Volume 18 , Issue 32

Walking With Sweet Silly Sadie

Perhaps some of you have heard the story of Bonnie and Clyde, the bank robbers of the 1930's, Bonnie Elizabeth Parker (October 1, 1910 – May 23, 1934) and Clyde Chestnut Barrow a.k.a. Clyde Champion Barrow (March 24, 1909 – May 23, 1934) were American criminals who traveled the central United States with their gang during the Great Depression, robbing people and killing when cornered or confronted.

Bonnie died wearing a wedding ring, but it wasn't Clyde's. Six days before turning 16, Bonnie married high school classmate Roy Thornton, but the marriage disintegrated wishing months. Bonnie never again saw her husband after he was imprisoned for robbery in 1929. Soon afterwards, Bonnie met Clyde, and the pair fell in love, she never divorced Thornton. The tattoo on the inside of Bonnie's right thigh with two interconnected hearts labeled "Bonnie" and "Roy."

It was during Bonnie's school days, that she excelled at creative writing and penning verses. Bonnie was imprisoned in 1932 after a failed hardware store burglary, she penned a collection of 10 odes that the entitled "Poetry from Life's Other Side," which included "The Story of Suicide Sal," a poem about an innocent country girl lured by her boyfriend into a life of crime. Two weeks before her death, Bonnie gave a prescient poem to her mother entitled "The Trial's End" that finished with the verse:

Some day they'll go down together;
And they'll burry them side by side,
To few it'll be grief-
To the law a relief-
But it's death for Bonnie and Clyde.

Did you know that the navy rejected Clyde Barrow's. As a teenager, Clyde attempted to enlist in the U.S. Navy, but lingering effects from a serious boyhood illness, possibly malaria or yellow fever, resulted in his medical rejection. It was a hard blow for Clyde, who had already tattooed "USN" on his left arm.

Clyde's first arrest came from failing to return a rental car in 1926, that he rented in Dallas to visit an estranged high school girlfriend. The rental car agency dropped the charges, but the indigent remained on Clyde's arrest record. Just three weeks later, he was arrested again alongside his older brother Ivan "Buck" Barrow for an even more farcical crime - possession of a truckload of stolen turkeys.

Although, they were often depicted as depression-era Robin hoods who stole from rich and powerful financial institutions, Bonnie and Clyde staged far more robberies of mom and pop gas stations and grocery stores than bank heists. Many a time their loot amounted to only $5 or $10.

Did you know that Clyde chopped off two of his toes while serving a 14 year sentence in Texas for robbery and automobile theft in in January 1932? Clyde decided he could no longer endure the unforgiving work and brutal conditions at the noxiously tough Eastham prison farm. In the hopes of forcing a transfer to a less harsh facility, Clyde severed his left big toe and a portion of a second toe with an axe, although it was not known whether he or another prisoner wielded the sharp instrument. The self-mutilation, which permanently crippled his walking stride and prevented him from wearing shoes while driving, ultimately proved unnecessary as he was released on parole six days later.

On the night of June 10, 1933, Clyde, with Bonnie i the passenger seat, was speeding along the real roads of North Texas so quickly that he missed a detour sign warning of a bridge under construction. The automobile ge was driving smashed through a barricade at 70 miles per hour and sailed through the air before landing in a dry riverbed. Scalding acid poured out of the smashed car battery and severely burned Bonnie's right leg, eating away at her flesh down to the bone in some places. As a result of the third degree burns, Bonnie, like Clyde, walked with a pronounced limp for the rest of her lie, and she had such difficulty walking that at times she hopped or needed Clyde to carry her.

Also on May 23, 1934, six-man posse led by former Texas Ranger captain Frank Hamer ambushed Bonnie and Clyde and pumped more than 130 rounds of steel-jacketed bullets into their stolen Ford V-8 outside Sailes, Louisiana. With acrid gun smoke still lingering in the air, gawkers descend upon the ambush site and attempted to leave with macabre souvenirs from the bodies of the outlaws still slumped in the front seat.

Then there is the display of the bullet riddled car on display at a casino. A federal judge ruled that the automobile stolen by Bonnie and Clyde should return to its former owner, Ruth Warren of Topeka, Kansas. Warren leased and eventually sold the car to Charles Stanley, an Anti-crime lecturer who toured fairgrounds withs he death car and the mothers of Bonnie and Clyde in tow as sideshow attractions. The death car is no an attraction in the lobby of Whiskey Pete's Casino in Primm, Nevada, a small resort town not he California border 40 miles south of Las Vegas.

And, last but not least, Bonnie and Clyde were buried separately. Although they were linked in life, Bonnie and Clyde were split in death. Bonnies's mother, who had disapproved of her relationship with Clyde, had her daughter buried in a separate Dallas cemetery.

Good Night! Good Luck! Remember, "Love conquers Hate!"
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