These rare photos of Bonnie and Clyde reveal the dark reality of America’s iconic criminal couple
A private collection of prints shows the duo’s grim end
Warning: graphic photos follow
Death came violently for Bonnie and Clyde. The posse that ambushed them boasted of emptying multiple tommy guns into the car carrying America’s most famous fugitives. The undertaker later claimed he had trouble embalming the bodies because there were so many bullet holes.
The ugly end of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow was photographed in stark contrast to the light-hearted portraits which made them household names in 1933. Rolls of film discovered by police after a botched raid in a Joplin, Missouri apartment were developed and published. The snapshots showed a couple of kids smiling, posing as gangsters, and smoking cigars. In the depths of the Great Depression, while droughts turned the Great Plains into dust, disillusioned Americans didn’t have much to believe in anymore. The romantic notion of two love-struck bank robbers tearing their way through the heartland must have captured the hearts of the 15 million unemployed standing in breadlines across the country.
A year later the romance was gone. The couple and their gang were now infamous, forcing them to skulk from town to town looking for safe places to lay low. Clashes with law enforcement grew more frequent and more violent, and while Barrow had always seemed intent on gunning down police officers public opinion really changed after Parker was implicated in the brutal slaying of a Texas highway patrolman. She was no longer a novelty, the smiling woman posed with a machine gun. Now she was an animal. It didn’t matter that the story of her involvement proved to be untrue.
By the time Parker and Barrow were gunned down in Louisiana on May 23rd, 1934, fascination with them had become as dark and disturbing as their multi-state robbery, kidnapping and killing spree. Crowds descended upon the scene of their deaths, cutting locks of hair and pieces of clothing from the corpses before police could regain control.
As for these rare photos, “they were owned by a pack rat from South Texas who gave them to his niece,” says Missy Finger, co-director of PDNB Gallery, where they are being displayed. “He received them from someone who worked at the local newspaper in town.”
Bonnie & Clyde: The End is on exhibit at PDNB Gallery through November 11th, 2017.
