On May 21, 1934 Texas Ranger Frank A. Hamer gathered up five other officers, Bob Alcorn, Ted Hinton, B.M. “Manny” Gault, Henderson Jordan, and Prentiss Oakley, to Bienville Parish in Gibsland, Louisiana. Hamer had chosen this location because he found out from Henry Methvin’s father,Ivy, that the Barrow Gang would go to the Methvin family farm if they were separated. Henry Methvin was separated from the gang the day before for reasons that were unknown. Mr. Methvin promised to help the officers if it meant that his son’s punishment would be reduced.
While the officers hid in the bushes on one side of the road, Mr. Methvin had propped up his truck and removed it’s wheels on the other side to make it look like he needed help. With the trap set, the officers began the long wait for Bonnie and Clyde. The officers were armed with guns, including some B.A.Rs, given to them from the armory just for the ambush. On May 23 at 9:15 AM, the officers were about to call off the ambush to try again tomorrow when they heard the sound of a car coming down the road. The officers recognized the car as Clyde’s Ford V8 and they saw that the passenger and the driver were Bonnie and Clyde themselves. When he saw Mr. Methvin on the side of the road, Clyde pulled up to see what was the matter. Just as Clyde got within Oakley’s range, Oakley began to fire at the car with the first shot hitting Clyde in the head. Soon, the officers fired all of their ammo into the car as it rolled into a ditch near by. 167 shots in total were fired that day. The officers checked the car to see if Bonnie and Clyde were dead and they saw the bodies hanging limp in the car. In the car, they found many items including several guns hidden under a blanket in the back seat and multiple license plates from different states.
When Hamer, Hinton, Jordon, and Oakley went to town to call their respective bosses and call in a tow truck, they left Alcorn and Gault to guard the bodies. Word spread fast and soon a crowd of people gathered to see the bodies. The two officers were not able to hold back the crowd as they pushed past them. The crowd began to collect things from the car like bullet casings, glass shards, and bloody locks of Bonnie’s hair. When the other officers returned, they saw one man trying to cut off Clyde’s left ear. The officers finally managed to control the situation until the tow truck arrived. It took a long time for the bullet-filled car, with it’s dead occupants, to get to the Conger Furniture Store & Funeral Parlor on Railroad Avenue in Arcadia, across from the Illinois Central train station. Henry Barrow, Clyde’s father, arrived from Texas to see the bodies after hearing about the ambush. When Mr. Barrow identified one of the bodies as that of Clyde, he sat down in the rocking chair section of the building and wept. When Bonnie’s husband Roy Thornton, who was in jail at the time, heard about the ambush, he said,” I’m glad they went out like they did. It’s much better than being caught.”
Even though Clyde and Bonnie wanted to be put in the same grave, their families decided to place them in their family grave plots. At Bonnie’s funeral, more than 20,000 people attended, making it impossible for the family to reach the grave site. Clyde’s family attended both Bonnie’s and Clyde’s funeral. A large percentage of the flowers sent to Bonnie’s grave were sent from the Dallas city newsboys because they had sold 500,000 newspapers about the ambush in Dallas alone. Thousands of people attended both Bonnie’s and Clyde’s funeral. Originally, Bonnie was buried with her grandparents in Fishtrap Cemetery in Dallas. Now she is in Crown Hill Cemetery, still in Dallas. Clyde’s body is buried with his brother Buck, sharing the same head stone, in Western Heights Cemetery in Dallas.
Bonnie and Clyde:1930s 