Jones, Ralph Fults, Henry Methvin, Joe Palmer, Raymond Hamilton and a few others. The fact that Barrow and Parker were alone when they were killed has obscured the fact that they usually traveled with a gang, made up of Barrow and Parker, along with, at various times, Clyde’s brother Marvin (“Buck”), Buck’s wife Blanche, teenager W.D. While "Bonnie and Clyde" was one of the ways the duo was referred to at the time, it became most popular way to refer to them after the well-known, but inaccurate, 1967 movie. “Barrow and Parker” or “the Barrow Gang” were the more common ways the duo was cited at the time. The gang’s tendency to open fire when they thought they had been detected made the progression of their encounters with the law more desperate, if not so much bold. Barrow and Parker frequently visited their families in the Dallas area, and came into violent contact with officers on some of those trips. Most of the Barrow Gang’s robberies were small grocery stores, gas stations and small-town banks Barrow’s habit of sticking to back roads meant that many of their crimes were committed in small, out-of-the-way towns with little in the way of law enforcement. If you could, please describe their crimes and how they got bolder over the years. The upshot is that Hamer and Jordan should get equal credit for finding Barrow and Parker – again, which of the two was more responsible is still pretty hotly debated. Just what the nature of the deal was, and the extent of the elder Methvin’s cooperation with law enforcement is still debated among writers on the subject, and details vary from one source to another. Hamer’s role was to secure a deal for immunity for Henry Methvin for crimes committed in Texas in order to gain the cooperation of Methvin’s father. Jordan was the one who made contact with the family of Henry Methvin, one of the gang members, and negotiated the deal for amnesty for Methvin in exchange for information leading to their apprehension or deaths. Credit for catching them in the ambush, though, belongs as much to Louisiana’s Bienville Parrish Sheriff Henderson Jordan as it does to Hamer. Hamer was working as a special investigator for the Texas prison system, with a commission from the Texas Highway Patrol, at the time of the ambush.Īlthough Barrow traveled the back roads and was difficult to track, Hamer recognized a pattern to his travels and was able to start anticipating the gang’s moves. She fired the entire Texas Ranger force anyway on the second day of her new term and replaced them with her political appointees. When Governor Miriam "Ma" Ferguson was reelected in 1932, Hamer and several other Rangers resigned because of the corruption and “softness” on crime during her first term a few years earlier. Frank Hamer was a "Ranger’s Ranger," could you tell us a bit about him and what he went through in catching the bandits?įrank Hamer actually wasn’t a Texas Ranger at the time of the ambush on Barrow and Parker.
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