Legends of the Old West - FRANK HAMER Ep. 4 | “The Hunt for Bonnie & Clyde”

Episode Date: January 27, 2021

After Frank leaves the Rangers during a second term for “Ma” Ferguson, he accepts the mission that will secure his legendary status: the manhunt for the infamous outlaws, Bonnie and Clyde. Join Black Barrel+ for bingeable seasons with no commercials: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join For more details, visit our website www.blackbarrelmedia.com and check out our social media pages. We’re @OldWestPodcast on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Benefits vary by card. Other conditions apply. The phone rang at 8.30 p.m. It was May 22, 1934. The director of the Texas prison system, Lee Simmons, picked up. It was Frank Hamer calling from Shreveport, Louisiana. Frank said quietly that the old hen was ready to hatch, and the chickens would come off tomorrow. Then the phone call ended. Simmons had been waiting for this call.

The lines about the old hen and the chickens were code, and he knew what they meant. A few minutes later, the phone rang in Frank's home. His wife Gladys picked up and received the same message. The old hen was setting and she was setting good. Gladys knew what the code meant. She knew now that she wouldn't hear from her husband until the job, or Frank, was done. Earlier that night, Frank had received a call of his own. It was the sheriff of Bienville Parish. He told Frank to gather his men and come to Arcadia, Louisiana at once. So Frank spread the word and then hurried to Arcadia. Once there,

the sheriff filled him in. Frank and his posse would intercept the fugitives on a little road a few miles away. The fugitives were Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. They'd robbed banks and stolen cars and killed people from Texas to Iowa. In the past few months, they'd become media sensations and early pop culture icons. But if everything went according to plan tomorrow, They'd become media sensations and early pop culture icons. But if everything went according to plan tomorrow, Frank and his posse would end the manhunt for two of the most infamous outlaws in American history. As a podcast network, our first priority has always been audio and the stories we're able to share with you. But we also sell merch, and organizing that was made both possible and easy with Shopify.

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From Black Barrel Media, this is Legends of the Old West. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer. And this season, we're telling a four-part story about the historic career of Texas Ranger Frank Hamer. This is Episode 4, The Hunt for Bonnie and Clyde. Late in the summer of 1932, Frank had yet another brush with politics. He had a good relationship with Ross Sterling, the governor at the time, but it was an election year, and by now Texans were reeling from the deadly combination of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. The once abundant harvests had been swallowed up in dust storms, and there wasn't a job to be found. The economy was in decline, and that would

hurt the incumbents' chances. And who should have appeared to challenge Sterling in this vulnerable moment? Ma and Paul Ferguson. They were back. Sterling and the Fergusons were Democrats. The Republican Party hadn't yet emerged as a dominant political force in Texas, so it was understood that whoever won the Democratic primary essentially won the governor's race. Ma won by the slim margin of 3,000 to 4,000 votes. The Rangers, especially Frank, suspected fraud, and they wouldn't stand for another term with the Fergusons.

So in defiance of regulations prohibiting them from publicly taking sides in an election, the Rangers intervened. They found phony ballots and tried to present their evidence at the statewide Democratic Convention, but by then it was too late. Maugh was named the Democratic nominee and then went on to win the general election. Whatever cold feelings the Rangers had toward the Fergusons, they could rest assured the feelings were mutual. Pa condemned the Rangers for attempting to interfere in an election. And in January of 1933, Ma and Pa were back in the governor's mansion, and they wasted no time making changes.

Like before, the Rangers were on the chopping block. But Frank didn't care, he wanted out anyway. He was ordinarily a measured man. He carefully watched what he said in public. And even if he had an air of the old west about him, he was still seen as a gentleman. But with the Fergusons, he was openly contemptuous, and even sexist. Of Ma, he said it would be better not to be under the command of a woman, and then he left the Rangers.

He took an indefinite leave of absence and began looking for another job. He lobbied for federal positions, most notably to be appointed to the U.S. Marshal Service. When that didn't work, he lobbied for other federal positions, such as customs officer or prohibition agent. That didn't work either. He worked briefly on an unpaid highwayman's commission, but it had been a year since he quit, and he'd spent most of the time unemployed. It would have been an unceremonious conclusion to a long career in law enforcement if it had not been for a visit Frank received the next month. In February of 1934, a man named Lee Simmons came calling. Simmons was more than a bit like Frank. Simmons was known as an upstanding, honest man. He'd spent his life as

a businessman, and then a sheriff, and since 1930, the director of the Texas prison system. Simmons was visiting from Huntsville, and he had a problem. One of the prisons in his jurisdiction was known as Eastham Farm. It was notorious for being one of the worst places to be incarcerated in the state of Texas. And in January 1934, one month before Simmons visited Frank, Eastham Farm suffered a deadly and humiliating prison break. Five convicts escaped, and a guard was killed

and another was wounded. And now, the orchestrators were on a rampage. Simmons needed someone to catch them, someone like Frank. So, standing in Frank's home in Austin, Simmons asked if Frank would track down Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. Bonnie and Clyde had been on the run from the law for nearly two years. They were called desperados by the press, who followed the duo by the trail of their dead. The country viewed the couple as violent and brutal, yet also exuberant and fascinating. Frank certainly would have known about them, though he probably didn't expect their case to fall into his lap.

Clyde was a young man from a poor Dallas family. He and his older brother Buck grew into petty thieves. They started by stealing chickens and graduated into larceny and car theft. Bonnie was a young woman from Rowena, Texas, and she was entranced by Broadway and poetry. She wrote her own poems and dreamed of one day being an actor. The pair met in Dallas in 1930. Bonnie saw Clyde at a party and they understood one another. The Great Depression had just begun and everything seemed hopeless except for each other. So their courtship began. Bonnie didn't mind Clyde's criminal past. In fact, she helped him escape from a Waco jail two months after they met.

A month later, he was caught and sent to Easton Farm and then Huntsville. He served two years of a 14-year prison sentence before being paroled in February of 1933. Easton was designed for criminals who were the worst of the worst, not small-time crooks like Clyde Barrow. And it didn't help that Clyde was only 5'6 and weighed about 130 pounds. As a result, he suffered constant physical and sexual abuse on the farm. He'd killed his chief tormentor in the shower, though another man happily took the blame for the crime. Clyde's abuser was known as one of the worst, even in a prison filled with horrible people. So one of Clyde's friends, who was serving a life sentence anyway, took credit for the killing.

Clyde reunited with Bonnie, and from then on, they were practically inseparable. After an unsuccessful attempt to go straight, Clyde turned once again to a life of crime. He, Bonnie, and a friend of Clyde's from prison, Ralph Fultz, committed a string of robberies. They were petty, usually no more than raiding the till of a small business and the occasional bank. It was fundraising for an eventual raid on Easton. But Bonnie was arrested in April of 1932, and while she was in jail, the killings began. Clyde and two associates robbed a jewelry store in Hillsboro, 60 miles south of Dallas, and the owner was killed in the process. Clyde was identified by the owner's wife, even though he'd waited in the car during the robbery. So now Clyde was wanted for murder.

Bonnie was released from jail, and over the next few months, the crimes multiplied. and over the next few months, the crimes multiplied. The gang committed robberies, car thefts, and murders, and the getaways were more violent than the initial crimes. Eventually, one of the gang was caught and sent to Easton Prison Farm. While inside, the gang member, Ray Hamilton, met an inmate who was about to be released, James Mullen. Ray offered Mullen $2,000 if Mullen would help with something big.

The first task was to get a message to Clyde Barrow. Ray was planning a prison break. Clyde had wanted to get revenge on the prison since the day he'd been released, and now he had the perfect chance. On the night of January 13th, James Mullen and Ray's brother Floyd hid guns under a bridge on the Easton property. The next day, they told Ray about the hiding spot during a visit.

On January 16th, 1934, the breakout happened. Ray and another inmate, Joe Palmer, had collected the guns and stashed them in their prison uniforms. Not long after the inmates began work on the farm, Ray and Joe pulled out the guns and opened fire on two nearby guards. At the sound of the gunshots, Clyde and James Mullen opened fire from a ditch at the edge of the farm. They provided covering fire while Ray, Joe, and two more inmates ran for freedom. The escapees joined Clyde and James, and they all raced for the getaway car. It was foggy that morning, and Bonnie sat in the front seat pounding on the car horn so the group could find its way to the vehicle.

They all piled into the car and sped away. Behind them, the farm was in chaos. One guard was dead and another was wounded. The next morning, the prison break was international news. In Canada, the Winnipeg Tribune ran the headline, Prison Guards Shot Down to Free Convicts. That's just one of the examples. And the fierce heat from the media landed on the director of the Texas prison system, Lee Simmons.

He needed to avenge his dead and wounded men, and he needed to rehab his image and the image of the prison system. To do that, he needed to be the one who was responsible for finally stopping Bonnie and Clyde. When the Fergusons asked him who he had in mind to help, he gave them one name, Frank Hamer. So Simmons went to Frank's house and proposed the mission. Frank asked how long it would take. Simmons said he didn't know, but he would support Frank every step of the way. Frank accepted. The deal was part of Frank's Highwaymen Commission, and he became a special investigator for the Department of Corrections. Frank's final manhunt was on.

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Frank quickly noticed something. The outlaws moved across the country in a broad triangle. They sometimes deviated as far west as Colorado or as far east as North Carolina, but in general, they moved between Dallas, Texas, Missouri, and Louisiana. But part of what made Bonnie and Clyde such a sensation was the chase. Both had been arrested before, but for the most part, they were notoriously hard to catch. been arrested before, but for the most part they were notoriously hard to catch. They sped across the country, and Clyde drove for hundreds of miles at a time without stopping. A getaway car was always close by, and if the outlaws didn't have one already, they would steal one. With too few cars of their own, the police could barely keep up.

It was clear that stopping Bonnie and Clyde would take more than just a high-speed chase. Lee Simmons knew it when he met with the Fergusons. He thought it would be necessary to hire an informant, but Frank needed to begin his detective work before they could decide on the correct informant. Frank set up headquarters in Shreveport, Louisiana. It was a smart choice for three reasons. First, Louisiana was the only state in the Triangle where Clyde wasn't a wanted fugitive, which made it an easier place for the outlaws to hide. Second, one of the inmates who had escaped the prison farm, Henry Methvin, was from that part of the state. And third, Shreveport was only about 18 miles from the Texas border and only 180 from Dallas. It allowed Frank to travel quickly between northwest Louisiana and Dallas.

While in Shreveport, Frank met with the sheriff of Bienville Parish, Henderson Jordan. Jordan would prove a useful contact in the Bayou State. Bonnie and Clyde were thieves, but they also made purchases while on the run, which meant there was a paper trail of receipts. Frank studied the receipts and learned their habits. The duo bought a host of things, from clothes to lodging and gasoline to guns and whiskey. But another piece of evidence emerged in March, Hilton Bybee's confession. Bybee, another of the escapees, was arrested two weeks after the breakout. Now he was being held in Huntsville. He hadn't cooperated in prior interrogations,

but Frank reminded him that there were multiple, credible robbery charges hanging over his head. Then Bybee talked. He confessed to a string of car thefts, one of which was a Ford sedan stolen in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and later abandoned near Electra, Texas. Bybee's confession was a turning point in the case. When Frank looked for the abandoned car, he found it sitting on the roadside. In it were some shotgun shells and receipts for dresses from a Dallas department store. The dresses were for Bonnie. They'd been bought by some of Clyde's family. Finding the car lent credence to the rest of Bybee's testimony.

Now the team knew it hadn't just scared a false confession out of him. The confession also confirmed Frank's theory about a triangular route. Bybee laid out the path. Clyde traveled north from Texas through Oklahoma and into Missouri, then south to Arkansas, and then to Louisiana. Then he would circle back west to Texas and start all over again. But most importantly, Bybee said that, to the best of his knowledge, Henry Methvin and Ray Hamilton were still part of the gang.

Frank stayed in Texas to follow up on some local leads, and he passed on the information about Henry Methvin to the Federal Bureau of Investigations. If either Methvin or Hamilton could be located, Frank would have his informant, and possibly his outlaws. Sure enough, the FBI's investigation into Henry Methvin led them to Louisiana. Henry had listed the town of Ashland as his home when he was arrested four years earlier. The FBI spent weeks looking for the Methvin residence, and they believed that Henry's father, Ivy, was just outside of Bienville Parish. Bienville Parish was Sheriff Henderson Jordan's jurisdiction.

Parish. Bienville Parish was Sheriff Henderson Jordan's jurisdiction. The FBI contacted Jordan and asked if he would carry out a search for Ivy Methvin. Like the bureau before him, Jordan spent weeks hunting for leads on Ivy. He approached it like a clandestine spy operation. He had carefully worded conversations with the locals and listened in on hours of conversations until the name Ivy Methvin finally came up. Ivy apparently rented a home on the edge of Bienville, right where it meets Natchitoches and Red River parishes. Now Sheriff Jordan could keep tabs. But then some major news hit. Just outside of Grapevine, Texas, a few miles north of Dallas, two highway patrolmen were lying dead on the road.

Their names were Wheeler and Murphy, and they'd been shot multiple times. From the look of it, neither of them stood a chance. A witness reported that he saw two young people, a man and a woman, sitting together in a car. The car apparently sat on the side of the road for several hours. The witness hadn't thought much of it at the time. Then he heard gunfire. By the time he came back out, their car was speeding away, and there were two highway patrolmen bleeding on the ground. At first, the witness misidentified the culprits. He thought it was Ray Hamilton and Bonnie's sister

Billy, both of whom had run with the gang in the past. It eventually came out that it was not Billy and Ray, but Bonnie and Clyde, and Henry Methvin was with them too. Accounts of Henry's involvement vary. Some hold that he was asleep in the back of the car and woke up at the sound of gunfire. Others hold that it was Henry and Clyde who shot the patrolman. Either way, it was now certain that the lawmen needed Henry as the informant. Finding Henry's father, Ivy Methvin, was a top priority. By now, the manhunt had swallowed up law enforcement resources all throughout the South and the Midwest. And there were tips coming in that Bonnie and Clyde had stayed at Ivy Methvin's place on April 10th. Then three days later, another informant said the fugitives would either stay with Ivy or Henry's brother, who also lived in the area.

The FBI planned a large raid on Ivy's home, with federal and local law enforcement both participating, but they had to scrap it. Not only had the gang left the area, but the sheriff of a nearby county told the press about the plans for the raid. but the sheriff of a nearby county told the press about the plans for the raid. Frank was livid that the plan had been leaked to the media, but the silver lining was that Frank learned the raid had been based on intelligence collected by Sheriff Jordan. Frank quickly met Jordan and brought him into the posse. For the upcoming showdown, Frank brought in five men in addition to himself. Sheriff Jordan, Jordan's deputy Prentice Oakley, Dallas deputies Ted Hinton and Bob Alcorn, and former Texas Ranger Manny Galt.

Not long after Sheriff Jordan joined the team, he received another visit. It was from a friend of Ivy's who reported that Ivy wanted a secret meeting with the sheriff. A few days later, they met, and Ivy said he was afraid for his son. The Methmans were scared that Bonnie and Clyde would kill their boy, or get him killed. When news of the raid broke, the family worried that the government would hunt them all down. So Ivy offered his help on one condition. Henry had to be pardoned. The FBI was in no position to offer a pardon from the state of Texas, but the Fergusons were, and the team took advantage of the offer. Ma Ferguson gave her approval, and on April 24th, Lee Simmons wrote a letter to be delivered to Frank in Dallas.

Simmons gave his word that cooperation by Ivey and Henry Methvin would ensure Henry's pardon. When Ivey and his family saw the letter, they were in. But now there were two more hurdles. The outlaws never stayed in one place very long, and Henry did not yet know about the plan. Ivy said no one knew when Clyde would come by, and when he did, it was only for a couple hours, and he never got out of the car. Cornering the outlaws would be tricky. The plan required that Ivy couldn't know about the pardon until the right time. The lawmen couldn't take the chance that Bonnie and Clyde might get suspicious for any

reason. When the pair appeared at a Methvin home, Ivy would alert the FBI office in New Orleans. Toward the middle of May 1934, it happened. The gang returned to Louisiana. it happened. The gang returned to Louisiana. On the night of May 8th, the fugitives slept at the home of Henry's brother. True to form, they weren't there long. But they were there long enough for Henry's brother to tell him the plan. Henry learned that if he helped trap Bonnie and Clyde, he would receive a pardon for his crimes. He agreed. Ivy told Frank's posse that Henry agreed to the plan, but Ivy didn't want the posse to try to capture Bonnie and Clyde at his home. That would be far too dangerous for his family. So the posse found a spot for an ambush on Highway 154 south of Gippsland. Henry was able to separate himself from Bonnie and Clyde without raising suspicion,

so now the outlaw couple was alone. Frank learned the news on May 22, 1934. It was now or never. He called his wife and Lee Simmons and passed them the information through coded language. The posse stationed itself behind some tall brush on an embankment off the roadside. There they laid the trap. Ivy Methvin parked his logging truck on the side of the road to make it look like he had a flat tire. Frank and the five other men of his posse waited in their hideout for hours in the Louisiana

heat and humidity. After several false alarms, they heard the roar of an engine. Then they saw a light tan Ford V8 approaching quickly. It slowed as it reached Ivy Methvin. There were two people inside, and Sheriff Jordan confirmed it was Bonnie and Clyde. Clyde pulled over and offered to help. Ivy pretended to be sick and hurried off into the brush. Before the posse could order a halt, one of the men opened fire prematurely. The six lawmen were armed with Browning automatic rifles, 12-gauge shotguns, and.45-caliber handguns. They let loose with the BARs and shredded the car and the outlaws. As Clyde absorbed bullet after bullet, his foot slipped

off the clutch and the car lurched forward. Bonnie screamed from the passenger seat. The posse kept firing until it would have been impossible to survive the assault. As the smoke cleared and the car ground to a halt, the six lawmen surveyed the scene. The notorious Bonnie and Clyde were dead. The coroner reported later that Clyde had been shot 17 times and Bonnie had been shot 26 times. Frank was blunt when he gave a quote to the St. Louis Dispatch. He said the posse just shot the devil out of them. Frank Hamer never fully rejoined the Rangers, but his career continued for 13 years after he started a private security company. Like most lawmen who have been romanticized

by years of stories like this one, Frank's life and career weren't as clear-cut and simple as we'd probably like them to be. He existed in the gray area, like everyone. He fought against lynch mobs and the KKK multiple times, but he also used violence outside the law against Mexicans and Mexican Americans. And throughout his career, he cracked down on strikes, which made him an enemy in the eyes of the labor movement. But when you tally up the events of his life, there's certainly more good than bad. Before May 23, 1934, he probably would have been considered a legend in the Texas Ranger community. After that day, he cemented his status as a legend for the general public as well. Frank Hamer retired in 1949 and lived out the rest of his life in Austin, Texas.

He passed away in 1955 and is buried in Austin Memorial Cemetery, not far from his friend Manny Galt. Thanks for listening to a few stories about Texas Ranger Frank Hamer here on Legends of the Old West. If you're a member of our Black Barrel Plus program, you've also received a bonus episode about Frank and the KKK. I hope you enjoyed it. And if you're listening in real time on the free podcast feed, hopefully you know that we're doing the full story of Bonnie and Clyde on the Infamous America podcast. Subscribe to that show to hear all the backstory of the final major chapter of Frank Hamer's life. Next time on this show, we'll do another story that's been requested many times.

We're staying with the theme of legendary lawmen as we talk about the first black U.S. Marshal in American history, Bass Reeves. That season begins in a couple weeks, February 17th, 2021. And as always, Black Barrel Plus members get the whole series one week early. Join through the link in the show notes

or on our website, blackbarrelmedia.com. This season was co-executive produced by Stephen Walters in association with Ritual Productions. Research and writing by Dante Flores. Original music by Rob Valliere. Audio editing and sound design by Dave Harrison. I'm your host and producer, Chris Wimmer.

Find us at our website, blackbarrelmedia.com, or on our social media channels. We're at Old West Podcast on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. And you can stream all our episodes on YouTube. Just search for Legends of the Old West Podcast. Thanks for listening. I'm going to go to sleep.