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Bonnie Parker

1910–1934 · 24 years

The waitress a roll of abandoned film turned into a legend

Portrait of Bonnie Parker — Attributed to Buck Barrow — 1933 — Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Her father laid brick in Rowena, Texas, and died when she was four. Emma Parker took her three children back to Cement City, an industrial corner of West Dallas, and worked as a seamstress. Bonnie was an honour student who wrote poetry, performed on stage, and told people she meant to be an actress. She was four feet ten and about 85 pounds. On September 25, 1926, six days short of her sixteenth birthday, she married Roy Thornton. He was in and out of jail, and after January 1929 they never saw each other again, though neither filed for divorce. She was still wearing his ring when she died. She was waiting tables in Dallas when she met Clyde Barrow in January 1930.

On April 13, 1933, a police raid drove the gang out of a Joplin, Missouri hideout, leaving two officers dead, and they abandoned a camera. Police developed the film and the Joplin Globe wired it out. One frame made her a national figure: pistol, bumper, cigar in her teeth. She never smoked cigars. No killing has ever been reliably attributed to her, and W. D. Jones told Playboy in 1968 that he never saw her fire a gun. Historians generally treat her as accomplice rather than shooter. BriefHistory has the gang. This page has the woman.

Between 1932 and 1934 the Barrow Gang killed at least nine law officers and several civilians. What it robbed was mostly grocery stores and filling stations, not banks, small takes at high risk. The rest was driving: sleeping in the car, washing in creeks, crossing state lines to outrun police forces that could not coordinate. On June 10, 1933, near Wellington, Texas, Barrow missed the warning signs at a bridge under construction and the car went into a ravine. Parker was burned down her right leg, third degree, deep enough that the muscle contracted and drew the leg up. For the eleven months she had left she could barely walk. She hopped, or she was carried.

On the morning of May 23, 1934, a six-man posse under Frank Hamer opened fire on their Ford on a back road south of Gibsland, Louisiana. The coroner counted 26 entrance wounds on her. She was 23. She had written a poem called "The Trail's End," better known now as "The Story of Bonnie and Clyde," and the papers reprinted it everywhere. More than 20,000 people came to her funeral in Dallas. Her family refused to let her be buried beside Barrow, and she went into Fishtrap Cemetery, moved in 1945 to Crown Hill. Then, in 1967, Arthur Penn and Faye Dunaway gave the country a Bonnie Parker the record does not carry, and that is the one it kept.

Lifespan

15401700180019002030

Bonnie Parker's life against the full span of the corpus.

Notable works

Poetry From Life's Other Side other
A jailhouse notebook of verse written in Kaufman County — sold at auction in 2007 1932
The Story of Suicide Sal other
The poem she wrote to pass the time in jail 1932
The Joplin photographs other
Snapshots the gang left undeveloped — police released them and the wire services did the rest 1933
The Trail's End other
Better known as The Story of Bonnie and Clyde 1934

Life in brief

with age at each point

October 1, 1910 aged 0 Born in Rowena, Texas, the second of three children
1914 aged ~4 Her father dies and the family moves to Cement City in West Dallas Emma Parker supported the household as a seamstress.
September 25, 1926 aged 15 Marries Roy Thornton six days before her sixteenth birthday They separated in 1929 and never divorced.
January 1930 aged 19 Meets Clyde Barrow in West Dallas She was 19 and had recently been waiting tables in Dallas.
March 11, 1930 aged 19 Barrow escapes the Waco jail with a pistol she smuggled in He was recaptured within days and sent to Eastham Prison Farm.
June 17, 1932 aged 21 A Kaufman County grand jury declines to indict her She had spent months in jail after a failed burglary. She was never convicted of anything.
April 13, 1933 aged 22 A police raid at Joplin kills two officers and the gang leaves its film behind Detective Harry McGinnis and Constable Wes Harryman died. The photographs made her famous.
June 10, 1933 aged 22 A car wreck near Wellington, Texas burns her right leg to the third degree She could barely walk for the rest of her life and was often carried.
May 23, 1934 aged 23 Killed with Barrow in a posse ambush in Bienville Parish, Louisiana Six officers fired about 130 rounds. She was 23.