Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Valentine's Day Special: The love crimes of Bonnie & Clyde

Episode Date: February 14, 2019

It's the ultimate criminal love story. The legend of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow is a real story of bank robberies, murders and love. Nancy Grace visits with Bonnie's niece -- Rhea Leen LInder -- and Clyde's nephew -- Buddy Barrow to talk about their infamous relatives. Also joining the discussion is Cold Case Research Institute director Sheryl McCullom and psychologist Caryn Stark. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. something that matters. And what matters the most? Protecting your child. What do you love the most in the world? Your children. I do. And I will do anything to protect my twins. Go to crimestopshere.com. It is a five-part series with action information that you can use to change your life and protect your child's life. Payment starting at $6.99. Give that as a gift, not another onesie or a plastic toy. Give them something that matters. Find out how to protect your child out and about at the mall, at the store, at the grocery store, in the parking lot, at home. Find out about protection regarding babysitters and daycare, even online cyber security. Oh yes, my children are online

and you better bet I'm doing everything within my power to protect them. Payment starting $6.99. I would much rather have that than yet another plastic baby doll or, God forbid, a toy gun. Just what I don't want. Join the Justice Nation. Crimestopshere.com Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. On January 5th, 1930, Clyde Barrow walked into her life. Clyde came along just at the right time for her.

This guy with a new car that's stolen, but so it's a new car and he's dressed in these fine clothes and he's got lots of money and he's got a good line and he's got a great smile and it just worked Buster her brother Buster told me he said little did he says when those two saw each other he said you could see the sparks fly right there just weeks into their courtship clyde's outlaw ways finally caught up to him dallas police showed up at bonnie's house with a warrant for his arrest clyde was sent to the county jail in waco to await his trial and sentencing but clyde barrow had no intention of being separated from Bonnie Parker for long. He knows where there's a gun and he gets the idea to get her to go get that gun and bring

it to him. On one visit, Clyde slipped Bonnie a note detailing his escape plan. He signed it, you are the sweetest baby in the world to me. This is where Bonnie has to make a choice. This is breaking the law herself. She can go to jail for this. On the other hand, if she does break him out, that's the kind of daring thing some of the pretty starlets do in the picture shows.

So she says she'll do it. Bonnie hid the gun under her dress and successfully smuggled it into the jail. She was now Clyde's accomplice. The escape plan worked. Clyde and two other inmates fled the Waco jail that evening. However, their freedom was short-lived. They were arrested just seven days later. Bonnie returned to her mother in West Dallas, but Clyde was slapped with a 14-year sentence and was now on his way to one of the most notorious institutions in Texas. A prison so violent and untamed it earned the nickname the Bloody Ham. Happy Valentine's Day everybody. I mean

why does love and crime seem to fit together just so well and who portrays that better than the legend of Bonnie and Clyde. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us. With me, the blood relatives of Bonnie and Clyde. Also with me, Cheryl McCollum, director of the Cold Case Research Institute. Boy, do we need her today. Jackie Howard in the studio. Alan Deak, my partner in crime, joining me from L.A. Let's get right down to it. You know, to Raylene Linder, the niece of Bonnie Parker of the famed Bonnie and Clyde, what does it feel like knowing that Bonnie's blood runs through your veins? Well, it's shocking in a way. It's not something that you would choose considering everything that happened there. she was my dad's sister she was the daughter of a wonderful grandmother the sister of my wonderful

aunt also so I don't see that that I have any complaints well you sound like you're doing all right let me just ask you out of curiosity Ray Raylene Linder, what do you do for a living? You don't work in a bank, do you? No. No, I don't. I'm retired. Happily retired. What did you do in your working life?

I was a secretary for one company for 20 years. It's not a bank, is it? I'm not giving up on the bank angle. Okay, good to know. With me, Buddy Barrow, the nephew. Oh, go ahead, please. Oh, I'm sorry. Then I actually retired from Coke Industries.

To Buddy Barrow, the nephew of Clydede barrow of bonnie and clyde okay buddy what does it feel like knowing you've got clyde's blood running through your veins well you know they say blood thicker than water and families stick together so you know that's just the way it is you know i've got a question to cheryl mccullum cold case research institute director ch Cheryl, you know, I'm thinking about Clyde and Bonnie. Was it true love or was he just a big user? I've actually never thought about it in that way before until I was listening to that PBS documentary when they fall in love at first sight.

I mean, you know, I'm not talking about my husband who is a saint. He is a saint. Between two guinea pigs, a cat, a dog, twins, and my 87-year-old mother living with us, he's a saint. But I will admit, there have been one or two men that just happened to show up, dressed great, looking good, smelling good, talking sweet. I mean, that can turn your head, Cheryl. Nancy, this is absolutely a love story. And I got to tell you, for me, this is an exciting program you're doing this morning because Bonnie and Clyde, I think, set the tone for my entire

career. I'm sorry to hear that because when I first pulled up on you at a crime scene, I had no idea you were inspired by Bonnie and Clyde. I may have run the other way. No, absolutely. Because as a little girl, she would tell these fantastic stories about this couple that was desperately in love. But they crisscrossed the country robbing banks. And, you know, she would wait until we were all exhausted. Okay, I hate to steal from Tina Turner, but what's love got to do with it? Why does love have to do with it? They're so in love, they robbed banks.

See, to me, that's like two and two equals five i'm so in love that i uh left new york city the tv mecca and moved away to raise children with my husband now i don't think oh david i love you so much let's go rob a bank i i i think your equation is all wrong cheryl what no as aologist, it's really important to understand how Bonnie and Clyde got to Robin Banks because they did love each other. And I think Raylene and Buddy will tell you, the Great Depression invented Bonnie and Clyde as much as Bonnie and Clyde did. Okay, let's take a listen to how Clyde Barrow became Clyde Barrow. Clyde Chestnut Barrow was born in the Texas Cotton Belt on March 24, 1909. One of seven children of itinerant farmers Henry and Cumie Barrow.

By 1925, the whole Barrow clan had followed a wave of other farmers who were flooding cities in search of work. With all their worldly possessions packed into a horse-drawn cart, the Barrows settled on the outskirts of Dallas in an impoverished backwater known as the Devil's Back Porch. Clyde Barrow grew up in an unincorporated slum, so poverty-stricken we couldn't imagine it today. And there's a campground right on the west bank of the Trinity River and it's mostly mud and there's one well there's a few outhouses and this is where the indigent lived my grandfather and grandmother it's just poor people trying to survive and they camped out out there and just that wagon that little mule. And that's how they lived. No money, no food, just poor as you could be. So from the time this kid can really

think, all he knows is there's no hope. This is it. I'm going to be poor. I'm going to be hungry. I'm going to be put down the rest of my life. Guys, before we go one step further, I want to thank our partner making today's Legend of Bonnie and Clyde for Valentine's special possible, and it is Blink. Hey, when do you want to spot the burglar? When he's casing your home on the outside or when he's sticking his foot through your kitchen window or worse? Ask John. His Blink camera alerted him to burglars actually breaking in while he and his family are home. Okay, that's bold.

Or Shannon, her blink camera caught a thief stealing packages out front. But both times, blink video clips were sent to cops and they got the bad guys. Blink motion activated indoor-outdoor cameras are wire-free, which I like. They set up in minutes. They work on two AA batteries that last up to two years. So every other month, you're not out there on a ladder trying to fix the camera. And if you're traveling, Blink's live feed option lets you monitor your home no matter where you are using the Blink smartphone app. There's no contracts, no subscriptions, totally affordable, and Blink works with Alexa. Blink camera systems make a great gift, and they're an excellent way to monitor your home, your package deliveries, whatever is happening, your pets from a distance, or right there at home. Visit BlinkProtect.com slash Nancy.

Blink, B-L-I-N-K. BlinkProtect.com slash Nancy. BlinkProtect.com slash Nancy. Blink's an Amazon company. Thank you, Blink, for making today possible. Clyde chafed at the prospect of a life of poverty. Though he was slight, 5 feet 6 inches, never more than 130 pounds, Clyde was bright, energetic, and a dreamer. He saw what he wanted just across the river in Dallas,

a prosperous city with skyscrapers, endless entertainment, and streets lined with high-end shops. Dallas exposed Clyde to a life that was far beyond his grasp. He had dreams. You know, he wanted to do something rather than be poor the rest of his life. He hated poverty and he hated looking like poverty. With a taste for expensive suits and a little interest in honest work, Clyde Barrow picked up the bad habits of his older brother, Buck, who had already settled into a life of petty crime. What started with the two brothers stealing chickens quickly grew into armed robbery, and by the time he was 17, Clyde was perfecting his signature crime. What started with the two brothers stealing chickens quickly grew into armed robbery and by the time he was 17 Clyde was perfecting his signature crime. This is the first era of car theft. The electric starter system is put in cars. You could hotwire one and Buck was a master of it, and he passed the skill along to little brother.

Clyde Barrow didn't see stealing so much as a crime as almost an obligation. I want to get out of here. This is the only way I can do it. By 1929, Clyde's crimes were regularly drawing the attention of local police. In November of that year, Clyde, Buck, and an accomplice broke into an auto shop in the town of Denton, just outside Dallas. Local law enforcement spotted the robbers trying to flee and opened fire. And they shoot Buck, and they capture Buck, but Clyde runs all the way back home it's a close call but it's worth it because as long as he's stealing cars and getting a few dollars for him he's somebody and to him that's worth any risk okay so Clyde was born out of a horrible horrible

depression just dirt poor. That means scratching the dirt to make a living. And, you know, Cheryl McCollum, director of the Cold Case Research Institute, joining me along with Raylene Linder, the niece of Bonnie Parker and Buddy Barrow, the nephew of Clyde Barrow of Bonnie and Clyde. Cheryl, you know, my grandparents had a pecan farm, a farm of animals, crops. They both

worked. My grandfather dug wells for a living and drove an ice truck and a school bus. My grandmother picked pecans, took care of the farm, and then went to a job at a tile factory where she stood up all day making mosaics. I don't think robbing an auto shop or stealing cars crossed their minds. You still think this is glamorous, Cheryl McCollum. Absolutely. And I'll tell you something. I bet there was a day or two it did cross their mind, too, that they might not have done it, but I bet they thought about it.

And this, again, is what is important as a criminologist. Somebody is always going through their own Great Depression. something. If dinner is an hour late, it'll change somebody's personality. If you're starving every day, you're desperate. In desperate times, come on. We've seen it. People will commit crimes when otherwise they would not have. You know what? You're right. You're right. But after they started living the high life, they kept doing it. And I love the way you connect, Cheryl McCollum. They were so in love, they robbed a bank. To Buddy Barrow, the blood nephew of Clyde Barrow, when you hear about Clyde Barrow's exploits, how does that make you feel? Well, I can say one thing about this whole deal.

When the depression hit, you know, people were losing their farms. They lost their homes. They lost their bank accounts. When the banks failed, they lost everything they had. And when Clyde struck out, his main purpose was to hit those with the loss. He hit big petroleum companies he'd hit railroad depots he had places where people could afford to lose the money because they were making the money uh as far as mom and pop filling stations they robbed they said most of these were big petroleum companies and all they did was have poor people working for them. They weren't stealing from the people themselves. They were stealing from the corporations, the big moneymakers.

That's where he hit mostly. Banks were not his favorite, but yet he had accomplices that, you know, thought that was the bigger money, the faster money. Clyde wasn't interested in that. Clyde was mostly interested in just getting down the road and surviving another day. You know what, Buddy Barrow, I'm glad you told me that because I didn't know that. I did not know that Clyde Barrow. He was a Jesse James of his time. If the railroad, what the railroad was doing to the people back then, you know, they were, if you wouldn't sell your property to the railroad, they would hire men to dress up as Indians, slaughter the whole family. There's no one that could stop them from taking that land.

And they did this in order to blame it on the Indians, not the railroad. Now, we're kind of going way back in history to justify some bank robberies, but you know what? I'll give that to you. Hold on. To Raylene Linder, you know, I never thought about the targets, the way that Buddy Barrow, nephew of Clyde Barrow, just described them. And I've got to tell you, coming from a family my when you're bringing up the

railroads it's probably not the right tree to bark up with me because my dad was a railroad man all of his brothers his father that's how i got put through school um and even through law school i was still taking that golden pass to go visit my sister in Philadelphia on the choo-choo train. But long story short, Raylene Linder, when I'm hearing Buddy Barrow put it in those terms, coming from very, very poor grandparents and, you know, let me just say economically challenged parents. I hear what he's saying, Raylene. I hear it. Those were hard times. My grandmother raised all three kids by herself. My grandfather died when my Aunt Jean was two years old. So it was hard times back then, and families moved in together. They sure did.

Joining me right now, in addition to Buddy Barrow, Raylene Linder, Cheryl McCollum, Director of the Cold Case Research Institute. Joining me now out of Manhattan, psychologist Karen Stark. You can find her at karenstark.com. Karen, those times were harder than any of us can imagine, even though I thought I had a hard growing up. My mom has told me a story. I don't remind her of it very often, but it was when there were the rations and she was sent to go get the sugar. That's all they'd have for the month. And my mom, this little girl, walked all the way home from the grocery store.

And she didn't know there was a tear in the bag. When she got home, almost all the sugar was gone. And my mother just went into, you know, she's very, very emotional. She just went into a depression over what she had done. And do you know my grandmother who, you know, I named Lucy after her. My grandmother Lucy never said a word, never complained, didn't scold her, nothing. But I think about those hard times of my grandmother getting up at three and four in the morning to take care of a farm and then go work in a tile factory and be glad they had it. Be overjoyed.

Thank God they had a job like that. And it was brutal, Karen Stark. And two, I think a lot of us, Nancy, were raised with that same kind of story. My grandmother came from Russia and wound up raising six children during the Depression. And they had no money. She became a chef, a cook in those days. And eventually she was a caterer. But she worked for every day I can remember. And what I wanted to say, although I grew up with the story about Incline and love it.

Who didn't love that in the movies that romanticized it? But the truth of the matter is, there were so many people during the Depression who were dirt poor and had to find a way to make a living and provide for their children. And they did not rob banks. They didn't kill people. They didn't get in that kind of trouble. Are we talking about Robin Hood? Because that's kind of what it sounds like. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Smack dab in the middle of Texas, in the small town of Rowena, Bonnie Elizabeth Parker was born on October 1st, 1910. Four years later, after her father's unexpected death, Bonnie's mother, Emma, moved the family not far from the slums of West Dallas.

Despite the impoverished conditions, Emma made sure to raise her three children with the knowledge that they were somehow better than their surroundings. My dad was Bonnie's brother, and daddy was the oldest, and then Bonnie, and then my aunt, Billie Jean. She raised those three kids by herself. She literally was their everything. My daddy and Billie Jean, I know, were spoiled. So I'm quite sure Bonnie was spoiled, too. Bonnie was just a cute little Texas girl. Not quite five feet tall, with blue eyes and strawberry blonde hair, Bonnie Parker excelled at school, was a good singer and dancer,

and enjoyed writing poetry. Like Clyde, she longed to escape the ceaseless poverty she saw everywhere. As a teenager, Bonnie would lose herself in the picture houses on the other side of the river in Dallas. Bonnie was tremendously influenced by motion pictures. What movies brought to the ordinary person was the roadmap to reinvention for yourself. You can be someone else.

You can create a story for yourself and live it. You don't have to be locked into the way you were born. In 1926, 15-year-old Bonnie, against her mother's wishes, dropped out of school to marry her boyfriend, a small-time thief named Roy Thornton. She had a little bit of the wild side to her. She had a tattoo on the inside of her thigh with Roy's name on it. Just imagine a woman doing that back in the to her. She had a tattoo on the inside of her thigh with Roy's name on it. Just imagine a woman doing that back in the 20s. You know, that was a daring thing to do. Bonnie thinks she's going to have a storybook romance, true love, just like you can see at the picture shows. Instead, Roy starts disappearing, won't tell her where he's going. When she bothers

him about it, he beats her up. The third time he leaves her, he doesn't come back. After her break from Roy, Bonnie's dissatisfaction with the unending boredom of poverty gushed forth in the pages of her journal. Blue as usual. Not a darn thing to do, she wrote. Why don't something happen? Wow. You're hearing from a PBS documentary, the true story of the legend of Bonnie and Clyde. You know, Cheryl McCollum, director of the Cold Case Research Institute, you know how people get addicted to drama or danger or chaos. And then, you know, it's like when you're in a relationship and you're always arguing. Then when you get in a normal, happy relationship, at first it just seems boring. Okay. It's dull because it's even-keeled. And people that are used to chaos aren't used to a normal, loving, calm relationship. And I'm just wondering, after Bonnie had been with Ray, the first husband,

who mistreated her, beat her, abused her, when life was normal, it felt like the doldrums. Listen, Clyde loved her. Clyde didn't beat her. Clyde didn't mistreat her. Nancy, you don't have to go any further than the photographs that we've all seen a hundred times. They had this fun, almost jovial kind of joking relationship. The photographs with Bonnie with the guns and the cigar, That's their private photo. They didn't develop those and send them to a newspaper. That was their private relationship when they were all

just having fun. I think that's a window into how their love actually was. The fancy clothes, the nice cars, the fast kind of life. They, I'm telling you, loved each other. I don't think it was a Robin Hood. I think it was desperate times and they got into a situation they couldn't get out of. Clyde tried to go legit more than once. He had a job in a factory and the police wouldn't leave him alone. Gee, I wonder why. Wow. I wonder why police wouldn't leave him alone. But he wasn't committing crimes at that point. He already had the reputation. And it's no different than when we're all in elementary school and all of us know the bad kid in first grade.

Well, he's a bad kid in third grade, too. And miraculously, he's the bad kid in eighth grade because he's already got that reputation because the teachers decided it. They're not going to let him outlive that. I guess the robbing the banks had nothing to do with his bad reputation. To Raylene Linder, Raylene, what are the stories that have been passed down to you about your Aunt Bonnie of Bonnie and Clyde? Well, actually, in our family, it was not talked about. It wasn't discussed.

They had lived it and when I came along old enough to hear anything it was over and done and they were getting on with their life so it actually wasn't the last two or three years of my Aunt Billie Jean's life did she really come to talk about some of the situations and reasons and such that Bonnie chose. It was her choice to go with Clyde. And she made her choice.

There were many times when they went out to meet them on the roads, to meet the family on the roads that even Clyde, but the family would try to talk Bonnie into staying home while she still could. And she said that life without Clyde would be worth living. And so she made her choice to go with Clyde, no matter what, knowing what the ultimate end was going to be. The whole family knew it. And so they lived and tried to meet them as often as they could, because they knew that it wouldn't be a long, long-term situation, that their time would end. And end like it did uh that was actually the only way that it could end for them and they had had come to accept it i know that it was going to happen and um so they just um you know they loved bonnie and Bonnie and Bonnie was so close to my grandmother. There was just unreal.

I cannot phantom the choice that Bonnie made to go along with the actions of Clyde. But that's, I guess if there was a true love, no matter what the circumstances, I honestly believe that that was one. That was an absolute true love, no matter what the circumstances. I honestly believe that that was one. That was an absolute true love. You know, even during their lifetime, they were depicted in the media one way, but I don't know that that's true. road. While Bonnie Parker was present at over 100 felonies during the two years she was with Clyde, I don't believe she was a cigar-smoking, machine-gun-wielding person that you would see in the media. Now, there are police accounts that say she murdered cops, but those claims have been contradicted over and over with claims she was never seen shooting at a law officer. And the whole thing regarding the cigar was from that photo, a play photo police found at an abandoned hideout that was taken in a joking moment.

And that was released to the press. I don't know what her real life was like. I do know she smoked camels, but not cigars, for whatever that means. Bonnie and Clyde, the myth or the reality, and what a great day to talk about it, Valentine's Day. Take a listen. Bonnie and Clyde had been on a two-year crime spree that left a trail of dead bodies in their wake. They were little more than a local curiosity until photos of the couple were discovered at a crime scene in 1933.

Overnight, the country became transfixed by the scandalous images, press accounts of improbable escapes, and their illicit romance. Bonnie and Clyde, who people are sort of making up stories about or getting sightings of, all of a sudden there are pictures, there are guns, and there's evidence. It was a nonstop soap opera. Everybody was tuning into the radios, everybody was reading the papers, and actually it was almost like they were rooting them to get away. Bonnie and Clyde would join the ranks of other celebrity gangsters like John Dillinger,

Pretty Boy Floyd, and Babyface Nelson. So-called public enemies who emerged out of nowhere during the Great Depression to capture the country's imagination. In a world where there was very little to get excited about in the summer of 1933, Bonnie and Clyde were pretty big names. Everybody was talking about the criminals, the bad guys. But Clyde and Bonnie had the one thing the others didn't, the whole true romance and the sexy scandal. She says, I began to see a strange and terrifying change in the mind of my

child. Bonnie has made a switch to investing in this persona in which what honor means is to stick to your man no matter what. In June a Kauffman grand jury set Bonnie free unwilling to believe that any woman would choose to accompany criminals of her own volition. Just days after her release Bonnie did just that. Taking their fate into their own hands Bonnie, Cly, and a revolving cast of ex-cons that would make up the Barrel Gang set out on the open road, burning a path through two dozen states, robbing gas stations, banks, and grocery stores, often scoring just enough money to make it to the county line. They had to go to places where they weren't known, where they could more easily commit crimes.

Once they committed those crimes, they would move as quickly as possible to get far away. From Dallas, they would go up through Oklahoma and Missouri. Clyde loved hitting banks in Iowa. They would go as far as Indiana, one case all the way to Ohio. And once he even did a Western trip out to New Mexico he told his mom he said mom he says all the money in the world I gonna make me free all he was interested with getting down the road and live another day there was no incentive for him to go

straight whatsoever whereas he actually knew he was good at crime he was good at stealing things he was good at crime. He was good at stealing things. He was really good at driving. He was good at stealing cars. You were hearing an awesome PBS documentary about the legend of Bonnie and Clyde. And for Valentine's Day, we have managed to snag Buddy Barrow, the nephew of Clyde Barrow and Raylene Linder, the niece of Bonnie Parker, with me, Karen Stark, psychologist and director of the Cold Case Research Institute, Cheryl McCollum. To you, Buddy Barrow, the nephew of Clyde Barrow.

And by the way, everybody, they are going to be this weekend. Cheryl, what's the name of your event this weekend? Bonnie and Clyde Till Death Do Us Part. Oh my goodness. And that is where and what time? At Manuel's Tavern from 11 in the morning till 2 in the afternoon, a little Valentine's brunch. This Sunday, and you know I'm going to be there in Atlanta with the twins who are obsessed with Bonnie and Clyde. To you, Buddy Barrow, what is your take on your Uncle Clyde? Let me say something.

I'm going to back up to something here. You know, we're talking about when Bonnie had a, you know, Clyde, he told Bonnie one time, he said he could have run off and left her at her mother's house and never came back. She told him then, she said, if you ever do that, you don't have to worry about some cop killing you, because I'm going to hunt you down. I'm going to kill you myself myself and then there's another thing i asked i asked a young

couple one time because i didn't understand the love that clive and bonnie had for one another and i said well you're you're a young couple you're married and i said let me ask you something i said would you die for him she looked at him she said sorry buster i said i rest my case wow wow okay okay cheryl mccullen let me remind you that you're still in law enforcement you're on the other side here i hear you rooting there you know that's really interesting karen stark psychologist you can find her at karenstark.com people were rooting for bonnie and clyde they hey you know what i want you to hear something karen You're not going to believe this. They didn't just rob banks.

Listen. After the shootout in Iowa, Clyde was taking even greater risks to stay on the road. And now with Buck's death, he needed a new gang. In January of 1934, Bonnie and Clyde took part in an early morning raid of Easton Prison

that freed five inmates. It was a satisfying bit of revenge, but set off a chain of events that not even the great escape artist Clyde Barrow could elude. So not only did they rob an auto, you know, automotive shops, that was Clyde, but banks and so forth, really hitting at what they perceived to be corporate fat cats. They actually raided a prison and set fees on prisoners. So Karen Stark, I understand why a lot of people were rooting for them. You can understand that they were certainly romantic figures, and that's what's come down along the line, Nancy. And I don't want to dispute Cheryl, but I must, because we're talking about

the law. I mean, that's what you do. That's what Cheryl does. And even though they cut such beautiful figures, we'd love to see them in a movie. The truth of the matter is they were robbers. They killed people. The law was after them. So it's a great story. It's perfect for Valentine's Day, but we don't want to let the myth overtake the reality of who these two people really were. I've got a funny feeling Cheryl McCollum wants to respond. I do. And you know, I love both of y'all. You're absolutely right. I'm not discounting what they became. I'm simply saying, if you start your life on the devil's back porch, it shouldn't shock anybody. You become a gun flinging outlaw. Of course they did. And I'm telling you during the great depression, that's what formed them. That's

what made them. My concentration was, this was a love story. I love the idea of the love story, Cheryl McCollum, but how do you reconcile their love story with their 12 murder victims? You don't reconcile it. You acknowledge it like Buddy and Raylene do every day. It happens. But how did it happen? Why did it happen? And can't you be two people at the same time,

Karen Starks? So you've got a woman that dances center stage, you know, every night taking her clothes off for money. But when she goes home, she's a good and loving mother. She's both of those things. And it's just true. And so to me, you recognize, yes, they were outlaws. No question about it. Let me go to Buddy Barrow and Raylene Linder, the blood relatives of Clyde and Bonnie. Raylene, weigh in on what you're hearing and how Bonnie and Clyde have affected you. Well, let me say that they were outlaws, yes. One thing about it, we do not at any time condone anything that Bonnie and Clyde did, and I want that known. They came from good, hardworking families.

The situations whatever caused them to get to the point that they did was their choices, was their, they got into situations that they could not uh get out of bonnie chose to stay with him we do not the family never has condoned uh what they did they've accepted they had to accept what what happened what they did they still loved them under all any circumstances they still loved them. Under all, any circumstances, they still loved them. They were still their children there. So don't think for a minute that the family condones what they did or feel proud of what they did because the family did not. They came from good, hardworking families.

What about it, Buddy Barrow? She's telling you the truth. You know, like I said, you're a mother of a child. You know, she said she didn't really don't see no wrong in her child because she, you know, she knew when she grew up, when he grew up, you know, he was a loving child. And circumstances changed that. And then they put themselves in a position to where they couldn't get out one time it was told me it was like a snowball going downhill the faster it goes the bigger it gets and there's just no turning back and my family never wanted to talk about this because it was it was hard on them for what they did the lives that were lost. You know, they felt bad because people lost their lives.

Clyde was blamed for many murders that his accomplices committed. He tried to stop them from doing that. He wanted no gunplay, but whenever they stayed in a motel or a hotel at one time rather than sleeping in a car, I know one time there's a story that Clyde and Bonnie were sleeping on the side of the road, and an officer pulled up beside them. He said, sir, you can't do this. You've got to move on. Clyde said, yes, sir.

He moved on. There was no problem. There was no, you know, gunfire. But if that man pulled a weapon on him, then you've got a different scenario. And he hated that some bad authority had been shoved down his throat after what he went through in prison. So we understand the things that caused him to do what he did, although we didn't agree with it.

You know, there was other ways to have handled it, but, you know, it was probably one of these decisions he made, and he made it. Well, what Buddy Barrow is referring to is Clyde was allegedly raped in prison, broke out, and swore he'd never go back. This is what I know. Their love was deep. Their love was strong. They would do anything for each other.

There was a plot to arrest Bonnie and Clyde that played out in Louisiana. They drove into a trap. He and Bonnie killed by 150 bullets. Happy Valentine's Day. Nancy Grace, Crime Stories, signing off. Goodbye, friend. This is an iHeart Podcast.