Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde

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It is no surprise that Clyde swore he’d never go to prison again, which changed the game. With the option of surrender eliminated from consideration, Clyde became a very dangerous man to try to apprehend.

The Bible was replete with reminders that Jesus loved poor people a lot more than he did rich ones. Wearing patched clothes and sometimes not having enough to eat were, in effect, evidence of personal godliness. The implication was obvious, if not declared outright: poor people were good, rich people were bad." - p 14 When some undeveloped pictures were confiscated in a raid on a Barrow gang temporary abode in Joplin, the press and public went wild. Most were just pictures of them goofing around, but those pictures did as much to shape their legacy as the true stories about their exploits. ”The Joplin photos introduced new criminal superstars with the most titillating trademark of all--illicit sex. Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker were young and unmarried. They undoubtedly slept together--after all, the girl smoked cigars. Whether they’d even heard of the term or not, the Freudian implications did not escape journalists or their readers.” Guinn outlines how the “Barrow Gang” killed ten people, almost always out of ineptitude or accident. These murders took place while resisting arrest or inexpertly completing bank robberies. Guinn dissects the myth of Bonnie and Clyde. While a major film about them in 1967 portrayed them as a couple who stole from the rich to give to the poor, in reality, they often stole from small gas stations and grocery stores. Large bank robberies required more resources that the young, inexperienced kids from Dallas could not access. They were not smart criminals. They were repeatedly jailed, chased, shot at, etc... They were often injured in these gunfights with police and when I say injured, I mean badly hurt. They were great at stealing cars though, and Clyde liked the Ford V-8's so much he wrote Henry Ford a fan letter about them. Weirdly enough I have never been much interested in the story of Bonnie and Clyde. I think many decades ago I did watch the movie but it did not make me want to know more apparently.

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Regardless of how one feels about police or criminals, the death of someone soon to start their married life is a tragic affair. Many people might feel this way about police but how many wd feel that way about criminals? At any rate, Guinn seems to try to examine Clyde's murders realistically. It's all too easy to oversimplify & to let sensationlist gossip get the upper hand. Chapter 1 gets into the pre-history of Bonnie & Clyde, details of socio-economic misery that it's unfortunate that anyone shd have to live thru. The section that chapter 1 starts is prefaced by a surprising 1910 quote from former president Teddy Roosevelt: That, unfortunately, was before Clyde had been repeatedly raped in prison. That's the sort of reality that most people, perhaps fortunately, don't have to think about. Just like they don't have to think about the lives of people like Clyde Barrow's parents & their family:

Now if he returned to me some time, Tho he hadn’t a penny to give, I’d forget all this “hell” he has caused me, And love him as long as I live. While the popular conception of Bonnie and Clyde depicts them as grandiose bank robbers, the truth was more mundane. “They were small-time crooks,” Guinn said. The Barrow Gang mostly robbed gas stations and convenience stores; they would even break into gumball machines to collect the change. After years of predicting she'd be a famous star on Broadway, or perhaps a renowned poet, she was still a nobody in the Dallas slums." - p 44 This is from a poem written by Bonnie Parker, shortly before the fatal ambush on her and Clyde Barrow in May of 1934. Bonnie wrote many poems during her time spent with Clyde. Most of them weren't very good but this one kind of gave me chills when I read it. Bonnie was well aware by then that there was no other way their story would end. She didn't get her wish that they would be buried together. When they died, Bonnie's mother would no longer even halfway pretend she liked Clyde and she refused, instead having Bonnie buried in a cemetery across town.One facet of this story that interests me is: Did Bonnie Parker ever actually shoot at anyone? It seems that the official police story is that she was a cold-blooded murderer &, therefore, deserved to be gunned down in an ambush. Other sources, closer to Parker, say she never shot at anybody. I tend to take it for granted that the police will lie to justify murder but I'm not so sure that friends & acquaintances of Bonnie Parker wd have such a clear-cut motive for lying about her not being the gun-toting killer she's reputed as being. LYDEN: Jeff Guinn. He's the author of "Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde." Indeed. Interestingly, there was an assassination attempt against Teddy Roosevelt by a man named John Schrank that I've written about in my review of James W. Clarke's American Assassins: Bonnie Parker is portrayed as particularly violent in The Highwaymen, from her use of an automatic rifle in that opening sequence to a murder in cold blood on the side of a highway. Jeff Guinn, who wrote the biography Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde, refutes this depiction of her, saying that there are only two or so records of her firing a gun, and no evidence that she killed anyone.

I have always been interested in Bonnie and Clyde and I love True Crime books so when I seen this I really wanted to read it. Floyd Hamilton: "Well, after each crime was committed, gun battle or what you might call it, run-in with the law, we would question them, & they would tell us, in other words, their side of the story." Jeff Guinn is the author of the new book, "Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde." He's with me from KERA in Dallas, and that's kind of appropriate because it's in Dallas, right, where the two of them grew up, met and fell in love?Bonnie Parker had been regarded as the sexy companion of a criminal kingpin. Overnight, she was newly perceived as a kill-crazy floozy who laughed as she finished off an innocent rookie patrolman and simultaneously ruined the life of the sweet young girl who'd been about to marry him. The vicarious love affair between Americans and the Barrow Gang was over." - p 5 We explore nine facts about the real Bonnie and Clyde that you may or may not find in movie versions of their story. Bonnie and Clyde became famous, but not for what they had hoped

Forget everything you think you know about Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker. Previous books and films, including the brilliant 1967 movie starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, have emphasized the supposed glamour of America's most notorious criminal couple, thus contributing to ongoing mythology. The real story is completely different -- and far more fascinating. A snapshot of the couple found at an abandoned hide-out, with pistol-toting Bonnie smoking a cigar, was subsequently distributed to the press... Marissa McMahon and Ashley Schlaifer of Kamala Films (" A Private War") are producing with Sean and Bryan Furst (" Daybreakers") for Skybound Entertainment.

He soon discovered a pattern in which Bonnie and Clyde would make loops rampaging around the South, only to return home to their families. This pattern allowed Hamer to make frequent trips home to his wife Gladys, a reality that stands in contrast to The Highwaymen’s portrayal, in which she forlornly says goodbye to him at the beginning of the film, never to appear again. Did Hamer and Gault set up Bonnie and Clyde? Up to th Time has a way of healing wounds or making them easier to look at to see if they've scabbed up. The guys came home from Vietnam and that's it? It doesn't end until these guys are absorbed into the mainstream and we deal with our feelings about it. Critical reception [ edit ] Hamer became a senior captain of the Rangers in 1922 and played a large role combating the Ku Klux Klan in Texas. He became known for his ability to control riots and his patient, skilled investigative work. He resigned in 1932 when Miriam “Ma” Ferguson—who detested the Rangers—recaptured the Governor’s Office. He turned to mostly private investigation work before being hired to hunt down Bonnie and Clyde following the Eastham breakout. Bonnie’s leg would never be the same after the accident. Because the couple had a lot of experience with nursing gunshot wounds, the leg eventually healed, but not properly, since Clyde could not take her to a real doctor. Witnesses described Bonnie as hopping more than walking for the last year of her life, and often Clyde would simply carry her when she had to get somewhere. Bonnie and Clyde were devoted to their families