Posted on 04/19/2003 9:25:30 AM PDT by MeekOneGOP
Reality less romantic than outlaw legend
04/18/2003
It all looked so romantic in the movie: Warren Beatty, a handsome hunk in wingtips and a fedora, dashing about the Southwest with sultry siren Faye Dunaway as two star-crossed lovers caught up in a confused time of violence and passion. It's the way most of the world has come to remember Bonnie and Clyde.
But that's not how Doris Edwards remembers them, though she admits she tries not to remember them at all.
"I had to put it out of my mind," the 92-year-old Mrs. Edwards said. "I can't grieve all my life. That doesn't change things."
Mrs. Edwards was only 23 on Easter Sunday 1934, the young bride of Texas Highway Patrolman Edward Bryan Wheeler. She remembers eating breakfast with her husband. Then, at Mr. Wheeler's suggestion, she left to go to her parents' home. Just because he had to work didn't mean she should spend the day alone, he told her.
"When I got back to our apartment, the funeral director was waiting," Mrs. Edwards recalled. "He said, "Mrs. Wheeler, I have some bad news for you.'"
Her handsome man in uniform was dead. The young bride was now a widow. Death from Dallas
Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow met in January 1930 through a mutual friend in West Dallas. Bonnie was a struggling waitress and the estranged wife of an imprisoned thief. Clyde was a small-time hood and glass worker who had already developed a reputation for stealing cars.
Their life of crime together began just two months later when Bonnie smuggled a pistol inside the McLennan County Jail in Waco, where Clyde was being held on charges of burglary and auto theft. Clyde used the gun to make a run for it -- all the way to Ohio -- where he eventually was captured and returned to Texas.
Clyde served a short but difficult stint at the infamous Eastham Prison Farm near Crockett, Texas, before his mother's efforts to win his pardon succeeded. He emerged from prison a more hardened, bitter criminal. With a small cast of accomplices in tow, Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker set a course for infamy.
A Hillsboro storeowner was the first to die, robbed while making change for two late-night callers who claimed to be looking to buy guitar strings. Then came an Oklahoma deputy sheriff, gunned down outside a rural dance hall. A Sherman butcher, a Temple lumber salesman -- they all died at the muzzle of the Barrow Gang's arsenal.
Four years and at least 12 murders later, Bonnie and Clyde met their own bloody fate on a rural Louisiana road, ambushed by a posse of six lawmen sworn to bring down Dallas' most infamous outlaws. But the 167 bullet holes left in the couple's stolen Ford V8 did little to comfort a grieving widow back in Texas. Wrong place, wrong time
Patrolman E.B. Wheeler, a four-year veteran of the highway patrol, and his partner, H.D. Murphy, who had been on the force for six months, thought they were going to help a stranded motorist when they turned their motorcycles up a dusty road near Grapevine. A car parked at the roadside had caught their attention. They had decided to check it out.
According to most accounts, they probably never knew what hit them. Not a single shot was fired in their defense. The car sped away, leaving the officers' bodies lying in the dirt.
Historians disagree as to who actually pulled the triggers. Some say Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker carried out the attack together, with Bonnie personally delivering a final vicious shotgun blast to Patrolman Murphy at point-blank range. Former Barrow gang member Raymond Hamilton and his girlfriend also have been fingered for the crime, and Bonnie Parker's sister actually was arrested in connection with the deaths at one point.
Still others say Clyde and Barrow gang member Henry Methvin were the guilty parties.
"That deal up at Grapevine was a goof," said L.J. "Boots" Hinton, the son of Dallas County Deputy Sheriff Ted Hinton. The elder Hinton, along with fellow Deputy Bob Alcorn, spent months tracking Bonnie and Clyde until joining in the May 23, 1934, ambush that ended the couple's run from the law.
The younger Mr. Hinton said his father later learned from interviews with Bonnie and Clyde's families that she was asleep in the back seat of the car when the highway patrolmen approached. Clyde and Methvin were keeping watch for former gang member Hamilton, with whom Clyde had a score to settle.
"Henry misunderstood something Clyde said," Mr. Hinton said. "Clyde said, 'Let's take them,' referring to kidnapping them. Henry thought that meant, 'Let's snuff them.'"
Clyde Barrow had kidnapped peace officers before. Deputy Sheriff Joe Johns was abducted near Carlsbad, N.M., and released unharmed in San Antonio in August 1932. In January 1933, motorcycle officer Thomas Persell was kidnapped and then released at Poundstone Corner, Mo.
"Clyde did have a sense of humor, strange though it was. He thought it was great fun to take a lawman captive and turn them loose eight hours later," Mr. Hinton said.
But Henry Methvin was relatively new to running with Clyde and failed to understand the veteran kidnapper's intentions as he watched Patrolmen Murphy and Wheeler drawing near.
"Henry fired the first shots and all Clyde could do was join the concert," Mr. Hinton said. Life after death
On that Sunday afternoon in 1934, it didn't matter much to Doris Edwards who was responsible for the shooting near Grapevine. The tragic result was the same.
"I was so busy feeling sorry for myself," she said, recalling the many painful days that followed her husband's death.
Mrs. Edwards said she had never feared for her husband's safety, despite the inherent dangers of police work. She knew he had been the type to want to help people, and she observed from their frequent hunting trips together that he was a good shot. She naively had believed those characteristics would be enough to bring her husband home each night.
"As long as we were together, I had a happy life," she said.
As hard as it was to imagine in 1934, life did turn happy once again for Mrs. Edwards. The highway patrol had no survivors' benefits, but she began earning a living as a secretary for the Department of Public Safety. She even went on to assist the Texas Rangers as an undercover officer infiltrating illegal gambling operations across the state.
Mrs. Edwards remarried in 1940. Children and grandchildren followed. Her second husband died in 1950, but Mrs. Edwards found love again with a third husband in the 1970s.
Time eventually healed the emotional wounds Bonnie and Clyde inflicted on Mrs. Edwards.
"I've buried three husbands, so I must be pretty tough," she said.
But Mrs. Edwards said she's never understood the public's fascination with E.B. Wheeler's assailants. Bullets and banjos
Most historians point to director Arthur Penn's 1967 film "Bonnie and Clyde" as the chief suspect in the perpetual glamorization of the movie's namesakes.
Eventually hailed as a masterpiece by film critics, "Bonnie and Clyde" was targeted for several lawsuits by the families of the outlaws and the lawmen alike. The movie's historical inaccuracies were as plentiful as its bullets and banjo strains, they said, but the moviegoing public has clung to the film's portrayal of Bonnie and Clyde as tragic heroes.
"There was no glamour, no glory there," said Ken Holmes, a local historian who has amassed a sizable collection of Bonnie and Clyde paraphernalia that includes a replica of the duo's "death car" used in the filming of the 1967 movie. "I'm not really sure why everybody thinks so much of them. I've known some people who would sell their souls to be Bonnie and Clyde. I don't know why."
Mr. Holmes said the couple's life on the run was anything but romantic.
"They lived miserable lives. They used to sleep in the car. They'd bathe in a creek," he said. "They knew they couldn't really hide out in a place of comfort."
And the couple's heists were never as lucrative as those they pulled off on the big screen.
"They actually never really had any money to speak of," Mr. Holmes said. "Most of the money they stole came from people who didn't have much -- mom-and-pop stores and gas stations."
Still, local interest in the exploits of Bonnie and Clyde remains high in the city that served as the center of the couple's twisted world. The Dallas Historical Society's 2001 Bonnie and Clyde exhibit at the State Fair of Texas recorded 104,000 more visitors than an exhibit the following year that was devoted to the memory of President John F. Kennedy, who was slain in Dallas in 1963. And the organization's tour of Bonnie and Clyde hangouts continues to sell tickets by the busload.
Among the stops is a granite marker just off present day Highway 114 that pays tribute to the memory of Texas Highway Patrolmen E.B. Wheeler and H.D. Murphy, but Mrs. Edwards said she has no need for stones marking where her first love fell in the line of duty.
"I have a monument in my heart," she said.
E-mail briananderson@dallasnews.com
Like Stalin and Castro?
There was a book I read many, many years ago called, "Monkey on My Back" written by an ex-con whose last name I can not recall but I think his first name was Jack.
Jack had served time with Clyde and claimed that he (Clyde) was sold as a "girlfriend" to another con for two cartons of cigarettes. If true that might explain Clyde's little problem.
(Although I surely would like to sit at table with Edmund Burke and Samuel Johnson and listen to the discussion. Looking forward to doing so after my sinful aspect is removed in Purgatory and I am admitted into His Presence, after I'm Home.)
I bet there were 10,001 guys who were in the "final shootout".
Its no wonder they were killed.
O'dell ran a beauty shop in Greenvile, Texas that shared a building with the local doctor. One afternoon, Bonnie Parker came in. She was holding an umbrella with her hand shoved up inside to conceal her pistol. She sat in the chair and told O'dell to do her hair. Scared, she washed and curled Bonnie's hair.
Suddenly the phone rang. O'dell explained that she always answered the phone because the doctor was out. If she didn't answer, someone would know something was wrong.
Bonnie told her to answer, but to not do anything stupid.
O'dell wrote on the doctor's note pad and told the caller that the doctor was out on a call, but would be back soon.
The doctor finally came back. Bonnie ducked out of site. O'dell was calm and told the doctor to check his messages.
Of course O'dell had written that Bonnie was here and to go get the sheriff. Dr. calmed said he had a house call and took his bag.
Bonnie got spooked and demanded that the curlers be taken out. Her hair was not dry yet, but she got out of there before the sheriff arrived.
This feisty 94 year old lady still cuts and styles hair here in Alba.
20-year-old divorcee, Irene, and former Sunday School Superintendent/married father of two, Dague, were entrenched in their own gas station and grocery store robbing spree (Aug '29-Dec '29) in the tri-state of Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania before Bonnie even MET Clyde. Unlike the thrill-killing Parker and Barrow, Schroeder and Dague displayed no bloodthirsty tendencies until December 27, 1929.
On this date in history, Irene and Dague robbed yet another grocery chain store, this one in Butler, PA. They got away with $220 worth of cash, checks, and belongings. The date became significant, however, for two other reasons.
One--It was the first crime to ever inspire the use of Pennsylvania's brand-new Teletype Tickertape system, used in getting the word of fresh crimes out to every police detatchment in the state, and Two--The murder of Highway Patrolman, Cpl. Brady C. Paul, who along with his partner, Pvt. Ernest C. Moore, had set up a roadblock in wait for the vehicle carrying Irene, Dague, Irene's older brother Tommy Crawford, and her 4 year old son Donnie. A surprise gunfight ensued and the two troopers were left on the pavement, wounded...Paul mortally.
Two miles later, with their car shot up with visible bullet holes in the windshield and rear body, the killers carjacked a steel company supervisor and his secretary who were on their way to lunch and fled back to West Virginia.
Irene's toddler provided what may be the most infamous quote by a child in criminal history, two days later when Pennsylvania Troopers, tracking leads in Wheeling, found him at his aunt's residence across the Ohio River from his mother's hometown.
"My momma shot two cops just like you," was the utterance that told the police that Irene WAS the woman they were looking for.
That search carried on another 16 days, though it wasn't the Pennsylvania police to make the arrest. Way down in Arizona, on January 14, 1930, a posse of some 110 men surrounded Irene, Dague, and an ex-con drifter they had picked up along a Texas highway days earlier, in the Estrella Mountains. Upon running out of ammunition, the trio surrendered. Irene and Dague were extradited back to Pennsylvania, tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. Irene became the first woman in Pennsylvania history to die in the state's electric chair on February 23, 1931 at the age of 22 years, 6 days. Dague followed her to the hot seat. Tommy Crawford was never found.
Bonnie & Clyde began their criminal career the next year.
My Dad lives in Quitman, just down the road from Alba. (The locals pronounce it as if it we Albie, so my Dad tells me). I go through Alba on my way to his house. Highway 69 to 182 East. Small world, huh? . . .
Monkey Off My Back: An Ex-Convict and Addict Relates His Discovery of Personal Freedom,by Jack Brown
It was a interesting book as I recall.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.