Their Last Car

CHAPTER IV
THE WAGES OF SIN

Just outside Platte City, Missouri the gang pulled into the Red Crown Tourist Camp. Blanche entered the office and asked for two rooms. Her actions alerted Delbert Crabtree's, the night clerk. Blanche payed in cash and dashed out. Crabtree watched as the four men and another woman went into the cabins. The other woman's leg appeared to be heavily bandaged. The thing that worried him, however was that each man carried a rifle. Crabtree called the highway patrol.

Before midnight, an armored truck and some squad cars that slipped into the parking lot. The armored truck blocked the garage doors between the two cabins while the officers lined up in front of the two cabins. When everyone was in place, their lights shot on as a unit, one great beam spotting the front-line of cabins. A policeman banged on Buck's door, loud enough to wake both cabins and hollered for them to open up. Then he quickly stepped away from the stoop, because he knew what was fixing to happen.

Clyde started firing his Browning automatic toward the blinding light. W. D. was using a machine gun and Buck started firing too. The army of policemen started firing and window frames and door jams burst apart, and large clumps of plaster started. Buck was hit by two bullets in the head.

Clyde picked Bonnie up and kicked open the narrow door that led into the interior of the garage. He and W. D. laid her on the back seat. W. D. saw the armored police vehicle blocking them in and started shooting through the door of the armored van. The driver, after being hit several in his knees and thighs backed the vehicle away from the line of fire. When he did, Clyde drove the car through the garage doors and into the open courtyard. The police were stunned long enough to permit the gang to escape with only minor damage.

Buck was dying. Blanche was blinded by blood from glass cuts and W. D. was loosing blood from a shoulder wound lost blood, and wept. W. D. stole another automobile and they ended up in Dexfield Park on the Middle Raccoon.

Back at the Red Crown, the police were licking their minor wounds, considering. Deputy Highfill, the armored car driver, had taken buckshot, but would live; a Sergeant Coffey had a neck wound; his son Clarence (also a lawman) was struck in the elbow. But they were already regrouping and driving off in organized manhunts. They knew they had made pincushions of the gang members.

An early morning hunter had found the bandits' grove unseen and had immediately notified the sheriff's office. The sheriff deputized more than a hundred local men that had answered the call, Bonnie saw a movement in the brush which encircled the clearing just after sunrise. She called Clyde and the gang ran to the nearest car. Every path out was blocked by men with rifles. Clyde was shot in the arm and the car smashed into a tree. Bonnie was shot in the arm and W. D. was grazed in the head. The other escape car had been virtually destroyed, so they ran into the woods. Buck and Blanche on the other side of the car huddled together under a hail of bullets flying overhead.

Buck died three days later in a hospital bed, and Blanche was captured and finally received a ten years in a women's prison. Bonnie and Clyde got away and wandered the rest of that day through cornfields until Clyde was able to steal another car. W. D. had gotten lost in the gunfight at Dexfield Park and decided he didn't want to be an outlaw any more.

Bonnie and Clyde hid out around Dallas between August and October, 1933. But, they started again on November 8 when they held up the payroll office of the McMurray Oil Refinery at Arp, Texas. Sheriff Richard Schmid, demanded that Deputy Hinton pull out all stops to arrest Bonnie and Clyde.

W. D. Jones had been arrested in Houston and sent back to Dallas for questioning. Deputies Hinton and Alcorn conducted the interrogation. Jones claimed that Clyde had forced him to come along and he couldn't help himself. Hinton didn't believe him he knew that Jones could tell him about Clyde's and Bonnie's habits and characteristics, and allow them to get into Clyde's thought process and possibly be able to figure out Barrow's next move.

Later, the officers learned that a farmer who lived near rural Sowers Road had earlier reported to Dallas police that he knew of a Barrow family meeting spot where they picnicked on an open field beside a disused stretch of road near his property. There was always a young pretty thing who helped make the sandwiches and serve out the soda pop, he said, just like she was a waitress at one time.

Hinton knew that Clyde's mother Cummie's birthday on November 21, just a few days away. So on a hunch, surveillance began on the Barrow's gas station-homestead. Nothing happened until the 21st when Hinton received a call that the Barrows were loading what appeared to be picnic baskets into their jalopy. Hinton summoned his men and they rode out to the area indicated by the farmer. They parked the car on private property, and hid in the field of tall grass beside the road.

A gray sedan rolled over the horizon about dusk and stopped about 100 yards past the detectives. Bonnie and Clyde got out of the car and were looking down the road. Hinton, stood in the tall grass and shouted, "Barrow, surrender in the name of the law!" Neither Bonnie nor Clyde answered as they ran for their car. The officers opened fire, nicking both fugitives in the knees. When Clyde reached the car he took a machine gun from the front seat and sprayed bullets toward the grass where the shots were coming from. The officers dove to the ground and when they looked up again, the car was crossing the open plain. Hinton and the detectives learned that you don't holler hands-up to killers like Bonnie and Clyde. You shoot first, then read them their rights.

Bonnie and Clyde helped Ray Hamilton and a fellow convict Henry Methvin, break out of the Eastham Prison Farm, on January 16, 1934. A guard was killed during the escape. General Manager-Texas Prison System Lee Simmons was outraged and hired ex-Texas Ranger Frank Hamer to find Bonnie and Clyde. Hamer had personally shot eighty or more wanted killers during his career.

Simmons kept Hamer's assignment a secret to avoid a media circus. Both Hamer and Simmons didn't want Bonnie and Clyde to be warned. Ted Hinton heard rumors and decided that he and Bob Alcorn should be included in the hunt. They were the recognized authorities on Bonnie and Clyde and they had known their families personally. They were some of the very few lawmen who could recognize the duo at a glance.

With the gang rebuilt they pulled a February 19 burglary at the National Guard Armory in Ranger, Texas. Simmons called a brief meeting between the lawmen. Hamer, who usually worked alone, decided that Hinton and Alcorn would be valuable allies.

The Barrow Gang next robbed of the Lancaster, Texas Bank on February 26 and the shot of two Texas highway patrolmen cops, E. B. Wheeler and H .D. Murphy, near Grapevine on Easter Sunday, April 1.

Killing the country, because of its cold brutality. It appeared to most that the troopers were shot just for fun. Actually Clyde was asleep when the troopers rode by, then stop and park their motorcycles. Methvin panicked and woke Clyde. When Clyde saw the policemen, he smiled, and said let's take them. He wanted to take them a joyride, but Methvin, it meant only one thing. Before Clyde could stop him, Methvin misunderstood and started shooting. Both patrolmen lay dead.

The Texas Highway Patrol now wanted one of its own men in on the kill and Hamer was forced to accept Murray Gault, as the fourth man in Hamer's party.

After the gang committed a robbery in Texarkana, they got stuck in the mud of a country road after a heavy downfall. Clyde tried to wave down a passing motorist, but the driver, saw the gun in Clyde's belt and sped off to notify police. Just as the gang pushed their car out of the mud, two policemen drove up and one of them was killed. Clyde drove north as far as Topeka, Kansas so they could lay low for awhile. It was there that Bonnie and Clyde stole their last car. It was a1934 sand-colored Ford V-8 Sedan with custom seat covers and built-in water-style heater.

Bonnie and Clyde met with their families for the last time on a rural road near Dallas. That meeting was very solemn. Bonnie seemed to know their time was near. She then handed her a poem she had written, which she called simply, The Story of Bonnie and Clyde.

Hamer, found out about the meeting with their folks in and guessed that they would probably go visit with Methvin's father, Iverson, who lived in Acadia, Louisiana, near Shreveport.

Henry Methvin was very nervous after he had killed the motorcycle trooper. He realized that he had gotten in much deeper then he meant to. He heard the talk about death during the family and he had read Bonnie's poem which spoke of death. He was a nervous wreck when they finally arrived in Shreveport, Methvin was a bundle of. While they were hiding, Henry confessed his fears to his father. He told his father that he could wake up and find himself pardoned of all his crimes and start life anew. This gave dad an idea.

When Hamer, Hinton and the other troopers paused in Shreveport on May 19, Hamer contacted Chief of Police Tom Bryan to inform him of their plans for an ambush. Bryan told them that Henry's father was offering a deal for a reduced sentence for his son. Sometime on May 22, the officers prepared plans for an ambush. The plan that resulted was devilishly simple., Methvin confessed that Bonnie and Clyde were staying at his cabin. He said that during the day they usually make an early visit to nearby Sailes. The The road to Sailes Road was heavily wood and the narrow road offered plenty of places a posse could wait in ambush.

Mr. Iverson, owned a beat-up Model A truck that he occasionally used to haul pulp lumber to Sailes. Clyde laughed at the truck and would surely recognize it on sight. If the truck was stalled Sailes Road, Clyde would surely stop to investigate.

The spot that for the ambush that next morning. On May 23, 1934, the agents chose a low hill and hid among the trees hung moss right beside the road. Mr. Methvin's truck was parked beside the ditch on the north side of the road and the sharpshooters kneeled across the way directly across from the truck. Joining the posse were Iverson County Sheriff Henderson Jordan and Bienville Parish Deputy Prentis Oakley.

Ted Hinton and Bob Alcorn were posted nearest the road to avoid the posse shooting the wrong party. At a quarter past nine Bob Alcorn pointed to a beige '34 Ford approaching from over the nearest hill. As it sped towards them, it seemed to slow down, its driver's eyes on the abandoned truck.

Hinton signaled that it was them and lifted his Browning automatic to his shoulder, the silhouette of Clyde Barrow's head square in its sight. Each of the other officers was also had Brownings, loaded with five full rounds. Clyde scanned the truck and the surrounding trees looking for Mr. Methvin. Hamer didn't call out a warning, instead in a low voice, Hamer ordered, "Shoot!"

Everyone fires, the BARs with spew out twenty shots in an instant, and the bullets hitting the car sounded like a drum roll. When the firing quit, Clyde was slumped forward , the back of his head a mat of blood. Bonnie was hanging out of the opened car door.

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