My Life with Bonnie and Clyde (36 page)

Page 11 of the original handwritten manuscript. (Courtesy of Esther L. Weiser)

Page 12 of the original handwritten manuscript. (Courtesy of Esther L. Weiser)

Appendix B

Blanche’s Letter to Her Father, November 11, 1933

On November 11, 1933, Blanche Barrow wrote to her father from the Missouri State Penitentiary. The letter appears here unedited, just as Blanche wrote it. The “best friend” Blanche mentions is Carl D. Beaty, the man who had sold Buck the ‘29 Marmon sedan that had carried them all to the ill-fated reunion with Bonnie and Clyde in Joplin, Missouri.

Received your sweet letter yesterday noon and was so proud to hear from you, and know you are well, this leaves me feeling fine, hope you are well. I am over my cold now and my eye feels better.

Dear I received a letter from mother and Lucinda and one from Mrs. Barrow yesterday and was so proud to hear from them again, but mother was still sick and was taking Lucinda to the hospital. Mother said John had been out there, he is married again. I am proud he is, maybe he will leave me alone.

Well dear the weather is pretty cold up here. but today the sun has been shining, hope you had a nice armistice day, do you remember where we were 4 years ago today and I met Buck. I never dreamed then I would be here 4 years from then and my darling would be dead and I could never see him again, but we never know from one day to the next what will happen to us. Mrs. Barrow told me about one of Buck’s and my best friends in Dallas being dead, and he is buried in the same grave yard that our darling is resting in, only a little over 3 months differences in there deaths, he was such a big healthy man, you would never think of him being
sick
, but that is something we all have to go through with. I only hope to be ready when my time comes and I can go to see my darling. Well dear I think I told you we had a dance here last Saturday night, the band boys come over with the warden and played the music for the girls to dance by, everyone seem to have a good time I know I enjoyed the music. Well dear I must go, hoping to hear from you soon, am sending lots and lots of love.

your lonely baby, Blanche

Appendix C

Buck’s Letter Home, January 16, 1930

On January 16, 1930, two days after arriving in Huntsville to begin his sentence, Buck Barrow wrote to his mother. The letter was probably dictated to a cell mate as Buck was illiterate.

Huntsville Tex.
Jan 16, 1930

Dear Mother and all

I will write you a few lines to let you know that I have made the trip. Mother I am in the hospital now and my legs are hurting pretty bad. It sure looks bad but I am going to take it. Mother try to get me a furlow. And don’t fail to write often. And don’t for get to tell Blanch to write me.

And tell me all the news that happen on the out side world. Send me some stamps and envelopes so that I can write ever day And I wish you would do the same. Mother tell sister to send my shoes and send me some more pajamas because they burn mine up.

But they well let me have some more now if you send them to me. And tell her to help me all she can to get out on a parole or a furlow while you are so sick. I hope the out side world don’t for get me just because I am in the walls.

Good-by Mother and don’t worry

—Marvin Barrow

Don’t send me any tobbacco but send me some money Because they wont let any tobbacco come in.

Appendix D

The Barrow Gang’s Victims

In all, the Barrow brothers and/or their accomplices accounted for the deaths of fourteen men between the fall of 1931 and the spring of 1934. The stories behind the murders are summarized below.

Ed Crowder, Killed by Clyde Barrow, October 29, 1931

E
D
C
ROWDER WAS A
convicted bank robber from Houston, Texas. Not much else is known about him prior to his prison days. Crowder was one of three “building tenders” serving Camp 1 at the Eastham prison farm when Clyde Barrow was moved there from Camp 2, probably in 1931. A building tender was a convict trustee who quite literally tended to the prison building. At each camp there were three building tenders working in eight-hour shifts. Their job was to make sure peace was maintained in the building and that everything ran smoothly. They worked closely with guards and were given quite a bit of latitude regarding the manner in which they kept the peace. Building tenders were not supposed to be armed, but most were. They carried a variety of homemade weapons, the most common being the “dirk knife,” “shiv,” or “shank”—knives fashioned from files stolen from the prison workshop. Some carried other weapons, including ballpeen hammers and a nasty little item called a “tough nut”—a leather glove festooned with razors.

Some building tenders were fair—tough, but fair—like Aubrey Skelley (sometimes appears as Scalley), whom Clyde Barrow befriended and made
part of the original plan to raid Eastham. It was Skelley who smuggled in the guns used in the raid of January 16, 1934. Other building tenders were vicious, vindictive, and extremely dangerous. Such was the case with Ed Crowder. Described as large, hulking, and overbearing, Crowder was, among other things, a predator. He enjoyed homing in on smaller convicts, beating them, sexually assaulting them, and making them do all manner of vile things for him. Crowder raped Clyde Barrow at least once, and in return Barrow vowed to kill Crowder.

By that time Barrow was working in the Camp 1 kitchen. He could have taken a knife from there and ripped Crowder in half, but Barrow did not want to do that because the weapon would surely be traced to him. He knew his mother had been fighting to have his fourteen-year sentence reduced to the original two years. His implication in a prison murder might have jeopardized that. Barrow went to Skelley and asked to borrow his knife. Skelley talked him out of that as well. Skelley then devised a plan whereby he, a bank robber serving a long term, would take the rap for Crowder’s murder knowing that nothing could, or would, be done to him. Today such a plan would never work, since convict killings are now capital crimes in the state of Texas, but in the early 1930s, such cases were commonplace and rarely if ever investigated. It might have made a difference with a “short-timer” like Barrow, but for a “heavy” like Skelley, it was nothing. In exchange for the deception, Skelley was to be included in the plan to raid Eastham—a plan that already included Ralph Fults, Joe Palmer, and Henry Methvin.

Barrow smuggled a length of galvanized pipe into the Camp 1 dormitory. He had it concealed in his pants. He waited for all the other convicts to finish their business at the open toilets and showers at the west end of the dormitory then walked back there alone. He knew such a move would lure the predator, Ed Crowder, back there with him. Barrow stood at one of the toilets pretending to urinate. When he heard Crowder approach, Barrow jerked that pipe out, wheeled around, and cracked Crowder’s head wide open. Barrow then rushed back to his bunk. Skelley, waiting nearby, pulled his knife, slashed himself on the stomach, and rushed over to Crowder. Screaming and shouting, he sank the knife deep into the already dead body and backed away, clutching his bleeding, but superficially wounded abdomen. The guard, stationed outside the dormitory, asked about all the shouting. “I just killed Crowder,” Skelley said. The guard said something to the effect of “good riddance” and to leave the body, that it would be cleared out later. It was Clyde Barrow’s first murder.

John N. Bucher, Killed by Ted Rogers, April 30, 1932

John N. Bucher was the sixty-five-year-old owner-operator of a variety store located on the old Fort Worth Highway (Itasca Road today), just north of Hillsboro, Texas. The store was on the ground floor of a two-story building. Bucher and his wife lived upstairs. The store had long since closed for the day when at about 10:00
P.M.
on the evening of April 30, 1932, a pounding came from downstairs. Someone claimed to want a guitar string, saying they were playing in a band at a nearby dance. Bucher went downstairs and let two young men into the store. He recognized them, but he probably did not know them. Their names were Johnny Russell and Ted Rogers. They were part of the gang that had planned to raid Eastham along with Clyde Barrow and Ralph Fults. By then, however, the gang had been decimated when Fults and two other gang members were captured in separate incidents. Russell, Rogers, and Barrow had barely escaped together when their hideout on Lake Dallas (now Lake Lewisville) was raided by the Denton County sheriff’s department. They had left so fast that they lost everything, weapons and cash, in the raid. By the time they rolled into Hillsboro, they were flat broke and desperate.

Russell and Rogers had been in the store earlier in the day browsing with Clyde Barrow, but that night Barrow waited outside in the car. It has long been thought that the reason Barrow did not go inside was because Bucher knew Barrow, which was probably true. Indeed, there is more than one theory as to the exact nature of their association. The most popular is that Barrow knew one of Bucher’s children. Nevertheless, there is another, seedier notion, which has never been substantiated—that Bucher was a fence for stolen goods and that Barrow was a longtime customer. Whatever the reason, Barrow stayed in the car while Russell and Rogers went inside, supposedly looking for a replacement guitar string.

When a string was selected, one of the men produced a ten dollar bill, knowing Bucher would have to open the safe to make change. Some reports have Bucher calling his wife at this point, for only she knew the combination. Regardless, she was apparently there in the store when Bucher opened the safe. At some point Russell and Rogers pulled guns and demanded cash and jewels. According to Rogers, who later related the story to Ralph Fults, Buck Barrow, and two other men inside the main prison at Huntsville, Texas, Bucher pulled a gun from the safe and Rogers shot him. Bucher’s wife then went for the gun but Rogers grabbed her before she could reach
it. He and Russell then scooped up forty dollars in cash and about fifteen hundred dollars in jewels and took off. The trio split up that night and apparently never saw each other again.

Ted Rogers was later arrested on an unrelated charge. When Raymond Hamilton, who actually resembled Rogers, was eventually tried and convicted of the Bucher murder, Rogers told Fults and the others in Huntsville that if Hamilton received the death sentence he would confess. Hamilton was sentenced to ninety-nine years instead, and Rogers remained silent. In 1934, he was caught unarmed by a convict rival in a prison shower and stabbed to death, which explains Hamilton’s statement about the Bucher case at the time of his execution in 1935.

According to Blanche Barrow, Johnny Russell was killed by police in another state. Clyde Barrow, of course, was ambushed and killed along with Bonnie Parker on May 23, 1934 in Louisiana.

Eugene C. Moore, Killed by Clyde Barrow and Raymond Hamilton, August 5, 1932

Eugene C. Moore was thirty-one, married, and the father of three small children. He was born into a very wealthy family that lost everything in the Great Depression. Desperate just to feed his family, Moore gladly accepted the job of undersheriff of Atoka County, Oklahoma. He knew he was no lawman, but he needed the money and jobs were scarce. On the evening of August 5, 1932, an outdoor dance was underway near Stringtown, Oklahoma. It is often said that the dance was an indoor affair, at a dance hall. Nevertheless, according to at least one of the musicians in the band that night, the dance was outside under the night sky. There was a wooden dance platform with a riser at one end for the band. Japanese lanterns were strung overhead.

According to one report, Atoka County Sheriff Charles G. Maxwell, Deputy Sheriff Chip Miller, and Undersheriff Moore noticed a pair of men moving from one car to another, evidently preparing to steal one. It was Clyde Barrow and Raymond Hamilton, fresh from a robbery five days earlier in Dallas, Texas. They had arrived at the dance with at least one other man, possibly two. However, as the officers approached, Hamilton and Barrow were the only men they saw. One report states that Sheriff Maxwell stepped up to the driver’s side of the car the two suspicious men were sitting in and said something. Without warning, gunfire erupted and
Maxwell fell to the dirt with six bullets in him. Despite this, the sheriff was able to return fire. Deputy Miller fired several shots at the assailants as frightened dancers and musicians dove from the dance platform to seek cover. None were hit. However, Eugene Moore was not so lucky. After felling Maxwell, Hamilton and Barrow turned their guns on him. He was killed instantly.

Raymond Hamilton always maintained that he never killed anyone, but this case makes his claim very tenuous. To his brother, Floyd, Raymond Hamilton admitted that he was not so sure about Stringtown. Both he and Barrow were shooting. It could have been either one, he said, or both who killed Eugene Moore. Almost three years later, Sheriff Maxwell, crippled for life by his wounds, would attend the execution of Raymond Hamilton.