the Dallas agents made anything more than nominal efforts to do so, they might have broken the case. As it was, they came close. On July 24, two days after the kidnapping, Weatherford and Dallas agent Dwight McCormack arranged for a tap on Kathryn’s phone at East Mulkey Street.
^q
The tap was a low priority, however: it was manned not by an FBI agent but by a Southwestern Bell supervisor, who was told to call if she heard anything suspicious.

Weatherford, meanwhile, watched the house. Kathryn had disappeared. He was certain she was at the Shannon Ranch. Weatherford begged the Dallas office to tap the ranch’s phone, but it was a party line, and agents said it was unlikely the Kellys would discuss anything incriminating on it. Another opportunity was missed when the FBI failed to secure a photo of Kelly. The Fort Worth police had a single image of Kelly, taken voluntarily in December 1930, and agents asked for it in order to show Mrs. Urschel. Had she identified Kelly’s photo, the case might have come to a swift conclusion. But the photo had been lost.

“[Weatherford] states that the last time he saw the photograph it was on [another officer’s] desk,” an agent wrote. “[He] advised Agent that possibly one of the boys picked it up and forgot to return it.”
⁹
The disappearance of this photo cost the FBI weeks.

 

 

At 8:00 that Saturday night, E. E. Kirkpatrick hunched in the bushes behind the Urschel mansion with four other family friends and a deputy sheriff. Berenice Urschel appeared at an upstairs window and flashed a floodlight. At the signal a car rolled into the driveway. From the car stepped an Oklahoma City banker. He trotted to the shrubs and handed Kirkpatrick a tan Gladstone bag carrying $200,000 in cash.

Two hours later Kirkpatrick and the Tulsa oilman John Catlett boarded the “Sooner” Katy-Limited train bound for Kansas City. The two men made their way to the rear of the train, pulling up stools by the backdoor. They carried matching Gladstone bags, one with the cash, the other stuffed with newspapers; if anyone attempted to rob them, they planned to hand over the decoy bag.

There was a delay when the conductor added two cars to the train to accommodate a group of World’s Fair excursionists.

“Think this will foul up their plan, Kirk?” Catlett asked.