If Jesse James ranks as America’s best-known individual outlaw, then Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow are American crime’s royal couple — despite never being married. Between 1930 and 1934, their gang committed around 13 murders and numerous robberies, specializing in robbing banks and stealing cars. Their tendency to drive stolen cars across state lines gave the FBI the evidence it needed to issue warrants for their arrest. Texas Rangers, FBI agents, and Louisiana state police eventually caught up to them in Arcadia, Louisiana, and sprayed them with gunfire in a 1934 road ambush — 167 times to be exact.
The police ambush completely shredded the bodies, whose condition was captured on film in a 1934 newsreel. Souvenir hunters then took parts of their hair and skin, mutilating them ever further. The bodies were taken to the Arcadia Funeral home and put on display, where over 70,000 people turned up to view the bodies, reportedly to make sure the outlaw couple was really dead.
The bodies were eventually sent back to Dallas, where the pair had originally met. Clyde was buried in Dallas’ Western Heights Cemetery next to his brother. Bonnie would have liked to be buried with him, but she was instead interred at the Fish Trap Cemetery, before vandals forced the body’s removal to Crown Hill Memorial Park, where it rests today. The saga is not over, however, as the pair’s relatives have been fighting for their bodies to be reunited in death.
