A memoir by the sister-in-law of Clyde Barrow describes her experiences on the run with Bonnie and Clyde, supplemented by notes on Depression-era outlaw history and biographical information about the author and her accomplices.
From the moment they first cut a swathe of crime across 1930s America, Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker have been glamorised in print, on screen and in legend. The reality of their brief and catastrophic lives is very different -- and far more fascinating. Combining exhaustive research with surprising, newly discovered material, author Jeff Guinn tells the real story of two youngsters from a filthy Dallas slum who fell in love and then willingly traded their lives for a brief interlude of excitement and, more important, fame. Thanks in great part to surviving relatives of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, who provided Guinn with access to never-before-published family documents and photographs, this book reveals the truth behind the myth, told with cinematic sweep and unprecedented insight by a master storyteller.
Bonnie and Clyde may be the most notorious--and celebrated--outlaw couple America has ever known. This is the true story of how they got that way. Bonnie and Clyde: we've been on a first name basis with them for almost a hundred years. Immortalized in movies, songs, and pop culture references, they are remembered mostly for their storied romance and tragic deaths. But what was life really like for Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker in the early 1930s? How did two dirt-poor teens from west Texas morph from vicious outlaws to legendary couple? And why? Award-winning author Karen Blumenthal devoted months to tracing the footsteps of Bonnie and Clyde, unearthing new information and debunking many persistent myths. The result is an impeccably researched, breathtaking nonfiction tale of love, car chases, kidnappings, and murder set against the backdrop of the Great Depression.
The flesh-and-blood story of the outlaw lovers who robbed banks and shot their way across Depression-era America, based on extensive archival research, declassified FBI documents, and interviews The daring movie revolutionized Hollywood—now the true story of Bonnie and Clyde is told in the lovers' own voices, with verisimilitude and drama to match Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. Strictly nonfiction—no dialogue or other material has been made up—and set in the dirt-poor Texas landscape that spawned the star-crossed outlaws, Paul Schneider's brilliantly researched and dramatically crafted tale begins with a daring jailbreak and ends with an ambush and shoot-out that consigns their bullet-riddled bodies to the crumpled front seat of a hopped-up getaway car. Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow's relationship was, at the core, a toxic combination of infatuation blended with an instinct for going too far too fast. The poetry-writing petite Bonnie and her gun-crazy lover drove lawmen wild. Despite their best efforts the duo kept up their exploits, slipping the noose every single, damned time. That is until the weight of their infamy in four states caught up with them in the famous ambush that literally blasted away their years of live-action rampage in seconds. Without glamorizing the killers or vilifying the cops, the book, alive with action and high-level entertainment, provides a complete picture of America's most famous outlaw couple and the culture that created them.
"It's probably too late to change the overall perception that the American public has of my brothers Clyde and Buck, as well as Clyde's sweetheart Bonnie Parker and Buck's wife Blanche Caldwell Barrow. The public's perspective on my family members and friends has been reinforced by over 60 years of caricature and exaggeration through the output of the publishing houses and the Hollywood studios. It began during the days of the old newsreels in the movie houses and has continued unchanged up through today's modern cable television networks and satellite communications. No matter which medium carries the message, the message itself is typically 100% pure baloney." A new slant on the infamous Bonnie and Clyde by Clyde's sister Marie Barrow.
The story of Bonnie and Clyde--their love, their desperate killings, and their destruction in an explosion of gun fire--has fueled an American legend more than seventy years. But it is only with this book by the last surviving officer of the six who shot Bonnie and Clyde that the full story of their capture has been told. Ted Hinton's description of a secret, illegal police trap--hidden at the time from the press and public--is one of many revelations he draws from his intimate knowledge of the greatest manhunt of the 1930s. As a Dallas lawman he spent seventeen months, night and day, on the trail of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. He knew the notorious criminals personally from the seamy, hoodlum-ridden Dallas neighborhoods where they all grew up. He shared their code of toughness and genuinely admired the extraordinary courage, skill, and loyalty that made Bonnie and Clyde stand out almost as heroes in the public imagination. Hinton admired them, but he never doubted that they had to be stopped. The long trail could only end in a shootout and their deaths-or his. Hinton's experiences as a green young sheriff's deputy and his compassion for outlaw lovers give Ambush an unusual dimension of humanity. Twenty-seven photographs underscore the book's vivid authenticity. And the author's meticulous research, using sources available to no one else, makes this the definitive work of fact. The result is a powerful human drama of crime and the law: the real story of Bonnie and Clyde.
One of the most sought-after criminals of the Depression era, Ralph Fults began his career of crime at the improbable age of fourteen. At nineteen he met Clyde Barrow in a Texas prison, and the two men together founded what would later be known as the Barrow gang. Running with Bonnie and Clyde is the story of Fults's experiences in the Texas criminal underworld between the years 1925 and 1935 and the gripping account of his involvement with the Barrow gang, particularly its notorious duo, Bonnie and Clyde. Fults's "ten fast years" were both dramatic and violent. As an adolescent he escaped numerous juvenile institutions and jails, was shot by an Oklahoma police officer, and was brutalized by prison guards. With Clyde, following their fateful meeting in 1930, he robbed a bank to finance a prison raid. After the ambush of Bonnie and Clyde, in 1934, he joined forces with Raymond Hamilton; together the two robbed more banks and eluded countless posses before Hamilton's capture and 1935 execution. One of the few survivors among numerous associates who ended up shot, stabbed, beaten to death, or executed, Fults was later able to reform himself, believing that the only reason he was spared was to reveal the darkest aspects of his past-and in so doing expose the circumstances that propel youth into crime. Author John Neal Phillips tells Fults's story in vivid and at times raw detail, recounting bank robberies, killings, and prison escapes, friendships, love affairs, and marriages. Dialogues based on actual conversations amongst the participants enhance the narrative's authenticity. Whereas in books and mms, Fults, Parker, Barrow, and Hamilton have been romanticized or depicted as one-dimensional, depraved characters, Running with Bonnie and Clyde shows them as real people, products of social, political, and economic forces that directed them into a life of crime and bound them to it for eternity. Although basing his account primarily on Fults's testimony, Phillips substantiates that viewpoint with references to scores of eyewitness interviews, police files and court documents, and contemporary news accounts. An important contribution to criminal and social history, Running with Bonnie and Clyde will be fascinating reading for scholars and general readers alike.
She preferred guys with an edge to them. Bad Boys, her mama called them. Then one night she met Clyde and knew her mama was right. If there was ever a bad boy, it was Clyde Chestnut Barrow. He had that look: those dark secretive eyes that never looked directly into yours. He had a pretty face and a smooth way of talking and she liked his silk shirt and the way he fit into it. He liked her too. They were destined to be star crossed lovers who blazed across the hot southwest in a time of drought and trouble. She wanted to be an actress and he wanted to rob banks. In an era that gave birth to the likes of Al Capone, John Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd and Baby Face Nelson--Bonnie and Clyde were to become America's version of Romeo and Juliet--with guns! Their love for each other was without rhyme or reason, their attraction and bond unbreakable. They vowed the only thing that would ever seperate them was a bullet. A vow the Texas Rangers hoped to make come true. Bonnie, the beautiful petite blond poet was Clyde's equal in every respect. She was his lover and partner, and was willing to die for her man. Clyde was tough and agile, a troubled soul of a man who loved only two things: bank robbing and Bonnie Parker. Whether behind the wheel of a fast-moving Ford V-8, or the sultry bedroom of a Texas motel, their love and lives were unparalleled in the annals of history. Theirs is more than just a story of a fast and furious short and violent life--theirs is a story of unshakable love and devotion few ever experience.
The New York Times bestseller! “Frank Hamer, last of the old breed of Texas Rangers, has not fared well in history or popular culture. John Boessenecker now restores this incredible Ranger to his proper place alongside such fabled lawmen as Wyatt Earp and Eliot Ness. Here is a grand adventure story, told with grace and authority by a master historian of American law enforcement. Frank Hamer can rest easy as readers will finally learn the truth behind his amazing career, spanning the end of the Wild West through the bloody days of the gangsters.” --Paul Andrew Hutton, author of The Apache Wars To most Americans, Frank Hamer is known only as the “villain” of the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde. Now, in Texas Ranger, historian John Boessenecker sets out to restore Hamer’s good name and prove that he was, in fact, a classic American hero. From the horseback days of the Old West through the gangster days of the 1930s, Hamer stood on the front lines of some of the most important and exciting periods in American history. He participated in the Bandit War of 1915, survived the climactic gunfight in the last blood feud of the Old West, battled the Mexican Revolution’s spillover across the border, protected African Americans from lynch mobs and the Ku Klux Klan, and ran down gangsters, bootleggers, and Communists. When at last his career came to an end, it was only when he ran up against another legendary Texan: Lyndon B. Johnson. Written by one of the most acclaimed historians of the Old West, Texas Ranger is the first biography to tell the full story of this near-mythic lawman.
Bonnie and Clyde were responsible for multiple murders and countless robberies. But they did not act alone. In 1933, during their infamous run from the law, Bonnie and Clyde were joined by Clyde’s brother Buck Barrow and his wife Blanche. Of these four accomplices, only one—Blanche Caldwell Barrow—lived beyond early adulthood and only Blanche left behind a written account of their escapades. Edited by outlaw expert John Neal Phillips, Blanche’s previously unknown memoir is here available for the first time. Blanche wrote her memoir between 1933 and 1939, while serving time at the Missouri State Penitentiary. Following her death, Blanche’s good friend and the executor of her will, Esther L. Weiser, found the memoir wrapped in a large unused Christmas card. Later she entrusted it to Phillips, who had interviewed Blanche several times before her death. Drawing from these interviews, and from extensive research into Depression-era outlaw history, Phillips supplements the memoir with helpful notes and with biographical information about Blanche and her accomplices.