Beautiful love story which is built on blood, broken destinies and human lives.
In the early 2000s, Russia had a tradition of romanticizing criminals. Criminals were considered victims who were rejected by the world, sufferers who needed a helping hand. The romanticization of criminals began all over the world, and not just in our country.
Many thieves, rapists and murderers today act as rescuers and evoke sympathy among today's youth.
One of these heroes appear before Bonnie and Clyde - gangsters from america. These young people have achieved overwhelming popularity, films have been made about them, poems and songs have been written.
The first Bonnie and Clyde movie was made in 1967 and won two Oscars.
And who were these young people until the moment when the whole world started talking about them?
Bonnie and Clyde lived in times of constant economic crises, poverty and hunger. At this time, banditry flourishes, the authorities could not do anything about it.
Bonnie and Clyde were mafia structures and were what are commonly called "thugs". Personalities who are not accustomed to obeying anyone are surrounded by utter chaos and death is on their heels.
Young people were born in Texas. Their parents were ordinary hard workers, the girl's father worked as a bricklayer, and her mother sewed clothes for poor peasants. The young man grew up in a family where there were many children and there was not enough money.
Bonnie studied hard at school, was a leader in the team, had an excellent imagination and loved to participate in school productions.
Everyone knows that good girls fall in love with bad boys. At the age of 15 she met Roy's first love. Surrounding assumed that soon the young man would be in prison. In 1926, a young man proposes to Bonnie and they get married. The girl at that time worked in a local cafe.
A year later, the young people decided to divorce. Roy did not spend the night at home, he could not appear for several days, the girl was not intentional, to endure the antics of the newly-made hubby. Roy didn't really mind and let Bonnie go with ease. A few years later he was put behind bars.
Rape victim in prison
Clyde was a year older Bonnie went to jail for the first time at the age of 16. He was soon released, but the second time he was caught stealing domestic turkeys. Clyde was not afraid of prison. Despite the fact that he had a stable income, he always wanted to steal something.
At 21, Clyde is sent to Eastham Prison.
Something terrible happened to a young guy behind bars, because he became a completely different person. Cheerful Clyde, turned into an angry at the whole world who hated everyone.
There are suggestions that behind bars young man was raped, it is likely that this was repeated several times. Clyde killed the rapist.
Two years later goes free.
In the same year, Bonnie and Clyde met. Clyde is 22 years old, hates the whole world, Bonnie is 21 years old, works at a local cafe, wants to change her life, travel a lot and find her “bad boy”. Bonnie never aspired to have a family and children, the goal in life was fun. Clyde was the perfect candidate.
Bonnie and Clyde organized a small gang, which included a few other people. They were robbing stores.
Clyde had a goal - to punish the prison in which he had to endure such torment. He planned to organize a mass escape of prisoners, but for this he did not have the necessary money.
Clyde was not stopped by the fact that sometimes he had to kill people for profit.
Bonnie and Clyde were not afraid to be behind bars. One evening they were having fun in their apartment, where a shot was fired. The neighbors called the police.
In 1933, the police were at the house of gangsters who didn't want to give up, a shootout ensued. Young people managed to get away from law enforcement agencies.
In 1933, the gang gets into a car accident, where the girl suffered the most.
In 1934, Clyde managed to implement a revenge plan and organize a mass escape of prisoners. Everyone rose up in the fight against criminals: the authorities, the police and the local population.
In 1934 Bonnie and Clyde were shot in their own car, 69 bullets were counted in the guy's chest, and 78 in the girl's chest.
They began to make money on the corpses, they began to show them to the population for money. Their clothes cost a lot of money.
From the first day they met, young people dreamed of being buried nearby, but their dream did not come true.
To this day remains a mystery why of all the mafia organizations of that time, Bonnie and Clyde gained popularity.
Bonnie loved to be photographed, and she was considered a slutty girl, although if you look at these photos now, there is not a drop of debauchery in them. Society did not accept young people, not only because of mass robberies, but also because of sexual relations outside of marriage, at that time in America this was unacceptable.
Bonnie and Clyde are young people madly in love with each other, but behind these feelings are human lives, broken destinies and destroyed families ...
A squad of policemen, led by Frank Hamer, a Texas Ranger, waited for the appearance of a Ford V8 car on the road, hiding in the bushes. A few minutes later, the car was already smoking on the side of the road, and inside lay the dead bodies that belonged to the most famous robber couple in the world, whose names were Clyde and Bonnie.
Origin of Bonnie Parker
Bonnie Elizabeth Parker is the daughter of a bricklayer from Roven, Texas. Her father died when she was not yet four years old. Together with her sister and mother, the girl moved to Dallas. She was not yet 16 years old when she married Roy Thornton, a petty crook. This marriage could hardly be called (especially considering subsequent events) a love story. Soon the husband disappeared into the criminal world, and after 1929 the newlyweds no longer crossed paths, although the girl did not take off her wedding ring until the last day. Thornton learned in prison that his wife had died.
Meeting Bonnie and Clyde
The main characters of our story, Clyde and Bonnie, met when she was 19 and he was 21. According to some version, it happened in a diner where the girl worked as a waitress at that time, according to another, they first met at Bonnie's friend. The girl was just making hot chocolate when Clyde entered the house.
Clyde's past
The latter was already an avid gangster by the time of this fateful meeting. Together with Buck, his older brother, this son of the poor, originally from Dallas, has already committed a sufficient number of robberies of roadside cafes and shops. After Buck went to prison in 1928, Clyde, the younger Barrow, became the leader of a criminal gang.
The beginning of the story of two lovers
It is not known what he said to Bonnie when they met, but she moved in with him the very next day. The lovers did not part for a minute. Clyde was an excellent shot and carried a pistol with him at all times. The girl asked me to teach her how to shoot. Clyde soon began to take his girlfriend "on business": she usually sat in the car when he burst into a gas station or cafe and robbed the cashier, threatening the staff with a weapon. A few months later he was arrested, but Bonnie managed to arrange an escape by handing over the gun to his partner. Soon she herself went to jail, and then, for two years, Clyde again. Parker at that time wrote him letters in which she promised to wait.
Clyde's first murder
He was released from prison in 1932 as a completely different person. Barrow Marie, his sister, said that "something terrible" happened there. This "terrible" - the first murder of Clyde - he beat the prisoner who raped him to death.
A dark story is the love of these two people. According to some reports, she was platonic, since the young man was a homosexual. According to another version, they had sexual relations not only among themselves, but also with other members of the gang. Roy Hamilton, as you know, was the lover of both, and then he also brought his girlfriend, because of which relations within this "team" heated up to the limit.
However, everyone who met Clyde and Bonnie said that they truly love each other. For example, Emma Parker, the girl's mother, noted that she understood this as soon as Bonnie introduced her to her boyfriend. "I saw it in her eyes," she said.
Development of events
Soon Buck, Clyde's brother, and Blanche, his wife, joined the company. Together they committed murders and robberies with unjustified cruelty. 13 deaths are on the conscience of this gang.
The life of Bonnie and Clyde was the life of real vagabonds: they ate what they managed to get in the shops, slept on the street, drank themselves unconscious, as if foreseeing their future death, knowing that they would not survive. Bonnie, during her last meeting with her mother, asked her not to speak ill of Clyde when they were killed.
"Fighters for Justice"
They considered themselves fighters for justice. It seemed an honorable thing during the Great Depression to deprive those who had even a little money. Despite the fact that the crimes of these people were high-profile, their booty was very small: in May 1933, they stole 2.5 thousand dollars from a Minnesota bank, which was the most significant amount. John Dillinger, a famous contemporary of the couple, said at the time that Bonnie and Clyde were "a disgrace to bank robbers." The lovers in October 1930 shot the owner of a grocery store in Texas. His life was worth only $28.
The couple loved cars and weapons. Clyde, shortly before his death, even wrote a letter of gratitude to Henry Ford, in which he promised that he would only steal cars of this brand.
Robbers in Oklahoma took Percy Boyd, the sheriff, captive, then left him on the sidelines, telling his people goodbye that they were "not a gang of murderers", but ordinary people trying to survive the Depression. The undisputed leader, according to the surviving police officer, was Clyde. And he even liked Bonnie - according to the sheriff, she seemed like a stranger in this company. The policeman noted that they loved each other, and told a detail: the lovers had a rabbit in the car, which the girl was taking to her mother as a gift.
"PR campaign" hosted by Bonnie Parker
These two were always happy when they saw articles about themselves in the newspapers. Bonnie even developed a "PR campaign" on purpose: she sent staged photographs to the newspapers in front of a car, with weapons at the ready. She attached her poems to these pictures. The notebook, in which several poems were written down by hand, was sold in 2007 for $36,000 at a Bonhams auction.
The glory of the robbers was growing. The best forces of the FBI and the police were thrown into their capture, they were promised a reward of $ 1,500. Note that well-known crime bosses also opposed the gang, for example, Handsome Floyd, who absolutely did not want to share with a bunch of visiting hooligans, the already small prey.
Ambush
In 1933, the gang was ambushed - Blanche Barrow was wounded in the leg, and Buck (her husband) was shot dead. Hamilton was arrested and then sent to the electric chair in April 1934. After that, Clyde and Bonnie went to Texas with the intention of sitting there with Bonnie's relatives. They found a haven, but Henry Methvin, the father of one of the gang members, betrayed the location of the beloved in exchange for the fact that his son was found not guilty. It was his supposedly broken car that served as a bait on that fateful day - May 23, 1934.
How does the story of Bonnie and Clyde end?
The end of this story was as follows. Clyde and Bonnie did not even have time to take weapons when a flurry of lead fell on their car: a lot of bullets stuck into the bodies of lovers. The evening papers immediately published reports of the deaths of these notorious robbers, with a front-page photo of their bodies riddled with bullets. Clyde's jacket, in which 40 bullet holes were counted, and his gun with 7 notches, one for each of those killed, were shown to the public.
However, this was not enough: the bodies of Clyde and Bonnie were put up in the morgue, and everyone could look at them for only a dollar for several days. This was done in Dallas by 40 thousand people who looked at Bonnie's body, and 30 thousand - at Clyde.
20 relatives, including friends and mothers of the couple, also appeared before the court for harboring, and the criminals themselves, against the wishes of Bonnie, were buried in different cemeteries. Such is the life and death of the robbers named Bonnie and Clyde, whose true story was told in this article.
Bonnie and Clyde Museum
There is a museum of this couple in Gibsland, located in the former cafe where the criminals bought their last meal. The son of Ted Hinton, a ranger involved in the shooting of the gang, works there as a caretaker. Every weekend leading up to May 23, this city hosts a festival dedicated to Bonnie and Clyde, during which a fatal ambush is staged.
Screen adaptations of the story
For all the couples of the underworld, the names of these robbers today have become common nouns. They are quoted in music, fashion, cinema. There are several adaptations of this story, including documentaries, but the most famous of them is the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde. The film is directed by Arthur Penn and produced by Warren Beatty who plays Clyde. For this film, they were looking for a female lead for a long time. Natalie Wood, Jane Fonda, Shirley MacLaine, Beatty's sister, and Leslie Caron, his then girlfriend (who dumped Warren when she was turned down) were considered for the role. Arthur Penn finally made up his mind - the choice fell on the actress Faye Dunaway, whom he saw in the film "The Incident", the debut for this girl, and immediately noted.
"Bonnie and Clyde" (film) tells the story of this famous couple from the moment they met until the fatal shootout. Clyde was presented as an ingenuous romantic who loves to talk about justice and suffers from impotence, which explains his supposedly platonic feelings for Bonnie. The latter was depicted as an enthusiastic young girl in love with her hero. She longs to escape from the gray everyday life of American life, take risks, live on the limit and love, no matter what.
After the release of the movie "Bonnie and Clyde" (the true life story of the robbers became very popular), women began to copy the style of the actress who played Bonnie Parker, and magazines began to publish various shootings with models whose image resembled the heroine - girls in midi skirts and blouses posed in front of cameras with weapons in their hands. Faye Dunaway initially wanted to act in slacks that were more comfortable for gunfights and chases. But Theadora van Runkle, the costume designer, came up with a more glamorous look with a beret, tight pencil skirt and heels. And I didn't guess. Modern Bonnies and Clydes have taken their idols as a model of style. The popularity of the picture was great.
"Bonnie and Clyde" (film) came out at a time when a huge wave of student protests swept the West. Therefore, the youth of the late 60s perceived these robbers as heroes. The film was nominated for an Oscar and received two statuettes - for the female supporting role (played by Blanche Barrow Estelle Parsons) and camera work.
This tape greatly influenced the further development of American cinema. According to Quentin Tarantino, who quoted this story in his work Natural Born Killers, this film began the Silver Age in Hollywood, which lasted right up to the early 1980s. Of course, for the actors, he also became a breakthrough. When Warren Beatty was honored at the 36th American Film Institute Awards in 2008, Faye Dunaway took the stage and delivered a touching Bonnie Parker-style verse speech, ending with "this is the end of the story" where Faye Dunaway is Bonnie and Warren Beatty is Clyde.
In 2013, the mini-series "Bonnie and Clyde" appeared. The film was a great success with the audience. Holliday Granger and Emile Hirsch (respectively Bonnie and Clyde) played the leading roles. Series 2, for example, tells us about how it all began (there are 20 episodes in total).
Many songs have also been created based on this story. The composition of the same name is in the groups "Spleen", "Night Snipers", Bad Balance, or, for example, we note the song performed by Kristina Si - "Bonnie and Clyde".
American robbers Bonnie and Clyde were villainous during the economic crisis in the United States - the Great Depression. These names are now often used to refer to any lovers involved in criminal activities, although in fact there was little tenderness in the relationship between Bonnie and Clyde.
Raider with a broken gun
Bonnie Elizabeth Parker was born October 1, 1910 in Rowena, Texas. When Bonnie was four years old, her father, a bricklayer by profession, died, and her mother moved to the suburbs of Dallas with three children. The family lived in poverty. And on September 25, 1926, 15-year-old Bonnie, an attractive petite girl (with a height of 150 cm, she weighed only 41 kg), married a certain Roy Thornton.
In 1927, Bonnie began working as a waitress in a cafe in East Dallas. Relations between the spouses did not work out. A year after his marriage, he began to regularly disappear for long weeks, and already in January 1929 they broke up. Shortly after the breakup (there was no official divorce, and Bonnie wore a wedding ring to her death), Thornton went to prison for five years.
Clyde Chestnut Barrow was born March 24, 1909 near Telico, Texas. He was the fifth child in a family of seven or eight children, his parents were poor farmers. At 16, Clyde leaves school. He starts to work, but does not stay in one place for a long time. He is becoming more and more interested in cars. Plays the saxophone. The police first arrested Clyde for stealing a car in 1926. A second arrest soon followed - after Clyde, along with his brother Buck, committed the theft of turkeys.
In 1928, he leaves home and settles with a friend. A few months later, Clyde decides to organize the thefts on his own. His first raid is on a gambling hall in Fort Bend County, where he disarms two guards at gunpoint with a broken gun. This is followed by a failed nighttime burglary attempt. In late 1929 and early 1930, Clyde and Buck are wanted by the police in many cities, that's when he meets Bonnie Parker.
Tired of vegetating in a lousy cafe
January 13, 1930 Clyde Barrow, shortly after being released from prison, enters a Dallas diner. He is served by a pretty blond waitress, as yet unknown to anyone, Bonnie Parker. What happened between them? What unknown force pulled them to each other? Love at first sight or sudden passion? Hardly. Or did Clyde seduce Bonnie with stories about the romance of robbery, about the unlimited freedom and power that can be achieved with weapons in hand? This is closer to the truth.
Bonnie was sick and tired of living in a lousy cafe, she had long hated boorish customers and trays of dirty dishes. Working hard for a penny in a cheap eatery, being married to a poor worker, having children who then would have nothing to feed - Bonnie did not want to. I wanted to bring other colors into the faded everyday life. Diversity did not work out: Bonnie's life still remained monotonous, however, the gray color changed to scarlet - the color of human blood ...
“Little blond lump,” as Bonnie wrote about herself in her diary, excited the exciting stories about the life of a reckless tramp that Clyde told her. As a woman, she was of little interest to the leader of the gang. He changed his sexual orientation while in prison. Bonnie was content with love affairs with other members of the gang. They fueled their friendship with stories of robberies and violent fights.
But we would err on the side of truth if we said that Clyde and Bonnie were cold and impassive. They were passionate about weapons. Together, they often went out of town and set up a shooting range. Perhaps, marksmanship from all types of weapons became the only science (Bonnie and Clyde were illiterate and did not even complete their primary education) in which they achieved perfection.
The sweet couple loved to be photographed with weapons: Bonnie, with a gun in her hands and a cigarette in her mouth, posed in front of the lenses. Clyde with a rifle in the photographs looked simpler - he lacked the artistry of his girlfriend. Bonnie admired the pistols her suitor wore in a coat holster and the power that came from the deadly guns.
Ruthlessly removed witnesses
They soon began working together. Their deadly journey began with the robbery of an armory in Texas in the spring of 1930. There they armed themselves to the teeth. The legend of the noble robbers, facilitating the wallets of moneybags, is untenable: the couple mainly robbed eateries, shops, gas stations. By the way, it was impossible to make big money on bank robberies in those days - the Great Depression raked all the big money out of the banks, and Clyde's gang sometimes got more by robbing some roadside shop. But sometimes even 10 dollars was not collected at the box office.
The robbery scenario was usually as follows: Bonnie was driving a car, Clyde broke in and took the proceeds, then jumped into the car on the go, shooting back. If someone tried to resist, then he immediately received a bullet. However, they ruthlessly removed innocent bystanders. Bonnie and Clyde were not just robbers, they were murderers, and on their account there were both ordinary people like owners of small shops and gas stations, and policemen, whom Clyde preferred to kill in order to avoid prison. One day, the criminals kidnapped the sheriff, stripped him and, having tied him up, threw him on the side of the road with the words: “Tell your people that we are not a gang of murderers. Get into the position of people trying to survive this damn depression."
After the murder of the first policeman who decided to check the documents of a suspicious couple, there was nothing to lose: now they were probably waiting for a death sentence. Therefore, Bonnie and Clyde went all out and, without hesitation, fired at people in any situation, even when they were practically not in danger.
On August 5, 1932, two policemen spotted Clyde at a village feast. When they asked him to come up, the bandit put both of them down on the spot. A month later, breaking through police posts on the road, the gang shot 12 guardians of the law.
Devotion without love
Pretty soon, more people joined their gang: Clyde's older brother Buck with his wife Blanche and a young boy S. W. Moss, whom they picked up at some gas station, seducing the "free life" of romantics from the main road. And also Bonnie's lover Raymond Hamilton, to whom Clyde also showed special feelings ...
Therefore, no unearthly love arose between Bonnie and Clyde, but there was no doubt that they were really very devoted to each other: Bonnie at one time pulled Clyde out of prison, passing him weapons on a date, and Clyde later, when the police apprehended Bonnie, recaptured her friend by brazenly attacking the police station. The murders excited the bloody couple more than sex or alcohol.
At night they drank whiskey, and Bonnie wrote pompous romantic poems in which she lamented her fate and had fun with accomplices. They were united by the desire to live life cheerfully and brightly, and also brought together by a pathological passion for murder: that Bonnie, that Clyde killed people because they liked to do it. One of the gang members, a certain Jones, said during interrogation: “These two are monsters. I've never seen anyone enjoy killing so much."
Once in Kansas, Bonnie first saw a Wanted by Police poster with her image. The fact that she and Clyde became "celebrities" shocked Bonnie so much that she immediately sent a dozen letters to major newspapers with pictures that she and Clyde took on their criminal path. Bonnie, by all means available to her, supported the version that she and Clyde were fighters for justice. After all, the banks they rob belong to the powerful, not to poor farmers and small businessmen.
The wild customs of the raiders, their unbridled passions and base desires terrified people. Of course, the police were constantly hunting for the gang. However, for the time being, the Barrow gang was incredibly lucky, and they managed to slip out of the most ingenious police traps. However, it wasn't just luck. Bonnie and Clyde had absolutely nothing to lose, so any attempt by the cops to get this gang ran into a terrible lead shower of pistols.
500 bullets in the bodies of gangsters
In 1933, when photographs of Bonnie and Clyde adorned the streets of cities in Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, the owner of the house they rented identified the gangsters. All police forces of the city of Lawton were thrown to capture the gang, but after a fierce shootout in which Clyde's brother Bob was killed, the criminals managed to hide in the nearby forest. The bloody couple miraculously escaped from the encirclement and moved to Texas to meet with Clyde's mother. Here they were ambushed: the sheriff's people had been watching Cammy Barrow for a long time. Bonnie and Clyde received only scratches, but the car in which they fled from the cops became like a sieve from bullets.
Having licked their wounds, the Barrow gang again took up dirty deeds. And the criminal terror began again: murders, car thefts, robberies. The FBI took over the raiders. The head of the department, Edward Hoover, called Clyde a mad animal, all forces were ordered to fire to kill. The hunt has begun...
Texas Sheriff Frank Hamer analyzed each of their attacks, created maps and diagrams of their movements over the years, studied all the places of the raids and the paths that the bandits chose. "I wanted to penetrate their diabolical plans," he said, "and I did it." For several months, he and his assistants tracked down Bonnie and Clyde. But the criminals left right from under the nose.
Finally, the father of one of the gang members, Henry Metvin, offered his help in the capture in exchange for pardoning his son. Henry Methvin gave the police the key to the house where the criminals were hiding. The house was surrounded by two dense rings of policemen, all entrances to it were blocked.
On the morning of May 23, 1934, a stolen Ford appeared on the road. The driver was wearing dark glasses, and a woman in a new red dress was sitting next to him. Two thousand rounds of ammunition, three rifles, 12 pistols, two pump-action shotguns and ... a saxophone were hidden in the car. Still, they had no hope.
The sheriff's car drove towards them. Hamer got out of the car and ordered the bandits to surrender. Clyde immediately grabbed his rifle, Bonnie - for a revolver. But they hardly managed to fire at least one shot. Lead hail hit the car. 500 bullets pierced the bodies of the gangsters, and they were literally torn apart, and the police continued to pour deadly fire on the riddled car ...
The front pages of American newspapers were filled with reports of the death of Bonnie and Clyde. The mutilated bodies of the criminals were put on public display in the morgue, and those who wished for one dollar could look at them. There were quite a few curious people ... Photos of the killed bandits were published by all the newspapers. America breathed a sigh of relief.
However, the inscription on Bonnie's gravestone, left by her mother, is not at all reproachful: "As flowers bloom under the rays of the sun and the freshness of dew, so the world becomes brighter thanks to people like you."
1935, May 23, morning - a dark red Ford was driving along a country road. Behind tall bushes, six riflemen armed with carbines were waiting for him. Inside the Ford were a man and a girl whose heads the American police valued at $50,000. When the car arrived at the ambush site, all six shooters rose to their full height and opened heavy fire.
More than a hundred bullets riddled the car and everyone in the cabin. "Ford" after driving a few more meters, stopped on the side of the road. The two bloody bodies of a minute ago were the legendary raiders Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. They were ranked among the most famous bandits in the United States. The reasons for this were more than solid.
The law pursued Bonnie and Clyde in a dozen states. They did not hesitate to shoot anyone who tried to stop them. The news of their death flew through all the world's newspapers, but no one believed in it. “This is another police duck,” said one of the respected American newspapers. “Someone needs political dividends in the upcoming elections, and he (and most likely “they”) intends to get them even with official recognition, based on gossip at best.” And only when the public was presented with photos of the corpses and an expert opinion on death, the Americans were convinced that they had lost their unlucky heroes.
Bonnie and Clyde became celebrities in two short years. They really were to become folk heroes - modern-day Robin Hood and Maid Maryam. But not for their victims, and not for the cops who tracked them down and killed them. For the police, they were simply trophies that could be shown to the whole world. Naked and unwashed, they were laid out on mortuary tables and photographed for history. Bonnie Parker is only 23, her partner is a year older.
Clyde Barrow was born on March 24, 1909 in Teleko (Texas), in a small town near Dallas. He was the sixth, penultimate child in the family. At the age of nine, Clyde was sent to an institution for juvenile delinquents as an incorrigible truant and petty thief. Teleko was located in a sandy basin. This was the name given to a vast area in the American Southwest, devastated by drought and intensive farming. 2/3 of the inhabitants dispersed in search of a better life. Among them was Clyde's father, who sold the farm for next to nothing. Clyde tried to provide for his family, but all his noble attempts were beyond the law.
1929 - young Clyde Barrow met young Bonnie Parker. Petite and slender, cheerful and smart, she was able to charm anyone. Bonnie's father died when she was only 4 years old. The mother, having taken the children, moved to live in Dallas, in a gloomy area, which was called the "cement city". Bonnie and her sister Billy married early, and both were petty criminals. A year after the wedding, the first husband of the future raider, Roy, ran away with his mistress.
Bonnie did not long for long: three months later she sheltered Clyde, who was hunted by the police with might and main. Clyde Barrow, a thief and swindler, spent only one night in bed with his beloved. Dawn had barely dawned when the door ripped off its hinges with a crash and three guys in uniform fell on the sleepy thief in unison. Clyde received 2 years in prison and 12 years on probation.
And although the prison term looked ridiculous for a professional thief, the energetic Clyde decided not to sit it out. His faithful Bonnie, having hidden a loaded Colt under her dress, was able to pass the weapon through the bars during the next meeting. The stern jailer at the checkpoint was ashamed to search the sweet and friendly girl, who exuded genuine timidity and chastity.
That same night, an armed Clyde escaped from prison, but two days later he was already caught and again yearned behind bars. He was now facing a full 14 years in prison. I had to resort to a small but painful operation. A local chamber "surgeon" chopped off two toes on his cellmate's leg with a homemade knife, moreover, at his request. The wounded prisoner was released.
In the United States in those days, banditry flourished thanks to Prohibition. The mafia ruled in the big cities, and in the provinces there was a hunt for gangsters like John Dillinger. The country was gripped by a depression that followed the stock market crash on Wall Street. More than three million families were forced to live on welfare. Employers were not interested in yesterday's prisoners.
Bonnie and Clyde, armed with revolvers, began to rob trading establishments throughout Texas. Bonnie, covering her face with a dark silk handkerchief, fearlessly fired upwards, while her partner hurriedly packed the money into a bag. This went on for several months until the hijackers fell into a police ambush in Kaufman.
Clyde, firing back, took to his heels and escaped with only a slight wound in the shoulder. The police roughly tied up Bonnie, who was squealing and biting, and dragged her to the car. When the judges looked at the young, pretty raider, they did not believe for a long time that they actually faced the object of criminal proceedings. Appearance and touching notes took their toll: the raider was sentenced to only three years.
Bonnie, after serving two, was released early for good behavior. Behind the prison walls, all her virtue disappeared again. Bonnie and Clyde were still together. Raid followed raid. During breaks, they had fun and posed for the camera. The pictures only increased their popularity. The press portrayed the gangsters as ruthless lovers who, wandering through the cities of Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Missouri, robbing and killing, at the same time remained a romantic couple.
In reality, everything was much more prosaic and even piquant. The prison turned the passionate Clyde into a bisexual. Very soon, the formidable gang was replenished with a third member - Ray Hamilton, with whom Clyde spent his prison term in love joys. Jealous Bonnie for a long time could not treat same-sex sex with understanding, then got used to it and tried to simply ignore it.
During the year, the criminal trio killed 4 people, the first of which was a jeweler. The raiders stole weapons, stole cars, and even swung at banks. Bank locks and employees, whose hands lay a few centimeters from the red button, could not resist their audacity. Ray Hamilton, although he considered himself lucky, got caught first.
Bonnie and Clyde hid for a month and decided to leave the state. A few days before leaving, they were again ambushed and opened fire with revolvers. In a desperate shootout, a sheriff's deputy was killed. The raiders managed to get away again, but now they were being hunted by the entire Texas police force. Bonnie, who sensed her near death, decided to play with death already openly. The gang was replenished with Clyde's brother named Buck and a certain 16-year-old youth named Wu De.
The raiders needed firearms. Bonnie offered to organize a raid on the federal arsenal in Springfield, Missouri. The operation went brilliantly. Success was immediately celebrated with a robbery of a loan company in Kansas City. While the police were looking for gangsters in six states, they made their way back to Dallas to visit their relatives. After the robbery of a jewelry store in Neosh, Bonnie and Clyde rented a house nearby, but a neighbor managed to notice how suspicious trunks migrated into the house along with bags and boxes.
The police arrived 15 minutes later and immediately began to suffer casualties. The first volley from the window of the surrounded house killed two policemen. The guards did not expect such a rebuff. Taking advantage of the confusion, the bandits jumped out of the house, got into the car and rushed along the dusty road. That night they drove almost 400 miles from Neosh to Texas. Clyde's hand was bleeding, it was bandaged right on the go. Before that, Bonnie was able to pull a bullet out of the wound with a hairpin.
Despite all their fame, the money the bandits got was tiny. The biggest prize - $ 2,500 they captured in May 1933 at the Okobino bank. The legendary John Dillinger commented on this event: “A couple of scumbags. They dishonor the bank robbers." A week later, Clyde was driving at his usual crazy speed when the accident happened. The car caught fire and overturned.
Clyde was able to open the door and jump out of the blazing salon. Bonnie was less nimble. She received serious burns and was barely able to hobble to the nearest village. A compassionate family that sheltered a young couple offered to call a doctor. Bonnie refused. The owner then called the police.
Two officers arrived at the house and a few minutes later were ambushed. The hijackers declared them hostages, got into a police car with them and at the same frantic speed rushed to the state line. The officers were released at the border.
Bonnie recovered slowly. The raiders had a chance to hide in Kansas and Iowa. Despite all their caution, the police tracked them down again. Early in the morning, a dozen or two policemen surrounded the house, where Clyde and his Bonnie were basking in the early morning slumber.
Sensitive Bonnie heard a slight noise, looked out from behind the curtain and was horrified. She woke Clyde, and together they tried to sneak out of the house unnoticed. The first shots rang out, and the bandits, shooting right and left, rushed ahead. They were able to get to the river and started swimming. Fortune again and again helped Bonnie and Clyde, who seemed drunk on the risk.
In the next 4 months, they shot four more policemen. By that time, Brother Buck was already resting in a better world, struck down by a bullet from a carbine. Baby Wu De, captured at the border, was able to avoid the electric chair. At the trial, he cried and shouted that he was forced to shoot and cut by force. Wu De asked for a pardon and was sent to federal prison for 15 years.
The elusive Bonnie and Clyde were dealt with by Sheriff Schmidt, who ordered his best agents to get the bandits alive or dead. The same, inspired by luck, attacked the farm where the prisoners worked, killed the guards and selected five prisoners from the striped crowd. The new team began to smash banking institutions, leaving behind corpses. Everything would be fine, but Clyde's sexual orientation manifested itself again.
Shameless Clyde flirted with two members of the gang, and they reciprocated. The third bandit brought his girlfriend to the group, and away we go. While the press treated the gangsters as sensational, a quarrel developed among them, not so much because of a sexual partnership, but because of the booty. The raids yielded a meager catch. Having quarreled and almost shot each other, the bandits split into two camps and dispersed.
Bonnie and Clyde traveled around the states, robbing and killing. During a long road trip, they stopped between corn fields, deciding to rest. The loving couple drank whiskey, shot birds and made love. Soon, two police officers from the highway patrol noticed her. The officers drove up to the car, not even suspecting who they would have to deal with. Smiling amiably, Bonnie and Clyde unanimously opened fire. After this cold-blooded murder, they signed their own verdict: the romantic and sentimental part of the United States turned away from them. Now a reward has been posted for the capture of Bonnie and Clyde.
The federal authorities joined forces to capture the daring hijackers. The search was led by Mounted Policeman Frank Hamer, who had shot 60 bandits in his time. Hedged by two fighters, he followed the trail of the raiders, not allowing them to rest and gain strength and ammunition. Bonnie and Clyde were heading northeast toward Oklahoma.
A random police patrol tried to stop a suspicious car with bullet holes in its windshield. But a machine gun shot out of the window. Two policemen fell on the road. One of them fell already dead. Local police chief Percy Boyd received minor head wounds and was taken hostage. The bandits kept him for a day. In the end, they somehow liked him and were generously released.
Percy Boyd began to share his impressions. According to him, Clyde stood out for his vanity and arrogance. As for Bonnie, the chief of police liked her:
She is not at all the same as shown in the picture with a revolver in her hands and a cigar in her mouth. She was annoyed by the caption under the photo "Clyde Barrow's girlfriend smokes cigars", and she regretted that she had once posed. Bonnie looks like herself in another picture. Where a smiling and cheerful girl stands. And you know, she really loves Clyde. This couple constantly carries a little rabbit named Sonny Boy with them in their car. They are going to give it to Bonnie's mother.
The last fact was a clue. A small squad of police headed to Dallas and visited the mother of Texas' most famous raider. The aging lonely woman sorted through the photographs and stared blankly at the armed policemen. “I haven't seen Bonnie for 5 years,” she said. “And even if I knew where she was, I still wouldn’t say. A mother cannot betray her child, no matter what it may be and no matter what is written about it.”
The deadly tired officers hoped for the mistake of the raiders and still waited. Clyde's Ford was spotted outside a cafe in Louisiana. The police suggested that the bandits were looking for a meeting with their former accomplice Henry Methven, whose father lived on a local farm. For some reason, all local robberies were attributed to Bonnie and Clyde.
Six police officers hid near the Methven Sr. farm. There was a whole arsenal of automatic weapons in their car, but there was nothing to brighten up the long wait. The officers were mortally tired, soaked, and exhausted by mosquito bites. For three days and three nights they sat in ambush. However, Bonnie and Clyde were on the lookout. On May 23, at 4 am, officers stopped the car where Henry Methven's father was driving. The old man was dragged out of the car, handcuffed to a tree, and the car was left in the middle of the road as bait.
At ten o'clock in the morning, a familiar Ford appeared on the horizon. Clyde was driving. Noticing the bait, he slowed down, but the next second he pressed the gas again. But it was already too late. A friendly volley of carbines rang out from the bushes. The Ford, shot almost point-blank, stopped. Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker died a violent death, died the way they lived. Bonnie fell onto Clyde's shoulder.
Clyde was an excellent shot. Few managed to stay alive if Clyde fired the first shot. Pistols and a carbine lay next to Bonnie, but the ambush took her by surprise. A few hours later, the first onlookers appeared at the shooting site. A bullet-riddled Ford escorted a long escort of 50 cars to the police station.
The crimson Ford was put on public display behind a high mesh fence. This fence appeared after souvenir hunters tried to dismantle the car for parts. Some even got pieces of Bonnie's clothes and locks of hair before her body was removed from the car. Three light machine guns, two shotguns, a dozen pistols and at least 1,000 rounds of ammunition were found in the back seat. They were of no use to the bandits. More than a hundred bullets lodged in two corpses.
The officers who shot the raiders became national heroes. Chaos reigned around the morgue. The crowd was eager to see the famous corpses. Filming was done at the morgue to visually witness the death. Bonnie's body, put on display in Dallas, could be seen by almost 40,000 onlookers. A few less came to gawk at Clyde's corpse. The most curious were shown Clyde's torn jacket and his carbine, where seven notches flaunted on the butt - one for each victim.
20 people were brought to trial on charges of harboring criminals. These were relatives and friends. The men were shackled with one long chain to prevent an attempt to attack the guards.
Clyde was buried next to his brother Buck in West Dallas Cemetery. A huge flower wreath was dropped from an airplane on his grave. Bonnie wanted to be buried next to Clyde, but her body was taken to Fishtrap Cemetery.
Between robberies and murders, Bonnie sent her poems to many newspapers. Examination proved their authenticity. Among them was her own prophetic epitaph:
They don't consider themselves too cruel
They know that the law always wins.
They've been shot at before
And they remember that death is the punishment for sin.
Someday they'll be killed together
And buried side by side.
It will be sadness for the few
And it will be a relief to the law
And it will be death for Bonnie and Clyde.
On Bonnie's grave, someone's hand carved the inscription: "As flowers become sweeter from the sun and dew, so our old world becomes better thanks to people like you."
And yet she was America's most cold-blooded and cruel raider.
Perhaps the most famous and romanticized criminals in American history were Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, a young couple from Texas. They became famous in the early 1930s, and their names during the Great Depression were synonymous with chic and mayhem. Their life was like a fascinating western, where women smoke cigars and brandish rifles, and men rob banks and steal luxury cars. True, for Bonnie and Clyde, the film called life turned out to be very short. In our review, 13 little-known facts about this bloodthirsty couple.
1. Bonnie wore a wedding ring until her death.
Six days before she turned 16, Bonnie married classmate Roy Thornton. The marriage ended a few months later, and Bonnie never saw her husband again after he was jailed for robbery in 1929. Shortly thereafter, Bonnie met Clyde, and although they fell in love, Bonnie never really did not divorce Thornton. On the day that Bonnie and Clyde were killed in 1934, she still wore Thornton's wedding ring and had a tattoo on the inside of her right thigh - two hearts connected to each other with the inscriptions "Bonnie" and "Roy".
2 Bonnie And Clyde Were Short
Bonnie's height was only 150 cm, and Clyde - 162 cm, at a time when the average height for women and men was considered 160 cm and 172 cm, respectively.
3. Bonnie was an exemplary student and wrote poetry
During her high school years, Bonnie stood out for her imagination and creativity. While imprisoned in 1932 after an unsuccessful attempted robbery at a hardware store, she wrote a collection of 10 odes, which she called Poetry from the Other Side of Life.
4. Bonnie never smoked cigars.
In her most famous photograph, Bonnie Parker holds a revolver with one foot on the bumper of a car, a cigar between her teeth. In fact, this is part of a collection of comic pictures that Bonnie and Clyde took for their own amusement. They were found in the gang's secret apartment during a police raid. In one photo, Bonnie aims a rifle at a smiling Clyde in the chest, and in another, Clyde kisses Bonnie in an exaggerated movie-star fashion. These photographs, as well as Bonnie's poems found in the apartment, greatly influenced Bonnie and Clyde's fame. Newspapers across the country reprinted the photo with the cigar. In fact, Bonnie smoked cigarettes, as did Clyde (their favorite brand was Camel). Bonnie also loved whiskey, and Clyde hardly drank alcohol.
5. Clyde was not taken to the Navy
As a young man, Clyde tried to enlist in the US Navy, but was turned down because he had a serious illness (perhaps malaria or yellow fever) as a child. It was a hard blow for Clyde, who had already tattooed "USN" (U.S. Navy) on his left arm.
6. First arrest for not returning a rental car
The notorious criminal was first arrested in 1926 for car theft after failing to return a car he had rented in Dallas to visit his girlfriend. The car rental agency dropped the charges, but the incident remained on file with Clyde. Just three weeks later, he was arrested again, along with his older brother Marvin "Buck" Barrow, for having stolen turkeys in the back of their truck.
7. Banks are not their specialty
While they are often portrayed as Depression-era Robin Hoods who stole from wealthy and powerful financial institutions, Bonnie and Clyde were much more likely to rob gas stations and grocery stores. Many times their production was only $5 or $10.
8. Clyde cut off two of his fingers
While serving a 14-year sentence in Texas for robbery and auto theft in January 1932, Clyde decided he had had enough of hard labor on a prison farm. In order to be transferred to a less severe facility, Clyde cut off his left thumb and part of his second toe with an axe. The self-mutilation, which always caused him to limp afterwards, ultimately proved unnecessary, as Clyde was released early after six days.
9. Bonnie and Clyde are caring kids
No matter what happened, Bonnie and Clyde kept in touch with their families and visited their relatives regularly. This is what helped law enforcement officers ambush and kill criminals.
In fact, it was precisely because they were predictable (and constantly visiting their families) that Bonnie and Clyde were able to ambush and kill them.
10 Bonnie Was Lame
On the night of June 10, 1933, Clyde, with Bonnie in the passenger seat, was driving fast down a country road in North Texas. He did not notice the warning about the detour of the bridge, which is under repair. Ford V-8 broke through the barrier at a speed of 112 km / h and fell into a dry river bed. Acid spilled from a broken car battery and badly burned Bonnie's right leg, eating through the flesh to the bone in places. As a result, Bonnie suffered third-degree burns and (like Clyde) limped for the rest of her life. It was so difficult for her to walk that she sometimes hopped on one foot or leaned on Clyde.
11. Souvenir hunters
On May 23, 1934, a six-man ambush led by former Texas Ranger Captain Frank Hamer shot Bonnie and Clyde in their car, firing a total of over 130 bullets (110 hit the bandits). The acrid smell of gunpowder still hung in the air, as onlookers rushed to the holed car, trying to grab something for themselves as a keepsake. One man tried to cut off Clyde's ear with a pocket knife, and another tried to rip his finger off. Before the police could intervene, one of the onlookers managed to cut strands of Bonnie's hair and wrap it around her blood-soaked dress.
12. Car riddled with bullets can be seen in the casino
After the ambush of Bonnie and Clyde, the riddled Ford V-8 sedan (which had been stolen) was returned to its former owner, Ruth Warren of Topeka, Kansas. Warren sold the car to Charles Stanley, who towed the "death car" and drove it around the country, showing it as a tourist attraction. Today, this car can be found in the lobby of the Whiskey Pete`s casino in Primm, Nevada.
13 Bonnie And Clyde Are Buried Separately
Despite the fact that they were always close during their lives, after death the couple was separated. Although they once stated that they wanted to be buried nearby, Bonnie's mother, who did not approve of her relationship with Clyde, insisted that her daughter be buried in another cemetery in Dallas. Clyde was buried next to his brother Marvin. On his tombstone is written: "Departed, but not forgotten."
Bonnie Parker's grave, which reads: "As all flowers are made more fragrant by sunlight and dew, so is this old world made brighter by the lives of people like you."
There were also criminals in such a famous port city as Odessa. became not only a talk in the tongues, but also a movie hero.