Bonnie Parker – October, 1 1910

Some day they’ll go down together
they’ll bury them side by side.
To few it’ll be grief,
to the law a relief
but it’s death for Bonnie and Clyde.

– Bonnie Parker from The Trail’s End and no, they weren’t buried side by side

Bonnie Elizabeth Parker was born in Rowena, Texas, to Emma (Krause) and Charles Robert Parker. He was a bricklayer who died when Bonnie was four. The family moved to Emma’s parent’s home in Cement City, Texas.

The 1920 census finds the Parker family living with now widowed Mary Krause on Fish Trap Road in Cement City. Emma and her children Hubert, Bonnie, and Billie are present. Emma is a helper at a printing company. Teamsters, laborers, and sorters make up the occupations of the neighbors, although one man is the general manager of the Hercules Oil company. The only immigrant is a 72-year old dairyman from Switzerland.

Later life

Bonnie dropped out of school before she was 16 when she met and married the first of her bad boys, Roy Thornton. Roy was a career criminal and Bonnie didn’t see him too often. They never divorced, but after 1929 when Bonnie was 19, they never saw one another again. She was wearing his wedding ring when she was killed, and he said  “I’m glad they jumped out like they did. It’s much better than being caught.” He was killed in 1937, while attempting one of his many prison breaks.

Bonnie moved in with her mother and got a job as a waitress. One of her customers was Ted Hinton who later became a lawman and was a member of the posse that killed her. Bonnie met Clyde Barrow in 1930, and recognizing that he was a low-life loser just like her, fell in love with him.

The couple roamed the countryside, killing and robbing. They are thought of as bank robbers but usually robbed lonely country stores or rural undertakers. When the police found a roll of undeveloped film they had left behind, they developed the photos and found the well known pictures of the pair posing with their cars and guns. At first when these pictures were found, the public began to see them as romantic, but as they continued their rampage people began to see the cold-blooded killers in them. For information of the crimes click here.

They were finally betrayed by a member of their gang and ambushed by six lawmen on May 23, 1934 on a wooded road in Louisiana. Two of the posse said:

Each of us six officers had a shotgun and an automatic rifle and pistols. We opened fire with the automatic rifles. They were emptied before the car got even with us. Then we used shotguns. There was smoke coming from the car, and it looked like it was on fire. After shooting the shotguns, we emptied the pistols at the car, which had passed us and ran into a ditch about 50 yards on down the road. It almost turned over. We kept shooting at the car even after it stopped. We weren’t taking any chances.

Bonnie was hit 26 times, and Clyde 17. The undertaker had problems embalming them due to the number of bullet holes. At one point, Bonnie and Clyde had kidnapped a man named H.D. Darby and a woman named Sophia Stone. They were called to identify the bodies since they were familiar with the couple. While Darby was kidnapped, they found out he was an undertaker. Bonnie said that maybe some day he would work on her. Darby ended up assisting the local undertaker.

Bonnie and Clyde have been the subject of film, television, music, theater, books, podcasts and slang (modern-day Bonnie and Clyde). The 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde starring Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty, brought the couple firmly back into the public eye and, once again, some people found the pair to be romantic and heroic. These are the kind of people who marry serials killers who are serving life sentences. Hybristophilia (also known as Bonnie and Clyde syndrome) is the phenomenon of becoming attracted to, sexually aroused by, or achieving orgasm based on knowledge of, or watching, an outrage or crime take place. For instance, high-profile criminals (e.g. serial killers) such as Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, and Richard Ramirez reportedly received volumes of sexual fan mail and love letters.

For anyone who believes Bonnie and Clyde were anything but evil, the families of these people would disagree:

• John Napoleon “JN” Bucher of Hillsboro, Texas: murdered April 30, 1932 in Hillsboro, TX
• Deputy Eugene Capell Moore of Atoka, Oklahoma: murdered August 5, 1932 in Stringtown, OK
• Howard Hall of Sherman, Texas: murdered October 11, 1932 in Sherman, TX
• Doyle Allie Myers Johnson of Temple, Texas: murdered December 26, 1932 in Temple, TX
• Deputy Malcolm Simmons Davis of Dallas, Texas: murdered January 6, 1933 in Dallas, TX
• Detective Harry Leonard McGinnis of Joplin, Missouri: murdered April 13, 1933 in Joplin, MO
• Constable John Wesley “Wes” Harryman of Joplin, Missouri: murdered April 13, 1933 in Joplin, MO
• Town Marshal Henry Dallas Humphrey of Alma, Arkansas: murdered June 26, 1933 in Alma, AR
• Prison Guard Major Joseph Crowson of Huntsville, Texas: murdered January 16, 1934 in Houston County, TX
• Patrolman Edward Bryan “Ed” Wheeler of Grapevine, Texas: murdered April 1, 1934 near Grapevine, TX
• Patrolman Holloway Daniel “H.D.” Murphy of Grapevine, Texas: murdered April 1, 1934 near Grapevine, TX
• Constable William Calvin “Cal” Campbell of Commerce, Oklahoma: murdered April 6, 1934 near Commerce, OK

Other happenings on October 1, 1910:

• Twenty-one employees of the Los Angeles Times were killed by the detonation of a time bomb at 1:07 a.m. local time outside of the Times offices. The 16 sticks of dynamite triggered the explosion of underground gas lines and a subsequent fire.
• Twenty-three American sailors, from the battleship USS New Hampshire, drowned when their launch capsized.
• Federico Boyd became acting president of Panama.
• A coal mine explosion at Palaú, in the Coahuila state of Mexico, killed 200 workers.
• The first mid-air collision between two airplanes occurred in Milan, when an Antoinette monoplane, piloted by Rene Thomas of France, rammed a Farman biplane being flown by Bertram Dickson. Both pilots were injured in the crash.

Tomorrow – A member of our gang

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Sources

• Wikipedia.org
• Ancestry.com
• Onthisday.com
• Picryl.com
• Youtube.com