My Life with Bonnie and Clyde (5 page)
Read My Life with Bonnie and Clyde Online
Authors: Blanche Caldwell Barrow,John Neal Phillips
| May 12, 1933 | | Buck and Clyde attempt a bank robbery in Lucerne, Indiana. They steal nothing and have to shoot their way out of town. |
| May 14, 1933 | | Blanche takes a bus to Dallas to arrange a post-Mother’s Day meeting for Bonnie, Buck, and Clyde. |
| May 15, 1933 | | The post-Mother’s Day meeting takes place near Cooper, Texas. |
| May 19, 1933 | | Buck and Clyde rob a bank in Okabena, Minnesota, of approximately $2,500 However, just as in Lucerne, Indiana, the bandits, including Bonnie Parker and Blanche Barrow, have to shoot their way out of town. |
| May 1933 | | At some point between the May 15 meeting with members of the Barrow and Parker families and the June 6 meeting with Matt Caldwell, the Barrow gang visits Mississippi, Florida, Georgia, and several other states during a vacation of sorts. |
| June 6, 1933 | | Buck and Blanche Barrow visit Matt Caldwell, Blanche’s father, in Oklahoma. |
| June 10, 1933 | | Clyde Barrow accidentally drives into the dry wash of the Salt Fork River near Wellington, Texas. He and W. D. (who has just rejoined the gang) are thrown free. Bonnie is severely burned. While trying to investigate, Collingsworth County Sheriff George Corry and Wellington City Marshal Paul Hardy are abducted and driven to Oklahoma, where a rendezvous with Buck and Blanche takes place and the officers are released. |
| June 11-14, 1933 | | The gang hides out in Pratt, Kansas. |
| June 15, 1933 | | They move to the Twin Cities Tourist Camp in Fort Smith, Arkansas. |
| June 18, 1933 | | Clyde Barrow drives to Dallas to get Billie Jean Parker Mace so she can help nurse her sister, Bonnie Parker, in Arkansas. |
| June 23, 1933 | | With Bonnie a virtual invalid in a Fort Smith, Arkansas, motor court, Buck Barrow and W. D. Jones rob the Brown Grocery in Fayetteville, Arkansas. On the return to Fort Smith, they are involved in an accident, followed immediately by a gunfight with Alma (Ark.) City Marshal Henry D. Humphrey and Deputy A. M. “Red” Salyers. Buck kills Humphrey. He and Jones then escape in the deputy’s car. |
| July 3, 1933 | | After helping her sister regain her strength, and after a brief romance with W. D. Jones, Billie Jean Mace is put on a train and sent back to Dallas. |
| July 7, 1933 | | The Barrow brothers and Jones rob the National Guard armory on the campus of Phillips University in Enid, Oklahoma. |
| July 10-16, 1933 | | The Barrow gang camps on a farmer’s property on the banks of the Little Sioux River in northwest Iowa. |
| July 18, 1933 | | The Barrow brothers and Jones rob three service stations within minutes in Fort Dodge, Iowa. |
| July 19, 1933 | | Buck and Blanche are wounded during a gunfight at a motor court outside of Platte City, Missouri. Buck is shot in the head; Blanche is partially blinded by flying glass. After a protracted flight from the area, the gang escapes into Iowa. |
| July 22, 1933 | | Raymond Hamilton, held in the Dallas County jail while awaiting transfer to the state penitentiary, is discovered in the process of escaping by jailer Murray Fischer and is placed in a more secure cell. |
| July 24, 1933 | | After a gunfight in an abandoned amusement park between Dexter and Redfield, Iowa, Clyde, Bonnie, and W. D., all wounded, escape. Buck and Blanche are captured. |
| July 26, 1933 | | Blanche Barrow is extradited to Missouri where she is charged with assault with intent to kill, stemming from the Platte City gunfight. |
| July 29, 1933 | | Buck Barrow dies at King’s Daughters Hospital in Perry, Iowa. |
| August 5, 1933 | | Blanche Barrow appears at a preliminary hearing in Platte County, Missouri. Her bail is set at $15,000. |
| August 8, 1933 | | Raymond Hamilton is transferred to the Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville. Two weeks later, he is transferred to the Eastham prison farm. This is nearly five months after Clyde Barrow tried to recruit Buck and Blanche to raid the farm. |
| August 20, 1933 | | Clyde Barrow and W. D. Jones rob a National Guard armory in Plattville, Illinois. Jones leaves Bonnie and Clyde not long afterward. He is later arrested near Houston, Texas. |
| September 4, 1933 | | Blanche Barrow pleads guilty in court and receives a ten-year sentence. She is transferred immediately to the Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City and received as prisoner #43454. She undergoes the first of a series of ultimately unsuccessful operations designed to save her injured eye. During this same period of time Clyde Barrow and two other men, including Texas prison escapee Henry Massingale, are involved in a series of auto mishaps, followed by a brief gun battle with local officers. Later, in an attempt to get a fresh car, Massingale approaches a group of people at an outdoor church social and demands the keys to one of the cars parked nearby. While Massingale is making his demands, a woman walks up behind him and knocks the bandit out with a croquet mallet. Barrow and the other man escape. |
| November 22, 1933 | | Bonnie and Clyde are wounded in an ambush staged by the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department near Sowers. Dallas County Sheriff Smoot Schmid, organizer of the failed attempt, immediately assigns one of his deputies, Bob Alcorn, to hunt Bonnie and Clyde full-time. |
| January 16, 1934 | | Bonnie and Clyde raid the Eastham prison farm, freeing five convicts (Raymond Hamilton, Henry Methvin, Hilton Bybee, J. B. French, and Joe Palmer). Palmer kills guard Major (his given name, not his title) Joseph Crowson during the raid. Another guard, Olan Bozeman, is wounded. |
| January 23, 1934 | | The Barrow gang robs a bank in Rembrandt, Iowa. |
| January 25, 1934 | | The Barrow gang robs a bank in Poteau, Oklahoma. |
| February 1, 1934 | | The Barrow gang robs a bank in Knierim, Iowa. Former Texas Ranger Captain Frank Hamer is hired by Colonel Lee Simmons, general manager of the Texas prison system, to hunt down Bonnie and Clyde. Simmons, whose brutal policies are the basis for Barrow’s intense desire to raid Eastham, tells Hamer, “I want you to put Clyde and Bonnie ‘on the spot’ and then shoot everyone in sight.” Hamer and Dallas County Deputy Sheriff Bob Alcorn soon join forces in the field. |
| February 12, 1934 | | Clyde Barrow, Raymond Hamilton, and Henry Methvin engage local authorities in a brief but intense gun battle near Reed Springs, Missouri. |
| February 27, 1934 | | Barrow gang robs the R. P. Henry & Sons Bank in Lancaster, Texas. After the robbery, Barrow and Hamilton get into an argument and part company. |
| March 19, 1934 | | Raymond and Floyd Hamilton rob the Grand Prairie State Bank in Grand Prairie, Texas. |
| April 1, 1934 | | Clyde Barrow and Henry Methvin (one of the Eastham escapees) kill motorcycle officers E. B. Wheeler and H. D. Murphy of the Texas State Highway Patrol near Grapevine, Texas. Eyewitnesses Fred and Mary Giggal see “the larger of two men” firing at the already wounded officers. (Henry Methvin is much taller and bigger than Barrow.) |
| April 3, 1934 | | The bullet-riddled body of former Eastham convict trustee Wade McNabb is found near Marshall, Texas. The Barrow gang, or at least elements of it, are no doubt responsible. |
| April 6, 1934 | | Barrow and Methvin kill Constable Cal Campbell of Commerce, Oklahoma. |
| April 16, 1934 | | The Barrow gang robs a bank in Stuart, Iowa. The getaway car is spotted speeding through Dexter, just five miles east of Stuart. |
| April 25, 1934 | | Raymond Hamilton is captured near Howe, Texas. |
| May 3, 1934 | | The Barrow gang robs a bank in Everly, Iowa. |
| May 23, 1934 | | Bonnie and Clyde are ambushed and killed eight miles south of Gibsland, Louisiana. Henry Methvin (the Eastham escapee) later admits in an Oklahoma court that he helped engineer the ambush. From the Missouri State Penitentiary for Women, Blanche Barrow says, “I’m glad they were both killed. It was the easiest way out. I’m glad it’s over. It is much better they were both killed, rather than have to be taken alive.” |
| June 15, 1934 | | Joe Palmer is arrested in St. Joseph, Missouri. He is extradited to Texas where he and Hamilton both receive the death sentence—Palmer for murder, Hamilton for being a habitual criminal. |
| July 22, 1934 | | Hamilton, Palmer, and Irvin “Blackie” Thompson escape from the death house inside the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville. |
| August 8, 1934 | | Palmer is captured in Paducah, Kentucky, and returned to Texas. |
| December 6, 1934 | | Blackie Thompson is killed in a gunfight with police near Amarillo, Texas. |
| January 10, 1935 | | Ralph Fults is pardoned by Texas governor Miriam Ferguson. |
| February 4, 1935 | | Floyd and Raymond Hamilton rob a bank in Carthage, Texas, along with another man. Later that same night the brothers narrowly escape a police trap at their hideout in Dallas. Raymond Hamilton is wounded in the neck. |
| February 5, 1935 | | Floyd Hamilton is captured in Shreveport, Louisiana. |
| February 16, 1935 | | Raymond Hamilton and Ralph Fults rob a National Guard armory in Beaumont, Texas. |
| February 22, 1935 | | Twenty-two defendants are put on trial in federal court in Dallas for harboring Bonnie and Clyde. It is a test case, the first federal harboring charges ever brought to trial. Among the defendants are Blanche Barrow and the mothers of Bonnie Parker, Clyde Barrow, and Raymond Hamilton. |
| February 24, 1935 | | Raymond Hamilton and Ralph Fults drive through a hail of bullets and narrowly escape a police ambush north of McKinney, Texas. |
| March 18, 1935 | | Ralph Fults and Raymond Hamilton pretend to abduct reporter Harry McCormick of the Houston Press , supposedly to let Hamilton tell his side of the story. In reality, the abduction story is staged to protect McCormick, who receives money from the outlaws for Joe Palmer’s defense attorney. |
| March 28, 1935 | | Fults and Hamilton rob a bank in Prentiss, Mississippi. During their flight, Fults is wounded. Fults and Hamilton then capture a fifteen-man posse, then a six-man posse, and finally elude two hundred troops of the Mississippi National Guard before escaping to Tennessee. The governor of Mississippi declares a state of emergency. Fults and Hamilton split up in Memphis. |
| April 3, 1935 | | Members of the Texas Prison Board and the Texas state legislature launch investigations into the brutal policies of the state prison system’s general manager, Colonel Lee Simmons. |
| April 5, 1935 | | Hamilton is captured in the rail yard near East Belknap, Fort Worth, Texas. He soon rejoins Palmer on death row in Huntsville. |
| April 10, 1935 | | The Osborne Commission on U.S. Prisons names the Texas prison system the worst in the nation, citing the brutal way in which convicts are handled, particularly at Eastham. |
| April 17, 1935 | | Ralph Fults is captured near Denton, Texas. |
| May 10, 1935 | | Joe Palmer and Raymond Hamilton are executed. |
| June 29, 1935 | | Ralph Fults is extradited to Mississippi. |
| September 2, 1935 | | Ralph Fults is sentenced to two fifty-year terms in Mississippi for his part in the Prentiss bank robbery. The very same day, Colonel Lee Simmons, general manager of the Texas prison system, resigns under fire. |
| March 24, 1939 | | Blanche Caldwell Barrow is released from the Missouri State Penitentiary. |
| March 25, 1939 | | Blanche’s conditional commutation from the State of Missouri, signed by Governor Lloyd C. Stark, becomes effective. |
| April 19, 1940 | | Blanche Caldwell marries Edwin Bert “Eddie” Frasure in Rockwall, Texas. |
| September 19, 1947 | | Matthew Fountain Caldwell dies. |
| 1952 | | Esther Weiser moves in with Blanche and Eddie Frasure. |
| 1967 | | The motion picture Bonnie and Clyde starring Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, Estelle Parsons, and Gene Hackman is released. |
| May 11, 1969 | | Eddie Frasure dies. |
| 1970-1988 | | Blanche Caldwell Frasure renews old friendships with the Barrows and Parkers, particularly Artie, LC, and Marie Barrow, and Billie Jean Parker Moon. During this period, Blanche also kept in close contact with Floyd Hamilton, mostly by phone, and visited Ralph Fults at least once. |
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