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Documentary, BBC Timewatch The Real Bonnie and Clyde
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00:00Hollywood portrayed them as the most glamorous outlaws in American history.
00:10She just had this strong love for Clyde and he for her.
00:16Their chaotic crime spree lasted two years and claimed 14 lives.
00:22One man died and bled out at the scene. The other man died later in hospital that night.
00:27But who were Bonnie and Clyde? What drove them to a life of violent crime?
00:36And how did they evade capture for so long?
00:40Clyde's been shot through the left cheekbones. Bonnie has been shot in the belly.
00:48Drawing on eyewitness accounts, newly released police files,
00:53and the discovery of a remarkable family memoir.
00:59Time Watch reveals the true motives and secret tactics
01:03behind the legend of America's most iconic outlaws.
01:09The End
01:15I am prepared under my constitutional duty to recommend the measures that a stricken nation in the midst of a stricken world may require.
01:27I am prepared, under my constitutional duty, to recommend the measures that a stricken nation
01:36in the midst of a stricken world may require.
01:41When Roosevelt was elected president in 1932, the United States of America was in economic
01:49meltdown.
01:50The 1929 Wall Street crash had decimated the financial markets, and a devastating drought
02:05had turned the farmland of the Midwest into a dust bowl.
02:14The Great Depression brought America's poor to its knees.
02:20It also triggered a crime wave of unprecedented proportions.
02:25All over America, there were criminal elements, some of them highly organized, carrying out
02:32all sorts of major crimes.
02:34The depredations of vicious outlaws roving from state to state like packs of wolves amounted
02:40to an actual armed invasion of America.
02:43You can't really understand what motivated them if you don't understand the economic hopelessness
02:55of the time.
02:57The most infamous outlaws of all were a pair of young lovers whose two-year crime spree
03:05included armed robbery, car theft, abduction, murder, and a series of dramatic gun battles
03:12across at least 11 states.
03:16Some saw them as modern-day Robin Hoods, others as bloodthirsty hell raisers.
03:22But all of America was captivated by the story of Bonnie and Clyde.
03:30A story that began here, amid the poverty and economic ruin of Texas.
03:36In February 1932, a 21-year-old car thief and burglar called Clyde Barrow was released
03:51after two years in prison.
03:55He returned to the family home, a filling station in the deprived district of West Dallas.
04:00This building behind me was the Barrow family residence from 1931 to approximately 1940.
04:16It was named the Barrow Star Filling Station.
04:23There is some evidence that Clyde tried to go straight, but his return to crime seemed depressingly
04:29inevitable.
04:34In 1932, when we first see the first embryonic Barrow gang, Clyde's already been in prison.
04:42He can't keep a job in Dallas because the police keep rousting him.
04:49For these young people, there's a chance for fun and excitement.
04:54You're not going to get that if you obey the law.
04:56Early in April 1932, with a gang recruited from the West Dallas underworld, Clyde Barrow became
05:07a bank robber.
05:10Later that month, after an aborted car theft, two of his gang were captured and jailed.
05:16One of them was a 21-year-old woman called Bonnie Parker.
05:27She was married very, very young, like 16, I think, and her husband was in prison.
05:34Then she met Clyde, and it must have just been a strong attraction.
05:42She just had this strong love for Clyde and he for her.
05:48Bonnie grew up in Cement City, part of the West Dallas slum.
05:53That's just one of the worst slums, not only in Texas, but I would say in the entire country,
05:58during the Depression, she always wanted to be a singer, an actress on Broadway.
06:09She wanted to be a famous poet.
06:11She told people that constantly.
06:14But when you grew up in Cement City, you didn't have many choices in life.
06:19By the time she went to prison, even her mother was troubled by Bonnie's fascination with Clyde's
06:29life of crime.
06:32Bonnie was learning the jargon of gangdom and striving desperately to fit into it and become
06:37part of it.
06:39There seemed to be a strange and terrifying change taking place in the mind of my child.
06:46I cannot imagine someone choosing that life.
06:49But I think Clyde just got so far in it that he, there was no out, you know, there was no out.
06:56And she chose to go with him, you know.
07:02While Bonnie was in jail, Clyde's criminal career reached a critical turning point.
07:09Petty theft turned to murder when the bungled robbery of a grocery store led to the death of its owner,
07:17John Butcher.
07:19Clyde and these two friends of his, these two cohorts, Ted Rogers and Johnny Russell, went down there.
07:30They cased the place.
07:33Clyde knew this guy.
07:35And so Clyde didn't want to go inside, but he sent the other two in.
07:38There's varying stories about what happened next.
07:45But whatever happened, Ted Rogers shot Butcher.
07:50Clyde was outside in the car.
07:51But because Rogers and Russell were associated with Clyde, it was immediately linked to Clyde.
08:03When Bonnie was released from prison two months later, Clyde was wanted for murder.
08:08He faced the electric chair if caught, but she vowed never to leave him.
08:17Bonnie and Clyde were already beyond the point of no return.
08:20The shooting of John Butcher had been a tragic blunder, but by the end of the year, Clyde and Bonnie were involved in three more seemingly callous murders.
08:34And in January 1933, Clyde's reputation as a ruthless killer, who would shoot without hesitation, was sealed when a deputy sheriff was murdered at this notorious West Dallas safe house.
08:51Clyde wasn't what you call a cold-blooded murderer, as walking up to someone and shooting for the thrill of it.
09:06But if he felt threatened and pushed into a corner, he's going to come out firing.
09:13Acting on a tip-off relating to another local bank robber, five police officers had the house surrounded.
09:21When Clyde Barrow arrived, trying to contact one of his gang, his visit proved a deadly coincidence.
09:35Confronted by an armed officer, Clyde opened fire.
09:40He was now a cop killer in a high-profile case.
09:43Already wanted for four other murders, Clyde and his lover Bonnie took to the road.
09:56Their life on the run was romanticised and made glamorous.
10:00But the true story of their fugitive lifestyle remained untold, until the recent discovery of one of their accomplice's personal effects.
10:10Blanche Barrow was married to Clyde's older brother, Buck.
10:21She became a reluctant member of the Barrow gang in March 1933.
10:25Over 60 years later, a close friend made a remarkable discovery.
10:32It was 12 years after Blanche died, I was getting ready to move to a new apartment.
10:42And I started to just toss it out because it was in an old raggedy envelope.
10:48And my son, Lee, said, it says Bonnie and Clyde on the outside of this.
10:56I said, oh my, I forgot all about it.
11:00Blanche gave this to me and wanted me to make sense out of it.
11:05And inside was this Christmas card.
11:11And inside that were two tablets that had Blanche's writing.
11:18And it said, written in 1933, 34, 35.
11:28And those were the years that she was in prison.
11:31Blanche Barrow was captured and jailed after a bloody shootout in July 1933.
11:43While in prison, she wrote a detailed account of her time with the Barrow gang.
11:51We roamed over many states, leaving a trail of horror behind us,
11:56terrorizing those Clyde came into contact with and needed something from.
12:01It's important because it's an eyewitness account that places you in the car with Bonnie and Clyde.
12:26Blanche's intimate account would lead John Neill Phillips to re-evaluate the motives behind the Barrow gang's legendary exploits.
12:48But there was also a second, often overlooked side to the outlaw's story.
12:58As Bonnie and Clyde's notoriety grew, the question on everybody's lips was, why couldn't the police catch them?
13:07Dallas County Deputy Sheriff Ken Holmes believes that the answer lies in the police's own archives.
13:20Well, I'm looking at a document here from the County of Horton, Texas.
13:25This is dated August 30th, 1932, and it's to all peace officers in the United States.
13:30So, they're taking this very seriously, and they're calling them extremely dangerous.
13:38Ken has pieced together a paper trail of documents from local police officers,
13:43all frustrated by their failure to apprehend Bonnie and Clyde.
13:47Please make every effort to arrest these parties and stop their running over the country shooting officers wherever they go.
14:02They will not hesitate to shoot in making their escape and have said that they would not be taken alive.
14:09But America, as yet, had no national police force.
14:17And the archives reveal that Bonnie and Clyde were directly profiting from the shortcomings of American law enforcement during the Great Depression.
14:26Many of these folks had no law experience in a small town.
14:30Your local deputy would be hired for $15 a week, and he'd have to drive his own farm pickup truck,
14:38which probably was held together with bailing wire, chewing gum, and a lot of hope.
14:42There weren't two-way radios.
14:45There is no coordinated effort to catch them yet.
14:50But police incompetence was just one factor in Clyde and Bonnie's early success.
14:55The gangsters would play a deadly game of cat and mouse with the law for the rest of their lives.
15:03And the evidence points not to a mindless crime spree,
15:08but reveals Clyde Barrow as a calculated criminal
15:11who made a series of tactical choices
15:14deliberately designed to exploit his opponent's weaknesses.
15:19His most important weapon was a piece of state-of-the-art technology
15:24the Ford V8.
15:32In one of those happy accidents of history,
15:36in 1932, Mr. Ford introduced his new V8 engine to the public,
15:42and it was love at first sight.
15:46The fact is that if you gave Clyde Barrow a Ford V8
15:51and five minutes' head start, he was gone.
15:57The Barrow gang travelled exclusively in stolen cars.
16:03Clyde realised that using the V8 gave them a clear advantage.
16:07Most of Clyde's opposition was in the form of small-town law officers,
16:13and most of those men drove whatever was available,
16:18either their own personal car
16:19or possibly a county car,
16:23and most of those would be a few years old.
16:30Clyde maintained, even to his family,
16:34that he would much rather run than fight,
16:37and if he had to run,
16:40he considered himself a better driver
16:42than anybody he would come up against.
16:45He was never run down by police pursuit
16:48in the 25 months that he was on the run.
16:51Never.
16:54Clyde's choice of car epitomised his acute tactical awareness,
16:59an attention to detail driven by his fierce determination
17:02to stay one step ahead of the law.
17:07Barrow was the leader.
17:09He was, in many ways, a control freak.
17:14He decided where they went.
17:16He decided when they went there.
17:18He decided who was driving the car,
17:21which was usually him.
17:23He decided everything.
17:27The threat of a death sentence
17:29seemed reason enough to explain Clyde's desperate nature.
17:36But now, for the first time,
17:38Blanche Barrow's memoir offers an insider account
17:41of what life on the run was really like for the outlaws.
17:46All of us had a lot of fun together,
17:49but to me, there always seemed to be
17:51a shadow hanging over us,
17:53like a dark cloud.
17:59On the 1st of April, 1933,
18:02Bonnie and Clyde rented a hideout in Joplin,
18:06a notorious gang town in Missouri.
18:12They were accompanied by a teenage gang member
18:15called W.D. Jones,
18:18Clyde's brother Buck,
18:21recently released after 17 months inside for burglary,
18:24and Buck's wife,
18:27Blanche.
18:28They seemed an unlikely band of outlaws,
18:32but Blanche's memoir also reveals
18:34a unique understanding of the forces
18:36that drove the Barrow gang.
18:41Clyde told me most everything he had done
18:44since his own parole,
18:45and I realized that Buck was in danger
18:48at any and all times with Clyde.
18:50There's Buck, who's the older brother.
18:55Clyde Barrow was way beyond
18:57anything Buck had ever done.
19:00Buck told me of his plan
19:02to try to persuade Clyde
19:03to give up the kind of life he was now living.
19:07There's Bonnie Parker.
19:10Bonnie Parker is just head over heels
19:12in love with Clyde Barrow.
19:15She told me everything that had happened to them
19:18in the past six months
19:19and how she wished she and Clyde
19:21were as free as Buck and I were.
19:26There's W.D. Jones.
19:28Before he joined up with Bonnie and Clyde,
19:31he didn't even own a pair of shoes.
19:33Now he's wearing suits and smoking cigars.
19:37And at that point in Joplin,
19:39W.D. Jones pretty much idolized Bonnie and Clyde.
19:42I suppose he was like most kids his age,
19:4616 or 17 years old.
19:48He thought it could get a thrill
19:49from most anything,
19:51even shooting at cops.
19:55And then we've got Blanche,
19:57who's just absolutely in love with Buck,
20:01just every bit as much
20:02as Bonnie is in love with Clyde.
20:04It was Clyde Barrow
20:09who had drawn the other four together.
20:12And Blanche's description
20:13of his state of mind
20:15sheds dramatic new light
20:16on the story of Bonnie and Clyde.
20:20I caught a few words now and then
20:22of Clyde's conversation with Buck,
20:24and I did not like what I heard.
20:28Blanche reveals that by the time
20:30the gang gathered in Joplin,
20:32Clyde had become obsessed
20:34by a dark episode from his past.
20:39The motivation behind Clyde's deadly violence
20:42lies in what happened to him
20:45three years earlier,
20:47inside this prison.
20:50Buck and I visited Clyde
20:52at a Texas prison farm
20:53called Eastom.
20:56Clyde told me many things
20:58that happened in prison.
21:02In September 1930,
21:10aged just 20,
21:13Clyde Barrow was sent
21:14to Eastom Prison Farm
21:16near Huntsville, Texas.
21:23John Neil Phillips
21:24has researched Clyde's time here.
21:26He has interviewed fellow inmates
21:30and been granted special access
21:32to the now derelict building.
21:36John believes
21:38that what happened here
21:39had a profound effect
21:41on Clyde's character.
21:44When Clyde first arrived here
21:46at Eastom,
21:47he was convicted for burglary
21:49and auto theft,
21:50which were not violent crimes.
21:52a fellow convict
21:57described, though,
21:58a transformation
21:59that Clyde Barrow
22:01underwent when he was here.
22:03He said,
22:03I saw Clyde Barrow
22:05change from a schoolboy
22:06to a rattlesnake
22:07right before my eyes.
22:09In October 1931,
22:17a convict called Ed Crowder
22:19was brutally murdered
22:21in the prison shower block.
22:24Another prisoner
22:25called Aubrey Scully
22:26was blamed.
22:28But he wasn't the killer.
22:32Crowder was known
22:33to sexually assault convicts
22:35and sexually assaulted Clyde.
22:39So Clyde conspired
22:41with another convict
22:43who was a life-termer here
22:44to actually perpetrate
22:47this murder,
22:48but the life-termer
22:49would take the rap
22:50for the murder.
22:56The real murderer's identity
22:58remained secret for decades.
23:01But John Neal Phillips
23:02believes that Clyde Barrow
23:04was a killer months before
23:05he became wanted for murder
23:07outside of prison.
23:09That was his first murder.
23:11It was purely
23:12an act of desperation.
23:14This place would make you
23:15that desperate.
23:19Clyde's remaining
23:20three months inside
23:21proved unbearable
23:23in a prison
23:24which was the scene
23:25of some of the worst brutality
23:26in American penal history.
23:29There were enough guards
23:31that were extremely sadistic
23:33all over the prison system,
23:34but it seemed to be
23:35really concentrated
23:36here at Easton.
23:40Some prisoners chose suicide.
23:42They would deliberately
23:43just run out
23:44in front of the guards
23:45and let them be killed.
23:50Another way to avoid this,
23:52however,
23:53was to inflict an injury
23:55on yourself.
23:56And if it was serious enough,
23:57you would have to be taken
23:59to Huntsville,
24:00to the hospital
24:01in the main prison there
24:02and get away from
24:04whatever guard
24:05was out to get you.
24:09Blanche's memoir
24:10reveals that in January 1932,
24:13Clyde was moved
24:13to the prison hospital.
24:18Clyde was walking
24:19on crutches
24:19because he had cut off
24:21two of his toes
24:22with an axe.
24:23Clyde's experience
24:27at Easton
24:28was psychologically devastating.
24:31When he emerged
24:32from prison
24:32on parole
24:33after two years inside,
24:36he was a damaged
24:36and dangerous man.
24:39There's a lot of evidence
24:40to indicate that Clyde
24:41was quite a control freak.
24:44So you can imagine
24:44what that must have been like
24:45to somebody like that
24:47to be put in a place
24:49like this
24:49where you lose
24:50complete control.
24:51It didn't affect
24:52all prisoners that way,
24:54but Barrow decided
24:55to seek revenge.
24:56He just grew
24:57to hate this place.
24:59And once he's released
25:01from Easton,
25:03he swears
25:04to several people,
25:05including his mother,
25:07that he will never
25:08be taken alive.
25:10I'll never go back
25:12to that hell hole,
25:13he said.
25:14They're going to have
25:14to kill me.
25:21For the rest
25:23of his short life,
25:25Clyde was consumed
25:26by a bitter hatred
25:27for the regime
25:28at Easton.
25:30It was the fear
25:31of being captured
25:32and returned there
25:34that fuelled
25:34his determination
25:35never to be taken alive
25:37and drove the Barrow Gang's
25:41increasingly extreme tactics.
25:43Barrow Gang stole
25:51a supply of weapons
25:52from a nearby
25:53military facility.
25:56Clyde began
25:57showing Bonnie
25:58all the guns
25:59and told her
26:00what he could do
26:01with one of the
26:01army rifles.
26:03It could shoot
26:0320 times
26:04without stopping.
26:06This was just
26:07one of a series
26:08of audacious raids
26:10on National Guard
26:11armories.
26:11The prize target
26:13was a military-grade
26:15machine gun
26:16that would dominate
26:17the next chapter
26:18in Bonnie and Clyde's
26:19continuing battle
26:20against the police.
26:25Vintage gun collector
26:27Don Raspanti
26:28has made a study
26:29of the firearms
26:30of the time.
26:33The handguns
26:35of the period
26:35were mainly
26:36.38 special
26:37made by Colt
26:38or Smith & Wesson
26:39and this particular
26:40size and configuration
26:41would be very typical
26:42of a uniformed
26:44police officer.
26:44They came in
26:45different sizes.
26:46Your detectives
26:48and plainclothes
26:49liked the smaller
26:51barrels.
26:51Shotguns were very
26:53popular with police
26:54departments because
26:55you didn't have to be
26:56that great a marksman
26:57and it had a lot of
26:58knockdown and a lot
26:59of force.
26:59All right,
27:02now this.
27:03This was Clyde
27:04Barrow's favorite.
27:05It had a lot
27:06of firepower.
27:07This is the 1918
27:09Browning automatic
27:10rifle, more commonly
27:11known as the B.A.R.
27:13It can fire semi-automatic,
27:15which was one round
27:16every time you pull
27:17the trigger, or full
27:18automatic, which you pull
27:19the trigger back and it
27:20just goes until you stop.
27:22The B.A.R.
27:24was a devastating weapon
27:26in Clyde's tactical
27:27armory.
27:28He knew it would give him
27:30a huge advantage against
27:31the local police.
27:32In those days, law
27:36enforcement officers
27:37almost always had to
27:38buy their own weapons,
27:40which was no small
27:42thing in the Great
27:44Depression.
27:46If they could afford
27:47anything, it was a pistol.
27:57Well, here comes Barrow
27:59with a military weapon.
28:02There's just no contests
28:05there.
28:24Clyde's formidable
28:25firepower would become
28:29the hallmark of a series
28:30of increasingly bloody
28:31gunfights that began
28:35when a group of local
28:36lawmen responded to
28:38reports of suspicious
28:39activities at the Barrow
28:41Gang's hideout in Joplin.
28:43They stayed here almost two
28:54weeks, but on the afternoon
28:57of the 13th, they were
28:59interrupted by five policemen
29:02who came with a search
29:04warrant, thinking that they
29:05were going to find a bootlegging
29:07operation going on here.
29:08Two men are hit, one man died
29:18and bled out at the scene.
29:19The other man died later in
29:21hospital that night.
29:22The gang blasted their way out, leaving two police officers dead.
29:27Their escape was the clearest demonstration yet that local lawmen were ill-equipped to take
29:34on such dangerous outlaws.
29:35The reason they're able to stay at large is they're only being pursued by under-armed,
29:44undermanned, under-carred local authorities.
29:48If they couldn't outrun law officers trying to capture them, the Barrow Gang could just blast
29:56the heck out of them.
29:59In Joplin, essentially that is what happened.
30:03But in their haste to escape, the gang left behind most of their belongings.
30:09And when the police examined the scene of the crime, the legend of Bonnie and Clyde was
30:14born.
30:16They left behind their suitcases of possessions and of course several rolls of undeveloped film.
30:23And there suddenly are these pictures.
30:28These gangsters posing like they would for a photo booth shot, only they're pointing real
30:34guns instead of fake guns.
30:40And Bonnie Parker, here she is leaning in a very unladylike posture on the bumper of a car
30:46and she's got a cigar dangling from her mouth.
30:50And that photo broke the Barrow Gang into huge national celebrities.
30:58America was enthralled.
30:59But Blanche's memoir reveals that the price of fame was an outlaw existence, far from the
31:06glamorous lifestyle of legend.
31:12We lived in the car day and night with very little sleep, just driving like mad, going no place.
31:18We had to keep ahead of the cops.
31:21If we stayed in one place very long, they would catch up with us.
31:25Blanche's account is a unique first-hand description of the grim reality of life on the run with Bonnie and Clyde.
31:35One of the greatest aspects of Blanche's memoir is her description of their lifestyle between these gunfights.
31:47We drove so much and so fast most of the day and night, sleeping only a few hours at a time.
31:55Living conditions were, well, how many can we fit in a car?
32:02We drove through South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and west through Mississippi.
32:12Using local plates to avoid attracting suspicion, Clyde steered the gang relentlessly from state to state,
32:20leaving local lawmen, whose jurisdiction ended at the county or state line, powerless.
32:27He ranged as far as the east coast. We think that he was in Florida and even North Carolina at times,
32:34as far northeast as Indiana and Michigan, as far north as Minnesota, all through the Midwest and Iowa and Kansas.
32:44He thought nothing of travelling 500 miles a day. If he was pursued, he could travel as much as 1,000 miles in a 24-hour period.
32:55Fast cars, big guns, and relentless travel were the secrets of the Barrow gang's epic crime spree.
33:04But their tactics were increasingly attracting attention beyond the local police level.
33:16Ken Holmes has obtained the FBI file on Bonnie and Clyde. It has only recently been released.
33:23And it sheds new light on the campaign to catch the Barrow gang.
33:30Now we're finding, you know, with the release of this file from the FBI, which is, I don't know, 600 to 900 pages of information,
33:38that the Bureau of Investigation was on the Barrow case, but was very limited in what they were allowed to do.
33:45The file reveals that Federal Chief J. Edgar Hoover was personally outraged by Clyde Barrow's audacious raids on military armories.
33:59But while Federal jurisdiction didn't include robbery or even murder, it did cover the movement of stolen cars across state lines.
34:12In May 1933, a Federal warrant was issued against Clyde and Bonnie for car theft,
34:19the only grounds on which Hoover could involve the Barrow gang in his personal mission to change the face of American law enforcement.
34:27In the last year alone, it was necessary for local law enforcement officers in the cities and communities of America
34:35to kill nearly 400 members of the underworld who, fully armed, sought to cause the death of the officers who came to arrest them.
34:48In Washington, D.C., J. Edgar Hoover is heading the Justice Department's Division of Investigation.
34:55This will become the FBI, but it isn't yet.
34:58And it's his ambition, which he ultimately succeeds in, of establishing the FBI as the group that can come into any situation, cross any boundaries and lines.
35:08But that wasn't the case yet.
35:10He chose to make that case based on the criminals of the day.
35:16Bonnie and Clyde were perfect, and he really wanted to get involved.
35:20Federal involvement in the Barrow gang case has always been thought to be minimal.
35:27But despite the limitations of their jurisdiction, Hoover's agents would play a significant part in the eventual downfall of Bonnie and Clyde.
35:37By the summer of 1933, the Barrow gang's formidable firepower had seen them escape from a series of intense gunfights across several states.
35:49But Bonnie and Clyde's notoriety was making life on the run increasingly grim.
35:58And at an abandoned tourist camp at Dexfield Park, Iowa, after their second brutal shootout in less than a week, their luck changed.
36:12Someone spots this group of campers and becomes suspicious of them.
36:18And word is spread, and a small posse is formed.
36:29I heard Clyde suddenly say, look out.
36:32Then he and W.D. rushed for the car and started shooting.
36:36Clyde is wounded in the arm, raised in the head, Buck was hit at least once.
36:47Bonnie was then shot at least once in the abdomen, and they dragged themselves up this hill.
36:53Shortly after daybreak, on the 24th of July, 19-year-old Marvell Feller was helping with the morning milking on his family farm.
37:08This here was about a five or six-acre cornfield right here is where it was at, right here.
37:15Marvell and his nine-year-old sister Louise were about to come face to face with Bonnie and Clyde.
37:22They are the only people alive to have come so dangerously close to the most feared outlaws in America.
37:36Clyde had been shot through the left cheekbones in his head.
37:42He'd been grazed right there, and the blood was running down his cheek.
37:46And Bonnie had been shot in the belly, I guess the belly is what you say, and the blood was running all down her.
38:00We discovered the fellows coming up through the lots, and they were carrying Bonnie, my brother, and my dad.
38:10She'd been shot and really bloody, and Clyde was behind them with a gun on them.
38:21They had my brother pull the car out and get it straightened up in the lane.
38:28And Marvell said that the gun was laying right between them.
38:32And he really wanted to reach down and grab it, but he knew better than to do that.
38:37Remarkably, despite their injuries, Bonnie, Clyde, and W.D. Jones escaped.
38:48But Clyde's brother, Buck, was too badly wounded to run.
38:53It was the end of the road for him, and for his wife, Blanche.
38:57They saw Buck faint and pull me down. I called to Clyde, but they didn't stop.
39:08Finally, she stands up, and the posse then apprehended Blanche and Buck.
39:15And it's at that point that that really famous photo of Blanche is taken.
39:19Buck Barrow died from his wounds five days later.
39:28Blanche was sentenced to ten years in jail, where she was visited by a high-profile interrogator.
39:35J. Edgar Hoover himself went to the jail where Blanche was after she gave up.
39:43The net was closing in on Bonnie and Clyde.
39:46Federal as well as local lawmen were now on their trail.
39:50Soon after, in Texas, W.D. Jones was arrested.
39:54And the Dallas police made a vital breakthrough.
40:04Since Clyde's murder of a deputy sheriff earlier in the year,
40:10the Dallas County police had made Bonnie and Clyde their top priority.
40:17The sheriff, Smoot Schmidt, had assigned two men to the case.
40:21Ladies and gentlemen, I want to introduce two of my deputies.
40:26R.S. Bob Alcorn and Ted Hinton.
40:32Ted Hinton, I think, had a huge crush on Bonnie.
40:34He used to be one of her customers when she was a waitress.
40:37Bob Alcorn was the first man ever to arrest Clyde Barrow.
40:41He arrested Clyde when Clyde was 15 or 16 for chicken theft.
40:45And their value to Schmidt, or at least the way Schmidt perceived it,
40:48was they might have insights that would allow him to, in some way,
40:52get informers, find informers, and capture Bonnie and Clyde.
40:57In November 1933,
41:00Hinton and Alcorn received a tip-off about a secret Barrow family meeting.
41:08This was the breakthrough they had hoped for,
41:11the opportunity for a police ambush.
41:13Ted and Bob wanted to bring in the Highway Patrol,
41:17they wanted to bring in the Texas Rangers and the Marshal's Office.
41:22And Smoot, he roosted up, and he says,
41:24no, he says, Dallas Sheriff's Department is going to handle this ourselves.
41:29And that proved to be one of the biggest mistakes he ever made in his life.
41:34Sheriff Schmidt directed an unsuccessful attempt to take Bonnie and Clyde alive.
41:47Although the outlaw's bullet-ridden car was later recovered,
41:51they had once again shot their way out of trouble.
41:54But Ted Hinton was determined that the next time he faced Bonnie and Clyde,
42:01he would not be outgunned.
42:03He immediately contacted a US congressman named Hatton Sumners.
42:08And he got Congressman Sumners to grieve the skids for him to draw a BAR out of the National Guard armory,
42:17along with a box of ammunition.
42:23Hinton had procured a BAR, the military machine gun beloved of Clyde Barrow.
42:29Finally, the police were beginning to match the tactics of their outlaw opponents.
42:37In January 1934, Clyde decided to realise an ambitious plan.
42:42For some time he had been plotting a raid on Eastam Prison, the scene of his first murder.
42:55Blanche Barrow's memoir reveals that the brutal abuse he had suffered as an inmate here
43:01was the real driving force behind Clyde's violent criminal career.
43:05Four years after he first arrived at Eastam,
43:08a daring prison break was to be his final act of revenge.
43:20Clyde had always planned to raid Eastam.
43:23He was once a prisoner here at Eastam.
43:25He was brutalised here at Eastam.
43:29This was a raid that was planned four years before it actually occurred.
43:38To quote him directly,
43:43I would like to raid this place,
43:46free as many prisoners as I can,
43:49and kill every damn guard in the place.
43:57Five prisoners escaped.
43:59Clyde had settled his score with Eastam.
44:02But this act of vengeance marked the beginning of the end for Bonnie and Clyde.
44:12A prison guard was fatally wounded by one of the convicts during the escape.
44:18For the prison manager, Lee Simmons, it was clear who was to blame.
44:24He now vowed revenge and called on the services of a formidable investigator.
44:31A former Texas Ranger called Frank Hamer.
44:37He asked Hamer to put Bonnie and Clyde on the spot and shoot everyone in sight.
44:42And that was the beginning of the tracking of Bonnie and Clyde with the express intent of killing them.
44:51Harrison Hamer has made a detailed study of his great uncle's involvement in the Barrow case.
44:57Revealing a methodical and ruthless tracker, unconcerned by the limits of jurisdiction or geography.
45:04Okay, this was Frank's expense account during the period of February the 15th, 1934 to February the 28th, 1934.
45:17This is money expended while traveling on official business in the capacity of investigator.
45:22This was a period of about 13 days and he traveled 1,397 miles so he was traveling about 100 miles a day.
45:36Adopting the outlaw lifestyle of his opponents, Frank Hamer took to the road.
45:42He got a car exactly like the Ford that Clyde was driving and he lived out of that car for the whole time he was tracking them down.
45:52He knew what kind of whiskey they drank, what brand of cigarettes they had, what kind of food they ate, where they ate at.
46:01He was like a pit ball. He was not going to give up. He was going to bring them to justice.
46:08At last, Clyde Barrow had met his match.
46:13Lee Simmons put Frank Hamer on the job. The job was going to get done.
46:19But while Frank Hamer has long been regarded as the archetypal Lone Ranger, the FBI file reveals that he was actually working in close harmony with J. Edgar Hoover's federal agents.
46:35Well, this letter here was March 17, 1934, telling the agents to work with Frank Hamer.
46:44And you start finding that Frank Hamer is working with their special agents in different locations and they're out investigating.
46:52And they did a quite detailed report. I mean, this is just a lot of information that is put in here.
47:00Behind the scenes, Hoover's men continued to make their resources and intelligence available to Frank Hamer.
47:07And in Dallas, the records now reveal that Bonnie and Clyde's family's telephones had been tapped.
47:17The police pursuit now focused on sophisticated surveillance and intelligence gathering.
47:22The tables were beginning to turn in the battle between Bonnie and Clyde and the law.
47:32And public opinion also turned against them after a shocking double murder here in Grapevine, Texas, on Easter Sunday, 1934.
47:42After a series of murders and bank jobs, Bonnie and Clyde were boldly keeping a rendezvous with some of their henchmen near Grapevine, Texas.
47:54While they waited, they drank whiskey, made love to each other and practiced their marksmanship by shooting at birds.
48:04Presently, two state highway patrol officers sighted the pair.
48:07They decide to investigate. They approach Bonnie and Clyde totally unaware of their identity.
48:21The murder of officers Edward Bryan Wheeler and Holloway Daniel Murphy seemed particularly callous.
48:30And for the first time, it was reported that Bonnie, as well as Clyde, had fired the fatal shots.
48:38This atrocious murder sealed the doom of Bonnie and Clyde.
48:46For every peace officer in the entire southwest became so enraged over this killing,
48:51they pledged themselves to sleepless days and nights in their search for this murdering pair.
48:56But despite the media reports, there is no evidence that Bonnie pulled the trigger here,
49:02or at any of the other murders attributed to the Barrow Gang.
49:04In fact, it was a third outlaw.
49:08Henry Methvin, one of the escapees from Easton, who opened fire first at Grapevine.
49:15Everyone within the Barrow Gang and the stories they told their families later,
49:21there's not much agreement on many things, but there's some agreement on this,
49:24that Clyde said to Henry Methvin, let's take them, meaning let's take them hostage.
49:29Henry hasn't been in this situation before. He's mean, he's young, and he's had too much to drink, and he starts shooting.
49:38But Methvin is mysteriously absent from the official version of events at Grapevine.
49:44Behind the scenes, a complex drama was beginning to play out.
49:51You can look at the newspaper headlines and you hardly ever find a mention of Methvin's name.
49:59And that, I think, can only have one thing behind it, and that was the fact there's this deal working.
50:06The official records reveal that Henry Methvin's family was plotting to betray Bonnie and Clyde in a deal brokered by Frank Hamer.
50:19Henry Methvin's sentence in the state of Texas would be wiped out, provided that Methvin's would place Barrow and Bonnie Parker on the spot.
50:29With the help of Henry Methvin's father, the plan was to lure Bonnie and Clyde into an ambush near the Methvin family home near Gibsland, Louisiana.
50:46The outlaws had been regularly sighted in the area since the raid on Easton Prison.
50:56And on Monday, the 21st of May, 1934, Frank Hamer assembled six officers on this remote country road.
51:04The composition of the posse was a six-man.
51:12Frank Hamer and Manny Gauld, who were both retired Texas Rangers.
51:17Two Dallas County deputy sheriffs, Ted Hinton and Bob Alcorn.
51:22And then you had Henderson Jordan, who was the sheriff here of Benville Parish,
51:28and his chief deputy, Apprentice Oakley.
51:31The two of them took in the legal jurisdiction for the shooting.
51:40And they waited down here for two days and two nights.
51:48Just before daybreak, on Wednesday the 23rd of May, the posse stopped a pickup truck.
51:55It was Henry Methvin's father.
51:57Bob Alcorn turned his truck around, put it in the southbound lane here.
52:04He jacked the wheel up, took it off.
52:08And by Methvin's truck being there, Clyde's going to naturally slow down,
52:14because he recognizes the truck.
52:15The trap was set.
52:21Later that morning, Bonnie and Clyde set off in their stolen Ford V8, hoping to meet Henry Methvin.
52:36Clyde Barrow was typically well armed.
52:37If you could have seen in this car that morning, you would have seen a sawed-off shotgun, three Browning automatic rifles, a loaded pistol, and a bag containing another ten or eleven handguns.
53:01The car was essentially a rolling armory.
53:11But this time, Bonnie and Clyde faced equal firepower, including Ted Hinton's BAR.
53:20It has been said that they were facing the most amount of firepower that they could have possibly faced short of an army platoon.
53:36This time, there would be no hope of taking Bonnie and Clyde alive.
53:43The posse would shoot on sight.
53:48And just after 9.15 on Wednesday, the 23rd of May, 1934, on a lonely road in Louisiana, Bonnie and Clyde's deadly game of cat and mouse reached its inevitable conclusion.
54:01I was glad they died together.
54:19That way, neither one had to deal with the grief of losing the other.
54:23The car wound up with 167 holes in it, counting the entrance and exit holes.
54:33Bonnie wound up with 53 in her, and Clyde wound up with 51 in him.
54:37There is not much to say now. It is all over. The ends of law and justice have been served.
54:58The Barrow Gang's chaotic crime spree had claimed 17 lives, including those of Buck Barrow and Bonnie and Clyde themselves.
55:19For her involvement with the Barrow Gang, Blanche Barrow spent nearly six years in prison, where she wrote her unique memoir.
55:33It's an account that finally explains Bonnie and Clyde's journey from petty crime to vicious murder, driven by Clyde's experience in a notoriously brutal Texas prison.
55:45The very next year, in 1935, Texas was named the worst prison in the United States.
55:52And they cited, in particular, brutality at various prison installations, and they really focused at East Ham.
56:00Bonnie and Clyde's downfall also signaled the beginning of a new chapter in American law enforcement.
56:07Bonnie and Clyde were a turning point in American legal history.
56:14Federal law changed so that murder and bank robbery became federal crimes.
56:22The Division of Investigation Agents then went out and pretty much over the next six months blew away all the other major criminals of the time.
56:33This was the birth of the FBI as we know it today.
56:40The crime wave of the Great Depression would soon run its course, but the legend of Bonnie and Clyde would continue to captivate the world for generations to come.
56:50Bonnie was a waitress in a small cafe.
57:02Clyde Barrel was the rounder that took her away.
57:07They both robbed and killed until both of them died.
57:13So goes the legend of Bonnie and Clyde, Bonnie and Clyde, Bonnie and Clyde.
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