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N0KFQ > TODAY 23.05.12 16:37l 62 Lines 3020 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 22757_KB0WSA
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Subj: Today in History - May 23
Path: IZ3LSV<IR1UAW<IK1NHL<CX2SA<N0KFQ<KB0WSA
Sent: 120523/1532Z 22757@KB0WSA.MO.USA.NA BPQK1.4.50
May 23, 1934:
Outlaws Bonnie and Clyde shot to death in stolen Ford
On this day in 1934, wanted outlaws Clyde Barrow and Bonnie
Parker are shot to death by Texas and Louisiana state police
officers as they attempt to escape apprehension in a stolen 1934
Ford Deluxe near Bienville Parish, Louisiana.
Beginning in early 1932, Parker and Barrow set off on a two-year
crime spree, evading local police in rural Texas, Louisiana and
New Mexico before drawing the attention of federal authorities at
the Bureau of Investigation (as the FBI was then known). Though
the couple was believed to have been responsible for 13 murders
by the time they were killed, along with several bank robberies
and burglaries, the only charge the Bureau could chase them on
was a violation of the National Motor Vehicle Act, which gave
federal agents the authority to pursue suspects accused of
interstate transportation of a stolen automobile. The car in
question was a Ford, stolen in Illinois and found abandoned in
Pawhuska, Oklahoma. Inside, agents discovered a prescription
bottle later traced to the Texas home of Clyde Barrow's aunt.
As authorities stepped up the pressure to catch the outlaw
couple, the heavily armed Barrow and Parker were joined at
various times by the convicted murderer Raymond Hamilton (whom
they helped break out of jail in 1934), William Daniel Jones and
Clyde's brother Ivan "Buck" Barrow and his wife, Blanche. In the
spring of 1934, federal agents traced the Barrow-Parker gang to a
remote county in southwest Louisiana, where the Methvin family
was said to have been aiding and abetting the outlaws for over a
year. Bonnie and Clyde, along with some of the Methvins, had
staged a party at Black Lake, Louisiana, on the night of May 21.
Two days later, just before dawn, a posse of police officers from
Texas and Louisiana laid an ambush along the highway near Sailes,
Louisiana. When Parker and Barrow appeared, going some 85 mph in
another stolen Ford--a four-door 1934 Deluxe with a V-8 engine,
the officers let loose with a hail of bullets, leaving the couple
no chance of survival despite the small arsenal of weapons they
had with them.
The bullet-ridden Deluxe, originally owned by Ruth Warren of
Topeka, Kansas, was later exhibited at carnivals and fairs then
sold as a collector's item; in 1988, the Primm Valley Resort and
Casino in Las Vegas purchased it for some $250,000. Barrow's
enthusiasm for cars was evident in a letter he wrote earlier in
the spring of 1934, addressed to Henry Ford himself:
"While I still have got breath in my lungs I will tell you
what a dandy car you make. I have drove Fords exclusively
when I could get away with one. For sustained speed and
freedom from trouble the Ford has got every other car
skinned and even if my business hasn't been strictly legal
it don't hurt anything to tell you what a fine car you got
in the V-8."
73, K.O. n0kfq
N0KFQ @ KB0WSA.MO.USA.NA
E-mail: n0kfq@winlink.org
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