The Stanford Digest EP14 - Bonnie and Clyde "Go Down Together"

[Music] well today we have some real fun some local history that's become national history jeff guinn's book go down together the true untold story of bonnie and clyde it came out for the 75th anniversary of the ambush in gibson in 1934 so it came out 2009 along with several others but this is the best and i think remains the best jeff gwen is a is an author in fort worth uh recently did vagabonds it's the story of henry ford and and uh and thomas edison and their road trips so he's local but he's got a national reputation and this this is really has become a national story so i want to talk about go down together the true story of bonnie and clyde i tell you what made it really important although although bonnie and clyde were known around the country during their lifetimes they became really well known with this movie bonnie and clyde made in the late 60s look at this picture gene hackman who played buck barrow blanche is played by estelle parsons clyde is played by warren beatty faye dunaway plays bonnie and michael pollard plays a composite role of all the people that travel with bonnie and clyde ralph fultz and wd jones and henry methvin and he's a he's a fictional character but this is the movie that launched the the craze of bonnie and clyde a lot of it was filmed locally and and that's how it started my interest in bonnie and clyde began with a client ralph fultz who was the first and the last of the barrow gang i remember when ralph came to the office so one of our staff members had a husband who was an assistant to bill decker and her eyes widened and she came in and said ralph fultz is in the lobby and i said well okay and she knew who ralph fultz was the first and last the barrow gang ralph we represented ralph for 25 years ralph was really a pretty nice guy and worked for the buckner orphans home gave gave speeches to high school students on going straight and all that raised a family uh he was the only one to survive what happened in the 1930s so let's talk about what happened in the 1930s this book is really about it tells us a lot about dallas what it was like uh in the 20s and in the 30s and that's one of the valuable pieces of this book it's it's a well-told vignette of of dallas in that era a lot of people don't realize dallas basically had a place for people who were coming in from the country it was across the river it was west dallas the devil's back porch people don't realize right after world war one when europe no longer needed so much farm produce produce from the united states all of a sudden they could till their own fields there was a huge agricultural depression in texas farmers could raise crops but they couldn't sell them for a price that made it worth raising them and all of a sudden there was this giant influx of folks from the country farmers from all over texas they came into houston and san antonio austin dallas fort worth people always think of 1929 as as as being the beginning of the depression the depression for texas farm folks began in 1920 and part of the group that came flowing in from the country poor uh were the barrows and and and emma parker and her daughters um it dallas put them in west dallas what we call cement city uh the place that uh really had no running water i take a look at this that's that's a little bit of the devil's back porch right there it was kind of a scandal you could live there and you could look across the river and see a brighter shinier dallas but you weren't any part of it and basically um without running water with all kinds of diseases with the resultant crimes that were committed by these desperate people it became kind of a tough place the people who originally took some initiative in trying to cure that were the ladies of dallas hattie rankin was one of them the wesley rankin center still sits off singleton on crosstown in west dallas they wanted to make lives of these poor suffering people better uh what you're seeing here is a pretty much a hand-built shack and that's what a lot of them were the barrels came from telico which is in a little town in ellis county um they had some relatives around here some of their older boys were already here including buck and they brought the the youngest uh clyde nelsey and and marie in in a wagon they came in a wagon and they where you go you go to west dallas and for a while they slept under their wagon henry was a junk man he'd take his wagon around and just gather junk all around town and and then sell it sell it by the pound and and at some point he managed to he managed to build a kind of a shack a home built shack if if you want to know these the area where this was happening go over sometimes where the belmont hotel is up on the hill off fort worth avenue and there at sylvan and fort worth go down sylvan and you will you will you will meet two little streets bayonne muncie those streets right now is probably one of the great shotgun house historical districts in this part of the state but they all look pretty run down those shotgun houses sit where the west dallas tent camp was at the time that the barrows arrived in dallas in their in their wagon they would later take what they had built and carted over to border and singleton then it was called eagle ford road and they would they would build a gas station and they would have the house behind it uh there's only the ruins now of the of the little houses generous the shack they had built uh and and and a structure that looks kind of like the barrel store it's not not particularly original but anyway that was that was the west allis tent camp that was the barrow lifestyle henry henry barrow's life became a whole lot better after a while when some motorist hit his hit his horse and killed it and he could he could all of a sudden start he got enough insurance proceeds to be able to buy a vehicle ramshackle as it was and still pick up the uh all the all the junk around that part of town and sell it by the pound now the parkers emma parker had lost her husband they came from rowena out west rowena texas and she in many ways had heirs i mean the kids were dressed up on sunday morning and and she was she felt better than her circumstances which were impoverished she had relatives in dallas also and so uh she had daughters one of them was one of them was a body and let's talk about both clyde and bonnie kind of a little personality thumbnail on each one of them clyde was kind of short decent looking a big dresser you know in that era dressing snappy meant you were somebody and so he was a snappy dresser but he dropped out of school at the grade school level i mean he had no education he there wasn't much by way of jobs for boys in west dallas and and so you could go across the river but you couldn't get a job usually as he grew older he was able to get jobs at places like united glass bama pies some of those kind of places but there was a problem for young boys in on the devil's porch and that is um really how you ended up sort of doing things was you started by stealing chickens and pretty soon you were stealing bicycles and then you were stealing cars and and so there was kind of a a progression in that ironically i even knew even knew leonard pak leonard pack was a dallas officer in that era who was if not the first and one of the first to arrest clyde bear i remember mr pack in the 50s and that great big gun he kept on his table in the in the house but leonard pack and other police would arrest clyde barrow as he graduated from chickens to bicycles to cars as had his older brother buck buck was already stealing things it's all it's all ironic because henry and kumi were just nice hard-working farm folks and but they were had always just kind of been down on their luck and and henry kind of went into the kind of the auto service station stuff later but basically there weren't too many routes to success for these guys and and while ones like buck and clyde just ended up on the other side of the law now bonnie bond aspirations she thought she should be a movie star she wrote poetry bonnie was a smart little girl one of the sites that you can still see is the eagle ford school the old town of eagle ford she went to eagle ford school it's right at the base of chalk hill road next to the new great big amazon facility that's being built there but she went to school elementary school but she couldn't complete any education there was really no way for a girl who was smart who had aspiration it was pretty uh she was a petite little thing and and uh your your main route to success was to to marry the right kind of guy if you could but there weren't just a whole lot of right kind of guys around west dallas at i forgot whether she was 15 or 16 when she married roy thornton but she married rory thornton uh people don't realize she was married to roy thornton for the rest of her life she never divorced roy thorne but soon enough after getting married in like 1926 or so roy ended up in jail and so she kind of lost interest with roy and the big meeting in the year it's it's 1930 the big meeting at a house on herbert street that no longer exists the big meeting of bonnie and clyde was almost love at first sight need at first sight whatever you want to call it but they saw in each other things that really complemented bonnie bonnie found a man who could make a decision who dressed well and had some flair clyde found a woman who was petite he was short petite and kind of clingy and admiring and they just served each other's needs and you know so that's 1930 and and basically she's married but she's done with roy thornton he's in the pen and so basically having met they become greatly devoted to each other she's a waitress another site that you can see it's it's empty but over over by baylor hospital over off of swiss it's a it's near swiss and oak lawn little crescent-shaped empty empty facility hargreaves cafe stood there she she waitressed at heart greg's cafe in fact she served ted hinton who will later be one of her executioners so she knew ted hinton ted knew her by by face she was very friendly she worked there and then she worked at it also at a cafe downtown so she waitressed and the problem was clyde was getting in more and more trouble in fact he was arrested emma said he could spend the night at at their house and emma parker and he was literally arrested one time the next morning by the police and carried away his stealing cars had sort of caught up with him and and buck was buck was in jail also at various points but but clyde ended up going to the easton prison farm and that's where he met that's where he met ralph and and i wish i had asked ralph more questions during his lifetime ralph died in 1993. it would have been fun to have heard more about how they met history says how they met and and and john neil phillips book on ralph says what happened was the paddy wagon that came to pick up people and take them to the eastern prison unit of our huntsville prison system picked up clyde and it picked up ralph ralph was already a queer criminal by this point and they met on the paddy wagon headed for easton well the eastern prison experience was tough the prison system in texas in that era was mean the easton was a prison farm and and you worked you worked the outdoors you you took care of crops and all that sort of thing ralph and and and clyde became friends clyde being sort of a small guy was easy prey for predatory trustees they used fellow prisoners as trustees he was repeatedly raped and sexually abused by one of the of the supervisors who was a fellow fellow prisoner but you know nobody ever pinned it on him but he found a time one time to ambush the guy from behind killed him with a pipe got rid of that situation but clyde vero always kind of had a chip on his shoulder and he was incredibly bitter after his experience at the eastern prison farm interestingly in that era one of the great ways to get out of prison was to have an accident and and have some sort of disability that would get yourself out clyde's mother comey was was working with the governor ferguson ma ferguson's office to try to get him a pardon clyde didn't know that but clyde figured out a way to cut off his toe on one of his feet and having cut off his toe he got a pass to get out of easton that way limp the rest of his life people don't realize that clydeberry had a limp because he cut off his own toe to get out of easton unfortunately little did he know his mother would have gotten him a pardon not all that much later but anyway clyde got out of prison and and back to west dallas the the barrels were a close family uh you know there was the service station there border and eagle ford and and uh you know had brothers and sisters in dallas and and including his little sister marie and and his parents had had this service station but um clyde was kind of at this point in sort of a life of crime and he had met somebody named raymond hamilton if you don't know that name you don't know dallas crime in the 20s and 30s raymond hamilton was also a friend of ralph fultz ralph did tell an interesting story about what happened to him he was a native of he was a native of mckinney and he was walking downtown past the old jail which is no longer a jail you know i think it's on tennessee wherever and a voice from out of the bar said what are you doing and ralph said who are you and they started talking and that's how ralph fultz and raymond hamilton met well raymond hamilton also came to to to run with clyde barrow and and they were like oil and water they did not mix well but they ran together raymond hamilton was a major criminal in his own right and so let's go forward a little bit to 1932 at a place that still exists it's on wineca it wasn't oneeka street back then it's a little duplex on the property of wesley rankin center the people living there the new new raymond hamilton law officers were staking it out to try to get raymond hamilton and it was clyde barrow who ended showing up part of the part of the lobsters that were there to ambush raymond hamilton one of them was malcolm davis an officer from fort worth clyde barrow showed up instead there was some gunfire clyde shot and killed malcolm davis when malcolm davis was was shot that that kind of cut it that was at from that point forward clyde barrow would have been would have been um electric chair material period but just before that actually uh clyde and bonnie and ralph fultz had tried to knock over a store in kaufman you know in that era people carried weapons with them a lot and and people just started coming out and shooting at them and and so they they did not successfully uh rob that store in kaufman instead uh they ended up with clyde getting away in his souped-up car he always he loved fords and he loved v8s he loved big engines but somehow bonnie and ralph ended up on a donkey in the rain they were found they were thrown in the jail in kemp bonnie was let out because at that point bonnie had no record a ralph was taken straight to jail because he did and and so you had that incident in in in kaufman just before the wonecka shooting you had another incident in hillsborough where where basically uh clyde was driving the car and and others shot and killed the man in hillsborough and so there'd already been a death but when malcolm davis when a lobster was shot and killed like that that's that is serious now uh bonnie and clyde always made loops in their v8s they would go into oklahoma missouri iowa arkansas louisiana new mexico even in that era if you cross state lines law officers kind of lost jurisdiction what you got to keep in mind in this era is that law officers carried a lot of times handguns they bought themselves you know a very low power weaponry their jurisdiction went to the state line and and all bonnie clyde had to do was cross the state line to go into another jurisdiction that's one of the things that led to the formation the fbi which was already being consolidated by hoover in the 20s and into this area in the 30s so that you could kind of have an interstate response to people like this but they would loop around but they always came home and and they came home to the gas station uh there were all these elaborates all these elaborate uh systems of turning lights on and off and throwing coke bottles with messages and all that sort of thing because law officers were were on the lookout for bonnie and clyde by this point but they always came back they always came back to family but they always did loop one another major killing took place in oklahoma if you take a drive from dallas to tulsa you'll go by on the highway a place called stringtown one night clyde not with bonnie but with raymond hamilton attended a dance at stringtown and some deputies a sheriff and deputy showed up and they shot and killed both of them in oklahoma so the string of law officer killings is is getting more intense um maybe the the first of the really close scrapes for bonnie and clyde was at uh was at joplin missouri they were staying at a court in joplin and and basically the law found out about it they surrounded them and they had to blast their way out of joplin and they did they actually the the moral officers killed they blasted their way out of the surround being surrounded at a at a a court an overnight court in in joplin um uh made it even worse i mean they're way beyond any saving at this point but you're looking now at a picture of bonnie parker bonnie is holding a gun she's smoking a cigar and this is a staged shot it's just kind of she didn't smoke cigars she didn't really carry guns herself there were an armory in the car but she didn't normally carry handguns or smoke a cigar this is a kind of a spoofy for fun shot a series of shots that were taken out who knows where bonnie and clyde lived what can't be called a glamorous life because they they were in the hinterlands hiding all the time but they took these fun pictures these were undeveloped pictures that were in the in the motel room after they blasted their way out of joplin law officers got a hold of these and that's where these pictures came from was the undeveloped film that they picked up in in joplin missouri and and so uh there are all kinds of spoofy shots that you'll you'll see of bonnie and clyde now in this in this era there was also an accident in wellington texas that people don't realize much about clyde was out west texas driving fast in the dark and missed a detour sign and ran off a bridge under construction rolled the car and the battery acid got on bonnie's leg ate parts of it to the bone and so here you have a fugitive who has a real medical issue and they just had to doctor her on the go as they went along after wellington people don't realize that that bonnie often needed she held on to clyde because she could not sometimes stand up by herself she was basically made lame by that by that accident in in wellington but um you've all got the stories uh if if you know people who've lived in dallas all their lives they'll tell you about their great aunt or great uncle or great you know whatever who bonnie and clyde stopped or they saw bonnie and clyde or you know whatever it's it's kind of legendary in dallas the uh but let's get on with the looping because after joplin there was one other well it's more in a close call it was it ended up with buck and blanche being captured in buck dying but platte city missouri they they moved on to platte city missouri and the law found out they were there and they surrounded the court that they were in again and again they were able to blast their way out of it but got hit in the head with a shot that took part of his skull actually uh i mean it was a it was most probably from the get-go immortal wound but he lived several days uh blanche had had glass from the shattered glass in her eyes so she was having trouble with her eyesight so later right after right after blanche's eyes are hit by this shattered glass and buck is you know part of his brain's exposed they drive over to dexter park in iowa it was an old amusement grounds and dexter park was basically empty at this point they set up camp but some locals saw them and they reported it to police officers and the police officers surrounded dexter park now they've surrounded joplin and the barrel gangs blasted their way out they've surrounded platte city they've they've gotten away again now they surround at dexter park and and when they start shooting bonnie and clyde get away again but blanche and buck do not um here here's a picture taken at the time right on the spot you see blanche is wearing dark glasses and and kind of resisting and quite obviously distraught sitting on the ground is buck of course who could barely function he was and and would die in the next couple two or three days uh but this is a this is a contemporary picture of of the capture at at dexter park and and basically after that it was kind of downhill bonnie and clyde got away but the fact is um time was getting short you know all of this happened in three years just three years from basically let's say from 1931 to 1934 was the height of it all bonnie and clyde would come back they would almost be ambushed at at sours which is in on sours road which is an irving you it's now asphalted over you can't see anything it's sours but they're almost caught visiting with family it's hours but clyde has a plan and clyde's plan uh reflects his bitterness about what happened to him at easton he's going to break into the eastern prison camp it's a farm prison farm he's going to break in and he's going to bust out everybody he can that he knows and this happens in i believe it's february early in 1934 and they attack the eastern prison farm that attack is the beginning of a pretty good new movie about bonnie and clyde in the pursuit of bonnie and clyde called the highwayman and it was produced by netflix i think has major stars and and it's a story of how frank hamer and aided by manny galt pursued body and clyde there from from the eastern breakout until may when they were when they ambushed them so it's just a short few month period but basically the the raid on eastern prison farm killed a prison guard another law officer they were able to break out i think wd jones henry methvin raymond hamilton they got them all the thing that saved ralph and allowed him to live a long life and and go straight and work at the orphan's home and help young kids try to go straight was the fact that they had moved ralph the day before to another part of the prison farm and so when bonnie and clyde broke into eastern prison farm they could not get ralph they got the others and hit the road now one thing i think is not particularly historically accurate and that is bonnie seems to walk just okay when when she does her part in the easton raid the fact is she had a hard time walking because of that leg that had been injured at wellington but they they broke them out and so now they're out um clyde and raymond hamilton break up and raymond hamilton goes his way and bonnie and clyde the next major thing in their saga happens on easter day of 1934 and this was maybe the turning point it was bad enough to shoot a law officer and and break break major criminals out of the texas prison system at the easton farm it was another thing what happened on easter day in 1934. they were hanging out in a car with henry methvin and and who who they had broken out of easton henry was louisiana boy that'll play in a little bit later they were sitting out on dove road if you go if you go to grapevine and go to dove road and go down dove road you will find a big stone marker that marks the place that the two motorcycle officers were killed what happened is bonnie and clyde and henry were sitting in a car down at the end of a dirt road and the officers were passing by one of them had just either just gotten married was about to be married it was almost his first day on the force uh they saw some people kind of lurking down the road and they pulled over and they were both shot and killed now i think another historical inaccuracy in the highwayman but dramatically it works is they have bonnie shoot the officers there's no evidence to believe that bonnie parker ever shot anybody she was infatuated with clyde clyde shot plenty of folks but bonnie was kind of along for the wild ride she was she was a criminal conspirator but uh but no this this idea that she shot them what that's based on and and uh i i won't mention his name because i don't want everybody calling him now but a friend of mine in dallas carl's uh grandfather was the man on the farm next door who said he saw a small person get out of the car and go over and shoot the losters who had both been shot executed basically on the ground and he identified it as bonnie even carl says my grandfather couldn't see that he was wrong and you know it's just it's not true but it's dramatic and that's the way to how highwayman has bonnie shooting them the one who shot them most probably was not even clyde it was henry methvin uh the the the thought is that henry methvin there was some miscommunication and henry methvin killed both law officers at that point public opinion kind of turned throughout the period of bonnie and clyde's going around the country doing these things people saw it as kind of a what the establishment deserved you know this was the height of the depression people were being foreclosed on and here were these wild young people going around you know flaunting flaunting the law and and doing all that sort of thing made made made people uh really want to read the newspapers and so they became kind of legendary but shooting a couple police officers particularly one who's just new on the job and either had just gotten married was about to get married it was just that was a little too much for for anybody um now here i want you to see a picture of bonnie and clyde in this period you notice bonnie is looks like she's smoking a cigarette but she's she's kind of clinging to clyde and she's not clinging to clyde because just because she's clinging she's clinging to clyde because a lot of the time she needed clyde to prop her up because of that leg and so um they lived a pretty hard life out in the middle of nowhere eating pork and beans and you know knocking over little little convenience store kind of operations it was not a glamorous life in fact it was so unglamorous uh other major criminals like uh dillinger who would himself die in in in the summer of 1934 um they were kind of dismissive of bonnie and clyde as kind of small town crooks you know they just weren't dillinger didn't think they were on his level but ralph would say and that's one thing ralph always did say was was that and i think he may be letting themselves off a little bit easy but he would say we were just kind of wild kids if we saw that dillinger was doing something or our pre-boy floyd or or babyface nelson or any of these folks who were the public enemies of the early 30s if they were doing something we'd imitate it you know we couldn't we had to one-up whatever they one-upped us on and so he portrayed his kind of wild young men about but but the long and short is is after after the easter shootings on on the dove road governor ferguson ma ferguson detailed she had already asked frank hamer to to to start looking for him and that's what the highwayman's all about is is the the frank hamer pursuit of bonnie and clyde all over the place what finally broke it as they as they moved from state to state using the fact that they were better armed than the lawmen that that state lines prohibited lawmen crossing over and following them using all that as they looped around all the time it made it hard but they finally found out a way to deal with that and it was by a traitor a an informer and and and keep in mind bonnie and clyde that car was so armed you wouldn't believe it now now guns from that car that are now they'll sell for a quarter million dollars for a handgun i mean it's just incredible but that car was so much more armed than any law officer that they would ever encounter basically there was no way you would take bonnie and clyde alive you'd die trying to trying to tell them to halt or something like that but but but the bottom line is um ironically the traitor was the guy that they had broken out of the eastern prison unit the guy that probably was the one who killed the two law officers on easter day that year it was henry methvin henry henry had a record that he would like to have been out of from under and his father ivy approached state authorities to talk about what would happen if they told them where bonnie and clyde were they knew because bonnie and clyde at this point had looped into louisiana they were in the arcadia area and and basically in bienville parish and basically a deal was negotiated for for for methane to get a pardon and for his dad ivy to set up bonnie and clyde and so introduce you to the execution team um uh bottom uh kneeling on the bottom left is frank hamer who was kind of in charge of this operation um included included on hi on his left is is the sheriff of bienville parish above that on the far right of the picture is manny galt formerly of the texas rangers as as was frank hamer um uh deputy deputy to the to the sheriff of bienville parish and the two guys the two of the guys in the back are are ted hinton who knew bonnie very well that's one of the reasons he was there ted knew bonnie and clyde he'd seen him both bonnie served him lunch and dinner at the cafe and and bob alcorn and so that was that was the team uh unlike what the what the what the setup was is that ivy knew that bonnie and clyde would be coming down the road in one of those fast forwards at a certain time and the way he would get them stopped was he would look like he was had had his truck had broken down and he'd be standing beside it these six men were standing in the bushes with high-powered weapons and basically as as clyde rounded the corner he did slow down to help ivy methane with his supposedly broken down truck these guys rose out of the bushes immediately fired pictures afterwards taken moments later of moving pictures show smoke still all around the smoke of this stuff is still all around this car don't believe what happened in the highwayman when when kevin costner as as frank hamer walks out and says stop or whatever he said and and nobody walked out and said stop nobody would get around that that car full of all those that weaponry they just rose up out of the bushes and started firing and kept firing and and the result was the famous bullet-ridden car and so um what what pursued in in short order was kind of like a zoo you hate to say that but they towed the car with the body still in it back to arcadia to a funeral home people were reaching inside trying to get pieces of cloth and watches and i saw one of those watches sold for thirty five thousand dollars recently i i wanted to show you this i uh collect all the the wanted posters of the great public enemies of the early 30s and and this is bonnie and clyde and you notice all the different names under which she went mrs roy thornton which was her true name mrs roy thornton bonnie parker mrs clyde barrow etc clyde had all kinds of interesting names clyde he was clyde champion barrow but he also looks like he used jack and eldon and all kinds of different names fbi was trying to nose into this it was really a local operation like i say it was the the the group that hamer under the governor's authority had formed um and the fbi did not really play any part of it hoover would have liked to have been part of this but this is actually was never posted on a wall these these were sitting there ready to be mailed out when they were killed and that's why their collector's items now the people took the ball and you know sell them to collectors but but basically back to dallas and and part of the ongoing zoo and my grandmother was part of it my grandmother was at the services for for bonnie parker over at the mckamey funeral home in oak cliff it no longer exists a clyde a clyde service was held over at the bet at spartman below the bilo mansion the dallas bars colonel belo's old mansion was a funeral home at that point each one of them drew crowds in the thousands uh their their funeral was not joint and one of the reasons their funeral was not joint was that um emma parker turned it down comey and henry barrow would have let it be joint but she said you know that man had my daughter during her lifetime he cannot have her now she never really approved of clyde barrow and so they were separate services and and basically um you know it was it was a zoo thousands at both places um now the postscript all of this uh this this was this was kind of we're coming to the end of the public enemies uh era in american history as the fbi rises and interstate crime becomes much harder to carry off bonnie and clyde were killed may 23rd 1934 later um dillinger was killed in the summer by the fbi a pre-boy floyd was killed in oklahoma early that fall babyface nelson was killed up up north toward the end of that year and then the next the next year the barker gang was ambushed in i think the very beginning of 1935 and and basically um the barkers were killed at a lake house in florida the next year they finally got the brains of the barker gang who was alvin karpas and karpas was was was basically arrested in 1936 and that was really the end of the public enemy era as we know it but but but the bottom line let me let me just talk about what happened to folks after this i am sorry to this day and it was about a year and a half ago that i did not buy a piece that came up for auction the sheriff of dallas county was a man named shmood schmidt schmood schmidt tried over and over again at sours and all kinds of places to get bonnie and clyde he never did but he obviously found humorous certain parts of it because he kept in his scrapbook one of the national auction houses sold a bunch of schmood schmidt stuff recently and one of them was a christmas card little little nice little folks with parasols that said merry christmas and all that sort of thing it was posted from cooper texas it was just addressed as often in that era sheriff schmood schmidt dallas texas well he got it and when he opened it up and kept it all his life it was sold at the auction it just sold a little hired i was willing to pay uh you open it up and on the a little merry christmas and blow it just says raymond hamilton he sent him a christmas card while while he was on the run and posted it from cooper texas well it was the next spring that things finally happened and then deputy sheriff bill decker got the drop on raymond hamilton from behind took him alive and within weeks he was executed in huntsville and so that's what happened to raymond hamilton uh of course we're leaving out blanche whatever happened to blanche well she spent some time in jail and and but blanche i never knew blanche it's funny i knew ralph anybody lived around dallas particularly east dallas pleasant grove area a new ralph but blanche lived in seataville and and i knew a lot of people in cityville represent a lot of folks in seattleville but i never met blanche i'm sorry about that a blanche later moved to a move to a little trailer home on cedar creek lake she was the only one of those four that was living when the movie bonnie and clyde was made uh she was an a uh an advisor to the film she was furious because she thought she thought estelle parsons had played her like a what she said like a screaming mimi she made me look like a screaming mimi but anyway uh blanche beryl frazier she married eddie frazier later she's buried at grove hill as is as is ralph um bonnie is buried at crown hill cemetery um she was originally buried at the fish trap cemetery in in in out off of off of singleton if you know where where fishtrap road is a lot of the reunion colony people are out there but her mother saw fit at her at such time as she thought the neighborhood was changing in its racial composition so ironically she thought the cemetery was no good for bonnie anymore she moved bonnie to crown hill cemetery in webb chapel you can go see her grave on webb chapel road and and ralph was the last of them ralph died in 1993 led an honorable life after all of this and and really tried his best to make society better um this is the book i'm talking about running with bonnie and clyde the 10 fast years of ralph fultz john neal phillips local historian does bonnie and clyde tours a lot based on information that ralph gave him and and basically it's a great book i i highly recom phillips is a great writer and so whether you're doing uh go down together or running with bonnie and clyde you will be well advised to read both of those books now clyde himself is buried western heights cemetery if you go down fort worth avenue there's a little cemetery amongst all those car dealerships and little motels and things it used to be you had to get a key from buddy barrow or there was a church but you never could get them had to make real arrangements to get in they've they've opened a small walkway now you can go in most people going in obviously to visit the grave of clyde berra you go in and if if they haven't kept it clean for a while you will find shell casings plastic guns old liquor bottles all that sort of thing um they try to keep it as clean as they can but the the the part about that that is so um touching really is is the gravestone itself clyde and buck are buried uh uh in it with with a tombstone and the reason they are is because the barrows couldn't couldn't afford two tombstones and so when buck died henry and kumi uh determined that that um that they basically would just have to do it with one tombstone because clyde would not be all that far behind and so uh when clyde was killed uh you know his name was added to the other side so one one side of tombstone's clyde one side is buck and but maybe the most maybe the most poignant thing is is what's inscribed on the tombstone gone but not forgotten and oh oh how true that is there's little you can see now uh other the old barrow the old barrow gas station at borger and singleton may not be long for this world uh the aryan muncie and bayonne and all that uh is falling to all this new construction as that whole area uh gentrifies bonnie's old school eagle ford school there on chalk hill road is still there the inscriptions on on dove hill maybe the most fascinating bonnie and clyde site that's still around and i forget the little side street but if you go out singleton far enough you will come to a light and and when you you can take a ride on a little gravel road and go about a 200 feet and on the left in the woods you can't see it from the highway but in the woods is this old bridge covered with liquor bottles they have to clean it up every once while but it's this old bridge in the woods it's really near where the original eagle ford community was that historic dallas community that bridge is one of the old cement bridges that goes over the trinity river there were several of them that i think this is the last one it goes from nowhere to nowhere now uh this little stretch of the bridge but it's something that really needs to be preserved it's one of those last remaining uh old uh connections with the bonnie and clyde story and and it's just in the woods there so uh i i challenge you to find it and but it's it's there and and it's and it's easy to get to so that's the story of bonnie and clyde and it is really true what's on the tombstone uh gone but not forgotten and i recommend this book uh because uh go down together also tells you the story of dallas in the 1920s and 30s particularly west dallas and what it was like to be in west allis so it is an eye-opener i recommend it jeff quinn's a great writer so get yourself go down together and get running with bonnie and clyde it's it's a great read also thanks you

Channel: SyncLab Media

Views: 60,451

Keywords: marketing, testimonial, how to, hd, studio, location, hangout, G+, web, blog, media, social, email, training, tutorial, image, consultant, business, commercial, broadcast, streaming, events, live, conference, trade show, design, speaker, golf, retail, franchise, PR, brand, RE, staffing, financial, restaurant, wellness

Id: Yk2TVuf92VY

Length: 52min 9sec (3129 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 09 2021