Bonnie and Clyde’s Wild Ride and Gruesome End

However, Bonnie and Clyde couldn’t get away with it forever. In the end they met their demise in a hail of gunfire, thus putting a tragic end to their life of crime.

Read below to learn more about their humble beginnings and what lead to their tragic and sudden end.

Bonnie was known for being studious, well-liked and a reader of poetry, while Clyde grew up on a farm, and at a young age already had found himself face to face with the law.

Clyde eventually taught himself to play the saxophone and read music on his own. Unfortunately, Clyde was negativly influenced by his older brother Buck, and close family friends. Clyde’s interests soon turned from playing music to committing crimes. 

Clyde was rejected for medical purposes due to long-term effects that stayed around after a childhood illness believed to be yellow fever or malaria. Clyde was rather unset about this rejection as he was already set on serving and even had “USN” tattooed on his left arm.

The rental car agency later dropped the theft charges, but the incident remained in Clyde’s criminal history and on his arrest record. Not even three weeks later, Clyde was arrested for the second time-alongside his older brother, Ivan “Buck” Barrow- for having a truck full of frozen turkeys. 

Bonnie was beautiful and also very intelligent. Even at a young age she told her friends that they would “see her name in lights one day.” Bonnie had a deep love for movies and imagined a future for herself on the silver screen.

In 1932, Bonnie landed herself behind bars after getting caught during a hardware store robbery. While in a cell, she continued to write. Bonnie wrote ten different odes that she titled, “Poetry from Life’s Other Side.”

They couple was married on September 25, 1926 when Bonnie was just 16 years old. However, after only being married for  just a little over a year the two separated for their third and final time in December, of 1927. It is believed the couple separated due to Roy’s alleged infidelity.

Shortly after his recapture Roy was transferred to the Huntsville State Prison where he ultimately met his demise. On October 3, 1937 Roy was killed during an attempted prison break.

Clyde was 20 years old, and Bonnie was 19 at the time. The two immediately fell in love and very quickly became inseparable.

He had her smuggle in a gun into the jail cell, which helped Clyde escape from that prison with two of his fellow inmates. However, this escape was short lived as one week later he was discovered and sent back to jail where he remained.

One friend of the couple said that Clyde underwent a transformation while in prison. The friend stated that Clyde went from “schoolboy to rattlesnake,” and was forever changed by his time in the prison.

In a tactic to get transferred to a hopefully less rough facility, Clyde decided to chop off two of his toes with an axe. However, this action became quite unnecessary as six days later he was released on parole.

In 1932, Clyde’s crimes began to escalate when one of their accomplices in a store robbery killed a store owner. Clyde decided to go on the run, and he took Bonnie along with him.

They didn’t have a permanent place of residence. They would bathe in rivers, eat cans of sardines, and take shifts driving throughout the night to escape from police. This photo from 1933 is of the couple in the forest, cleaning their guns while on the run.

However, this was not the case. The dynamic duo instead planned their robberies on smaller business, grocery stores, gas stations, and other mom-and-pop shops. With one robbery, they often only stole an amount of $5 to $10 in total.

When a local purchased the building, he had every intention to get rid of it or demolish it, but a recent vote by 14 to 1 shows that the Landmark Commission wants to instead preserve it as a historical landmark.

The press portrayed Clyde as a rebellious hoodlum and Bonnie as a lovestruck partner in crime.

An investigation of the crime scene turned up a camera full of photos of the two that ran in newspapers across the country.

Clyde ended up smashing his car going 70 mph into a construction barricade. Their car then when airborne before landing in a dried up riverbed.

Clyde even walked with a bit of a hobble. He also had to drive in his socks, since he couldn’t balance correctly on the pedals of a car while wearing shoes. Clyde was driving in his socks in the summer of 1933 when the couple crashed into the riverbed. 

After the accident, Bonnie walked with a limp and really struggled with walking. She needed Clyde to carry her around at times.

To pass messages along to his family, Clyde would tie secret messages to a Coca-Cola bottle, speed past his family’s home, then throw the bottle out the window. His parents would then find the bottle which would have directions on where to meet up with the outlaws.

Bonnie and Clyde often shared their riches with their families. In return, if the couple was ever in trouble, their families helped them during their struggles with new clothes and some money.

These sentences were relatively short, but they ultimately got caught for aiding and abetting the infamous criminal.

He got Clyde started in criminal activity in the 1920s when they would steal poultry and automobiles together. They later on would form the Barrow Gang and commit even more crimes together. In 1933, Buck breathed his last breath during a police shootout, but Bonnie and Clyde were able to escape from this incident.

During one of the getaways, she got blinded in one eye. In the incident that ended her husband Buck’s life, Blanche was arrested and ultimately served six of her ten years in prison before being let out.

Similar to Clyde’s family members, Billie Jean was sentenced to one year in jail for helping Bonnie while she was on the run. She served her sentencing in West Virginia at Alderson Prison.

Clyde would more often than not try abducting those who were onto the couple and trying to alert authorities, including lawmen themselves. Once they escaped far away, he would release the individual, unharmed and even give them some cash to return home.

Murphy was about to get married, and his fiancée later wore her wedding gown to his funeral. This outraged the public, who had often rooted for the brazen underdog-outlaws. The public wanted to see the couple caught- dead or alive.

 The officers suspected the car of being occupied by sleeping drunks and were preparing to ticket the occupants. Clyde said to Henry,“Let’s take them,” meaning kidnap, and Henry misinterpreted the command as an encouragement to fire his weapon resulting in the officers deaths.

It didn’t take very long for neighbors to get suspicious and call the police. The groups stay ended abruptly with a shootout that ended in the deaths of two more police officers- Officer Wes Harryman and Officer Harry McGinnis.

This famous image of Bonnie is one of many completely staged photographs that were found in the hideout. Bonnie never smoked, so posing with the cigar was only for show and an attempt to toughen-up her image.

However, the only people who really know the answer to these questions with absolute certinity, would never get the chance to say. Bonnie and Clyde had no idea of the horrendous fate waiting for them in the very near future…

On the night of May 23, 1934, six police officers from Texas and Louisiana planned an ambush against the notorious bank robbers. The police attacked them on a rural road in Bienville Parish, Louisiana.

One officer recounted hearing Bonnie scream when Clyde was hit. Police kept firing, about 130 rounds. When the smoke cleared, the two were dead. Bonnie was 23 years old, Clyde was 24.

Souvenir hunters showed up to the scene in an attempt to collect memorabilia from the criminals. One man even tried to cut off Clyde’s ear as a souvenir. Another ended up collecting a small lock of hair from Bonnie.

C.B. Bailey, the undertaker assigned to preserve the bodies for the funerals, found that the bodies had so many holes in them in so many different places that it was difficult to keep embalming fluid in them.

The four drove from Louisiana to Arkansas and chatted along the way. Bonnie enjoyed talking to Darby and begged him to eventually embalm the couple when they pass. They ended up releasing both Darby and Stone in Arkansas with $5 to get back home. After the fact, Darby didn’t seem too phased about the kidnapping and did in fact go on to embalm the couple after their deaths.

He ruled that the Ford V-8 sedan Bonnie and Clyde stole should be given back to its true owner, despite being riddled with bullet holes now. The owner of the car was a Kansas man named Ruth Warren.

He would charge a fee for visitors to see the infamous automobile. This ultimately led to other fraudulent scammers popping up as five replicas were created and advertised as the real car.

Today, the real version of the infamous vehicle is on display in Las Vegas, Nevada. You can find it at Whiskey Pete’s Resort and Casino.

After their death, police found multiple weapons inside their stolen car, including rifles, shotguns, revolvers, pistols, and 3,000 rounds of ammunition. Bonnie was even found with a gun resting on her lap.

Bonnie’s mom had always disapproved of Clyde and thus made sure that her daughter was buried in a separate Dallas cemetery from Clyde.

Blanche mentioned how it was “the easiest way out” for her. Blanche unfortunately seemed to have gotten wrapped up in the crime without wanting to. After she was released from jail, she ended up leading a quiet life and remarried.

As a surviving member of the Barrow Gang, Blanche was consulted a lot for the movie to create the fictionalized film. Estelle Parsons played Blanche in the film and ended up winning an Oscar for this role. However, Blanche did not like how the film portrayed her.

Mrs. Edwards said she appreciated the memorial because Bonnie and Clyde had become infamous for being murderers, yet their victims were often forgotten. She was reported as stating “I want the world to know what vicious killers and murderers they are.”

By 2011, the musical made its way to Broadway and had 69 different shows. The Broadway show starred Laura Osnes as Bonnie Parker and Jeremy Jordan as Clyde Barrow.

The second episode depicted the formation of the Barrow Gang with Buck and Blanche leading up to Bonnie and Clyde’s death. The series stars Emile Hirsch, Holliday Grainger, Lane Garrison, and Sarah Hyland. It was ultimately criticized for its historical inaccuracies despite being shown on the History Channel.

The film stars Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson who played the rangers Frank Hamer and Maney Gault. It received average reviews with a 58% approval on Rotten Tomatoes.

The ring features three snakes with jewels for eyes. Though Bonnie was married to another man throughout her time with Clyde, this ring is believed to be an engagement or even wedding ring that Clyde gave to her. The ring was taken from the couple’s vehicle after their passing and discovered over 80 years later. Bonnie and Clyde’s ring sold at an auction for $20,000.