Key Takeaways
It was a spring daybreak in Louisiana near theborder with Texasin the grungy heart of theGreat Depression — May 23 , 1934 , to be precise . Clyde Champion Barrow , one of the most wanted man in America , insouciantly parked his steal Ford at Ma Canfield ’s café and hitch at bottom to order a breakfast ofeither burger , BLT or fried Bologna sausage , bet on which witnesser testimonial you choose to consider .
There were a draw of witness and they all seem to have known dead well who Clyde was . He ’d been ambuscade in the area for some time by then . They watch him warily as he gather the sandwiches and limped back out to the car and handed one of them over to his push back companion , Bonnie Elizabeth Parker , one of the most cherished char in the country .
Morning at Ma Canfield’s
You ’ll mention that Bonnie did n’t partake in Clyde ’s last name . This was n’t a proto - feminist instruction of independency . It reflect the minor detail that the two notorious fleer were n’t married . Or , at least , not to each other . Bonnie was officially the wife of a violently abusive twist name Roy Thornton , who was serving time for looting . Bonnie had n’t taken his name either . She ’d married him when she was only 16 , soon thought better of it , and break from him a few years later .
Still , neither was divorce , so Bonnie and Clyde were officially populate in sin , but that was the least of their outlaw behaviour . By May of 1934 , the pair was wanted on multiple charges of theft and murder , and had unwrap the law in just about every manner potential . They ’d also become popular criminal pinups thanks to a cache of glamorous photo discovered by the copper at one of their previous hideaway . But there was fiddling glamour in their lives that leaping forenoon in 1934 .
The intellect Bonnie stay on in the car while Clyde went inside the diner was because Bonnie could barely walk at all . About nine months in the first place , Clyde had crashed a different stolen elevator car into a riverand the electric battery acid splashed all over one of Bonnie ’s leg . They grapple to keep open her leg from pure wrecking with the help of some baking soda , but not before the acid ate it down to the bone in some situation . Things had deteriorated to the pointedness that Bonnie had to skip rather than take the air to get around , and as often as not , Clyde had to carry her .
And as we already mentioned , Clyde himself had a marked limp . Some years earlier while serving prison term in a penitentiary , he’d cut off two of his toesto debar the Eastham Prison Farm ’s brutal forced labor regime . All in all , lugging Bonnie in to get some breakfast sandwiches would have been unnecessarily arduous , and so she waited in the auto .
As Clyde take out out of the parking lot , Bonnie ate a few collation of her sandwich and wrapped the remainder in the paper napkin it follow with . A myopic time afterwards , Bonnie and Clyde were race along at 60 mile per hour ( 97 kilometers per hour ) in Ruth Warren ’s stolen car down a back - area straightaway when they spotted a truck that reckon like it ’d broken down . The driver was stand next to the vehicle looking forlorn . They get laid the motortruck and number one wood well . It was Ivy Methvin , whose Word , Henry , was part of Bonnie and Clyde ’s little gang . of late , Bonnie and Clyde , Buck Barrow , and the repose of the Barrow Gang spent many an even gossip in the Methvins ' menage . Clyde slowed the auto to see if he needed help .
The Set Up
common ivy did n’t need help . In fact , his truck was n’t even broken down . About two month earlier , Henry , a violence - prostrate hothead lately sprung from slammer , had mistaken Clyde ’s instructions to kidnap a police police officer who was bring forth too close and had gun him down or else . enrage by the unnecessary red ink of life , Clyde reluctantly shot down the second officer , a24 - year - old , about - to - be - conjoin noviceout on his very first day of motorcycle patrol .
Bonnie and Clyde were already wanted for multiple crime but it was this outrageous turn that turn the tide of public sentiment against them and stoked the try of law enforcement to bring them down by any means necessary .
Given the nature of the incident and his role in it , Henry had a lot of gall to foreshorten a deal with the cops , but that ’s just what he did when he agreed to help a posse comitatus of lawmen waylay his two former partners in crime . Henry ’s father Ivy was recruited to play a part , which he did convincingly enough on that morn in May .
No preferably had Bonnie and Clyde slowed down to see about Ivy ’s well - being than six men with gun appeared from the Sir Henry Joseph Wood and opened fire . The idiom " a hail of slug " does n’t do justice to what happen next . It was more like a blizzard . The man fired167 shots ; Clyde ’s steal car ’s windshield was perforated by so many maw it had more empty space than glass .
The bozo in electric charge of the carnage , a Texas Ranger by the name of Frank Hamer , was not a subtle man . He walk up to the rider side where Bonnie sprawled , her half - exhaust sandwich still in her grip , and kindle another salvo into her prone body level vacuous . She was definitely dead , and so was Clyde . That was the end of their run as the most famous criminal duo in American history .
