Volume 18 , Issue 32

March, 1935, Mothers of Three Ruthless Criminals Freed On Wednesday

In the Corsicana Semi-Weekly Light, Corsicana, Texas, dated 29 March 1935, Friday, page 6, were the following headlines: "Mothers of Three Ruthless Criminals Freed On Wednesday." Mothers of Clyde Barrow, Bonnie Parker and Ray Hamilton were released.

Found on Newspapers.com

Dallas, March 27 (1935) -- Three mothers who befriended two of the Southwest's most ruthless marauders, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, were freed today. They finished a thirty-day term apiece for harboring Bonnie and Clyde while the machine-gunning duo fled the law.

Mrs. Cumie Barrow, mother of Clyde; Mrs. Emma Parker, Bonnie's mother, and tight-lipped Mrs. Steve Davis, mother of Ray Hamilton, No. 1 Texas outlaw and fugitive from he state penitentiary death house, were released from the county jail at 9 a.m. on that date.

Mrs. Davis had no message to send her arrant son. She told newspapermen, "I have no message for Ray, and no plans to tell you."

Mrs. Davis and Mrs. Parker refused to pose for pictures, but Mrs. Barrow, smiling and happy over her release, willingly agreed, "I want you tell the world that I have paid my debt to society. I'm all washed up with this business now, and I'm going straight."

Waiting for Mrs. Barrow outside the jail elevator were Marie barrow Francis, her daughter, and Audrey Fay Barrow, wife of L. C. Barrow, given penitentiary sentences on the harboring charge and a robbery accusation. The two 16 year old girls also were given brief sentences.

Shortly before the release, the three women laughed and joked, "it's a good thin I had a cell to myself," said Mrs. Barrow as she straightened her hat and ran her hands over her wrinkled face.

"If I would have had to sleep in one of these upper bunks, I probably would go home and try to sleep on a table, just from habit."

Spying reporters, Mrs. Parker and Mrs. Davis ducked their heads and hurried from he building when the jail door leading to the outside was opened.

But Mrs. Barrow, her arms about her daughter and daughter-in-law, "prettied up" a bit and pose for the picture.

Jail attacks reported the trio were model prisoners, offering no complaints over their confining quarters and the jail fare.

The crime careers of Bonnie and Clyde ended in their deaths in a Louisiana ambuscade set by officers.
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