My Life with Bonnie and Clyde (38 page)

On June 23, 1933, the day after his abduction and beating, Humphrey received a call that a grocery store in Fayetteville, Arkansas, about fifty miles north of Alma, had been robbed by two men who were heading his way. Humphrey borrowed a pistol and contacted Deputy Sheriff A. M. “Red” Salyers. Together the two officers proceeded north on the Fayetteville road in hopes of heading off the bandits. Salyers, at the wheel of his own car, and Humphrey had not traveled too far when they passed a friend of theirs named Webber Wilson, who was driving south in the oncoming lane at a very slow speed. Right after this, another car, traveling at a high rate of speed, passed. A split-second later the officers heard a tremendous crash. The second car had careened into the rear end of Webber Wilson’s slow-moving car.

Salyers turned his car around and rolled to a stop a few feet away from the wreck. Humphrey stepped from the car just as Webber Wilson was running off in the opposite direction. Then a shotgun blast rang out. The driver of the second car had opened fire on Humphrey, striking him in the chest with a load of buckshot and blowing him into the ditch. With that shot the assailant’s gun had apparently jammed because he started working furiously with the ejection mechanism. This gave Salyers enough time to take his rifle and retreat to a house about a hundred yards away. From there, he began shooting with such accuracy that decades later one of the two bandits involved still vividly recalled Salyers’ marksmanship. At some point automatic weapons fire raked across the area, striking a number of objects, including a strawberry field several hundred yards away. But no one was hit, including Salyers who proceeded to disrupt the killers’ movements with a number of well-placed shots, slightly wounding one of the two bandits as he and his companion took off in Salyers’ car. The car was later found abandoned near Van Buren, Arkansas, not far from Fort Smith.

Humphrey was taken to the hospital where he hung on for three days. But, on June 26, his killer by then long gone, Humphrey died.

Major Joseph Crowson, Shot by Joe Palmer on January 16, 1934, Died January 26, 1934

Tuesday, January 16, 1934, dawned damp and chilly. A thick fog rising from the nearby Trinity River blanketed the countryside around the Eastham prison farm, twenty miles north of Huntsville. Through the milky haze, two miles south of Camp 1, the great hulking shapes of several large brush heaps loomed here and there. Then movement, faint at first, dozens of yards away, followed by voices and the sounds of axes, handsaws, and horses. Squads of prisoners dressed in white denim lumbered toward the clearing, spreading out and getting down to the business of clearing the brush piles.

It has been said that it was really too foggy to “turn out” the convict work crews that day, too difficult to see the prisoners. That was usually the rule: the squads were “turned out” as soon as it was light enough to see them and brought back when it was too dark to see them. That also meant working the convicts in the rain, as long as it was not a heavy enough downpour to lose sight of the white or striped denim uniforms. That, of course, meant the guards also worked in the rain, sleet, and blazing sun, right along with everyone else. It was not an easy job. But that day, January 16, the crews had to turn out, fog or no fog. Wood supplies were very low and although it was not too cold that day, a front was due in soon. The camps needed to replenish their supplies.

Each squad was overseen by a group of guards collectively called “the shotgun ring,” so named because of the Browning “Long Tom” shotguns they carried. Positioned at a distance, however, was the “long-arm man,” or “high rider” as the convicts called him, a guard on horseback armed with a high-powered rifle. His job was to maintain his distance and watch the group as a whole. Should a convict break past the shotgun ring, the high rider would pick him off with his rifle. That is the way it was supposed to work. That was the official policy of the Texas prison system at the time, but at least two convicts in the work crews, Raymond Hamilton and Joe Palmer, were counting on the habitual disregard of that policy by one of Eastham’s more notorious guards, a man noted for leaving his post to beat prisoners, a guard who had once beaten Palmer half to death, the high rider in the field that morning—Major Joseph Crowson. Although some convicts did not remember Crowson as being all that vicious, Palmer hated the guard and was about to spring a well-planned trap on him.

“Major” was Crowson’s given name, not a title. Indeed the rank of major did not exist at the time in the Texas prison system. Crowson had grown
up in the woods near Eastham. Several of his relatives had been guards. At least one Crowson still works for the Texas Department of Justice–Institutional Division, as the Texas prison system is known today. Nevertheless, Major Crowson started out as a barber in the town of Lovelady, Texas, not far from Eastham. However, he eventually gave up the barber’s trade and signed on as the first so-called long-arm man for the Texas prison system, a position created by Colonel Lee Simmons, general manager of the system.

To raise Crowson’s ire on the morning of January 16, Hamilton had “jumped squads,” meaning he had left his own seventeen-man work crew and joined another, specifically Palmer’s. Hamilton and Palmer, both armed, simply waited for Crowson’s inevitable approach, thus affording the inmates the opportunity to disarm the one man who could have prevented the escape.

Guard Olin (or Olan) Bozeman, assigned to Palmer’s squad, had already noticed Hamilton in his group. He had spotted him back at Camp 1, even before the inmates started for the fields, but decided not to pursue the matter until later, exactly what Hamilton and Palmer had hoped for. They suspected that once in the field, Bozeman would summon Crowson and either have him beat Hamilton and take him back to his squad or hold a gun on him while Bozeman whipped him. Sure enough, as soon as they arrived in the field, Bozeman called the long-arm man, the high rider Crowson. The two guards were conversing when Palmer walked up. The initial impression was that he was about to ask a question. Instead, he pulled an automatic.

“Don’t you boys try to do anything,” he said.

There are conflicting reports as to what happened next. Some sources indicate that Palmer deliberately shot Crowson at this point, for revenge—something Palmer himself admitted later in open court. “I killed Major Crowson,” he said, “because of mistreatment to convicts.” However, at least one source makes the claim that Crowson fired the first shot and that only then did Palmer open fire. Still another source quotes Palmer directly, disclosing the killer’s astonishment that Crowson and Bozeman chose to fight: “I told the guards to sit still. Do not move and there will not be no shooting. I really thought the guards would stick their hands up.”

Regardless, at some point Crowson was shot in the stomach by Palmer. Mortally wounded, the guard turned his horse around and rode all the way back to Camp 1 to alert the camp manager, B. B. Monzingo. Palmer then fired at Bozeman. He missed. Bozeman pulled a pistol and fired at Palmer. Palmer ducked. The bullet barely creased his temple. Palmer fired again.
The slug struck Bozeman’s holstered shotgun and sliced deep into his hip. Both the mangled weapon and Bozeman fell to the ground.

Just then, someone concealed in the ravine not far away stood up and fired a volley from a Browning automatic rifle over the heads of everyone in the field. It was Clyde Barrow. Guards and prisoners alike dove for cover. Palmer turned to find Hamilton fumbling around in the mud. He had accidentally ejected the clip from his weapon.

Some have said that because of this, Hamilton never fired a shot. However, at least one eyewitness, an inmate in Palmer’s squad, remembered both gunmen shooting at
and
hitting Bozeman. This may be true because even if Hamilton’s clip was indeed ejected, presumably one round might have still been in the chamber.

Regardless, as soon as gunfire erupted from the creek, Hamilton, Palmer, Henry Methvin, and Hilton Bybee, all dangerous convicts serving long sentences, started running south toward the sound of a car horn. Bonnie Parker, waiting in the car on Calhoun Ferry Road, was sounding a beacon for the fleeing convicts.

Two guards (some reports say three) ran away, completely deserting their posts and the wounded Bozeman. Only one guard, Bobbie Bullock, stood his ground, perhaps preventing a devastating mass escape. “The first man to raise his head,” he shouted, “will have it blown clear off!”

Nevertheless, one other convict managed to flee. J. B. French, two squads away from Palmer, Hamilton, and the others, ducked into the underbrush until things quieted down, then slipped into the woods. He was not in on the actual break and did not understand the significance of the horn. He was recaptured after midnight without ever meeting the ones responsible for his brief taste of freedom.

Eventually the wounded Bozeman mounted his horse and rode back to Camp 1 where he and Crowson were transported to a hospital in Huntsville, Texas. Bozeman recovered fully, but Crowson developed acute complications, among them pneumonia. On January 23, he mustered enough strength to dictate and sign a deathbed statement naming Palmer as his assailant. He died three days later. He was twenty-four.

Wade McNabb, Killed by Joe Palmer, March 29, 1934, His Body Recovered April 3, 1934

On February 24, 1934, convict trustee Wade McNabb, serving a twenty-five-year sentence for an August 20, 1932, armed robbery in Longview,
Texas, was released on a sixty-day furlough to visit his parents in Greenville, Texas. Late in March, McNabb and his brother took a trip to Shreveport, Louisiana. McNabb wanted to see the city before he had to return to Eastham, where he was a “building tender” at Camp 1. On March 29, McNabb and his brother were in a domino parlor in Gladewater, Texas, between Tyler and Marshall. At one point McNabb took off his coat, telling his brother he was hot. Shortly thereafter, someone called McNabb away from his brother. He was never seen alive again.

On April 3, 1934, crime reporter Harry McCormick of the
Houston Press
, received an anonymous letter stating that if he followed the enclosed map, the body of “one of the [Texas] prison system’s worst rats could be found.” The letter, described as very well written, also stated that McNabb had been “’put on the spot’ because of treatment of fellow prisoners.” Acting on the tip, McCormick found McNabb’s body face down with his arms crossed under him in a damp clearing near Waskom, Texas. It appeared that he had been made to kneel in the soft, moist ground, then struck very hard in the head. Afterward six bullets (some reports cite four) were fired into his brain.

This was the work of Joe Palmer, escaped Eastham convict who, until Clyde Barrow’s raid, had been serving twenty-five years for armed robbery. Indeed, the reason for the murder, cited in the letter, is strikingly similar to Palmer’s statement regarding his reason for killing Eastham guard Major Joseph Crowson: “I killed Major Crowson ... because of mistreatment to convicts.”

Within days of his release from Eastham by Clyde Barrow, Palmer had participated in the robberies of at least two banks—one in Rembrandt, Iowa, and one in Poteau, Oklahoma. After paying his share of a fee to one of the raid’s conspirators, Palmer had enough left over to “buy” McNabb a furlough. That is the correct term—”buy.” It was used by convicts of the day to indicate the payment of money to a lawyer for a service, because often the payment went beyond the lawyer. After his furlough, Palmer caught up with McNabb in Gladewater, abducted him from the domino parlor, and drove him to that clearing near the Texas-Louisiana border. He then made McNabb kneel down, told him to say his prayers, and slugged him in the head. Afterward he pumped four to six slugs into his skull and walked away.

At the time of Palmer’s execution more than a year later, he was asked to clear up the McNabb murder. Although Palmer made a rather eloquent
statement as he stood before the electric chair, he went to his death without saying a word about Wade McNabb.

Edward Bryan Wheeler and Holloway Daniel Murphy, Killed by Clyde Barrow and Henry Methvin, April 1, 1934

On the morning of April 1, 1934, twenty-six-year-old Ed Wheeler and Doris, his wife of eighteen months, were listening to the radio and chatting over Easter Sunday breakfast. They spoke about the meaning of Easter, of life and death and of the Resurrection. At one point Wheeler made a comment about how tragic it was that the dead are so often forgotten. After breakfast, he and his wife drove to the home of Polk Ivy and his wife.

Wheeler and Ivy were partners, veterans of a relatively new state agency—the Texas Highway Patrol (now the Texas Department of Public Safety). It was formed in 1931 in response to the growing need to regulate the state’s developing highway system, especially with regard to overloaded trucks, which at the time were destroying Texas highways as fast as they could be paved. In addition to this, officers of the highway patrol were responsible for enforcing traffic laws and helping stranded motorists. Wheeler was one of the original fifty officers hired by the agency.

The Wheelers and Ivys visited for a while, then Ed took his wife back home and got ready for his shift. He and Polk Ivy were in the motorcycle division. They were to begin training a new recruit that day, twenty-two-year-old Holloway Daniel Murphy. Murphy was from the town of Alto in East Texas. He had joined the force a month earlier, completed his basic training, and had just been assigned to north Texas. He and his fiancée, Maree, had already picked out an apartment in Fort Worth. They were to be married on April 13, less than two weeks from that Easter Sunday, his first day as a patrolman in the field.

Riding Harley-Davidsons, the three patrolmen rendezvoused at a service station near the Tarrant County courthouse in Fort Worth and proceeded north out of town. Polk Ivy led the trio, with Wheeler and Murphy behind, as was the custom when training a new patrolman, one veteran in the lead while other dropped back with the new officer. Their assignment, apart from checking weight limits on trucks, enforcing traffic laws, and aiding motorists, was to be on the lookout for Raymond Hamilton, Eastham fugitive who had robbed the bank in West, Texas the day before.