Citation Needed - Bonnie and Clyde

Episode Date: April 9, 2025

Bonnie Elizabeth Parker (October 1, 1910 – May 23, 1934) and Clyde Chestnut "Champion" Barrow (March 24, 1909 – May 23, 1934) were American outlaws who traveled the Central United States with their gang during the Great Depression, committing a series of criminal acts such as bank robberies, kidnappings, and murders between 1932 and 1934. The couple were known for their bank robberies and multiple murders, although they preferred to rob small stores or rural gas stations. Their exploits captured the attention of the American press and its readership during what is occasionally referred to as the "public enemy era" between 1931 and 1934. They were ambushed by police and shot dead in Bienville Parish, Louisiana. They are believed to have murdered at least nine police officers and four civilians.[1][2]

Hello and welcome to Citation Needed, the podcast where we choose a subject, read a single article about it on Wikipedia and pretend we're experts because this is the internet and that's how it works now. I'm Eli Bosnick and I'll be putting the criminal in this quatet tonight, but I'll need some partners in crime. First up, the Fenn fatales based on flowing locks alone, Noah and Cecil. Yeah, I knew crooks were supposed to know about locks. I got confused.

Sorry. You have written here, fem fetal, which sounds like an issue between a woman and her doctor actually. You'd think that, but now it's a state's rights issue. No, it's definitely depends on where you live. But yeah. And also joining us tonight, the brawn in the sense of both strength and paper towel usage Tom Curry, yeah, some might say I have a real bounty of ball

Now before we begin tonight, I'd like to take a moment to thank our patrons Patrons you're the half of the enterprise that greases the wheels and makes the whole grift go off without a hitch If you'd like to learn how to join their ranks, be sure to stick around till the end of the show. And with that out of the way, tell us Cecil, what person, place, thing, concept, phenomenon, or event will we be talking about today? Bonnie and Clyde.

Ooh, and Noah, I assume you picked this story because you and the subjects went to high school together. You ready to give us the inside story? Okay, so here's the sad thing I realized when I saw that you'd written that as the intro. I'm now old enough that I can no longer even say, Eli, I'm only X years old when you do that. You've been doing that so long that I actually got old.

I aged you. I'm your portrait of Dorian Gray in so many ways. In so many ways. I never got old before I knew you. That's true. So who were Bonnie and Clyde? So anyway, I never got old before I knew you. So that's true. So who were Bonnie and Clyde? Bonnie and Clyde were America's most famous criminals back when that wasn't a reference to the presidential administration.

And that was actually a pretty hard list to make it to the top of since their crime spree took place in the heyday of episode two thirty five's very own John Dillinger, as well as babyface Nelson and pretty boy Floyd. And it was made all the more unlikely by the fact that unlike the notorious bank robbers that I just mentioned, Bonnie and Clyde's robberies mostly consisted of shit like grocery stores and diners. For the last time, even if it says million dollar bacon

on the diner menu, it's not actually worth a million dollars. That's how they get you. Exactly, see, so you not actually worth a million dollars. That's how they get you. That's how they get you. Exactly, see, so you cannot put a price on bacon. Yes, yes, as a cardiac patient, let me agree with you emphatically on that, Tom. Your insurance company can put a price on bacon. Yeah, they do, they do, actually, yeah.

But, so to understand the phenomenon of Bonnie and Clyde, you need to understand the era. Their crime spree took place in the early 30s, right at the height of the Great Depression. This was a time when people were even more all cops or bastards than they are now. So Americans didn't have much trouble at all making heroes out of cop killers who stole money from rich folks.

And only rich folks had bank accounts or even money at all at that time. You know, like we live in really weird times, right? Cause like Robin Hood was like an early form of populist economic revolt, you know, representation of stealing from the rich to give to the poor. And now that's an app you can use to buy stocks. So it was a real drug and soylent is actual food. We're not learning the right lessons, guys.

Right? So it's also important to remember that this was a very sexually repressed era compared to today, but cultural attitudes were shifting. So this was like this unique sort of sexual estuary culturally, where like an unmarried couple riding around and sleeping in the same car was still salacious, but not quite scandalous. It was exactly titillating enough to capture the repressed imaginations of what would be downright puritanical people by modern standards. But it wasn't so controversial that newspapers had to shy away from talking about it. Yeah, guys are reading their paper. Look, I understand driving around the country murdering people in cold blood for their petty cash but sharing a bed before the wedding night? Why don't they think of propriety? That's exactly right though yeah so so Bonnie Elizabeth Parker was born in 1910

in a nowhere ass town in the middle of Texas. She grew up loving the spotlight and she was convinced at an early age that she was gonna be a big star which was a long shot for a kid born into poverty in the middle of nowhere, but hey, you know what? She managed it in the long run. She got half a citation needed episode and a couple of blockbuster movies by the end of it. But her fame didn't come from her acting chops or her poetry, but rather from her breathtaking lack

of a moral compass. So the same congressional qualifications as Marjorie Taylor Greene. Okay, fair. Yes, absolutely. I'd love it if you wouldn't compare the two. So in her sophomore year of high school, she met the love of her life, Roy Thornton. So the first love of her life. She and Roy got married the week before her 16th birthday,

but embrace yourself for a heartbreaking shock here. That marriage didn't work out. He was prone to long absences, hard drinking, and occasional criminal activity, the latter two of which led him to a five-year stint in prison for bank robbery. The two never actually divorced, but they were estranged by January of 1921. So the marriage made it just over two years in any real form. Yeah. Okay. So for all those idiots that hand-ring about modern divorce rates, maybe consider the only reason it's higher now is because like we bother to do the paperwork.

Yeah. Yes, exactly. That's so much of it. So meanwhile, you got this broke ass son of a gas station owner by the name of Clyde Chestnut Barrow. And if you think Chestnut is a silly middle name, by the way, you would be joining Clyde in that opinion. He spent most of his life trying to convince people that his real middle name was Champion, which is also silly, right? But in a cooler way. So Clyde Champion Barrow was the fifth of seven kids born into the Barrow family, which eventually settled in the West Dallas slums. Now, of course, then is now the economy kind of trapped people in the class they were born into. And that meant that Clyde's prospects were pretty low

he could follow his dad's footsteps and sell scrap metal and service cars for a pauper's wages or He could do crimes and be rich and I'm sorry if it sounds like I'm making excuses for his criminal tendencies But that it's kind of undeniably true when you look at the circumstances that people like him grew up in Okay, and I'm not saying that if I could do crimes and get rich that I would, but I am saying that if anyone out there knows of any good crimes to get rich, we have an email address. Tom, if it makes you feel better, I think what you do now will be illegal for most of the future.

Yeah, but it's not now. Yet. So yeah, right. Technically, this thing in the backlog. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I can do two things at once. Eli, don't limit me. OK, so now Clyde chose the latter option. He liked fancy clothes way too much to do oily work.

So he settled into an early life of crime. This was made far easier for him by the fact that his older brother Buck had sort of paved the way for him, showed him the criminal ropes as he was growing up, so to speak. Clyde was first arrested in 1926 at the age of 17 for failing to return a rented car. His second arrest came in the same year for possession of stolen turkeys Please sketch artists just tracing around their open hand Adding a beak Is that him is that it There the police lineup is like Jim Purdue and Jenny Oh

Guys it's typecast cuz he looks like the fucking hand. It's ridiculous. Hamburger helper. I forgot about that fucking guy. He was the best. He was like the Butch Pillsbury man. Right. That's right. Exactly. We're making biscuits and Hamburger helper would be like,

so your mom is poor. Every time he goes to work, it's a hand job. Oh, God. Oh, all right. No, it's OK. So Clyde did get a few legit jobs early on in his life, not hand jobs, which is like job jobs. But I've taken away your ability to edit that bit. Sorry, Cecil.

But he supplemented his income through the occasional turkey theft or hold up or car theft or safe crack. It got to the point where he was one of the Dallas cops as usual suspect. So like basically, anytime a crime happened, they would go get him, shake him down, see if he had anything to do with it. Needless to say, this made it hard for him to keep a job. Cops keep picking you up in the middle of a shift. It doesn't much matter if they charge you or let you go afterwards. We're talking about early depression era, so plenty of people are ready to take your job the instant you're an inconvenience to your foreman. All right, three strikes, chestnut.

That's a turkey for you, which you probably also stole. So in January of 1930. That's amazing. That's a bull. That's amazing. Someone out there loved that. Oh, God. I loved it. Outstanding.

See, I knew they were out there. Outstanding. They were on this very. Hamburger Helper guy probably could bowl. I bet. Yeah, 100 percent. I'm going to go piss this ball over here. I don't got kids in my home, but I'm pretty close with my stepkids.

Three holes, lots of options. It's so hot. So in January of 19, I did not expect that the hamburger helper guy's sexual proclivities would make it into my essay about Bonnie and Clyde. And I should have known better. I've known better. I feel like that's 100%. What about our 10 year relationship thought?

No, you're right. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. So, okay. So it's January of 1930 when Clyde meets the lovely and vivacious Bonnie Parker through a mutual friend and the two fall in love at first sight. Their romance though hits an early snag when he was arrested shortly after they met for car theft.

He was convicted and he was sentenced to five years in prison. Now, Bonnie pledged to wait for him, but he had a better idea. He convinced her to sneak a gun into the prison for him, which he then used to escape. Clyde, your dame brought you some kind of hammer. It's all the wrong shape though.

Gals, am I right? Here you go. So so he gets out along with a friend and he promises that he's going to send for Bonnie as soon as the heat dies down. And maybe that's what he intended to do. Maybe it was. It doesn't much matter. After a week on the run, he and his accomplice are picked up again and they're sent back to prison in Texas.

But this time, Clyde finds himself in the worst prison farm in the entire shithole of his state, a place called Easton Prison Farm that was generally reserved for violent criminals, murderers, lifers, that kind of shit. This would probably be a good time to point out that Clyde is about 5'6 and he weighs 125 pounds. Okay, terrible place, I'm sure. But if he just does the taxes for the screws, then you know, he might not be. Andy Dufresne was at least tall though, right?

That's true. So while he's at Easton, Clyde will earn two new titles, rape victim and murderer. Yes, those two are related. So with apologies for temporarily sucking all the humor out of the story, Clyde was repeatedly sexually assaulted by an inmate while he was in this prison farm, and another inmate, a guy that was serving a life sentence who also hated the shit out of the rapist

dude, agreed to take the rap for it if Clyde killed him. So Clyde somehow acquired a length of pipe, and he stove that motherfucker's skull in with it. Afterwards, the lifer stabbed the lifeless body a few times with a shank and then he got a couple of years added to his already life sentence for it. Why are you guys wearing matching teamwork makes the dream work t-shirts? Why did you think you needed to do some of the stabbing? We would have just believed that you did some tough stuff. Why did you think you needed to do some of the stabbing? Well, they won't notice his caved in skull if we poke him a couple of times like a baked potato

Apparently, I don't I don't even think that makes it into the coroner's report Tom that they just were like Oh, no, you stabbed a bunch of times also other stuff. What's the thing that happened last? That's probably what killed him, right? Yeah, he committed suicide with this pipe. So, OK, so while he's in prison, Bonnie is going back and forth between devotion to Clyde and frustration at his absence. So keep in mind, she's still dealing with an absentee husband technically who was in and out of jail. So she's familiar with how relationships like that can go. So within a few months of his stint there, she finds a new boyfriend and she stops writing to Clyde altogether.

The other woman in his life, though, his mother, Cue me, Barrow, never stops writing. And she's not just writing to him. She's also writing to the governor about getting him paroled. Texas prisons were so wildly overcrowded at the time that any concerted effort to get anybody paroled for any fucking crime had at least some chance of success and Cue me was trying a damn harm. Okay. So audience, when you look at the way this word is spelled, the only thing you can see is come. Okay. So I'm just saying it's spelled so all of the podcasts are going to take a vote here. So all in favor of pronouncing it, Cummy. Aye. Yep.

Okay. Ayes have it. So here's my joke with Cummy. She started a whole movement to get her kid out of jail. They called it Cummy Get It. Oh, excellent. That's not the joke I was expecting. No, I was going to do a different one. I was just picturing the warden staring at her name on the paper and being like, ma'am, I'm willing to parole your son right now if you promise I don't have to say your name. I'm with Cecil, I was one of the eyes and I need...

But eventually Clyde decides he can't wait for the governor or for his sentence to run out. Now Easton was notoriously hard to escape from and pretty much everybody who tried wound up dead. So Clyde wasn't going that way, but there was another way off the prison farm. And that way was to get too injured to farm. Can't put you in a work camp if you can't work, right? So while they're out chopping wood one day, suspense builds, suspense builds, suspense builds, Clyde convinces somebody to chop off his big toe of his right foot. What? They also get a little of the second toe because what are the odds that he's gonna be a

fucking ninja to just hit one? Now that almost certainly would have been sufficient to get him moved off of this prison farm, but we'll never know that because a few days before he did that the governor ceded to Cue me's letter writing campaign and granted him a pardon. They just hadn't finished processing the paperwork yet so he didn't know about it. Just not get in here you're gonna going to laugh. Well, not. Well, Clyde, since you've really told the line while you're in here, we're going to let you dip a toe back in a regular society. You can tell which of us has the most kids.

Can't you? So so Clyde ran straight to Bonnie when he got out. Oh, I'm sorry. He didn't run. I mean, he was he was on crutches for months. And even every got off of him, he didn't do a lot of running. But he limped straight to Bonnie. And when she saw him, all that internal conflict from the past months melted away and she realized that Clyde would always be her true love. She fell into his arms and the two embraced, which was super fucking awkward

because her boyfriend was there. Shit. Yeah, he was in the fucking room. But he slinked away rather than fuck with a dude so prison hardened that he intentionally parted with toes and he made room for the legend that Bonnie and Clyde were about to become. All right. Well, monogamy has ruined yet another love story. So while I draw a triangle for the rest of the cast once again, we'll

pause for a little apropos of nothing. Say, Clyde, you sure got a pep in your step today, what's the story? Getting a visit from my best gal. Oh, Bonnie was her name, right? You betcha. Right this way, prisoner. There's my gal. Quick, stick it in!

Oh, I told you, this ain't a conjugal visit. Also there's glass between us. Well just- just smush it through the holes! I- I don't, I-I-I can't, uh- Never fucking mind your fucking none! Anyway, how is it in here? Oh, darling, I miss you something terrible. Yeah, yeah, me too.

So here's the thing. You ever own a house with, like, copper pipes? Uh, no. Well, if you don't run the water, they start to rust. You know what I mean? I guess, how's the escape plan going? you don't run the water, they start to rust. You know what I mean? So how's the escape plan going? I don't know.

Can you sneak me another one of those guns? Nah, I'm keeping graham crackers in there. Yeah, what? What about your proddin'? You might have any luck, Cummy. Not so far, but look, I know it's desperate, but perhaps I could cut off a toe. It might be a little small, I might be able to flick the bean with it, but if you want to plunge the clunge, you're going to need the whole foot, you know what I mean?

No, not for that, I mean to get me out of here. Oh yeah, that could work too. Well look, the clock's ticking, so get out by next week, I can't be responsible for my fucking actions, alright? Why, what by next week, I can't be responsible for my fucking actions, alright? Why, what's next week? The carnival comes to town every- flip upside down and catch loads like a game of flip cup! Please! Uh, don't?

Well then I'll see you next week, Toosie! Yeah, yup, I'm Tom Curry. And I'm Cecil something Italian. You know, there's nothing I love more than spending a day prepping a delicious meal for the people I love. But some people don't have that time. I had pretzel for breakfast. Did you say pretzel like singular? Yes, I did. No illusions. But now there's factor. What's factor? Make this your best season yet with nutritious two minute meals from Factor. Eating well has never been this easy, just heat up and enjoy, giving you more time to do what you want.

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And we're back. When we left off, our dynamic duo was finally together. What hijinks did they get up to, Noah? Yeah, murder mostly. So you can imagine that in the lead up to their infamous crime spree, Bonnie had probably dreamed a bit about the adventurous life on the lamb that the two could have. It's safe to say that their inaugural crime didn't live up to expectations. It literally ends with them barging in on a farmer, demanding the keys to his car, learning that he doesn't own a car and stealing his donkey instead. You do not want to know where the keys go on the donkey. That's all I'm saying.

Hey, hey, they didn't intend to steal it. They were just going to burrow it for a while. So, so after he was released from prison, Clyde and a friend of his named Ralph Foltz decided that they were going to raid Easton prison farm and break out all the prisoners, especially that guy that took the fall for Clyde when he killed his rapist they figured all they'd need to do that would be some really big guns and this was a time when you could buy a fucking machine gun from Sears so all they needed for that was money which they figured they would raise by knocking off a series of gas stations in corner stores now if you're thinking to yourself why not just steal some Tommy

guns from Sears don't. They would think of that eventually Okay, and before we all get too high and mighty remember you could still buy an AR 15 from fucking Walmart until 2015 Yeah, yeah, but they had fully automatic doesn't it's not yes Off the shelves for lagging sales by by the way, not because anybody said you can't sell those here. Now you've got to go to two different online stores to get an air-fib. So Clyde and Ralph pull off a few robberies with Bonnie taking an increasing role until she's a straight-up partner in crime.

And of course, Clyde isn't exactly quick on his feet, what with the missing toe. So his job is usually to drive the getaway car, which he did in his socks apparently, because with the missing toe he had a lot of trouble driving with shoes on. It's a floppy part. Kids these days and their special accommodations, am I right? He's still way more nimble than anyone wearing Crocs though. Fair. They're so comfortable though.

Way uncomfortable. But fairly early on in this series of robberies, shit goes wrong. Well, I mean, shit goes wrong on the very first robbery, hence the donkey theft, but shit goes wrong-er. And the trio find themselves in a spot where the cops are right behind them, Foltz is too injured to move, and Bonnie's too slow to get away. So Clyde realizes his only chance is to escape by himself and then come back and rescue Bonnie after she gets caught Now if that sounds a lot like just abandoning his girlfriend and saving himself, that's because that's what it is I already told you Jack. There's not enough room on the door for both of us Exactly. So so Bonnie gets arrested and she has to sit in jail for a while while she's waiting for a grand jury to decide whether to indict her.

And ultimately, she and Clyde decide that she's got a better chance of just pretending she was a hostage than of him breaking her out of prison. So she spends a few weeks in jail, she writes a few poems, she pines for Clyde, and ultimately convinces a grand jury that she was an innocent victim of circumstance. So she gets out and pretty much right away, she rejoins Clyde for some more of that awesome crime stuff. So this is where things start to get deadly for people who don't deserve it, that is.

Clyde is the getaway driver for a store robbery where one of his accomplices shoots and kills the store owner, one J.N. Butcher. So Butcher's wife, who witnessed the murder, would later identify Clyde Barrow as one of the killers, which he wasn't. Okay, so this was a misidentification. He never even went into the store where the shooting happened. And given his involvement, right, that's almost certainly not a coincidence, more than likely the cops already knew he was involved. And so they told Mrs. Butcher

who to identify. And further backing up that assertion is the fact that she also identified a former partner of Clyde's that was in Michigan at the time of the murder. So, but regardless of the flimsiness of the ID, Clyde was treated by local law enforcement as a murderer from that point forward, a murderer different than the murderer that he actually was. But here's the thing about local law enforcement at the time. They were fucking broke. Okay, so we're in 1932 at this point,

again, height of the depression. So most cops didn't get a paycheck for their service. Instead, they were paid in bounties for criminals that they caught. And they also, they weren't supplied with state equipment either. So they're driving around in their own depression era trucks with their own depression era guns,

which they bought without paychecks. And Clyde, meanwhile, is stealing Ford V8s whenever he can, which is the fastest thing on the road back then. And then when they finally get around to stealing guns, they're stealing Browning automatic rifles. So they pretty much always have the advantage of a faster car and a bigger gun the cops

Oh the days of yore when every 10,000 person town didn't have an armored police tank. Yeah, right We really think teams were just guys slapping at criminals. Yeah Who's there? So predictably this whole they have better guns thing would eventually cost a few cops their lives The first one was in August of 1932 Clyde had just finished pulling off a pretty sweet robbery that Bonnie wasn't involved in so he and his two accomplices they're driving around afterwards just you know looking for somewhere to party they happen on a town tavern a little party. There's moonshine at this party. This is of course during prohibition so predictably they stop

but when these fancy city boys with their nice clothes and their expensive cars start flirting with the local girls the local boys get pissed some cops try to intervene before a fight breaks out and the barrel gang opens fire one cop dies instantly the other far less instantly he's just previously wounded and then dies of like cancer later or whatever fucking sucks to die at the height of the Great Depression and then dies of like cancer later or whatever. It fucking sucks to die at the height of the Great Depression and then miss getting to live through World War II. I know. I know.

I saw the fun. They had so much more awesome Batman movies. So much to look forward to. Now, apparently, Barrow's a hard guy to get along with. So he demands everything be done exactly his way. And most criminals don't like that show. So he mows through partners pretty quick, at early in his career but eventually he and Bonnie pick up this kid from back home named WD Jones who idolizes Clyde and has since he

was a kid and so he makes it into the Barrel Gang even if he is like comic relief levels of fuck-up throughout all of his criminal career. I heard he was the heart and soul of the criminal enterprise. Now, and I should point out, by the way, the reason they're picking up a kid from back home is because despite being on the run for murder, Bonnie and Clyde still hover around their home area of Dallas, Texas. They periodically come back to check up on their families and bring them gifts and money and shit. Now, the families for their part know exactly where those gifts and that money is coming from. But other than Bonnie's mom's perpetual entreaties that she like, you know, give that nice podiatrist another chance or whatever, they're happy to take

the spoils. Son! Another 360 pound wooden stand-up radio you shouldn't have! So by the beginning of 1933, the gang is wanted for five murders, most of which they committed. They killed the cop at the moonshine party, a car owner who caught them in the middle of stealing his V8. Jeez, imagine dying over some Bloody Mary mix. That's fucking brutal.

Well, it's either that or you drive diagonally, Tom. It's one or the other. Anyway, so there's those two and then they killed another cop when they hopped into like a trap that was set for a different criminal. The other two were murders that they probably didn't have anything to do with. But at this point, anytime that crime was unsolved in Texas, they were like, that's probably Bonnie and Clyde. That reputation would go national in the spring of 33 after Clyde's brother Buck had joined

the gang. See, so Buck had spent some time in prison, then he got a full pardon without hacking any body parts off in advance of it, and he went straight. He got married, settled into a simple life. He did that for like three weeks, and he's like, oh, fuck this, Clyde's thing looks way more fun. So he and his wife Blanche decided to join Bonnie and Clyde

for a little while. Now, Blanche told later biographers that the plan was to try to talk Clyde into giving up his life of crime Right and and and that may have been what he told her the plan was but pretty much immediately Buck and Blanche just joined the gang and made it five strong WD just sitting at the end of the booth at every restaurant lock in the aisle here. We are the five wheels Well, here we are, the five wheels. Yes.

So things get deadly again in April. The gang is staying in a rented place in Joplin, Missouri, and they're apparently as suspicious as it is possible to be. So pretty quickly, local cops respond to the 57, I think there are criminals living in this house complaint. Well, I don't know about pretty quickly. It took Clyde accidentally firing one of those automatic rifles into the ceiling before they actually showed up. But eventually the cops did think, Hey, we should check this out. Now, the cops know they've got

somebody. They don't know who they've got, but they figure it's probably bootleggers. So five cops get together, they set up an ambush, but it's not a very good one. So the gang shoots their way out, but they leave everything that they own back in the rented place. So the cops go through it in the aftermath, try to figure out who they're dealing with. In addition to plenty of identifying information, they also found a couple of roles of undeveloped film. It was this film and the later decision to turn it over to the media that would really make them famous. So in these roles of film, there were a couple of pictures that WD had taken of the couple posing in front of their stolen car with their machine guns. And several of these photos are super famous.

Arguably, the most famous one though is one of Bonnie smoking a cigar, which was a downright vulgar thing for a woman to do at the time. So much so in fact, that despite being accused of murder, she had nothing to do with, Bonnie would take every opportunity from then on to inform the press that she only did that for the funny picture. She did not smoke cigars. Yeah, I stick them in my hoo-ha for Clyde to smoke later like a respectable lady. Don't you compare him to Bill Clinton? Yeah. Now, of course, once they were on the national radar,

everybody wanted a piece of him. More and more reward money just keeps piling up and the brand new Federal Bureau of Investigations has made it like its stated goal to round up all the famous criminals. So instead of the incompetent West Dallas sheriff who had been chasing them up to this point whose name I shit you not was Smooch Schmidt, they were suddenly being tracked by J. Edgar Hoover. So they're notoriety hamstrung in another way that I find fucking hilarious too. So in the media, they're always mentioned alongside these famous bank robbers like Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd.

But those guys, when they robbed banks, as you'll remember from episode 235, they did so with inside help and a network of safe houses and sophisticated logistics and all this shit. And they'd come away often with like tens or even sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars So when crooks that had read those types of stories signed up with the infamous Barrow gang And then they knocked off a fucking piggly wiggly for two hundred and twelve bucks. They generally didn't stick around Sorry, I'm just robbing these bigly wigglies to find a piggy for my left foot. I just replace that piggy as the year wears on things get worse for the game They're trapped by another ambush in Platte City, Missouri

And now they shoot their way out of this one as well, but in the melee buck gets shot in the head It's a fatal shot, but not a right away fatal shot, which makes it complicated Yeah His wife also takes some shrapnel in the eyes during this shootout that would fuck her up it would fuck her vision up for the rest of her life and shortly after all of that Clyde wrecks their stolen car and rolls it into a river now everybody survives but the car's battery spills all of its acid right onto Bonnie's legs we get cover on the battery what what kind of batteries are they driving? Right?

Yeah, eventually they did. Yeah. But in the meantime, it would fuck Bonnie's legs up so bad that for the rest of her life, Clyde had to like carry her in and out of restaurants. Yeah. And at this point, the entire gang makes up one competent criminal. So yeah, right. No, Clyde's the left leg. Blanche is the right leg. Bonnie's the eyes. Yeah. So, okay. So now, as you might have guessed,, Blanche is the right leg, Bonnie's the eyes. Yeah. So, okay. So now, as you might have guessed, this whole rest of her life thing, not a huge commitment.

In January of 1934, Clyde finally manages to pull off a much smaller version of the Easton prison break than the one he'd been dreaming about for so long. He didn't manage to rescue the guy who took the rap for him on that murder, but he did get a few buddies out and one of them joined the gang and then agreed to sell the gang out in exchange for a full pardon from the state of Texas. Man, if you can't trust hardened criminals, who can you trust? Right? Yeah.

So for Easter of 1934, the narc, this guy, Henry Methvin, he convinces Bonnie and Clyde to take him to see his family for a little while over the holidays, right? Unbeknownst to them, the cops had set up an ambush along the way on this one very narrow road that they'd have to drive down to get to his family's place. So they drive down for the scheduled meeting, they get to this broken down truck that's meant to like slow them down and then either Bonnie and Clyde both pull out guns and start firing at cops who hadn't even broken cover yet and they're just defending themselves or The cops just murdered the fuck out of Bonnie and Clyde the second they had the chance to

Man, if you can't trust murderous jackboots of the state, who can you trust? Right? Yeah, exactly Jack boots of the state who can you try right? Yeah, exactly now either way the two guys the Absolute shit killed out of them the bullet riddled car is actually it's on display in some casino in Vegas to this day And for his part methvin did get that pardon from Texas But since he also murdered a guy in Louisiana and committed federal crimes. It was of limited use to him He also murdered a guy in Louisiana and committed federal crimes. It was of limited use to him. Sitting next to that McDonald's manager who didn't get his prize money for Luigi and hell. First time.

Yeah. Ah, we suck. So, so Bonnie and Clyde's reign of terror ended on May 23rd of 1934, more than two years after it began along the way, they killed 12 people, nine cops, three civilians, and despite a myriad of opportunities to get away, almost certainly get some amount of legency from the courts, especially after her legs were all fucked up, and still get out of jail with a significant chunk of her life left to live, Bonnie chose to stand by Clyde to the bitter end, despite knowing exactly how bitter that end was going to be. And ultimately, she became way to fuck more famous

than any actress or poet of the day. And if you had to summarize in one sentence what you've learned, what would it be? If podcasting ever makes us famous, guys, there is another path. I'm right with ya, No Illusions. I'm right with ya. Are you ready for the quiz?

Sure, why not? All right, Noah, you keep alluding to the possibility of fame derived from poetry why Hey, no really why? Secret answer B. Maybe you've heard of a little something called the Lee Bennett Hopkins Pack in and arm up. Okay Noah, I'm going to use the proper pronunciation of her name. When Cummys petition finally made it to the Supreme Court, what was it colloquially called? A, a nutcase.

I was so disappointed. I was so sad for you when I had to write into the nose it's it's pronounced cute me I'm so sorry Noah if I do a one answer question this week is it a a three beat so it's funnier. God damn it. I guess A is the correct answer. Hey, I win. No actually I win. I win. I win. No, I win.

That's how it works. I'm the host next week. So I win and I decided I want an essay from Cecil. All right. Well, for Tom, Cecil, Noah, and Heath, I'm Uly Bossnik, thanking you for hanging out with us today. We'll be back next week. And by then, Cecil will be an expert on something else.

Between now and then, you can train an AI on Cecil's Boston lady voice so you can have phone sex with it, or you can listen to our other podcasts. Up to you. And if you'd like to keep this show going, you can make a per episode donation at patreon.com slash CitationPod, or leave us a five star review everywhere you can. And if you'd like to get in touch with us check out past episodes Connect with us on social media or check the show notes. Be sure to check out citation pod calm

I'll face I'm home. Oh Um, hey Clyde wait a second was one of those Carney jugglers in here? No? Really? Cause he left one of his clubs... What's up? Two. Two of his clubs. There's more in there!