Volume 17 , Issue 8

A Tale of Bonnie & Clyde (1930-1934)

In April 1930, Clyde Chestnut Barrow was sent to the Eastham Prison Farm, the first maximum security prison in Texas. Hard core criminals dreaded being sent there because of its grueling work assignments, treacherous conditions and difficulty of escaping.

Clyde Barrow's incarceration at Eastham Prison Farm marked his beginning of life of rampage and destruction across the Midwest. We learn that Barrow was sexually assaulted repeatedly for over a year by a dominant inmate. Clyde Barrow fractured the man's skull with a length of pipe, killing the inmate. That was Barrow's first killing.

Barrow was paroled in February 1932 from the asthma Prison Farm, emerging as a hardened and bitter criminal. Other inmates that knew Barrow watched him change from a schoolboy to a rattlesnake. Between 1931 and 1934, Bonnie & Clyde joined the ranks of John Dillinger and pretty Boy Floyd.

After Barrow's release from aEstham Prison Farm, he began recruiting a gang in order to storm the Eastham Prison ... freeing all the prisoners, killing the guards that had assaulted him.

It was in 1934 that Clyde would get the revenge against the Eastham Prison Farm that he wanted. It was during the previous year when Raymond Hamilton briefly rejoined the Barrow gang, and then shortly afterwards, December 1933, Hamilton was arrested, began serving a lengthy prison term at Eastham prison farm. Hamilton was serving 266 years in prison for auto theft, armed robbery and murder.

Bonnie & Clyde raided the prison farm after Raymond Hamilton was imprisoned, free Hamilton and four other prisoners on 16 January 1934. Among those involved in the jailbreak were Raymond Hamilton, Joe Palmer, Henry Methvin, and Hilton Bybee.

Because Joe Palmer killed a guard and other series of events, the Texas Prison system chief Lee Simmons issued a shoot to kill order against Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker. Simmons hired Texas Ranger Frank Hamer and his six-man posse to execute the order to kill Bonnie & Clyde.

Clyde's reign of terror ended with a bloody shoot-out on 24 May 1934, when the couple were ambushed and gunned down in Gibsland, Louisiana.

You can read the rest of the Bonnie & Clyde story at A Tale of Bonnie & Clyde.
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