Bonnie and clyde

The Ambush took place on May 23, 1934. While Bonnie and Clyde were driving Hamer stepped out into the road and stopped the car. When Clyde and Bonnie reached for their weapons Hamer and his officers unloaded 167 rounds into the side of the car, their bodies were shredded from the fifty rounds that hit the car, most going in one side and exiting the other. Bonnie Parker was twenty-three and Clyde Barrow was twenty-four when they were killed (FBI, 2004).

Clyde Barrow was born in Telaco, Texas on March 21, 1909. His father was a sharecropper until he decided to open a service station in West Dallas. Clyde never finished school higher than the fifth grade, and tried to go back after the family moved to West Texas but felt it would be better to start selling stolen turkeys with his brother Buck. Before Clyde was nineteen he was arrested for safecracking and auto theft, however was never convicted. He stood five feet seven inches tall and had a boyish figure. In the late 1920s Clyde moved out of his house and the trouble that followed would eventually lead to his death. Just before to visit a friend which would allow him to meet Bonnie, he was arrested with William Turner and Frank Hardy the chief of police, yet again let him go (FBI, 2004).

Before Clyde met Bonnie he had started his criminal career with his brother Buck. In March 1933, Buck and his wife Blanch along with W.D. Jones would join the pair to form the Barrow gang in Joplin, Missouri. After a couple of robberies the gang was caught in a flummox with officers on June 29, 1933. Only Clyde and Jones were wounded and escaped but the gang added two more people to the list of murders that had been committed over the last two years. The tides had turned against the Barrow gang again after officials caught up with them near Wellington, Texas. Bonnie was pinned beneath a stolen car after they failed to realize that a bridge was out and crashed in a farm. The farmers help rescue the gang but became quite uncomfortable after seeing the mass of weapons in the back of the car. Even though the gang would again be on their way Bonnie’s leg would remain scared forever (FBI, 2004).

Clyde had committed burglary and auto theft, but he was not satisfied with that and added murder just before Bonnie was released from prison. In the process of robbing a jewelry store the owner was shot by Clyde and died before officials could arrive. In June, Bonnie and Clyde again left in a stolen car for Rustin, Louisiana. The car however belonged to an undertaker that would ironically be the same one that would work on Bonnie before she was placed to rest. While stealing the car, the pair felt it was better to take the undertaker who was named Mr. Darby. Before Mr. Darby was released Clyde had since killed three police officers and a jewelry store owner (Historybuff, 2004).

After researching the notorious criminals Bonnie and Clyde, as well as comparing theories that would best help understand why they acted the way they did, I begin to fe