When Bonnie and Clyde Came to Town

00:00:10
Speaker 1: And we returned to our American Stories. Up next, a story from Dexter, Iowa, about an infamous event that still lives on in the town. Here’s our own Montay Montgomery with a story.

00:00:33
Speaker 2: The town of Dexter, Iowa, is tiny but rich in history, and on July twenty-third, nineteen thirty-three, it hosted a shootout between a massive posse and perhaps the most infamous group of outlaws who ever roamed the United States. Here’s Rod Stanley with more.

00:00:50
Speaker 3: It’s mind-boggling to me to try to figure out why people are fascinated with Bonnie and Clyde.

00:00:55
Speaker 4: And I mean, they…

00:00:56
Speaker 3: were outlaws, they were murderers, they were thieves, they were thugs. You name it, they did. I mean, as far as the criminal aspect of it. But I think part of the deal was that, twenty-two and twenty-three years old, they were young. During the Depression, people didn’t have any money. People looked at Bonnie and Clyde as Robin Hoods, steal from the banks, that took, took my land, took all my money, took everything away from me.

00:01:17
Speaker 4: But go ahead and rob the bank because we don’t have anything there anymore.

00:01:19
Speaker 3: Anyway. You know, and the other thing: they were male and female. Bonnie and Clyde were from Texas.

00:01:28
Speaker 3: Bonnie Parker was an A student, honor roll student, got A’s in school, very good writer, poetrys, all that stuff.

00:01:35
Speaker 4: She did really well.

00:01:36
Speaker 3: She quit school when she was sixteen years old, though she got a job as a waitress. But she married a fella by the name of Roy Thornton. I always said Bonnie didn’t have very good-tasting men, because within six months Roy was in jail. I think she is one of those, one of those girls that, you know. And I taught school for thirty-five years, and I saw this quite frequently: that good girl, bad boy.

00:01:59
Speaker 4: “I’m going to change this bad boy,” you know.

00:02:00
Speaker 3: And it’s like, you know, “Yeah, right, you’re gonna change him.” Go, yeah, go ahead and go ahead and try if you want to. But anyway, she actually got a tattoo, which back in this day, that was pretty risqué. I mean, she had a heart right above her right knee and said, “Roy and Bonnie forever and forever.”

00:02:18
Speaker 4: Six months.

00:02:19
Speaker 2: Because Bonnie Parker would soon turn her attention to Clyde Barrow. She met him at a friend’s house in nineteen thirty.

00:02:26
Speaker 3: They saw each other across the room, from what I’ve read and understand, and they kind of looked at each other, and it’s like, “Yeah, I think there’s something there.” So, they hooked up, and Clyde got in trouble, got put in jail. Bonnie put a gun around her waist. I don’t know how she’d fastened their elastic or belt or something, and got in to the of the jail, gave…

00:02:48
Speaker 4: him the gun.

00:02:48
Speaker 3: He broke out. They caught him. They put him in the state pen down in Texas. And then, then Bonnie and Clyde’s mother started petitioning the governor of Texas to let him out because he was a good boy, and they got enough—they sent enough letters and so on—that finally they did let him go. And that’s when Bonnie and Clyde… This was in nineteen thirty-two, and that’s when this era of Bonnie and Clyde lasted from nineteen thirty-two to nineteen thirty-four. The gang was Bonnie, Clyde, Buck (his brother), Blanche (his wife), and there was a teenager, his name was W. D. Jones, seventeen years old, and he was running with them.

00:03:28
Speaker 2: And their favorite target was small-town banks, for a few pretty simple reasons.

00:03:33
Speaker 3: It was easy Pickens because most of those towns, there was one police officer, and most of the time it was a constable who worked nights and then slept the first four or five hours in the day, and that’s usually when they came, like at nine o’clock in the morning. That’s when they were knocking on the door of the bank to rob the bank. So, it was easy Pickens. It was easy to get away. Most policemen’s cars that they had weren’t going…

00:03:56
Speaker 4: to be able to keep up with Clyde. Clyde loved V-8 Fords.

00:03:59
Speaker 3: He’s always looking for an advantage over the police, and they’d go eighty-five…

00:04:02
Speaker 4: miles an hour.

00:04:04
Speaker 3: We have a letter back here that he actually wrote to Henry Ford, and basically it says: “Dear Mister Ford, well, I…

00:04:11
Speaker 5: still have got breath in my lungs. I will tell you what a dandy car you make. I have drove Fords exclusively when I could get away with one, for sustained speed and freedom from trouble. The Ford has got every other car skin, and even if my business hasn’t been strictly legal, they don’t hurt anything. To tell you what a fine car you got in the V-8. Yours truly, Clyde Champion Barrow.”

00:04:33
Speaker 4: They were all over down South.

00:04:35
Speaker 3: I mean, they were in Texas, they were in Oklahoma, they were in Arkansas. They happened to be in Platte City, Missouri, before they came to Iowa, and there was a shootout there. I don’t think at that point in time they were really trying to get away from anybody, but they were hoping that they could just stay and relax for a few days and then go on their merry way. They were in a motor hotel. They had places you stayed, and then there was a, in between the two units, where you…

00:05:02
Speaker 4: parked your cars.

00:05:03
Speaker 3: The manager of that hotel was suspicious because whoever these people were put newspapers up on the windows. And so he called the police, and then they called the people in Kansas City, and they came out, and they basically surrounded the place, and they had to shoot their way out. And on their way out, Brother Buck… Brother Buck got shot right in the forehead, and it took off a four-inch piece of his head. It didn’t kill him, though. Blanche got a big chunk of glass in her eyes. They were trying to get away. They were really, really lucky to get out of Platte City alive. We think they came up Highway 169 out of Missouri. They stopped at Mount Ayr, which is on the border. They actually stopped at a country store there. It was called Caledonia, and they bought like lunch meat and food, and so on, to eat. They actually stopped north of Mount Ayr at a creek. Clyde actually took mud from the creek and filled in the bullet holes of the car to make it less, less distinguishable. They came up Highway 169 to Adel, came across on, we think, Highway 6. Dexfield Park is three miles north of Dexter, and this park is out in the middle of nowhere. Basically, the campground was there. There was a half-a-mile lane going back to it, and it was thick timber and brush, and it cleared out area where they ended up. We don’t know for sure how Clyde knew about it. They’re hanging out, but they started coming into Dexter. They’re strangers all the time that come to Dexter, and the people at Dexter, they saw Clyde starting to come into town, and Bonnie was usually with him. You have to understand, that’s the reason why they spent lots and lots of time in Iowa. Well, it isn’t hard to figure out. When they were in Iowa, nobody knew who they were. Down in Texas, people knew who they were, and if they were hanging around down there, somebody’s going to turn them into the police.

00:07:00
Speaker 4: Shoot.

00:07:00
Speaker 3: Clyde went into this clothing store, this Myron Williams clothing store, and the guy that waited on him was the Town…

00:07:07
Speaker 4: Constable John Love. John Love didn’t even know who he was.

00:07:12
Speaker 3: John Love said that this slight, slight guy—slight, thin guy—comes into his store, ends in the store. And Clyde Barrow was five-seven, one hundred and thirty-five pounds. Bonnie Parker was four-nine, ninety-five pounds, so they weren’t very big people. But anyway, John said this guy comes in, and he comes up to the counter. He asked John about buying shirts. He wants to buy some shirts, and John said, “We have about three or four different kinds of shirts.”

00:07:37
Speaker 4: John said this guy said, “I want Arrow Arrow shirts.”

00:07:41
Speaker 3: It was the most expensive brand, and John looked at—and looked at—Clyde, not knowing it was Clyde Barrow, and says, “Well, those are a dollar-quarter apiece.” And John said this guy said, “I don’t care how much it costs. I got the money to pay for him.” He says, “I want size fourteen regular.” So he got four shirts, and he got a belt and maybe a pair of pants and whatever. And John looked at him and said, “You want me to…”

00:08:02
Speaker 4: “Wrap this stuff up for you?” And he said, “That’d be great.”

00:08:04
Speaker 3: And John Love, the town constable, always carried his badge and his gun on his left hip. And he said, “I turned around,” and he said, “Evidently my gun and badge showed, because,” he said, “this guy’s disposition changed immediately.” He said, “Just give me my stuff. Here’s the money,” and out the door he went.

00:08:30
Speaker 4: In his pocket.

00:08:31
Speaker 3: It wasn’t his, but he was spending at right and left in Dexter during the Depression.

00:08:37
Speaker 1: And you’ve been listening to Rod Stanley tell a heck of a story about Bonnie and Clyde. Most of us know what we know about Bonnie and Clyde from a movie with Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway way back in the late sixties or early seventies, and it sort of etched a picture in our mind of these two. My goodness, no one would think they were five-seven and four-nine, respectively. Huh, that is a shock. They were outlaws, murderers, thieves, though twenty-two or twenty-three. But the people of the time looked at them as Robin Hoods because they were stealing money from banks that had foreclosed on people during the Great Depression. Plus, they were a glamorous couple, or at least seem so from the outside. When we come back, more of the story of Bonnie and Clyde here on Our American Stories. And we continue with Our American Stories and our story of Bonnie and Clyde in Dexter, Iowa. When we last left off, Rod Stanley of the Dexter Museum was telling us a little bit about who Bonnie and Clyde were and how they ended up in this small town. At first, nobody knew who they were, but they would soon be discover. Let’s continue with the story.

00:10:10
Speaker 3: And the guy that discovered him was a fellow by the name of Henry Nye, and he was a farmhand. He was hunting blackberries and he saw five people sitting around a campfire. He saw bloody bandages and shirts hanging up, and he said, “I just kept riding on, walking.” He said, “Those people look pretty rough,” and he said, “I just kept walking back to wherever I lived.”

00:10:31
Speaker 4: And when he got home, he called John Love.

00:10:35
Speaker 3: The constable said, “There’s some pretty rough people out here in this campground.”

00:10:40
Speaker 4: “You need to come out in a victim.”

00:10:41
Speaker 3: And John said, “I don’t have any jurisdiction three miles north of Dexter. I just have my jurisdiction around here.” He said, “I’ll come out with my binoculars, and we’ll take a look to see what they have.” And John did go out there and said that he saw five people and two cars. They actually had made a car-shopping trip, stolen a a second car because Brother Buck, with that head wound, had to lay down, had took up the WHO vaccine, and they wanted a backup car. But they’ve stole another V-8 Ford from a guy by the name of Ed Stoner.

00:11:10
Speaker 4: He saw five people.

00:11:11
Speaker 3: Then he comes back, and he calls the county sheriff, a fellow by the name of Clint Knee, and he calls Clint Knee up and asked him, “Is there any—you had any—rumors about outlaws in the area, gangs?” And he said, “Well, we’ve been hearing things about the Barrow Gang might be around.” And John Love said, “Well, you better bring your heavy artillery over to Dexter, because I think we got the Barrow…”

00:11:32
Speaker 4: “…Gang out north of Dexter.”

00:11:36
Speaker 3: Then that was on a Sunday evening, and I don’t know how many people were in. The posse often said that I wish there would have been a sign-up sheet where people signed in. Probably, I’m guessing, between fifty and seventy-five people showed up when the posse was gathering up here in north of town. Guess who was coming in to get his takeouts for the evening? Clyde Barrow. And Clyde Barrow saw the crowd, and Clyde Barrow was one of those guys. He had great intuition. I mean, he had a great sense of what, you know, what was going on. I’ve often wondered what he was thinking when he saw that group of people gathering there. And maybe, you know, he was thinking, “Well, I don’t know, this might not be nuts, not be very good.”

00:12:14
Speaker 4: “What’s happening there?”

00:12:15
Speaker 3: But he came into the restaurant and bought his five takeouts. And the guy that worked there was a fellow by the name of Jesse Ross. And Jesse Ross was the mayor of Dexter when I was growing up, and he was the cook in this restaurant, and this is his story. And he said that this guy came in, got the five takeout meals, and anybody bought a package of hot dogs, and he said he put, put them on top of the meat counter, and got his meals and stuff, and he started walking out the door, and he forgot his hot dogs. And so Jesse said, “I got out on the conner Andy.” He said, “I hollered at him, ‘Hey!'” And he said, “This guy turned around.”

00:12:50
Speaker 4: “I thought it was gonna get…”

00:12:51
Speaker 3: “Shot,” Jesse said. And he said, “You forgot your wieners!” So Clyde came back and picked up his hot dogs, and on his way he went. Posse’s plan was to go out there, surround him on three sides, come in on three sides, which they did. The only way out was the timber—the thick brush to the back of the campground. They had their two cars there, and at six, five-point-five that morning, the posse went out there, and they surrounded him on three sides, and they got close enough. The guy that took over the posse was a fellow bind the name of Charles Raggs Riley, and he was a state policeman from Des Moines. He was kind of the leader of the pack. And he got close enough where he could see the people, and they were round, had the seats pulled out of the car, and they were sitting around the campfire, and one guy was roasting something or had something that was roasting.

00:13:44
Speaker 4: They thought sausage or a hot dog over the fire.

00:13:47
Speaker 3: And he was in this bee of this tree, and he was close enough, and he hollered at him and said, “Put down your guns! Put up your hands!” The guy with the hot dog threw it down and grabbed a rifle.

00:14:00
Speaker 4: And the next thing he knows, it’s World War I breaking out.

00:14:06
Speaker 3: Riley got shot, grazed behind the right. That was the only member of the posse they got wounded. There was only one person whoever was shooting. They shot over the posse, and this posse, of course, when they heard this cannon’s going off, they dove down in the brush. Clyde wanted to get in the car. He did get all five people in the car. Clyde didn’t want to shoot out. Clyde’s not gonna surrender. I mean, if he’s surrendered, he’s going to—he’s gonna—he’s gonna see Mister Sparky, the electric chair, because he’s already killed people. And he starts up, and the posse’s up and shooting. They’re shooting at the car.

00:14:40
Speaker 4: They’re shooting at the people in the car.

00:14:41
Speaker 3: Clyde gets shot in the shoulder, swerves the car. The bumper of the car gets hung up on a tree stump. W. D. Jones and him try to get it lifted off.

00:14:49
Speaker 4: They can. They jump out of the car; all jump out of the car.

00:14:55
Speaker 3: They head to the second car. The police—the posse—had shot the tires out, couldn’t drive it. So, Bonnie, Clyde, W. D. Jones head, head to the woods. Now they’re out in the middle of Dallas County, Iowa, no car, no place to go, and they’re thinking, “Wow, you know, we’re this kind of hopeless.” And so they cross the river, and they keep looking around, and up on, like, northeast of them, they see a farmhouse, and that’s where they head. And so they end up at this farmhouse. And the people who own the farmhouse are the Feller family. Valley Feller and his family, and he had a son, Marvel. And this is Marvel’s story. Marvel was nineteen years old at the time, and him and his dad, Valley, and his uncle Walt Spillers were going down to get the cows, and he…

00:15:47
Speaker 4: said, “My dog, wrecks…”

00:15:48
Speaker 3: The German Shepherd was on the cornfield side of the lot, and he was barking at something, and he said, “Pretty soon I saw this slight, muddy, bloody guy come up to the fence.” And this guy hollered at Marvel and said, “Call the dog off!”

00:16:00
Speaker 4: “I’m going to kill him right here!”

00:16:02
Speaker 3: And so Marvel ran over, and he pulled the dog back, looked up, and he said that I had a forty-five pointed at my head.

00:16:08
Speaker 4: Clyde said, “The laws. The laws shot the hell out of us!”

00:16:13
Speaker 3: “Do you have any cars?” And Marvel said, “Well, actually, we have three cars.”

00:16:17
Speaker 4: “But only one runs.”

00:16:19
Speaker 3: He said, “Two of them are on blocks because of the Depression.” He said, “We couldn’t fix it,” but Marvel said, “We had just bought this nineteen twenty-nine Plymouth, just got it, just got it.” But anyway, so Clyde says, “Well, that’s good.”

00:16:32
Speaker 4: “We’re going to have to use that car.”

00:16:33
Speaker 3: And he said, he turned around and whistled, and here comes the teenager W. D. carrying Bonnie up out of the cornfield. And in the meantime, Marvel’s mother had came out of the house with the daughter, Louise, and she was coming down to tell her husband, Valley, that she had gotten a phone call to be on the lookout for outlaws in the valley, and then the outlaws were leading her husband and son and brother up to the farmy…