Bonnie Parker

American robber and murderer

• Born: October 1, 1910
• Birthplace: Rowena, Texas
• Died: May 23, 1934
• Place of death: Near Gibsland, Bienville Parish, Louisiana

Cause of notoriety: Parker, along with Clyde Barrow, enacted a violent crime spree of robbery and murder.

Active: 1932-1934

Locale: Southern, midwestern, and southwestern United States

Early Life

Bonnie Elizabeth Parker (PAHR-kuhr) was born into a loving but utterly destitute family. Her father, a bricklayer, died when Bonnie was young, leaving her often unemployed mother alone to rear three children. In desperation, Emma Parker moved her family to Cement City, Texas, a suburb of Dallas, to live with her parents. Young Parker was a bright and popular child and excelled in the creative arts. Favoring colorful clothes and usually wearing a hat, the strawberry blond petite girl (she was under five feet tall and weighed less than one hundred pounds) was often the center of attention. At age sixteen, she married Roy Thornton, a petty career criminal who was sentenced to five years in prison in 1929. Although Parker and Thornton never were divorced, their relationship ended at this time.

Parker found work as a waitress at Marco’s Café in east Dallas. Personable and proficient, she did well and earned good tips, but the restaurant soon closed. Bored, alone, and again poverty-stricken, Parker seemed to be aimless when, in January, 1930, her life took a criminal turn.

Criminal Career

Parker met Clyde Barrow through mutual friends in Dallas. Their mutual attraction was immediate, and they were quickly inseparable. Barrow was from Telico, Texas, one year older than Parker, and already a hardened career criminal. From a sharecropping family, he never showed any predilection for hard work or education, dropping out of school after the fifth grade. The Barrow family moved to Dallas in 1921, and Barrow, often accompanied by his older brother Buck, became progressively more involved in criminal activity, such as selling stolen goods. Shortly after meeting Parker, Barrow was arrested and taken to Denton and then to Waco to face a variety of charges, including car theft.

Parker’s career in crime apparently began when she smuggled a Colt pistol to Barrow, who promptly used it to escape. Fleeing to Ohio without Parker, Barrow was caught in Middletown and sentenced to fourteen years in prison. Hating both work and incarceration, Barrow had several of his toes cut off with an ax to avoid chain-gang labor. His mother wrote a sincere letter of apology on her son’s behalf, and that, accompanied by his crippling injury, led to his release in February, 1932.

Barrow tried very briefly to go straight but quickly abandoned the idea, picked up Parker, and resumed his criminal behavior. The police caught them in Kaufman, Texas. Barrow escaped in a shoot-out, but Parker was captured and held for two months while prosecutors tried without success to build a case against her; she was ultimately released. While Parker was in jail, Barrow was implicated in the murder of John Butcher, a jewelry store owner. Later, two police officers in Oklahoma were murdered as they approached the car in which Barrow and Parker were sitting. By this point, the couple had pledged never to be taken alive again.

Parker and Barrow robbed grocery stores, gas stations, and small banks—targets that they believed would be lightly guarded. They developed a reputation for gratuitous violence, often targeting law enforcement officers. Sometimes joined by fellow criminals W. D. Jones, Raymond Hamilton, Henry Methvin, and Barrow’s brother Buck, the Barrow gang terrorized the law and business communities in Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, New Mexico, and allegedly several other states. The role Parker played in the mayhem has been debated, but most accounts portray her as an active participant.

In March, 1933, while hiding in Joplin, Missouri, the gang was taken by surprise by the local police, who had mistaken them for bootleggers. They managed to escape, although Jones and Barrow were wounded. Shortly thereafter, Parker was seriously injured in a flaming car wreck in Wellington, Texas, suffering a shattered leg that never fully healed. Buck Barrow was shot in the head in another fight at Platte City, Missouri, and then killed in yet another confrontation.

Parker was always fatalistic and knew by early 1934 that Barrow’s and her demise was near. Nevertheless, they continued their criminal activity, freeing Hamilton from prison in a burst of fire from a machine gun that left a guard dead. Texas governor Miriam Ferguson put together a task force led by former Texas Ranger Frank Hamer and charged it with bringing Barrow and Parker to justice. While being chased by Hamer, Barrow killed another three law officers.

At some point, in exchange for a pardon for his son, Methvin had told Hamer where the gang was located and what road Barrow used while traveling between the Methvin farm and nearby Black Lake, Louisiana. With this information, Hamer located Barrow and Parker. After waiting in ambush for seven hours, the posse killed the couple in an avalanche of 167 rounds of steel-coated, high-velocity bullets on May 23, 1934.

Impact

Bonnie Parker has often been portrayed as a fascinating, romantic, nonconforming figure. The fact that she was a small, beautiful, and intelligent woman in a field dominated by abhorrent male career criminals—and her gift for self-promotion—made her something of a heroic figure to some. Her main legacy, however, was her example that women could be as violent and as bloodthirsty as any man. In the years following her death, she was often characterized as a sympathetic figure, the victim of poverty, circumstances, and bad influences. Many historians counter, however, that Parker was always the victimizer.

Bibliography

Barrow, Blanch Caldwell. My Life with Bonnie and Clyde. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004. A firsthand source written by the widow of Buck Barrow. Not surprisingly, the author is protective and defensive toward Buck and disparaging toward her perceived rival, Parker.

Flowers, H. Lorraine, and R. Barri Flowers. Murder in the United States: Crimes, Killers, and Victims of the Twentieth Century. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2001. An accurate overview of Parker’s criminal career, related in substantial detail.

Steele, Phillip W., and Marie Barrow Scoma. The Family Story of Bonnie and Clyde. Gretna, La.: Pelican, 2000. A sympathetic account of the Barrow gang’s criminal activities. It reiterates in some detail Barrow’s and Parker’s devotion to their respective families.