Read My Life with Bonnie and Clyde Online

Authors: Blanche Caldwell Barrow,John Neal Phillips

My Life with Bonnie and Clyde (4 page)

When Blanche was still a teenager, her mother forced her to marry a man named John Callaway. Callaway was apparently much older than Blanche and well acquainted with her mother. To close friends Blanche speculated that her mother thought Callaway had some money, enough anyway to perhaps acquire some it for herself by offering her daughter as part of the deal. The only thing Blanche got from the marriage, however, was abuse, both physical and emotional. Although seeing the arrangement initially as a means to freedom and independence, she quickly found it to be otherwise. Among other things, the experience left her unable to bear children.
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Blanche endured the marriage for a while, and then ran away, apparently to West Dallas, a poor, and at the time unincorporated, neighborhood across the Trinity River from the city. By this time, December 1929, Blanche Caldwell Callaway had acquired a young friend named Emma Lou Renfro, who may have been hiding Blanche from her husband and family.
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Callaway had a sister living in Dallas, and Blanche, still a teenager, no doubt feared being tracked down.
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American women in the 1920s, especially underage women, had little recourse against abusive spouses. This might account for the fact that Blanche waited until 1931 to surface and seek a divorce from Callaway. By then, however, she had also met another man.

According to Clyde Barrow’s youngest sister, Marie, Blanche was living at the home of a friend, “On Borger, near the railroad tracks.” One source indicates that Blanche was walking in West Dallas one day when she passed a young man. At some point, she and the young man struck up a conversation. The date was November 11, 1929. Their subsequent friendship developed quickly into deep affection and love. His name was Marvin Ivan Barrow. His friends called him Buck, but Blanche referred to him as Daddy.
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Just after midnight on November 30, 1929, less than three weeks after meeting Blanche, Buck was shot following a burglary in Denton, Texas, and arrested. He was tried and sentenced to four years in the Texas State Penitentiary. He began serving his sentence on January 14, 1930. In a letter written home two days later, Buck asked that Blanche write to him. (See Appendix C.) Apparently, she wrote to him often, but on March 8, 1930, less than two months after his delivery to the penitentiary system, Buck escaped from the Ferguson prison farm, near Midway, Texas, and returned to Dallas. More than a year later, following the finalization of her divorce from her first husband, Blanche married Buck Barrow. The date was July 3, 1931.
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It has been stated that Blanche was initially ignorant of Buck’s criminal activities and that she did not realize he was an escaped convict. But that is hard to believe; she had to have known of his arrest on November 30, 1929. Buck’s mother knew all along that her son had gone to prison and had subsequently escaped. In her unpublished manuscript, Cumie Barrow wrote, “When Buck escaped from the pen, he came by here and got Blanche (who was staying here) and they went off some place in a car. I think it was in a rooming house someplace, where they hid for awhile.” This suggests that Blanche Barrow knew more than she admits in her own memoir. Still, whatever the extent of Blanche’s initial knowledge of the nature of Buck’s freedom, she, along with Buck’s mother, eventually persuaded Buck to turn himself over to prison authorities, finish out his term, and start over again with a clean record. On December 27, 1931, Buck traveled to Huntsville, Texas, and surrendered to a group of very surprised prison officials.
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Buck Barrow served his remaining term and was issued a pardon by Governor Miriam Ferguson. He was released from prison on March 22, 1933, and reunited with his young wife the following night. Within a few days, Clyde Barrow paid a visit to Buck and Blanche. The meeting was strained and tense. By this time, Clyde in the company of his girlfriend, Bonnie Parker, and a young man from West Dallas named W. D. Jones, was widely sought for a number of crimes ranging from auto theft to murder.

Clyde immediately began pressing Buck and Blanche to help him raid Eastham, the notorious Texas prison farm. Both Clyde and Ralph Fults had begun plotting the break-in while they were still convicts serving time there. Although mistaken in thinking that the plan was hatched to free criminal cohort Raymond Hamilton (Hamilton would not arrive at Eastham until August 1933, after Buck Barrow was dead and Blanche was in police custody), Blanche knew well of Clyde’s desire to raid Eastham. And she was not eager to get involved with her brother-in-law. Still, Buck pressed the point. Eventually he and Blanche arrived at a very tenuous compromise. They would not help with the raid, but they would meet again with Clyde, Bonnie, and W. D. They would even try to convince Clyde to give himself up, even though both thought it futile.
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Thus, it was with some apprehension on the part of Blanche that on Wednesday, March 29, 1933, she and her husband took to the road, meeting Clyde first in Oklahoma, and then proceeding with him to Joplin, Missouri. Blanche was evidently hopeful enough about the visit to bring her camera with her, to record the images of those she could not otherwise see with any frequency.
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Nevertheless, it would be there, in Joplin, that her fears became reality, changing her life forever.

On April 13, 1933, the day before Buck and Blanche were to return to West Dallas, six lawmen arrived at the garage apartment occupied by the Barrow brothers. A gunfight erupted. Two officers were killed and in their haste to escape, the fugitives left most of their belongings behind—including Buck’s pardon papers and marriage license and Blanche’s camera. Now he and Blanche were on the run with Bonnie and Clyde and their friend W. D. Jones.

In her diary, Blanche describes graphically the scene left in the wake of the bloody shoot-out. In a subsequent interview, she told of helping move the body of one of the slain officers so Clyde could get the car out of the garage.
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Nevertheless, that was not the end of the story.

On July 19, 1933, a posse descended on Platte City, Missouri, and surrounded the tourist cabins occupied by the Barrow brothers. Again, a gunfight ensued and again the gang escaped. But this time Buck was mortally wounded, and Blanche was struck in the forehead with a bullet fragment and in one of her eyes with razor-sharp shards of glass.

Buck and Blanche Barrow near Crockett, Texas, 1931. (Courtesy of Rhea Leen Linder)

Seeking refuge in an abandoned amusement park near Dexter, Iowa, the gang camped out for four days after their escape from Platte City. Buck drifted in and out of consciousness while Blanche, her vision greatly impaired, tried to nurse his wound. Then on July 24, 1933, just before dawn, another posse engaged the gang. Bonnie, Clyde, and W. D., all wounded, escaped. Buck and Blanche were captured—Blanche calling, “Don’t die, Daddy,” as she was separated from Buck. Five days later, he was dead.

Blanche was tried in Platte City, Missouri, on a charge of assault with intent to kill and was sentenced to ten years in the state penitentiary at Jefferson City. She began her memoir shortly thereafter.
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Less than a year later, on May 23, 1934, she heard of the deaths of Bonnie and Clyde. She told reporters that she was glad they died together. In 1935, while seated in a federal courtroom with numerous other defendants (including a heavily manacled W. D. Jones), Blanche received an additional sentence of one year and one day for harboring Bonnie and Clyde; the extra time was to be served concurrently with her Missouri sentence (meaning her total sentence remained ten years).

Bonnie and Clyde on a road between Marshall, Texas, and Dallas, 1933. (Courtesy of L. J. Hinton)

By then, she had become close friends with Holt Coffey, the sheriff of Platte City, Missouri. Coffey was the officer who had launched the unsuccessful attempt to surround the Barrow brothers in 1933, the same officer Blanche was convicted of assaulting. With his help, along with that of a friendly FBI agent and the wife of a Missouri governor, Blanche’s prison experience was made as comfortable as possible. It was certainly nothing to compare to the sadistic brutality suffered by her brother-in-law Clyde in the Texas penitentiary. In a letter to her mother, Blanche mentioned that she and the other female inmates were “not behind bars” and that they were allowed to make many of their own decisions, within prison regulations, of course.
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One negative side to Blanche’s sentence was the eventual loss of her injured eye. Initially, doctors were confident the eye could be saved, but a number of serious complications resulted in its loss.

Blanche was a model prisoner throughout her time in prison.
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Indeed, she received an early release due to good behavior. On March 24, 1939, Blanche Barrow walked out of the Missouri State Penitentiary and went home to her father in Garvin, Oklahoma.

Chronology

March 14, 1903
   
Marvin Ivan “Buck” Barrow is born in Jones Prairie, Texas. The year 1905 on his gravestone is incorrect according to the family Bible and family members, including Marie and Cumie Barrow. When her son died, Cumie Barrow confused Buck’s birth year with that of his younger sister Nell, born May 12, 1905.
March 24, 1910
   
Clyde Chestnut Barrow is born near Telico, Texas. The year 1909 on his gravestone is incorrect according to the family Bible and family members. In a repeat of what happened with Buck’s marker (actually Buck and Clyde share the same marker), Cumie Barrow was apparently so upset at the death of Clyde that she again gave the wrong birth year to the stonecutter.
October 1, 1910
   
Bonnie Parker is born in Rowena, Texas. She is the third child of four born to Emma Krause and Charles Parker. The firstborn, Coley, died of crib death. Hubert “Buster” was born December 20, 1908, and Billie Jean was born December 16, 1912.
December 31, 1914
   
Charles Parker, Bonnie’s father, dies.
1915
   
The Parkers move to Eagle Ford, Texas (Dallas County).
1920
   
Buck Barrow and Margaret Heneger marry. Twin boys are born, one of whom dies at five months of age. Barrow and Heneger divorce soon thereafter.
1921
   
The Barrows move to West Dallas, Texas (Dallas County). They are first listed in the city directory in 1922, but the youngest child, Marie, born May 27, 1918, said the family moved when she was three years old.
1925
   
Buck Barrow and Pearl Churchley are married. A daughter is born in 1926. Barrow and Churchley divorce soon thereafter.
September 25, 1926
   
Bonnie Parker marries Roy Glyn Thornton. Both are in their second year at Cement High School, Cement, Texas. Both quit school.
December 3, 1926
   
Clyde Barrow’s first known arrest occurs in Dallas. He is charged with auto theft, but the charges are dropped.
1927
   
Blanche Caldwell is forced by her mother to marry John Callaway.
1928
   
Blanche Caldwell Callaway and her friend Emma Lou Renfro escape to West Dallas.
February 22, 1928
   
Clyde Barrow is arrested in Fort Worth for “investigation.”
August 13, 1928
   
Buck Barrow is arrested in San Antonio for auto theft.
January 23, 1929
   
The Barrows (including Henry and Cumie, Buck’s parents, and LC and Marie, his siblings) and the Jones family (including W. D.) travel by wagon to San Antonio for Buck’s hearing. The charges against him are dropped.
October 13, 1929
   
Clyde and Buck Barrow and a third man are arrested on suspicion of burglarizing Buell Lumber in Dallas. Charges are dismissed.
October 24, 1929
   
“Black Thursday,” the stock market crashes.
October 29, 1929
   
“Black Tuesday” brings a stock-market crash even more devastating than that of the previous week.
November 11, 1929
   
Buck Barrow and Blanche Caldwell Callaway meet.
November 29, 1929
   
Clyde and Buck Barrow and a third man burglarize the Mark Garage in Denton, Texas. Buck is shot and captured. Clyde and the third man escape.
December 17, 1929
   
Buck Barrow is sentenced to four years for burglary.
January 1930
   
Bonnie (estranged from Roy Thornton, but not divorced) and Clyde meet for the first time at the West Dallas home of Clarence Clay, a friend of Clyde’s whose sister is married to Bonnie’s brother, Buster.
January 14, 1930
   
Buck Barrow is received at the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville.
February 1930
   
Clyde is arrested at the home of Bonnie’s mother.
March 3, 1930
   
Clyde is sentenced to two years on each of seven counts of auto theft and burglary in Waco, Texas.
March 8, 1930
   
Buck Barrow and another inmate escape from the Ferguson prison farm on the Trinity River, just north of Huntsville. Barrow drives to West Dallas, picks up Blanche, and flees to the farm of his uncle Jim Muckleroy near Martinsville, Texas.
March 11, 1930
   
Clyde Barrow, using a gun smuggled to him by Bonnie Parker, escapes with two others from the McClelland County jail in Waco.
March 17, 1930
   
Clyde Barrow and his fellow escapees are captured in Middleton, Ohio, and returned to Texas.
April 21, 1930
   
Clyde Barrow is received at the Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville. Over the next several weeks, he is transferred to various county jurisdictions on bench warrants.
September 18, 1930
   
Returning from Waco after a court appearance on a bench warrant, Clyde Barrow meets Ralph Fults in the rear of the prison transport. Fults and Barrow are both remanded to the Eastham prison farm, twenty miles north of Huntsville. That fall, responding to the brutal policies of Colonel Lee Simmons, general manager of the Texas prison system, Fults and Barrow begin making plans to one day raid Eastham.
July 3, 1931
   
After receiving a divorce from her first husband the month before, Blanche Caldwell marries Buck Barrow.
October 29, 1931
   
Clyde Barrow kills his first man, an Eastham “building tender” and convict trustee named Ed Crowder.
August 26, 1931
   
Ralph Fults is paroled by Texas governor Ross Sterling.
December 27, 1931
   
Buck Barrow voluntarily returns to prison to finish serving his term. His wife lives with the Barrow family at least through April 1932 at their residence behind the Star Service Station, the family business at 1620 Eagle Ford Road, West Dallas.
January 27, 1932
   
Clyde Barrow cuts off two of his own toes and is admitted to the main prison hospital in Huntsville.
February 2, 1932
   
Clyde Barrow is paroled by Texas governor Ross Sterling.
March 25, 1932
   
Clyde Barrow, Ralph Fults, and Raymond Hamilton rob the Simms Oil Refinery in West Dallas. Clyde borrows Buck’s gun from Blanche for the job. Blanche warns him not to lose the weapon, or Buck “. . . will skin you alive.” Clyde loses the gun.
April 1932
   
Clyde Barrow, Ralph Fults, and Raymond Hamilton rob the First National Bank of Lawrence, Kansas, the first such crime for any of them. The robbery is conducted to finance the planned raid on Eastham. Hamilton abruptly backs out of the planned raid, saying, “I don’t know nothing about no cons on no farm.”
April 14, 1932
   
Barrow and Fults, having now put together a gang of six, are stopped by the chief of police of Electra, Texas, and two other officials. Barrow and Fults get the drop on them and abduct the men, later abducting a fourth man, a mail carrier, in their flight from the area.
April 18, 1932
   
After stealing two cars in Tyler, Texas, to use in the raid on Eastham, Barrow, Fults, and Bonnie Parker get involved in an eighteen-hour flight from a posse in Kaufman County, Texas.
April 19, 1932
   
Fults is wounded and captured, along with Bonnie Parker, by the Kaufman County posse near Kemp, Texas. Barrow escapes.
April 20, 1932
   
Barrow, along with gang members Ted Rogers and Johnny Russell, raids a Celina, Texas, hardware store for weapons to use to free Fults and Parker, who are being held in the Kaufman County jail. Clyde Barrow makes at least two trips to the Kaufman County jail, once with LC Barrow and again with Blanche Barrow, to let Fults and Parker know he is working on their escape.
April 21, 1932
   
A posse led by the Denton County sheriff raids-Barrow’s hideout on Lake Dallas. Barrow, Rogers, and Russell escape. Two other gang members are captured, and all the weapons are confiscated along with the Lawrence, Kansas, bank money.
April 30, 1932
   
Barrow, Rogers, and Russell rob a store in Hillsboro, Texas. Rogers kills proprietor John N. Bucher. Barrow is the only one involved in this murder who is ever correctly identified. Raymond Hamilton, who is in Michigan at the time, later receives a ninety-nine-year sentence for this crime.
May 11, 1932
   
Fults is returned to prison.
June 15, 1932
   
Bonnie is “no billed,” that is, no bill of indictment was returned by the grand jury, in Kaufman County and released.
August 1, 1932
   
Clyde Barrow, Raymond Hamilton, and another man rob the Neuhoff Meat Packing Plant, in Dallas.
August 5, 1932
   
Barrow, Hamilton, and at least one other man, perhaps even a fourth man, are involved in the killing of Undersheriff Eugene Moore at an outdoor dance near Stringtown, Oklahoma.
August 14, 1932
   
Barrow, Hamilton, and Bonnie Parker abduct Chief Deputy Sheriff Joe Johns near Carlsbad, New Mexico, leaving him by the side of the road unharmed near San Antonio, Texas, the following day.
September 1, 1932
   
Raymond Hamilton leaves Bonnie and Clyde and travels to Bay City, Michigan.
October 8, 1932
   
Raymond Hamilton returns to Texas and robs a bank in Cedar Hill, Texas (Dallas County).
October 11, 1932
   
A lone bandit who escapes in a car occupied by at least two other men kills grocer Howard Hall. Some suspect Clyde Barrow is the killer, but others do not.
November 9, 1932
   
Raymond Hamilton and another man rob a bank in La Grange, Texas.
November 25, 1932
   
Hamilton robs the bank in Cedar Hill a second time.
November 30, 1932
   
Clyde Barrow, along with Hollis Hale and Frank Hardy, robs a bank in Oronogo, Missouri.
December 6, 1932
   
Hamilton and his La Grange accomplice are arrested in Bay City, Michigan and returned to Texas.
December 25, 1932
   
Clyde Barrow and W. D. Jones shoot Doyle Johnson in Temple, Texas, while in the process of stealing Johnson’s car. Bonnie Parker is in another car nearby. Johnson dies the next day. Frank Hardy is eventually charged with the murder, which precipitates the well-known letter written by Clyde Barrow in Hardy’s defense.
January 6, 1933
   
Clyde Barrow kills Tarrant county deputy sheriff Malcolm Davis at 507 County Avenue, West Dallas.
January 13, 1933
   
A bank in Ash Grove, Missouri, is robbed.
January 26, 1933
   
Barrow, Jones, and Parker abduct Springfield, Missouri motorcycle officer Tom Persell, later leaving him unharmed near Joplin, Missouri. Persell, who found himself sitting on bags of money in the car, later states that his abductors spoke freely of a number of bank robberies, including the one in Ash Grove, Missouri, on January 13, 1933.
March 22, 1933
   
Buck Barrow is granted a full pardon from the State of Texas by Governor Miriam Ferguson. The following day Buck and Blanche are reunited.
March 25-26, 1933
   
Buck and Blanche Barrow pay a visit to Blanche’s mother near Wilmer, Texas. During the night Clyde Barrow, Bonnie Parker, and W. D. Jones arrive. Clyde immediately begins pressing his older brother to help him raid Eastham.
March 29, 1933
   
Buck and Blanche leave Texas to meet Clyde in Oklahoma. After meeting, the group (Bonnie, Clyde, W. D., Buck, and Blanche) proceed to Joplin, Missouri.
April 1, 1933
   
After first staying in a Joplin tourist court, Blanche Barrow, the Barrow brothers, Parker, and Jones rent a garage apartment at 3347½ Oak Ridge Drive.
April 13, 1933
   
Newton County (Missouri) Constable Wes Harryman and Joplin (Missouri) City Motor Detective Harry McGinnis are killed trying to serve a warrant at the Joplin, Missouri, garage apartment occupied by the Barrows and W. D. Jones. All three men in the Barrow group are wounded during the gunfight.
April 14, 1933
   
Clyde and Buck Barrow rob a service station in Amarillo, Texas.
April 27, 1933
   
Ruston, Louisiana, residents H. D. Darby and Sophie Stone are abducted by the Barrow gang following Jones’s theft of Darby’s car. Either by accident or by design, Jones loses the group and does not rejoin them until June.
May 5, 1933
   
After receiving sentences of 167 years for everything from auto theft to bank robbery, Raymond Hamilton is convicted of the murder of John N. Bucher of Hillsboro, Texas (although Ted Rogers is the actual killer). Hamilton is then sentenced to an additional 99 years—for a grand total of 266 years (the 263 years usually cited plus a little-known three-year suspended sentence for auto theft that was also revoked).

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