The Death and Autopsy of Bonnie and Clyde by Carroll Y. Rich © 1990 Carroll Y. RichThe Autopsy of Bonnie and Clyde CARROLL Y. RICH Suice THE RECENT motion picture based on their escapades, Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker have had more publicity than they were able to attract when they were alive and shooting. At the height of their crime spree from 1982 to 1934 they caughe public interest, but two years was too brief a time for a body of folklore to develop, despite the fact that Bonnie and Clyde encouraged notice. Reporters ‘wrote chilling, if often inaccurate, stories about them, and Bonnie herself sometimes sent “poems' to the newspapers. Her best known verse, “The Story of Bonnie and Clyde,” tells how they hoped to die together and to be buried together." Their first hope was fulfilled on 28 May 1934 on a country road in northern Louisiana. The second fone, however, was thwarted by their families who discreetly buried ‘them in separate cemeteries. After the demise of those two poor-white killers, interest in them waned, and with the coming of a prosperous global war, Bonnie and Glyde, whose fate had been shaped by a Great Depression, were forgotten except for the occasional appearance at faits of an auto- mobile purported to be the one they died in, Recent concern with violence, however, has revived interest in them, and after thirty-five years they have risen from the grave—transformed. Bonnie now has long blonde hair, not a short hennaed bob. She has never been married, not even to Clyde, and certainly never to an obscure convict named Roy Thornton. We are told these days that Clyde was im- potent, perhaps even homosexual, before he met Bonnie, the only ‘woman in the world who could stir is passon.* Nobody remembers his common-law wife Grace, who lived with him in Dallas for over ‘Hepdenon Jordan (st tld to. F. Waer, “The Inside Stary of the Kil Sonne’ Parker snd je Barow’ True Detcve Mtr, Nove 83,68. Jordan wat one ofthe tx ofc inthe amb, Jorn’ eetouded scot i (Beals Dey Tie Heal 2 May 194 p “Mita Allen defor, The Rea! Bonnie and Ce (ew York 1960, pp. 8, 14: {Join Toland The Diltnger Deys ew York, 83)... 7)8 WESTERN FOLKLORE a year, or the anonymous Miss EB. W., another fame Bonnie, we are told, was pregtant at the time of her death, a story which has survived the years In 1984 officers and the coroner said there was no truth in it? they admitted only that she and Clyde had a venereal disease® Fact, though stranger than fiction, is often less beautiful, land o the folklore mill at work on Bonnie and Clyde. Of all the famous Killers of the thirts—Daby Face Nelton, Machine Gun, Kelly, Ma Barker, Pretty Boy Floyd, among, others—only John Dil- linger has approached Barrow and Parker in popularity, and about Finger there i lite folklore, excluding the myth of his prodigious penis, an exaggeration recently destroyed by facts from a doctor who ‘examined his body? Since the lives and particularly che deaths of famous criminals continue to fascinate u, the recently renewed interest in Bonnie and Clyde has resulted in a rash of hurried publications about them, rently paperback editions containing the oftenseen_pictures of Bonnie posing with a cigar in her mouth, of Clyde and his driver W. D. Jones holding hands, of Bonnie pointing a shotgun at Clyde, of Bonnie standing with hands on hips. These photographs were left behind in a frantic flight from officers in Joplin, Missouri. But in audition to these, there are other pictures, macabre ones ofthe naked bodies of Bonnie and Clyde lying on morgue slabs. At the time of their deaths they were photographed extensively when a mob of people gathered at the combination furniture store-morgue where they had been brought for an autopry. Everyone wanted to see them, not only because they were known killers openly living together, but also because their badly shotup bodies were a stem reminder in the harsh thirties that erime was nota safe way to get money. Since 1984 the circumstances of the killing of Bonnie and Clyde have been obscured by exaggerations and lies on the part of both admirers and detractors, even while legal documents and ascerain- able face of their deaths are still available in courthouse files, news: paper offices, and the memories of many people. One of the ofcers ‘eho shoe them, Ted Hinton, is till alive in Dallas. A bystander atthe “Ena Ftker and Nel taro Govan Fuge (Dal, 1989, p 1. Man Per (pimlcr mothe and rn Cavan (ey ses eines Cre ‘amen in ghow warn sxet ote oer re Denton, Te Arde, Liana ees dey beened geen, SS TE ais Titel ty Sp "ince ay ag {Pb ne (ape tated 18, 0. 8 (Ang 0: 7-8‘THE AUTOPSY OF BONNIE AND CLYDE ey shooting, one who happened upon the ambush scene and nearly foiled the trap, is William Lyons, an aged Negro now living in ‘Taylor, Louisiana. In 1034 he was the driver of a pulpwood truck which for a moment seemed destined to come between Clyde's car and the guns of the law. Hinton and Lyons recall clearly what happened in the pine hills that hot day in May, but they disagree on whether any warning ery of “Halt” or “Stick ’em up, Barrow; we're the law” was made before the shooting started. The law officers were of course under no legal or moral obligation to say anything before they began shooting. Barrow was a known killer for whom a shoot om- sight warrant had been issued. Considering his past performances, would have been folly for officers to have challenged him before firing. In addition to the two eyewitnesses at the moment of death, there are hundreds of people who appeared within minutes at the shoot. ing site to see the riddled automobile and the dead outlaws. Officer Hinton himself took over twenty feet of movie film of the bodies ‘and the ear before the coroner arrived: prints of that film are avail- able. Dr. James L. Wade, who performed the autopsy, still practices medicine at eighty-two. In addition, five of the six members of his coroner’ jury are around to tell of events just after the shooting. Since memory is often colored by hearsay so often repeated that it seems fact, photographs and documents are more reliable in recon- structing what happened on the day when Bonnie and Clyde were shot Among the most interesting legal documents on the subject are Dr. Wade's autopsy reports, the coroner's jury reports, and the ody identifications on file in the Bienville Parish Courthouse in “Arcadia, Louisiana, the town where the autopsies were performed and where, since it is the parish seat, the records are kept today. Wade's reports are written in blunt pencil on lined composition paper. Since he examined Clyde's body first, that description is more legible than the one describing Bonnie, the latter being written when ‘Wade was tired and eager to complete an unpleasant cask. He was in a great hurry to finish bis work since a mob was threatening to break. down the morgue wall at any moment unless a public showing of the bodies was made. As he hurried, the pencil grew bluntes, and when he began recording the fifty.wo bullet holes and glass cuts in Bonnie's body, he increasingly used abbreviations to shorten the writing time. Here are given the coroner's reports, verbatim, with as0 WESTERN FOLKLORE close an approximation of his deletions, spacing, and spelling as possible: yds & Baxow OX right ar toate Pitre of gl under which serie Gree on ier ae nto anchor and aUsN. nla too on fren dagger hrovgh Rest and E.BW. ee On ee toaler a tio Rose and eave. in shot wound in bend enrng ton of tc Ssitabou Sncher above igh ent One eed Sedge tir above let oye Ceveal hos ening Tet boulder jae Saal la Cu at on 1 Singer ght hand, Ff ole wouter of gh bce ‘Amber gat ons Gansoc wound entering fs portion left hi 8 bullet wounds striking right side back = from te of eek wo angus ight wapela to sieback bone one ltiking midway bck breaing Back bone, Dr. J. L Wade Srcon [None of the officers standing in that cramped, stifling room were sur- prised at the tattoos “Grace” and “E. B. W."; they honored two ‘women whom Clyde had loved before he met Bonnie. The “US. ‘was puzaling; Clyde had never been in the Navy. Barrow was missing ‘wo foes on his left foot; he had once persuaded a fellow prison inmate to cat them off with an axe to get him out of prison chores. The officers had already verified the body 25 that of Clyde mainly because they knew the story of the missing toes, but Wade did not note them in his description ofthe body. ‘Outside the morgue, the crowd was growing impatient. They had swarmed into the furniture store, climbing over couches and chairs, and were now at the rear of the store crowding against the plywood ‘which partitioned off the morgue. Some were climbing up onto a row of new caskets to try scaling the wall. The law officers tried to hold them back and promised to put the bodies on display as soon as Dr. Wade and the undertaker had finished their work. Wade went on to Bonnie, hurrying: Bonnie Parker: 2 Diam Rings—1 west w [wrist watch begun here, then par-‘THE AUTOPSY OF BONNIE AND CLYDE a tially deleted] gold wed ring Sr finger left hand, Small watch on left arm, $ acom brooch on dress in front, 1 Catholic Gross under dress Red dress & Red shors = Tatto on right leg 2 hearts with arrow 6 inches above Right] knee Roy on Right] Bonnie on Left sie: G[un] shot wound edge of hair about 194 inches] above left eye another—entered mouth on L side ‘madenoenit [deletion sc] Made ext at center of top skull + another about middle and Just below left Jaw bones ‘another entering above clavicle lft side ranging into neck, Another entering about 2 in. below inner side left shoulder. 2 bullet wounds 1 about 2 in. below left shoulder another mid way arm fract{uring] the bone Another wound elbow lefe arm breaking into joint. Another shoe in left breast going to ches 4 inch below Excela fauxilla, the armpit] 1 shot entering] let ibid 4 in{ches] below Excela breaking ribs 6 shots entering the inches back region ef left scalpula. 5 bullet wounds about mile of left thigh, ‘Number of cut places on left leg outer side sems cut from glass, 1 cut on left ankle. 1 on top of lft foot appfajrantly from glass Bullet wound inner aspect and center of right thigh. Sear apparfenly from ‘Durn 6 inches in lenguh about 82 widch on outer ‘center of right thigh appears effect of burns, nother cat 6 infces] fengeh 4 in{ches} wide ‘outer aspect right nee extending on across front of knee extending 6 inches on inner side of right leg. Flesh wound inner side of right knce. Bullet wound right leg about mid way ankle and tence. Another B{ullet} woud anterior ankle, inner spect foot about 2 in. above base of great toe. gun shot wound bone of first finger another middle finger—at bone severing the member. ‘The wedding ring and the tattoed name “Roy” were reminders of the estranged, but undivorced husband whom Bonnie had married when she was sixteen. They had not seen each other for nearly five years. At the time of her death Roy Thornton was in a Texas prison. serving a term for robbery. Wade listed Bonnie's personal effects in the autopsy report probably because he wanted a written record of them to discourage further theft. Clyde's watch and diamond tie pin hhad been stolen in the interim between the arrival of the bodies in the morgue and Wade's examination. The scars which the coroner32 WESTERN FOLKLORE noted on Bonnie's right thigh were the result of a burning auto- mobile crash a year earlier. ‘While Wade examined the naked and bloody bodies, the coroner's jurymen looked on as frequently 26 their queasiness would allow. Tt was a sweltering day, and the sight of so much blood and the odor of ‘embalming fluid was overwhelming. Two of them went outside in an alley to recover. When the examination was over, they came back inside to sign the two statements which Wade had written for them: We the undersigned coroners Jury after diligent Inquiry and thorough investigation find that Clyde Champion Barrow met his death from gun shot wounds fed by Ofer MW. Barber GG “Taylor EW, Pentecost Jr BG. Theus JR Colt [signatures] We the undersigned coroners Jury after diligent inquiry and thorough investigation find that Bonnie Parker came to her death from gun shot wounds fired fom vfs Pio and dot guns in the ands of [None of the jurymen realized that no pistols had been used by the officers. As a matter of course they signed the second statement just as they had done the fist Last ofall, Wade wrote out a statement of identification and asked Bob Alcor to sign it. Alcorn was one of the officers in the ambush, the only one who had actually known Bonnie and Glyde and could identify chem on sight. RF. Alcorn—Dallis Tex— ‘Being duly sworn testifies as follows. deposes and says hhe knows the 2 parties exami[nod] by him & that one of them is Clyde C. Barrow fe the other Bonnie Parker alias also known as Bonnie Thorton You [he] furche(r] testifies that he has personally knowfn) them for si or seven years. ‘That he knov{s} of his own knowledge that both were 2 [times] indife}ted on charge of murder Case #5045 & 7 (Criminal District Court Dallis Tex. Nov:28-1983 RE. Alcorn, [signacure}‘THE AUTOPSY OF BONNIE AND CLYDE 3 ‘Then the officers, Wade, and the coroner's jurymen left the morgue. ‘A local photographer, a privileged friend of the undertaker, moved in to take a series of flash pictures ofthe bodies; his pictures are the sory ones most often seen in recent publications. That day the photo- srapher was to make a comfortable sum of money by selling prints to anyone who was willing to pay $5 a picture ($50 for newspaper reporter). ‘After their embalmment and a hasty swabbing of dried blood, Bonnie and Clyde were covered to their neck with white sheets and rolled out into the farniture tore for a public showing. For some six hhours a seemingly endless line of people moved by the bodies. It was Jong after dark when the streets of Atcadia began to clear of exowds. By midnight cro ambulances from Dallas had arrived to take the bodies of Clyde Champion Barrow and Bonnie Parker Thornton back home. North Texas State University, Denton