# Bonnie and Clyde: What the Record Shows, 1930 to 1934

- Link: https://thedarksideofhumanity.com/bonnie-and-clyde/
- Published: 2026-11-04T00:56:16-05:00
- Author: Mandi Martyr

TDSH · CASE FILE · USABonnie and ClydeTDSH fileIn the recordIn the recordThe officersMoore · Davis · Harryman · McGinnis · Humphrey · Crowson · Wheeler · Murphy · CampbellNamed on the markers and in the recordThe officers first. A typographic card stands in for a photograph.Never triedIO No. 1227Ambush · May 23, 1934Case fileTexas to Louisiana · 1930 to 1934Never tried for any killing · three associates convictedRecord-led fileThe couple are remembered together, and the police officers who died in their path are remembered on markers that name them together. But the record treats them differently.Killed in ambush · May 23, 1934 · status checked against the saved sources Oct. 23, 2026Record boundary Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker were shot to death by officers near Sailes, Bienville Parish, Louisiana, on May 23, 1934, and neither was ever tried for any killing. Barrow’s one conviction in the saved record came before the killings began. Bonnie Parker was never convicted of any crime in the records saved here; in 1932 a grand jury at Kaufman, Texas, declined to indict her. Three associates were convicted of killings described below. Every killing attributed to Barrow or Parker is the account or allegation of the source named, not a court finding.Docket Docket sheetSingle-source items creditedNamesClyde Chesnut Barrow; Bonnie Parker (federal notice: “Mrs. Roy Thornton”)282712BornBarrow, March 24, 1909, near Telico, Texas; Parker, Oct. 1, 1910, Rowena, Texas2827Home“Cement City,” West Dallas27Only convictionBarrow: burglary, after his 1930 Waco arrest; 14 years at hard labor28ParoledBarrow, February 193228Grand juryKaufman, Texas, no-billed Parker, June 17, 193227Federal warrantMay 20, 1933, interstate transport of a stolen car6Wanted noticeIdentification Order No. 1227, May 21, 193412Associates convictedMethvin (Campbell); Palmer (Crowson); Jones (Davis, secondary source)202122Hunted byFrank Hamer, hired February 1934 for the Texas prison system29DiedMay 23, 1934, posse ambush near Sailes, Bienville Parish, La.61Counts of the deadFBI: 13 murders; Parish Journal: 12 men, 9 of them lawmen61EvidenceCaseTex. to La. · 1930 to 1934NamedC. Barrow · B. ParkerItems in the cited recordA prescription bottle in a stolen Ford, traced to Barrow’s aunt6A Ford coupe of Dr. E. L. Damron, named in the federal complaint12Browning automatic rifles recovered, per an SAC letter of Aug. 29, 193313“Bloody bandages” at the camp near Dexter, Iowa14A .45 automatic pistol, per the Eastham break opinion21Rolls of unprocessed film left at the Joplin apartment22SRC: FBI; Mob Files; Palmer v. State; Texas History NotebookReconstruction / illustrative. Not a real evidence tag; items drawn from the cited sources.Content & source warning. This case file describes the shootings of police officers, a prison guard and civilians in Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri and Arkansas between 1932 and 1934, a prison break, kidnappings at gunpoint, and the deaths of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker in a police ambush in Louisiana, where officers fired more than a hundred rounds into their car. The officers and civilians who were killed are named, with their ages where the saved sources give them.Dossier index18 sections · 00 to 1700Rowena, Telico and West Dallas01January 1930: a pistol for a Waco cell02Kaufman jail and a killing in Hillsboro03Stringtown, Sherman and Temple04January 6, 1933: a trap on Winetka Avenue05A prescription bottle and a federal warrant06Joplin, April 13, 193307Wellington, Alma and the woods near Dexter08Eastham, January 16, 193409Easter Sunday near Grapevine10Commerce, Oklahoma, April 6, 193411The Methvin bargain and Highway 15412Markers for the lawmen13Timeline14What the record leaves open15Frequently asked questions16Where do these facts come from?17Related case filesNEVER TRIED FOR ANY KILLING • THREE ASSOCIATES CONVICTED • COUNTS DIFFER BY SOURCE • NEVER TRIED FOR ANY KILLING • THREE ASSOCIATES CONVICTED • COUNTS DIFFER BY SOURCE • NEVER TRIED FOR ANY KILLING • THREE ASSOCIATES CONVICTED • COUNTS DIFFER BY SOURCE • NEVER TRIED FOR ANY KILLING • THREE ASSOCIATES CONVICTED • COUNTS DIFFER BY SOURCE • NEVER TRIED FOR ANY KILLING • THREE ASSOCIATES CONVICTED • COUNTS DIFFER BY SOURCE • NEVER TRIED FOR ANY KILLING • THREE ASSOCIATES CONVICTED • COUNTS DIFFER BY SOURCE • 00§00Rowena, Telico and West DallasKey numbersFigures from the cited record · counts credited to their source13murders the FBI says the two “were believed to have committed”612men killed by the gang, 9 of them lawmen, per the Parish Journal1167bullets in the ambush, per both Handbook entries2728On April 6, 1934, a city marshal named Percy Boyd was shot in the head on a muddy road outside Commerce, Oklahoma, and taken hostage. Two years later his testimony sat in the record of the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, in a case where Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker were named but could not be defendants. The court summarized what Boyd saw as he was marched to the stuck car with a rifle at his back: “Bonnie Parker was sitting at the wheel in the car.”That sentence is close to the center of this file. The couple are remembered together, and the police officers who died in their path are remembered on markers that name them together. But the record treats them differently. The FBI says Barrow was “suspected of numerous killings and was wanted for murder, robbery, and state charges of kidnapping.” Its own centennial history says of Parker: “Though she probably never fired a shot, she was his willing accomplice.” Other sources go further: a Texas state agency’s memorial pages name her as one of two killers, the Handbook of Texas repeats a witness account that has her firing, and a gang member’s statement says she shot at officers. None of those claims was ever tested before a jury. What follows sets out who was killed, what each source says happened, and which parts were proved in a courtroom and which were not.Clyde Chesnut Barrow was born just outside Telico, Texas, on March 24, 1909, the son of Henry Barrow. The Handbook of Texas says the family moved to Dallas in 1922. Bonnie Parker was born at Rowena, Texas, on October 1, 1910, to Henry and Emma Parker. She had an older brother, Hubert, known as Buster, and a younger sister, Billie. Her father, a bricklayer, died in 1914, and her mother moved the children to what the Handbook calls “Cement City” in West Dallas, to be near relatives.The two entries that the Texas State Historical Association keeps on them read like opposite portraits. Kristi Strickland’s entry on Parker says she was an honor student in the public schools, wrote poetry and read romance novels, and, at “four-feet-ten and eighty-five pounds,” hardly looked like a future criminal. The FBI’s 2008 centennial story describes her as “just shy of five feet tall, all of 90 pounds, a part-time waitress and amateur poet from a poor Dallas home who was bored with life and wanted something more.” A caption on the FBI’s own case page gives different numbers again: Parker “was listed as” five feet, five inches and 100 pounds. The sources do not agree on her size, and none of the three explains its figure.In 1926, the Handbook says, she married her longtime sweetheart, Roy Thornton. The marriage was “tumultuous,” but she refused to divorce him. She worked at Marco’s Cafe in Dallas until it closed in November 1929, around the time Thornton went to prison on a five-year sentence. The FBI later put it more starkly: when she met Barrow, “Bonnie was 19 and married to an imprisoned murderer.” Years later the federal government still listed her under her married name. Identification Order No. 1227, the Division of Investigation’s wanted notice of May 21, 1934, names her as “Mrs. Roy Thornton, aliases Bonnie Barrow, Mrs. Clyde Barrow, Bonnie Parker.”Christopher Long’s entry on Barrow is shorter on childhood. In 1926, it says, he was first arrested, for stealing an automobile, and over the next four years he committed “a string of robberies in and around Dallas.” The same Handbook entry ends with a judgment that runs against the later films: despite their glamorous image, it says, the two were “in reality small-time hoods whose largest haul was only $1,500.”01§01January 1930: a pistol for a Waco cellEvery account saved here agrees that Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow met in Texas in January 1930. The FBI’s case page says that at the time Parker was 19 and Barrow was 21 and unmarried; its centennial story says he was “a few months short of 21” and calls her “already an ex-wife (though not officially divorced).” They were, the Bureau wrote, “just kids.”The sources then diverge on timing. The centennial story says Barrow was arrested “a few days after they met.” Strickland’s Handbook entry says the romance was interrupted when he was jailed “a month later,” and that while he was held she wrote him letters pleading with him to stay out of trouble once he was released.On the escape itself the sources agree. Long writes that while awaiting trial in Waco Barrow got away “with a handgun slipped to him by Bonnie” and fled north. Strickland puts the date in early March and says she “smuggled into his cell a pistol.” The FBI’s case page says the same: “He escaped using a gun Bonnie had smuggled to him.” No charge against her for it appears in any record saved here.The freedom was short. Long says Barrow was captured “a week later in Middletown, Ohio.” Strickland says he was recaptured there after a robbery. The centennial story gives a different picture, saying “They robbed their way across the Midwest, until Clyde was captured and thrown in jail once more,” which would put Parker with him; neither Handbook entry says she went north. Long then records the conviction that is the only one in Barrow’s life the saved sources set out: “Barrow was found guilty and sentenced to a fourteen-year term at hard labor in the state penitentiary.” Strickland says he was sent to the Eastham Prison Farm on April 21, 1930. Unwilling to endure the work on the state plantation, Long writes, Barrow “had another convict chop two toes off his left foot with an axe.” Wikipedia dates the amputation to late January 1932, notes that some accounts say he did it himself, and says he walked with a limp for the rest of his life.He did not serve the term. In February 1932, Long writes, Barrow “was given a general parole and released.” Strickland’s entry says he came out “more bent on destruction than before,” and that Parker “was more determined than ever to prove her loyalty to him, even to the extent of assuming his manner of living.” That is the Handbook’s reading of her motives; no statement from her is quoted to support it.From 1932, the FBI’s 2008 summary says, the couple “crisscrossed the countryside in a series of stolen cars.” Long’s entry adds a third member early on: “Reunited with Bonnie and joined by bank robber Raymond Hamilton, Barrow began a series of violent holdups in the Southwest and Midwest.” The FBI case page calls Hamilton “a young gunman.”02§02Kaufman jail and a killing in HillsboroThe first months after the parole are where Bonnie Parker’s legal record is clearest, because it is the one time a grand jury looked at her. Strickland’s Handbook entry says that after Barrow’s release the couple “began robbing grocery stores, filling stations, and small banks.” In March 1932, it says, Parker was captured in a failed robbery attempt and jailed in Kaufman, Texas.She was still in that jail when the first civilian died. The saved sources disagree on the victim’s name and the date. Strickland writes: “Clyde murdered merchant J. W. Butcher of Hillsboro on April 27, 1932.” The Bienville Parish Journal, in a 2024 report on the replaced ambush marker, gives the victim as John Bucher, a 61-year-old storeowner, and the date as April 30, 1932, killed in Hillsboro, Texas, “during a robbery.” The FBI’s case page, in its list of the crimes the Bureau linked to the pair, says only that “Clyde allegedly murdered a man at Hillsboro, Texas.” The Bureau’s word is “allegedly,” and it is the right one. Barrow was never charged with the killing in any record saved here, and he never stood trial for it.On June 17, 1932, Strickland writes, “the grand jury met in Kaufman and no-billed Bonnie, thus securing her release.” A no-bill means the grand jury declined to return an indictment. It is the only formal decision about her conduct in any court record saved for this file, and it went in her favor. “Within a few weeks she connected with Clyde,” the entry continues. “Once again, they were on the run.”03§03Stringtown, Sherman and TempleThe first officer killed was Eugene C. Moore, at Stringtown, Oklahoma, on August 5, 1932. The Texas History Notebook, a history site that has compiled each of the Barrow gang’s law enforcement victims, describes him as deputy Eugene Clyde Moore, 31, of Atoka. The Parish Journal calls him a “30-year-old undersheriff.” The incident took place at an outdoor bandstand. According to other published accounts collected by the Notebook, Moore and Sheriff C. G. Maxwell approached a car with two men inside, later identified as Barrow and Hamilton, holding an open container of whiskey. When the officers tried to make an arrest, someone in the car opened fire. Maxwell was wounded, and Moore was killed with “a shot to the forehead.” He left a wife and three children and was buried in the Rose Hill Cemetery at Calera, Oklahoma.Whether Bonnie Parker was there is unsettled. The Notebook says only that she “was said to have been there with Barrow and Hamilton.” Strickland’s Handbook entry goes further and is wrong in at least one respect: “The couple killed two officers in Atoka, Oklahoma, where they had attended a dance and were apprehended in the parking lot.” Only one officer died that night; the sheriff survived. The FBI’s list says Barrow “murdered one sheriff and wounded another at Stringtown,” which ranks Moore above the deputy’s post the Notebook gives him. No court ever tried anyone for Moore’s death in any record saved here.Two civilians died in Texas before the year was out. On October 11, 1932, according to the Bienville Parish Journal, a 57-year-old butcher named Howard Hall was killed in Sherman during a robbery. On December 26, 1932, a 27-year-old named Doyle Johnson was shot in Temple “when the gang tried to steal his car,” and he died the following day. Strickland’s entry puts both killings on the couple, saying they “gunned down a grocery-store owner in Sherman, Texas, a citizen in Temple.” The FBI’s list attributes murder and robbery at Sherman to Barrow alone. None of these sources says which person fired in either case.By then the gang had changed shape. The FBI says Hamilton “left them several months later and was replaced by William Daniel Jones in November.” The Bureau adds that Jones was often mistaken for the outlaw Pretty Boy Floyd.04§04January 6, 1933: a trap on Winetka AvenueThe second officer killed was Malcolm Simmons Davis, 51, a Tarrant County deputy sheriff. On January 6, 1933, he was one of a group of officers waiting at 3111 N. Winetka Avenue in Dallas, the home of Barrow’s aunt Lillie McBride, for a man named Odell Chandler. The Texas History Notebook, drawing on the Brownsville Herald, says Chandler was wanted in a Grapevine bank robbery of the week before. The officers were not waiting for Barrow.The Herald’s account, as the Notebook summarizes it, is that a small coupe passed the house slowly several times before stopping. A man with a sawed-off shotgun got out and walked to the porch. A woman inside, who had been told by officers to let any visitor in, opened the door. The visitor apparently saw the six or so officers inside and fired through a window, and they fired back. Davis and another officer ran around the house from the back door. A second person in the car began firing too, and Davis was hit twice by shotgun blasts. The Notebook says he is believed to have died instantly. He was single, and he was buried in Grapevine Cemetery.The shooter on the porch was later identified as Barrow, and the shooter in the car as W. D. Jones. Here the saved record holds one of the few convictions connected to the gang’s killings. The Notebook says Jones “was later arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced to fifteen years in prison for his role in the shooting.” No court document for his case was saved, so that conviction rests on the Notebook.The same source records what Jones said afterward, and it is the earliest claim in this file that Bonnie Parker fired at police. In a 27-page statement, Jones denied taking part in the shooting and said the visit was to get information about Hamilton, then in jail in Hillsboro. “Jones stated that Bonnie Parker was also in the car and that she fired a pistol several times at the officers.” That is the account of a man who was blaming others for gunfire he was convicted of joining. No one else quoted in the saved sources puts her in the car, and she was never charged in Davis’s death.05§05A prescription bottle and a federal warrantThe federal government did not come into the case through any killing. The FBI’s case page says the Bureau, then called the Bureau of Investigation, “became interested in Clyde and Bonnie in December 1932 through a singular bit of evidence.” A Ford stolen in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, had been found abandoned near Jackson, Michigan, in September. At Pawhuska, officers learned that another Ford, stolen in Illinois, had been left behind there. In that car was a prescription bottle.The bottle led agents to a drug store in Nacogdoches, Texas, and the medicine to a woman who turned out to be Barrow’s aunt. The FBI says she had recently been visited by Clyde Barrow, Bonnie Parker and Clyde’s brother L. C., driving the Ford stolen in Illinois, and that L. C. Barrow had obtained the empty bottle from the woman’s son.The federal warrant that followed them to the end came out of that car. On May 20, 1933, the FBI says, the United States Commissioner at Dallas issued a warrant charging them with interstate transportation of the stolen Illinois car, from Dallas to Oklahoma. A year later the Division of Investigation’s Identification Order No. 1227, dated May 21, 1934, named the owner: the complaint charged them with transporting a Ford coupe, the property of Dr. E. L. Damron of Effingham, Illinois, “from Dallas to Pawhuska, Oklahoma, on or about September 16, 1932.” The order was issued under the National Motor Vehicle Theft Act. Its warning at the foot was blunter than its charge: the two “constantly travel together and extreme caution must be exercised by arresting officers as they are wanted in connection with assault and murder of officers.”A 2009 FBI story says “the investigative case records of our Dallas Field Office” run to “nearly 1,000 pages,” and dates the pursuit to “almost exactly a year before their deaths,” which fits the May 1933 warrant better than the December 1932 start the case page gives. No federal file saved here charges either of them with murder.06§06Joplin, April 13, 1933In March 1933 the group grew to five. The FBI says Clyde’s brother, Ivan M. “Buck” Barrow, “was released from the Texas State Prison on March 23, 1933, having been granted a full pardon by the governor,” and joined Clyde with his wife, Blanche. The Handbook says the couple and Buck and Blanche rented a small garage apartment in Joplin, Missouri, as a hideout.ExhibitThe garage apartment in south Joplin, Missouri, where the Commons description says Bonnie and Clyde stayed for two weeks in 1933.Photo: AbeEzekowitz, via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0.Neighbors grew suspicious. The Newton County Sheriff’s Office says they reported late-hour activity to the Highway Patrol, and that troopers found the car’s registration did not match the renters. The officers believed they were dealing with bootleggers. Joplin police obtained a search warrant, and five lawmen went to the house at 3347 1/2 Oak Ridge Drive at 4:00 p.m.: Constable John Wesley “Wes” Harryman of Shoal Creek Township, Troopers George Kahler and Walter Grammer of the Missouri State Highway Patrol, and Joplin Detectives Thomas DeGraff and Harry L. McGinnis. The Notebook spells the second trooper’s name Grammar.The sheriff’s office account is that Clyde Barrow was at the garage door when the officers arrived and that they drove a car into the driveway to stop him closing it. Harryman jumped out and was struck by a shotgun blast. McGinnis, getting out the other side, was hit by another blast from the garage and returned fire; then automatic rifle fire from the apartment windows struck him, “nearly severing his right arm.” Kahler ran out of ammunition, and DeGraff sent Grammer for help. Harryman died on the way to the hospital. He was 42, a farmer who had been elected constable in November 1932, and he left a wife, Atha. McGinnis, 53, a widower, died later. The gang got away by ramming the police car that partly blocked the garage, the Notebook says.ExhibitAn FBI snapshot of the Barrow gang’s hideout in Joplin, Missouri, in April 1933, from the Bureau’s public files.Photo: Federal Bureau of Investigation, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.Who fired is the question the record cannot settle. The Notebook says simply that the gang, “Buck, Blanche, Clyde, Bonnie and W. D. Jones,” opened fire. Strickland’s entry says officers “were met by the four inhabitants and a barrage of bullets.” Blanche Barrow, questioned by federal agents after her capture later that year, gave a different account of where the women were. A Kansas City office report in the FBI Vault, as described by mobfiles.org, records her statement “that Bonnie Parker was upstairs in the front of the house; that she and Marvin were upstairs in the back of the house,” with the men downstairs. That puts Marvin, the name the report uses for Buck, upstairs as well, and it is her account alone. Nobody was ever tried for the two Joplin deaths.What the gang left behind became more famous than the shootout. The Notebook lists Buck’s pardon papers, guns, jewelry, a camera and “two rolls of unprocessed film.” Long’s entry says “a roll of film.” Strickland’s says “six rolls of film, from which many of the famous photographs of the couple came.” The Notebook says the poses included Parker with a shotgun and a cigar, and that she “supposedly hated” the published pictures.07§07Wellington, Alma and the woods near DexterOn June 10, 1933, Strickland writes, Parker “was burned after their car rolled over an embankment near Wellington, Texas,” and was treated at a nearby farmhouse. Officials sent to investigate were kidnapped and later freed in Oklahoma. The FBI’s list describes it as abducting “a sheriff and the chief of police at Wellington.”The next officer to die was Henry D. Humphrey, the town marshal of Alma, Arkansas,, and the saved accounts disagree on nearly everything. The Texas History Notebook says that on the night of June 22, 1933, two unknown men tied him up and stole his handgun during a bank burglary. The next day, carrying a borrowed revolver, he and Deputy Sheriff Ansel Salyers of Crawford County went after a car stolen in a Fort Smith grocery robbery, came on it wrecked, and blocked the road. Humphrey was shot in the chest with a shotgun. He died on June 26, 1933, at 51, and left a wife and children.Who shot him is unresolved. The Notebook says the shooter “was later assumed to be Buck Barrow,” that Buck confessed to a sheriff before he died that he and another man had killed the marshal, and that Clyde Barrow was not there. A man named Hubert Bleigh was charged and never tried; the Notebook says the second gunman was later thought to be W. D. Jones, and that Jones “would later state that it was the deceased Buck Barrow who actually killed Humphrey.” The Bienville Parish Journal calls him Henry Dallas Humphrey, places the shooting at Fayetteville on June 23, and says officers “tried to arrest members of the gang.” Strickland’s entry puts it on the couple: “Near Alma, Arkansas, the two killed the town marshall.” No saved source other than that sentence puts Bonnie Parker at the scene.That summer the gang was surprised twice. Long’s entry says that at Platte City, Missouri, “the gang once again was ambushed by police officers,” and that Buck was killed and Blanche taken into custody. The Bureau’s own contemporary report places the end farther north. A Kansas City office report in the FBI Vault, as mobfiles.org describes it, says a man named Ed Penn found a camp with “bloody bandages” in woods near Dexter, Iowa, that “A party of about 15 officers” moved on it, and that “The attack was made shortly after daybreak on Monday July 24, 1933.” Officers caught Buck and Blanche after he was wounded; Clyde, Bonnie and a third man escaped on foot. “Marvin Barrow died from his wound,” the report says. The FBI’s case page dates the Iowa shootout July 29. The Notebook says Buck died on July 21, which cannot be right if the raid was on the 24th.The raid also exposed the gang’s weapons. On August 29, 1933, the Dallas special agent in charge, F. J. Blake, wrote to the Director that “4 Browning automatic rifles were recovered from members of the Barrow gang, some of which have been traced to Government armories,” and warned that “the Government is furnishing ammunition and equipment to these outlaws.” A separate federal case, number 8008 in the Northern District of Texas, accused Hamilton, Clyde C. Barrow, Bonnie Parker, Henry Methvin, Joe Palmer and Hilton Bybee of stealing weapons from a Texas National Guard armory. No outcome is recorded in the catalog entry.08§08Eastham, January 16, 1934ExhibitThe old Eastham Prison Farm in Texas, photographed in June 2008. Joe Palmer shot the guard Major Crowson here on January 16, 1934.Photo: Lance L Lowry, via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 3.0.The clearest court account of what Bonnie Parker did comes from Palmer v. State, the appeal of the convict who killed a guard at the Eastham Prison Farm.The court summarized the state’s “uncontroverted testimony.” James Mullins, a convict discharged from Eastham on January 10, 1934, had agreed to help Raymond Hamilton and others escape. He “went to Dallas, where he procured several automatic pistols, some shotguns and Browning high-powered rifles, which he, Clyde Barrow, Bonnie Parker and Floyd Hamilton, brother of Raymond, carried to Eastham farm in Barrow’s V-8 Ford coupe.” Mullins hid two .45 automatic pistols where Hamilton and Joe Palmer could reach them. At about 7 a.m. on January 16, the opinion says, “Mullins, Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker parked their V-8 Ford coupe at the edge of the woods near Eastham farm” and waited.Hamilton had slipped into the wrong work squad. When the guard of squad No. 1, Olin Bozeman, asked another guard, Major Crowson, to report it, “without provocation, appellant mortally wounded deceased by shooting him in the abdomen with a .45 automatic pistol.” Bozeman was also wounded and survived. Then, “while covered by an automatic rifle barrage fired by Mullins and Clyde Barrow,” Palmer, Hamilton and two other convicts ran to Barrow’s car and were driven away. The Texas History Notebook names the other two as Henry Methvin and Hilton Bybee, and says Bozeman was hit in the hip, “apparently by convict Raymond Hamilton.”Crowson was taken to a hospital in Huntsville and died on January 27, 1934. Major was his given name, the Notebook says; he was 33, single, and was buried in Lovelady. The court quoted his dying declaration: “I am positive that it was Joe Palmer who shot me.”The opinion gives Parker a role in bringing the weapons and in waiting with the car. It does not say she fired, and no one in the saved record says so. The FBI’s case page describes the break more loosely: the prisoners were released “by Clyde, accompanied by Bonnie,” and the pistols “had been previously concealed in a ditch by Barrow.” That differs from the court, which says Mullins hid them, and from the Notebook, which says Palmer hid them in a brush pile. The FBI says Hamilton was serving sentences “totaling more than 200 years”; the Notebook cites newspaper reports of 263 years. Long’s Handbook entry goes furthest, saying “the two” freed the prisoners, “in the process machine-gunning several guards and killing one.”Palmer was convicted of Crowson’s murder in Grimes County, on a change of venue from Walker County, and sentenced to death; the appeals court affirmed. The Notebook says Palmer and Hamilton were “both executed on May 10, 1935.” Barrow and Parker were never charged with Crowson’s death in any record saved here. The break had one more consequence. Strickland’s entry says that “the head of the Texas prison system and the governor hired former Texas Ranger captain Francis (Frank) Hamer to track down the couple,” and the Handbook’s entry on Hamer says prison director Marshall Lee Simmons hired him in February 1934 “as a special investigator for the Texas prison system.”09§09Easter Sunday near GrapevineOn April 1, 1934, Easter Sunday, two Texas Highway Patrol motorcycle officers were killed near Grapevine: Edward Bryan Wheeler, 26, and Holloway Daniel Murphy, 22. The Texas History Notebook says that at about 3:00 p.m. they were riding with a third officer, Polk Ivy, to do some target shooting. Ivy rode ahead. The Department of Public Safety’s memorial pages say each man “stopped his motorcycle near Parker and Barrow’s car, thinking a motorist needed assistance. When he approached, he was shot.” Wheeler had joined the patrol on January 8, 1930, and was married to the former Doris Elizabeth Brown. Murphy had joined on September 18, 1933. A 2021 column in the Longview News-Journal says “It was his first day on patrol,” and that his fiancée, Marie Tullis, wore her wedding dress only to his funeral.The DPS pages say both men were shot “by the infamous criminals Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow.” It is the strongest official claim saved here that Parker took part in a killing, and it is contested. Strickland’s Handbook entry relies on one witness and qualifies it: “Bonnie reportedly walked over to one of the officers and rolled him over with one foot,” then fired at him and said, “look-a-there, his head bounced just like a rubber ball.” The Notebook explains why that account is doubted. It came from a farmer, William Schieffer, whose story “is discounted for various reasons.” He is said to have later changed his story to blame Floyd Hamilton and Parker’s sister, Billie Parker Mace.It is likely not possible to obtain a reliable account of these murders.Texas History Notebook, on the Grapevine killings26Other witnesses saw something else. A United Press story of April 2, as the Notebook summarizes it, quoted Mr. and Mrs. Fred A. Giggal of Dallas, who said that “the taller of two killers” stood over the fallen officers and fired, then he and a woman drove off. Other accounts name Methvin, Raymond Hamilton and Barrow in various combinations. The Longview column says Parker leveled “her rifle,” but it gives no source. The Notebook’s conclusion is that “it is likely not possible to obtain a reliable account of these murders.”The governor’s own words did not name Parker. The day after the shooting, Miriam A. Ferguson offered a $500 reward for Clyde Barrow, Ray Hamilton or “other persons who killed Highway Patrolmen, E. B. Wheeler and H. D. Murphy.” The Notebook says that, to its knowledge, “no one was arrested and tried for the murders of the officers.”10§10Commerce, Oklahoma, April 6, 1934Five days after Grapevine, Constable Calvin “Cal” Campbell was killed outside Commerce, Oklahoma. He was 60 and left two sons and five daughters, the Texas History Notebook says. His death is the only killing in this file that produced a murder conviction of someone in the car, and the court’s record of it is the fullest account of Parker’s conduct during a killing.The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals set out the state’s evidence. “Between 9 and 10 o’clock a.m. on April 6, 1934, Clyde Barrow, Bonnie Parker and the defendant, Henry Methvin, fugitives from justice, were in a Ford car parked on the road running West from Highway 66.” Campbell and Percy Boyd, the city marshal, drove out after a report. The car backed about 100 yards and stuck in a ditch. A man jumped out with a Browning automatic rifle and opened fire. Boyd was hit in the side of the head and fell; Campbell was hit “about the center of the body, resulting in almost instant death.” Boyd testified that he did not know whether Methvin was the man shooting. Methvin, he said, came up with a rifle, took his pistol and said, “Get up and come with me.” Then: “Bonnie Parker was sitting at the wheel in the car.” A neighbor, Mrs. May Phelps, testified that she saw “a woman dressed in red in the car that was in the ditch.”Barrow had a passing truck pull the car out with a chain, put Boyd in the back seat and drove to Fort Scott, Kansas, before releasing him. Boyd testified that Barrow said there that “he was sorry he had to shoot the old man, or something like that.” Methvin’s defense was that he had acted in fear of Barrow. He testified that Clyde Barrow did the shooting, that he had been asleep, that Barrow ordered him to bring the officers up, and that “Bonnie Parker handed him a gun.” He said he heard Barrow tell Boyd, “I am sorry I had to kill that old man.” The jury rejected the defense. The court found it had “entirely failed and was properly discredited by the jury.”The information charged that Methvin acted “conjointly with Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker.” The FBI’s case page says the constable “was mortally wounded by Bonnie and Clyde” at “Miami, Oklahoma,” a different town from the court’s. Methvin was found guilty on September 20, 1935, after a mistrial in March, and sentenced to death. In 1936 the appeals court reduced the sentence to life imprisonment. Boyd recovered, became Miami’s police chief, and died in 1940, the Notebook says.11§11The Methvin bargain and Highway 154ExhibitThe road near Sailes, Louisiana, where the posse waited, in a snapshot by an unknown photographer dated May 23, 1934, from the FBI’s files.Photo: Federal Bureau of Investigation, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.The end was arranged through Methvin’s family. At his trial, John Joiner, who lived near Castor, Louisiana, testified that about the first of March 1934 he made arrangements through the Methvins to reach the officers of their parish. At a meeting with Sheriff Henderson Jordan, Lester Kandale, “a Department of Justice man from New Orleans,” Frank Hamer, and Bob Alcorn, a Dallas County deputy, Joiner said he told them Henry Methvin was willing to put Barrow and Parker “on the spot” for his freedom, and that the officers drew up a written agreement. The court’s spelling is Kandale; the FBI’s 2009 story names New Orleans Special Agent Lester Kindell and says he “did not participate in the fatal ambush.”The FBI’s case page says Bonnie and Clyde, with some of the Methvins, “had staged a party at Black Lake, Louisiana, on the night of May 21, 1934, and were due to return to the area two days later.” That same day, May 21, the Division issued Identification Order No. 1227. A marker text at the site says Ted Hinton’s account had the posse in place by 9 p.m. on the 21st; other accounts say they set up the evening of the 22nd. The posse was six men: Jordan and his chief deputy, Prentiss Oakley, of Bienville Parish; Hamer and B. M. Gault, former Texas Rangers; and Alcorn and Ted Hinton, Dallas County deputies.The FBI’s centennial story describes the morning: “Around nine in the morning, Bonnie and Clyde drove up in their tan Ford.” They slowed when they saw Methvin’s father, Ivy, standing by his truck as if it had broken down. “It was a trap.” Ivy ducked away, and the officers opened fire. The Bureau’s case page says the two were killed instantly. Both Handbook entries give the time as 9:15 a.m. and the count as “a barrage of 167 bullets.” Strickland’s entry says “Bonnie Parker was found riddled with bullets, holding a machine gun, a sandwich, and a pack of cigarettes; Clyde Barrow, barely recognizable, was clutching a revolver.” Wikipedia, citing the parish coroner J. L. Wade, says his report listed 17 entrance wounds on Barrow’s body and 26 on Parker’s, including several head shots to each and one that severed Barrow’s spinal cord. The same article says Barrow was shot in the head by the first bullet, fired by the Louisiana officer Prentiss Oakley, and that the undertaker, C. F. “Boots” Bailey, had trouble embalming the bodies because of all the bullet holes. The Parish Journal says “Bonnie and Clyde both had weapons on their laps.” No court reviewed the shooting. The only legal finding on it in the saved record is the Oklahoma court’s, in passing: Methvin’s information led “to their justifiable killing by officers of the law.” Governor Ferguson’s pardon of Methvin, dated August 14, 1934, used the same phrase.Even the place has three names. The FBI says near Sailes, in Bienville Parish. The Handbook’s entries say near Black Lake and in Gibsland. The Parish Journal puts it on LA 154 near Sailes. Strickland writes that the car was taken to Arcadia and the bodies to Dallas, where “Thousands viewed” them before burial in the two families’ plots.12§12Markers for the lawmenThe first stone at the site reads: “At this site, May 23, 1934, Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker were killed by enforcement officers.” The plaque on the second honors the posse “Lest we forget these brave and vigilant conservators of the peace.” The Bienville Parish Journal says that plaque was stolen in April 2023 and that the parish Police Jury replaced it in 2024. “It’s not a memorial to Bonnie and Clyde,” Perry Carver of the Gibsland ambush museum told a local paper.The count of the dead depends on the source. The FBI says the two “were believed to have committed 13 murders.” The Parish Journal says the gang caused “the deaths of 12 men, 9 of which were lawmen.” The FBI’s centennial story says Barrow allegedly killed “at least a dozen people.” The Handbook concludes they were “both ruthless killers.” No court ever said so of either of them.ExhibitThe original monument at the ambush site near Gibsland, Louisiana, photographed in May 2019.Photo: Acarlin0577, via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0.ExhibitThe monument to the lawmen at the ambush site, with the posse’s photograph on its plaque, in May 2019.Photo: Acarlin0577, via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0.ExhibitThe grave of Clyde Barrow, photographed in July 2009.Photo: Michael W. Pocock, via Wikimedia Commons. CC0.13§13TimelineBuilt from dates already in this file · each row citedMarch 24, 1909 Barrow bornClyde Chesnut Barrow is born just outside Telico, Texas.28Oct. 1, 1910 Parker bornBonnie Parker is born at Rowena, Texas.27January 1930 They meetEvery saved account agrees they met in Texas in January 1930.627Early March 1930 Waco escapeBarrow escapes the Waco jail with a pistol Parker smuggled to him.276April 21, 1930 EasthamBarrow is sent to the Eastham Prison Farm.27February 1932 ParoledBarrow is paroled.28June 17, 1932 No-billA Kaufman grand jury declines to indict Parker.27Jan. 6, 1933 Winetka AvenueDeputy Malcolm Davis is killed in Dallas.22April 13, 1933 JoplinConstable Harryman and Detective McGinnis are killed.1922May 20, 1933 Federal warrantThe U.S. Commissioner at Dallas issues a warrant over the stolen Illinois car.6June 23, 1933 Alma, ArkansasMarshal Henry Humphrey is shot; he dies June 26. Who fired is unresolved.23July 24, 1933 Dexter, IowaOfficers raid the camp; Buck Barrow is wounded and Blanche captured.14Jan. 16, 1934 Eastham breakGuard Major Crowson is mortally wounded; he dies Jan. 27.2124February 1934 Hamer hiredFrank Hamer is hired as a special investigator.29April 1, 1934 GrapevinePatrolmen Wheeler and Murphy are killed. The accounts conflict.3426April 6, 1934 CommerceConstable Cal Campbell is killed outside Commerce, Oklahoma.20May 21, 1934 IO No. 1227The Division of Investigation issues its wanted notice.12May 23, 1934 SailesA posse of six kills Barrow and Parker on the road near Sailes.61Sept. 20, 1935 Methvin verdictMethvin is found guilty of Campbell’s murder.2014§14What the record leaves openNo court tried Clyde Barrow or Bonnie Parker for any killing, and only Methvin, Palmer and, by a secondary account, Jones were convicted for any of them. Who fired at Stringtown, Joplin, Alma and Grapevine is unresolved. The claims that Parker fired rest on Jones’s statement, a discounted witness and later accounts; the court records place her at the wheel, handing over a gun and carrying weapons to Eastham. The harboring case against Mary Pitts and others, and the armory case naming the couple, have no recorded outcome in the saved catalog entries.Register 01 · convictionsWhoConviction or allegationOutcome and sourceStatusHenry MethvinMurder of Constable Cal CampbellDeath; reduced to life on appeal, 193620ESTABLISHEDJoe PalmerMurder of guard Major CrowsonDeath; executed May 10, 19352124ESTABLISHEDW. D. JonesRole in the shooting of Deputy Malcolm DavisFifteen years; no court document saved22CREDITED15§15Frequently asked questionsWere Bonnie and Clyde ever convicted of murder?No. Neither was ever tried for any killing. Clyde Barrow’s one conviction in the saved record came before the killings began: after his 1930 arrest in Waco on burglary charges, the Handbook of Texas says, he was found guilty and sentenced to fourteen years at hard labor, and he was paroled in February 1932. Bonnie Parker was never convicted of any crime in the records saved here. In 1932 a grand jury at Kaufman, Texas, declined to indict her.Did Bonnie Parker shoot at police?The record does not settle it. The FBI’s centennial history says: “Though she probably never fired a shot, she was his willing accomplice.” The claims that she fired rest on W. D. Jones’s statement, a discounted witness and later accounts. The court records place her at the wheel, handing over a gun and carrying weapons to Eastham. She was never charged in any officer’s death.Who was convicted of the gang’s killings?Three associates. Henry Methvin was convicted of the murder of Constable Cal Campbell, and his death sentence was reduced to life on appeal. Joe Palmer was convicted of the murder of prison guard Major Crowson and sentenced to death. W. D. Jones was convicted of a role in the shooting of Deputy Malcolm Davis and got fifteen years, per a secondary source.How did Bonnie and Clyde die?A six-man posse shot them to death on Highway 154 near Sailes, Bienville Parish, Louisiana, on May 23, 1934. Henry Methvin had agreed to put them “on the spot” for his freedom, and his father, Ivy, stood by his truck as if it had broken down. Both Handbook entries give the time as 9:15 a.m. and the count as “a barrage of 167 bullets.” Wikipedia, citing the parish coroner, says his report listed 17 entrance wounds on Barrow’s body and 26 on Parker’s.Who was in the posse?Sheriff Henderson Jordan and his chief deputy, Prentiss Oakley, of Bienville Parish; Frank Hamer and B. M. Gault, former Texas Rangers; and Bob Alcorn and Ted Hinton, Dallas County deputies.How many people did Bonnie and Clyde kill?The count depends on the source. The FBI says the two “were believed to have committed 13 murders.” The Bienville Parish Journal says the gang caused “the deaths of 12 men, 9 of which were lawmen.” The FBI’s centennial story says Barrow allegedly killed “at least a dozen people.” No court ever found either of them guilty of any of those deaths.16§16Where do these facts come from?Numbered in the order of the post’s own source listNotes Numbered notesBienville Parish Journal, Ribbon cut on new Bonnie & Clyde Ambush marker, October 23, 2024.Bienville Parish Journal, Stolen Bonnie and Clyde Ambush Posse Historical Marker Replaced, September 6, 2024.Texas Department of Public Safety, Highway Patrolman H.D. Murphy.Texas Department of Public Safety, Highway Patrolman Edward Bryan Wheeler.FBI, FBI 100 series, An Odd Couple of Crime, May 2008.FBI, History, Famous Cases, Bonnie and Clyde.FBI, Bonnie and Clyde Redux, May 2009.The Historical Marker Database, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow Ambush Site Historical Marker.Longview News-Journal, James: Remembering Holloway Daniel Murphy, April 3, 2021.Mob Files (CourtListener text), Methvin v. State, 60 P.2d 1062.Mob Files (CourtListener text), Palmer v. State, 81 S.W.2d 76.Mob Files, Identification Order No. 1227: Bonnie Parker and Clyde Champion Barrow (21 May 1934).Mob Files, Letter from SAC F. J. Blake, Dallas, to the Director, 29 August 1933: Browning automatic rifles recovered from the Barrow gang.Mob Files, Bureau report on the raid near Dexter, Iowa, 24 July 1933.Mob Files, 8250: United States v. Mary Pitts, alias Mary O’Dare, et al..Mob Files, 8008: United States v. Raymond Hamilton, et al..Mob Files, Bonnie Parker.Mob Files, Clyde Barrow.Newton County Sheriff’s Office (Missouri), Remember the Fallen, honor roll entry for Constable J. W. Harryman.Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, Methvin v. State, 1936 OK CR 105.OpenJurist, Palmer v. State, 128 Tex. Crim. 293, 81 S.W.2d 76 (1934).Texas History Notebook, Law Officers Killed by the Barrow Gang: Victims 1 Through 4.Texas History Notebook, Victim Number 5, Humphrey.Texas History Notebook, Major Crowson, Victim Number 6.Texas History Notebook, Cal Campbell, Victim 9.Texas History Notebook, The Barrow Gang Grapevine Murders.Handbook of Texas Online, Kristi Strickland, Parker, Bonnie.Handbook of Texas Online, Christopher Long, Barrow, Clyde Chesnut.Handbook of Texas Online, Hamer, Francis Augustus.Wikipedia, Bonnie and Clyde.Images: Wikimedia Commons, credited in each caption.Photo: AbeEzekowitz, via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0.Photo: Federal Bureau of Investigation, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.Photo: Lance L Lowry, via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 3.0.Photo: Federal Bureau of Investigation, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.Photo: Acarlin0577, via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0.Photo: Acarlin0577, via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0.Photo: Michael W. Pocock, via Wikimedia Commons. CC0.17§17Related case files The Female Accomplice And Her Puppet Master Infamous Crimes That Shocked the 20th Century Case file prepared from the sources listed above. Status checked against the saved sources on October 23, 2026.