Where Are They Buried? (81 page)

Inside the car, red-dressed Bonnie’s lifeless hand held a bloody pack of cigarettes, Clyde’s jaw dangled precariously, and, among the weapons in the back seat, Hamer found a saxophone. With the bodies still in it, the car was towed to an undertaker in Arcadia, Louisiana.

Contrary to popular myth, Bonnie and Clyde were not buried in the same casket, nor do they share a plot. In fact, they’re not even buried in the same cemetery, though both are interred in Dallas, Texas. At 23, Bonnie was buried at Crown Hill Memorial Park, while 25-year-old Clyde was interred alongside his brother Buck at Western Heights Cemetery.

DIRECTIONS TO CEMETERY OF BONNIE:
From I-35E, take exit 436 and follow the Northwest Highway (Route 12) east for two miles. Turn left onto Webb Chapel Road and Crown Hill is a half-mile on the right.

DIRECTIONS TO GRAVE OF BONNIE:
Enter the cemetery through the green, steel gates and bear left at the first drive. After a hundred feet, stop. Off to the right is a hedgerow, and Bonnie’s flat marker can be found against the hedgerow, just a dozen stones from the hedge’s end.

DIRECTIONS TO CEMETERY OF CLYDE AND BUCK:
These wise guys are buried in a small and defunct old relic of a cemetery on a main thoroughfare, hidden in plain sight. It’s interesting that thousands of commuters pass it everyday and it gets nary a glance. From I-35E, take Exit 427 and follow Colorado Boulevard west for three miles to Fort Worth Avenue. Turn right onto Fort Worth Avenue and Western Heights Cemetery is three-fourths of a mile on the left, atop a small knoll.

DIRECTIONS TO GRAVE OF CLYDE AND BUCK:
Enter the cemetery (you’ll have to hop a short, chain-link fence), walk 75 feet to the left, and just in front of two overgrown bushes is their flat marker.

DIRECTIONS TO THE BONNIE AND CLYDE AMBUSH SITE:
A marker was erected where Bonnie and Clyde were killed near Bienville, Louisiana. From I-20, take Exit 61 and follow Route 154 south for 9H miles, where you’ll see a stone tablet marking the site on the right. Bonnie and Clyde were driving north and the police posse hid in the bushes on the east side.

For years, their beige 1934 Ford “death car” was shown at fairs for 25 cents per look. It’s now on display, for free, on the connector between the Outlet Mall and the Primm Valley Resort Casino in Primm, Nevada. Primm is about 40 miles south of Las Vegas, along I-15 on the Nevada and California state line.

Henry Methvin received his pardon from Texas as promised, but not from Oklahoma. He was arrested for murder and sentenced to death, though it was later commuted to life, and he was released after serving twelve years. In 1948 Henry was run over by a train.

JULY 19, 1860 – JUNE 1, 1927

One hot afternoon in August 1892 someone savagely murdered Andrew and Abby Borden with an axe in their home but, after more than a century of speculation, nobody can say for certain who really did it. Lizzie, their youngest daughter, was acquitted of the crime following a sensational trial whose high point came when both of the victims’ heads were produced as exhibits. She lived the remainder of her life as a recluse, ostracized by a community that believed her to be guilty as charged (a kind of precursor to O.J. Simpson). In any case, she’ll not be forgotten as long this familiar jump-rope jingle is still sung by children:

Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks; When she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one.

Lizzie died of natural causes at 66 and is buried at Oak Grove Cemetery in Fall River, Massachusetts.

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
From I-195, take Exit 7 and turn north onto Plymouth Avenue, which will become Robeson Street. After four lights, turn right onto Prospect Street you’ll see the cemetery entrance.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
Enter the cemetery, proceed straight, then bear left at the Turner mausoleum. After you make a left at the four corners, proceed another 75 yards. There on the left you’ll see the Borden family plot. The plot holds Lizzie as well as her parents.

The house where the murders took place is at 92 Second St. in Fall River. It’s now a museum and, if you dare, a bed and breakfast.

JANUARY 17, 1899 – JANUARY 25, 1947

APRIL 19, 1903 – MAY 7, 1957

Al Capone, the original “Scarface” (so named because of the three razor slashes across his left cheek), was perhaps the most famous of all mobsters. His life of crime started in Brooklyn and then, in Chicago, he meteorically rose through the syndicate ranks to eventually control the bootleg liquor industry, which brought him an income of some $15 million a year.

In the late 1920s federal agent Eliot Ness was assigned the duty of bringing down the Capone gang. After assembling a crack squad of ten carefully selected agents, the Untouchables (a nickname referring to the failure of all efforts to bribe them) methodically raided Capone’s stills and speakeasies and with new vigor pursued the triggermen in Chicago’s gangland-style murders. But despite the Untouchables’ dogged determination, Ness was repeatedly frustrated in his attempts to put away the kingpin.

The government’s break finally came when agent Eddie O’Hare pointed out that Capone had neglected to pay income taxes—ever. Never before had the government considered pursuing Capone for income tax evasion—such charges seemed too minor for a man who had ordered at least a hundred murders. But this was the dawn of the IRS’s far-reaching powers, and in 1931 Capone was found guilty of the charges and sentenced to eleven years in federal prison.

During his initial medical exam in prison, Capone admitted he had contracted syphilis a few years earlier, but insisted he had been cured and declined a spinal tap to determine if he was still infected. After two years Capone was transferred to the newly
constructed Alcatraz prison and, after five more unremarkable years, was found one day staring blankly at a wall. Doctors determined that his syphilis was actually in its advanced stages and Capone spent the next year in the hospital ward.

In November 1939, ravaged and demented by the disease, he was judged to be harmlessly insane and was released. The paranoid and kooky Capone retired to an estate near Miami Beach, where he continued his downward spiral. Physically uncoordinated, his speech garbled and confused, Capone fished off his dock for hours at a time, clad in his pajamas. In 1942 his syphilis was successfully treated with penicillin, but not even the new wonder drug could reverse his already severe brain damage.

Capone expired after suffering a brain hemorrhage while in bed.

At 48, he was buried at Mount Carmel Cemetery in Hillside, Illinois.

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
From I-294, take Route 38 east and the cemetery is immediately to the left.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
Enter the cemetery at the main entrance, which is the second drive. Inside the cemetery, take an immediate right and stop after a hundred feet. On the right, the tall Capone marker is surrounded by hedges.

Eliot Ness’s perseverance in battling Capone assured him a place among the legends of gangland prosecutors. He later became director of public safety in Cleveland but, at just 54, Ness died of a heart attack. He was cremated and for 40 years his ashes were stuck away in a box at his family’s home. In 1997, in a special ceremony honoring his contributions to the city, his ashes were scattered in the artificial lake at Cleveland’s Lake View Cemetery.

MARCH 29, 1937 – SEPTEMBER 25, 1988

Billy Carter was a gas station proprietor and peanut farmer who was vaulted to national celebrity when his brother Jimmy won the United States presidency in 1976.

Caring little for convention, he proved incapable of handling his sudden fame and became the butt of contemporary jokes for business dealings that were politically embarrassing to his brother, including a Libyan loan fiasco and his short-lived Billy Beer venture. Billy alternately courted and denounced the media, depending on the occasion, but was rather consistently skewered as a buffoon, a boob, and a wacko. In his own defense, with a sister who was a faith healer and a brother who was president, he once observed that he “was probably the only sane member of the family.”

At 51, Billy died of pancreatic cancer and was buried at Lebanon Cemetery in Plains, Georgia.

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
Route 280 is the main road through Plains. From the center of town, follow 280 west for a mile, then turn left onto Old Plains Highway. The cemetery is a half-mile ahead on the right.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
Make a right onto the first paved drive, then bear left. Stop a short distance on the right when you see a Carter plot (though you’re not quite there yet). Another 50 feet behind this Carter plot is a second Carter plot, and it’s there you’ll find Billy’s grave alongside his parents, Lillian and Earl.

JUNE 11, 1910 – JUNE 25, 1997

Jacques Cousteau, the revered scientist who held no scientific degree, spent most of his life exploring the oceans and discovering their wonders and secrets. Documenting his findings through television programs, he helped to create the nature documentary as a distinct form—but no matter which sea creatures cavorted before the lenses, there was never any question that the star of the show was Captain Cousteau himself. Projecting his image as the leading explorer of the day, he spoke in a highly personal, Gallicflavored English and, with a dazzling smile, deeply lined face,
and red woolen watch cap, became recognizable to people all over the world.

As co-inventor of the “Aqualung,” the world’s first underwater breathing apparatus, Jacques cleared German mines from French ports during World War II, then formed a series of corporations and nonprofit organizations through which he financed underwater expeditions. In 1953 he gained celebrity with the publication of
The Silent World
, an account of the development and promise of scuba diving, and its documentary film version won him the first of his three Academy Awards.

In the 1960s Cousteau set out to prove that humans, “oceanauts,” could live and work on the ocean floor. His three Conshelf experiments competed for public attention with government-financed space programs. Later, Jacques brought the wonders of the Earth’s oceans—sharks, whales, dolphins, sunken treasure, and coral reefs—into people’s homes through his television series,
The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau
. He enthralled the world on zigzag voyages from Alaska to Africa to Antarctica aboard his research vessel,
Calypso
. When it became apparent that pollution was degrading the oceans, Jacques turned environmentalist and in 1974 started a nonprofit marine conservation group, the Cousteau Society, which today boasts a membership of more than 300,000.

At 87, Jacques died of a heart attack and was buried in his hometown at the cemetery in Saint Andre-de-Cubzac, France, which is just fifteen miles north of Bordeaux.

MAY 21, 1960 – NOVEMBER 28, 1994

In 1991 Jeffrey Dahmer’s gruesome acts of murder, necrophilia, and dismemberment shocked the world. He had lured his victims with promises of beer and money in exchange for posing for nude photographs, but once inside his Milwaukee apartment they were drugged and then stabbed or strangled.

Of the seventeen he’s known to have killed, he ate parts of at least five, and stored the remains of several others in his refrigerator. Dahmer told investigators he killed only to ward off loneliness and that he just “didn’t want them to leave.”

Dahmer was sentenced to fifteen consecutive life terms but served only one. After he’d been in prison only 30 months, he was beaten to death with a broomstick in a prison bathroom by a fellow inmate.

Ten months after his death, Dahmer was finally cremated and his parents, who had divorced, reportedly split the ashes.

Amid fears that someone might create a Jeffrey Dahmer Museum with his gruesome collection of tools, photographs, and his famous refrigerator, in 1996 a group of Milwaukee businessmen bought the motley collection for more than $400,000 and incinerated the lot.

NOVEMBER 22, 1921 – OCTOBER 5, 2004

At 19, Jacob Cohen, who would eventually come to be known as Rodney Dangerfield, adopted the name Jack Roy and began bouncing around dingy New York area gin joints as a singing waiter and comedian. Tales of his hard-knock experiences with club owners and unappreciative audiences would become fodder for his later routines and after a particularly humiliating experience at a Catskills hotel in the early 1950s he quit show business. “To give you an idea of how well I was doing at the time I quit,” he recalled later, “I was the only one who knew I quit.”