The day Bonnie and Clyde came to Madill

On any list of the most notorious gangsters or outlaws inUnitedStateshistory,Bonnie and Clyde sit in the top two or three. Clyde Chestnut (Champion)Barrowwasborn in 1909 into a poor farming family in Ellis County, Texas, southeast of Dallas. Bonnie Elizabeth Parker was born in 1910 in Rowena, Texas.

In her second year in high school, Bonnie met Roy Thornton. The couple dropped out of school and married on September 25, 1926, six days before Bonnie’s 16th birthday. Their marriage was marred by his frequent infidelities and brushes with the law and proved to be short lived. They never divorced, but their paths never crossed again after January 1929. Soon after, Thorntonwasimprisoned for numerous crimes. Bonnie wasstillwearingthewedding ring Thornton had given her when she died.

The duo first met on January 5, 1930, at the home of one of Barrow's friends. Both were smitten immediately. Most historians believe that Bonnie joined Clyde because she had fallen in love with him. She remained loyal to Clyde to the end of their short lives.

Less than a month after they met, Clyde was arrested at Bonnie’s mother’s home on suspicion of committing burglary in the Waco area of Texas. Clyde was convicted on seven counts of burglary, but given his age and criminal history, he was sentenced to only two years in prison. A few days later, while being held at the Waco County Jail, Barrow and two others escaped using a weapon Bonnie smuggled to Clyde.

Hewasrecapturedshortly after and returned to Waco. After these events, the judge then decided that Clyde should serve a fourteenyear sentence, and he was transferred to the Eastham Prison Farm. Clyde was then paroled on February 2, 1932.

Immediately after his parole, he and Bonnie embarked on one of the most notorious crimes sprees in US history. It is reported that over the course of only 27months,BonnieandClyde were responsible for thirteen murders, dozens of robberies andburglariesandnumerous kidnappings.

On the evening of Thursday, June 8, 1933, lifelong Madill resident, Robert Dorsey (R.D.) Taliaferro, also known by the nickname “Hux,” stopped by the home of his friend Tom Lee Scott in southeast Madill. On that evening, Taliaferro was driving his new, 1933 Ford Coupe that he purchased from Woody Motor Company in Madill on May 5, 1933.

When he arrived at Scott’s residence, Taliaferro left the keys in the car when he went inside. Upon his entering the residence, Taliaferro did not see the woman, that a witness later described to United States Bureau of Investigation Agents (later renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation) as a “strange, small woman,” looking around the neighborhood as if she was “looking for something or someone.”

The witness was the wife of Marshall County Deputy Sheriff, Joe Everett. When Taliaferro exited Scott’s residence, he realized his new, 1933 Ford Coupe was gone.

At roughly 10:00 p.m. that same evening, 19-year-old, Harold Kenneth Jones was working a double shift at the Phillips 66 service station at the corner of Highway 70 and East Tishomingo in Madill whenanew1933FordCoupe pulled into the station and stopped just outside the front door. The car was headed north and when it pulled into the station, the passenger side was facing the front door.

When the car came to a stop, the passenger door opened and Harold saw a woman sitting in the passenger seat holding something. At that same moment, a man in suit jumped out of the car and immediately entered the front door of the station. The man ordered Jones to sit down in a chair by the restroom, and he then grabbed Jones by the hair and said, “Do you want to be a hero?” Jones replied, “No, I don't want to be a hero. I'd just kind of like to know what you want?” The man replied, “Well, I'm Clyde, and that's Bonnie out there in the car.”

After introducing himself to Jones, the man then asked, “Do you know what that is in her lap?” As Jones looked out at the car, he could see the woman with red hair holding what he believed to be a machine gun.

Jones then replied, “Well, I think it's a machine gun. I've seen them on picture shows.” The gun was a .45 caliber, Thompsonsub-machinegun, which happened to be Bonnie Parker’s favorite gun.

When Jones stated he believed it to be a machine gun, Clyde replied, it is a machine gun, and that gun is “her baby, and she likes to hear it cry.” It was clear to Jones thatClydemeantthatBonnie liked to hear the sound of the Thompson sub-machine gun being fired in full automatic mode. Jones then stated, “Well, she don't have to be in trouble with me.”

At that point, Clyde asked Jones, “how much money is in that cash register?” Jones told him, “the boss picked it up at twelve o'clock and it's not a whole lot, gas is twenty cents, a gallon I don't accumulate a whole lot of money,” after which, Clyde “looked in the cash register” and he pulled out a few cents and and put it back,” saying “I don’t need that.”

In the service station was a slot machine that customers played from time to time to see how much money they could make. Clyde then walked over to the slot machine and he tried to pull the handle, but nothing happened.

He then turned to Jones and asked, “What's the matter with this slot machine?” Jones responded that “well, we were putting tires on a big truck that comes through here from Colorado and the driver put a slug in it and he pulled it until he hit the jackpot.” The slug jammed the slot machine.

That angered Clyde who then asked, “well, where does that son of a [redacted] live, I’d like to kill him, I want to play the slot machine.” Jones told Clyde he did not know where the man was or how to find him even though he may have known.

About that time, Clyde asked Jones, 'Where's the night watchman?” He then asked, “when will he be back?” In 1933 Madill, the nightWatchmanwasanolder man named Charlie Walker, whopatrolledthetownchecking doors and stopping in on late night businesses to ensure there was no trouble.

Jones told Clyde, “he was here about 15 minutes before you got here.” Clyde then asked, “How long before he gets back,” to which Jones replied, “about an hour.” Jones knewitwouldbemuchsooner than that, but he feared if he told Clyde when Walker would return, that Clyde and Bonnie would lay in wait, and ambush and kill Walker. Jones knew that Walker did not stand a chance against Bonnie or Clyde and he was hoping that they would just leave.

Clyde then noticed a pair of Phillips 66 coveralls hanging in the station. He pulled off his suit coat and put on the coveralls and told Jones, “I’ll just take these.” Clyde then grabbed a chair and sat down next to Jones.

At that point, Jones noticed Clyde looking at the large screwdriver Jones had in the side pocket of his coveralls. He realized that the screwdriver was in some way disconcerting to Clyde, and fearing that Clyde or Bonnie might shoot him, Jones asked Clyde to remove the screwdriver from Jones’s pocket and put it elsewhere.

Clyde reached over and took the screwdriver and put it aside. That seemed to reassure Clyde that Jones was not threat, and he then just started having a normal conversation. Clyde was talkative and Jones believed that Clyde “wanted to really impressmethathewasClyde and that was Bonnie.”

After a short time, the night watchman Walker never returned, so Clyde got up and started out the front doortoleaveandJonesasked, “do you need any gas?” Clyde looked back and said, “No its full. We just stole it [the car] down the road there,” pointing toward southeast Madill.

Two days later on the evening of June 10, 1933, Bonnie, Clyde and an associate W.D.Joneswerespeeding along then State Highway 4 in Collinsworth County, Texas near Wellington in Taliaferro’s1933FordCoupe. They were headed to meet Clyde’s brother Buck Barrow and his wife Blanch at Sayer, Oklah. In his hurry to make the meeting with Buck and Blanche, Clyde missed the detour signs along Highway 4 indicating that the new bridge had not yet been built and the road detoured to the old river bridge.

Because of his inattention and speed, Clyde, Bonnie and W.D. Jones tore through a wooden barrier and plunged into the Salt Fork of the Red River. Bonnie was seriously burned on her leg by battery acid in the crash. An injury from which Bonnie never fully recovered that left her with with a limp for the remainder of her short life.

Steve Pritchard and his family lived near the crash site. The family was having dinner and they heard the crash.

The family members all ran to the river to assist the injured. Upon arriving at the river, they found the car on its side in the river missing the windshield and severely damaged. Because of the excitement of the moment, the Pritchard family did not recognize Bonnie Parker or Clyde Barrow.

When the Pritchard’s offered assistance, Clyde and W.D. Jones each produced Thompsonsub-machineguns and forced them to take Bonnie to their house. There Pritchard begged them to let him call an ambulance because Bonnie was severely burned and needed immediate medical attention but Clyde refused and stated that they “couldn’t afford it.”

Clyde demanded that Pritchard do the best he couldtohelpBonnie.Atabout that same time, Pritchard’s daughter-in-law arrived at the house and upon knocking on the door, she was shot in the hand by Clyde or Jones. When Bonnie heard the gunshot, shejumpedfromthebed and ran into the front yard, followed by Clyde and Jones. They remained outside in the dark and ordered the Pritchard family to lie down on the floor and keep quiet.

While Bonnie, Clyde and W.D. Jones were outside the Pritchardhouse,ahiredhand that worked for the Pritchard family was able to sneak out of the house and run to a neighbor’s home to call the police. Collinsworth County Sheriff George Corry, and Wellington City Marshall, Paul Hardy responded to the Pritchard residence. Upon theirarrival,ClydeandJones disarmed the officers.

They handcuffed the two officersandorderedtheminto Sheriff Corry’s car. At roughly 11:30 p.m., Clyde and W,D, Jones loaded Bonnie into the car and left headed to Erick, Okla. As they were leaving, they began firing one of the Thompsonsub-machineguns at the Pritchard family car, disabling it completely.

The group arrived in Erick at about 3:30 a.m. on June 11. Upon their arrival, they met up with Clyde’s brother, Barrow and his wife Blanche. At that point, Barrow asked Clyde if he was going to kill Sheriff Corry and Marshall Hardy, to which Barrow responded, “No, I’ve been with them long enough, I’m beginning to like them.”

At that point, the Barrow gang tied Sheriff Corry and Marshall Hardy together with barbed wire they cut from a fence and they left them there bound together. After about 30 minutes, Sheriff CorryandMarshallHardy were able to free themselves and walk to Sayer where they notified authorities. However, by that time, the Barrow gang was long gone.

On Wednesday, June 14, 1933, Taliaferro travelled to Collinsworth County, Texas to recover his 1933 Ford Coupe. The car was completely destroyed, but Taliaferro still brought the car home to Madill.

Afewdayslater,Arkansas Marshall Henry Humphrey was killed in a shootout with the Barrow gang. Then on July 23, a posse surrounded the Barrow gang at an Iowa park. Barrow was fatally wounded in the shootout.

Bonnie and W.D. Jones were wounded but were able to escape with Clyde on foot and Buck's wife, Blanche, was blinded by a shotgun pellet and captured. Then on January 16, 1934, Bonnie and Clyde killed a prison guard while helping a gang member Raymond Hamilton and three others from Eastham Prison Farm in Houston County, Texas.

On April 1, 1934, two Texas highway officers were killed near Grapevine. On April 6, 1934, the Barrow Gangmemberskilledonelaw officer and took another captive in Oklahoma. And then on May 23, 1934, Clyde and Bonnie were ambushed and killed on a rural Louisiana road ending their reign of terror after a little more than two years.

Today, there is a historical marker along U.S. Highway 83, at the Collingsworth County Pioneer’s Park on the banks of the Salt Fork of the Red River signifying the area where Bonnie and Clyde took their Red River plunge in Taliaferro’s1933FordCoupe. Sadly, no signs remain in Madilltorememberthenight of June 8, 1933, when Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow stole Taliaferro’s car and then spent the evening with Harold Jones at the old Phillips 66 on East Tishomingo and Highway 70.

Nothing but the memories the families of Harold and Huxhaveabouthearingtheir loved ones telling the story of their brush with the most notorious criminals of the 20th Century and the night Bonnie and Clyde came to Madill.