Up next
Sunday Smiles
Clyde Barrow had lived with a price on his head for longer than Bonnie Parker by 1934. According to a 1934 Daily News story, the state of Missouri had offered $1,000 for the capture of Barrow and his brother the year before, and the Texas legislature voted to put a $1,000 price on his head just months before the Grapevine murders. The bounties posted after Grapevine were the first to implicate Parker in violent crime.
Former Texas Ranger Frank Hamer, on authority from Texas prison superintendent Lee Simmons, began hunting down Parker and Barrow after they freed five convicts from Barrow’s hated Eastham Prison. It was a solitary mission for Hamer until the Grapevine murders energized the case. Hamer recruited friend and active ranger Ben Maney Gault to aid him in tracking the robbers’ movements and patterns, and they received additional help from the FBI, local law enforcement officers, and the family of an accomplice of Barrow’s, Henry Methvin. It was thanks to the family’s information that Hamer was able to set his ambush for Parker and Barrow.
Hamer and Gault reportedly wanted to take their targets alive, but in the confusion set off by a passing logger truck, the May 23, 1934 trap became one of the most infamous gun battles between cops and robbers in modern American history. Six men, including Hamer and Gault, were involved in the shootout. Among them was Dallas deputy Ted Hinton, who was later told by his sheriff, Smoot Schmid, that the combined value of the bounties on Parker and Barrow came to $26,000, per “Go Down Together,” a sum worth of nearly $619,000 as of 2024.
