Bonnie Parker Fell In Love With Clyde Barrow And Gave Up Everything For A Life Of Crime

Petite, kind, and intelligent, Bonnie was never the sort of woman that you would expect to become a criminal. But when she met Clyde Barrow, her life went in an entirely different direction. And while she’d shown no interest in breaking the law before, she ended up joining her lover on the run.

For years, Bonnie and Clyde terrorized the Central United States, eliminating their foes in a hail of gunfire. killing plenty of them in the process. But both of them knew that they were living on borrowed time. And when the law finally caught up with them, their brutal end ensured them a place in history for ever more. 

Born in Rowena, Texas, in 1910 Bonnie had been the second child of Charles, a bricklayer, and his wife Emma. Tragically, her father had passed away when she was just four years old, and the family moved east to the suburbs of Dallas. There, she applied herself well at school, becoming something of a model student.

In fact, there was nothing in these early years to indicate the sort of life that fate had in store for her. By all accounts, the teenage Bonnie got her kicks from reading romance stories and writing poetry. And she was tiny, too, standing at less than 5 feet tall and weighing just 85 pounds.

But what she lacked in size, Bonnie more than made up for in heart. And when she met Roy Thornton during her sophomore year of high school, she fell in love hard. Determined to start a life together, the couple turned their backs on education, dropping out and tying the knot on September 25, 1926.

Just days later, Bonnie turned 16. But young love is rarely smooth sailing, and soon the couple’s relationship hit the rocks. According to reports, Roy often left his wife home alone while he disappeared on unknown adventures. In fact, he was gone so regularly that she had to go out and find work of her own in order to pay the bills.

While employed at Marco’s Cafe in Dallas, Bonnie developed a reputation for being kind and hardworking, often doling out food to the city’s homeless population. But she soon toughened up when it came to her home life. And before long, she had abandoned all hope that her relationship with Roy could be rekindled.

According to reports, Roy’s unexplained absences continued until January 1929, when he was jailed for taking part in a robbery. But while the couple would never set eyes on each other again, they never actually divorced, either. And until the day that she died, Bonnie still wore her wedding ring, as well as a tattoo dedicated to her first love etched into her thigh. 

By this time, Bonnie had acquired a degree of independence. But when Marco’s Cafe shut its doors in 1929 she was left without a source of income. Apparently, she had been lodging with a friend in January 1930 when Clyde happened to drop by the house in which she was staying. And by all accounts, it was love at first sight.

Just 19 years old at the time, Bonnie was instantly smitten with the 20-year-old Clyde. But she wasn’t quite as enamored with his lifestyle — at least, not at first. And when he found himself in prison just one month into their relationship, she penned a letter urging him to get on the straight and narrow.

Of course, as we all know, Bonnie’s pleas landed on deaf ears. And eventually, she tired of waiting for her lover, smuggling a gun into his prison cell. Using the weapon, he managed to escape, although he was apprehended soon after. This time, he opted for even more drastic measures, cutting off his own toes in the hope of securing a transfer.

Ironically, Clyde was released just six days after his act of self-mutilation. And from that point onwards, he would walk with a pronounced limp. Reunited at last, he and Bonnie embarked on a crime spree, targeting filling stations, grocery stores, and banks across the Central United States. And quickly, their notoriety began to grow.

But why did Bonnie, an intelligent girl from small-town Texas, decide to join Clyde in a life of crime? Well, while we might never know the whole truth, most believe that she was simply in love, and willing to follow the object of her affections wherever he might lead her. In this case, it was on a trail of destruction with one inevitable conclusion.

After joining forces with fellow outlaw Ralph Fults, the star-crossed lovers continued to target small businesses, hoping to raise the money for a bigger job. Then in April 1932 Bonnie was arrested after the trio had botched a hardware store robbery in Kaufman, TX. During her short stint behind bars, she revisited her old love of poetry.

While locked up in her cell in the Kaufman County Jail, Bonnie penned a total of ten poems, scribbling them down in a notebook from the First National Bank of Burkburnett Texas. Among them was The Story of Suicide Sal, a ballad that begins by acknowledging that most of the people who find themselves locked up are guilty, despite their protestations.

“We each of us have a good ‘alibi,’ For being down here in the ‘joint,’ But few of them really are justified, If you get right down to the point,” the poem begins. Later, it recounts the story of a female inmate named Suicide Sal, a country girl who turned criminal after moving to the city and falling in love with a gangster.

In the poem, Suicide Sal’s unfortunate fate is revealed: after taking the fall for a botched bank job, she is left to rot in jail. And although she initially believes that her lover is dead, she eventually finds out that he has taken up with another moll. After years, she is released from prison and enacts a violent revenge on the man who had abandoned her. 

Did Bonnie see herself in Suicide Sal, an innocent girl turned into a criminal by the man that she loved? If this was the case, she certainly didn’t treat her own poem as a cautionary tale. And after her release from prison in June 1932 she soon reunited with Clyde. By this time, the outlaw had added murder to his long list of sins.

Back on the run, the outlaws continued their crime spree, gunning down two lawmen at an Oklahoma dance in August 1932. And after joining forces with W. D. Jones, an old family friend of Clyde’s, they toured Texas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and New Mexico, resorting to violence against anyone who stood in their way.

Throughout the course of her criminal career, Bonnie would be at least partially responsible for a total of 13 murders. But life wasn’t all about high-stakes robberies and gun-slinging battles. By March 1933 the couple had made a home for themselves in Joplin, Missouri, where they shared a bungalow with Clyde’s older brother Buck and his wife Blanche.

Of course, domestic life was far from a quiet affair for Bonnie and Clyde. Drinking heavily, the group caused a rowdy disturbance in the neighborhood, prompting one nearby resident to contact the police. Thinking that they had stumbled upon a bootleggers’ den, law enforcement raided the bungalow, only to be met by a hail of bullets.

As they fled the police, the gang left almost all of their possessions behind — including a roll of film. When it was developed, it revealed several photographs of the outlaws in a variety of humorous poses, including one now-iconic image of Bonnie smoking a cigar and wielding a gun. With these arresting images to accompany the story, she soon became a media sensation.

Although outlaws such as Pretty Boy Floyd and John Dillinger also featured in the photographs, it was Bonnie — and her illicit love affair with Clyde — that really captured the public’s attention. And from that point onwards, her exploits became headline news. Meanwhile, back in Texas, her mother fretted over what had become of her once-studious daughter.

Despite the glamorous accounts in the national press, though, life for the outlaws was tough. Having lost their anonymity, they found it harder and harder to avoid capture, with civilization posing an ever-increasing risk. Then, in June 1933, the gang crashed a stolen car, leaving Bonnie with life-threatening injuries.

In the accident Bonnie’s leg was severely scorched, either by battery acid or ignited gasoline. Speaking in 1968 to Playboy magazine, Jones recalled, “She’d been burned so bad none of us thought she was gonna live. The hide on her right leg was gone, from her hip down to her ankle. I could see the bone at places.”

Gravely injured, Bonnie was carried to a nearby farmhouse, where the inhabitants administered basic first aid. But before she could even begin to recover, the gang were forced to flee. After weeks on the run, they holed up at the Red Crown Tourist Court in Platte County, Missouri, where they attempted to lie low.

Ultimately, though, it was Bonnie’s injury that would prove their undoing. According to reports, police had warned local drug stores to keep an eye out for anyone purchasing specific medical supplies. And when Clyde made a trip into town to purchase bandages for his lover, law enforcement were placed on high alert.

In the early hours of July 20, 1933, a fierce gun battle broke out, leaving Buck seriously wounded. But somehow, the gang managed to escape once more. After seeking refuge in a disused amusement park across the border in Iowa, they found themselves surrounded by police officers. And while Bonnie and Clyde managed to escape, their companions were not so lucky.

Five days after being captured, Buck passed away. Meanwhile, Bonnie and Clyde continued their desperate flight across America, traveling as far southeast as Mississippi and as far north as Minnesota. But even being on the run from the law didn’t stop them from committing crime. And in January 1934 they helped to orchestrate a mass breakout at Eastham Prison Farm in Texas.

Apparently, this proved the final straw for the Texas Department of Corrections, who hired Frank Hamer, a former captain of the Texas Rangers, to track the outlaws down once and for all. And by February 1934 he was hot on their tail. Then, on Easter Sunday, Bonnie and Clyde were involved in one of their most brutal killings yet.

On this occasion, two highway patrolmen had spotted the gang’s vehicle at an intersection outside Grapevine, TX. Believing that the occupants required assistance, they had approached: they were quickly and savagely gunned down. According to a witness to the crime, it was Bonnie that had fired the fatal shots, exhibiting a brutality that seemed at odds with her petite, feminine appearance.

Of course, it was a contrast that made Bonnie even more of a sensation in the local and national press. And even though the witness who claimed to have seen her laughing and joking as she gunned down innocent men was unreliable at best, her reputation as a femme fatale endured.

With a price on her head, by May 1934 Bonnie must have known that the end was coming near. And it was around this time that she penned her most famous poem, The Trail’s End, also known as The Story of Bonnie and Clyde. In it, she attempted to set the record straight about her life on the wrong side of the law.

Part of the poem read,

“There’s lots of un-truths to these write-ups; they’re not as ruthless as that.

Their nature is raw;

they hate all the law,

the stool pigeons, spotters and rats.

They call them cold-blooded killers, they say they are heartless and mean.

But I say this with pride,

that I once knew Clyde,

when he was honest and upright and clean.”

In the stanzas that followed, Bonnie went on to blame the law’s ill-treatment of Clyde for turning him into the criminal that he became. On top of that, she also hinted that the gang had been framed for several murders that they didn’t actually commit. Ultimately, though, it’s clear that she was all too aware of where their adventure would ultimately lead them.

Prophetically, it went on,

“They don’t think they’re too smart or desperate, they know that the law always wins,

They’ve been shot at before;

but they do not ignore

that death is the wages of sin.

Some day they’ll go down together, they’ll bury them side by side.

To few it’ll be grief,

to the law a relief,

but it’s death for Bonnie and Clyde.”

It was a grim prediction that would soon come true: within weeks of writing the poem, Bonnie was dead. On May 23, 1934, she had been traveling with Clyde in a Ford V8 along the Louisiana State Highway near Gibsland, L.A. But this time, the law was one step ahead. And as the vehicle came into view, half a dozen officers opened fire.

As bullets pierced the Ford V8 all over, the outlaws never stood a chance. Just as the poem had predicted, their story had ended in death. But Bonnie’s mother Emma drew the line at the romantic conclusion her daughter had imagined in prose. And instead of being buried side by side, the pair were laid to rest in cemeteries some ten miles apart.

In fact, Emma took charge of her daughter’s legacy after her death, collaborating on a 1934 biography. In it, she observed, “The two years that Bonnie and Clyde spent as fugitives, hunted by officers from all over the Southwest, were the most horrible years ever spent by two young people.” But while their time on the run may have been unpleasant, they have gone down in history as some of history’s most famous outlaws.