Young Thug Clyde
Davis
A terrible case of being at the wrong place at the wrong time, the Davis killing is set in motion by Clyde's friendship with outlaw Raymond Hamilton, and the December 29th robbery of the Home Bank of Grapevine, Texas (a suburb of Fort Worth) by two bandit friends of Hamilton's, Les Stewart and Odell Chambless. Captured shortly after the robbery, seeking a lighter sentence, Stewart sells out his partner by telling his captors that Chambless often visits the West Dallas home of Hamilton's sister, Lillian McBride (only a few blocks away from the Barrow Family gas station). Visions of a fairly easy arrest and positive headlines dancing through his head, after being contacted by the Tarrant County district attorney with the Chambless information, newly elected Dallas County Sheriff, Richard Allen "Smoot" Schmid, approves a joint stakeout/ambush operation with Fort Worth police, scheduled to take place on the evening of January 6th.
Schmid
A familiar character in the region as a result of running a bicycle and motorcycle shop on Commerce Street in downtown Dallas (there are rumors he accepts "hot" merchandise) for years, and for his penchant of wearing white ten-gallon hats and wearing size 14 cowboy boots, standing 6'5" and 35-years-old when he begins his duties on 1/1/1933, Schmid wins office by campaigning that he will aggressively pursue lawbreakers and bring order to the county. The Chambless take down is planned as the Dallas sheriff's office first major arrest of Schmid's regime. Showing up at 11:00 p.m. at the McBride home are Tarrant County assistant district attorney W.T. Evans, Special Texas Ranger J. F. Van Noy, Dallas County deputy sheriff Fred Bradberry, and Fort Worth deputy sheriffs, Dusty Rhodes and Malcolm Davis. Armed with the layout of the poorly constructed shack McBride calls home from an afternoon visit of a Dallas deputy sheriff, Bradberry, Evans, and Van Noy take up positions in the house's small living room, while Rhodes and Davis wait outside by the structure's back porch (no McBride at home, the house is occupied by McBride's and Hamilton's younger sister, Maggie Fairris, and her young children). They are ready for Chambless to show up, but not for the killer that arrives instead.
Chambless
Unbeknownst to the authorities, Clyde Barrow, Bonnie Parker, and W. D. Jones are still in the area, both for a holiday visit with family, and to try and bust Raymond Hamilton out of jail where he is facing murder charges for the death of pawnshop owner John Bucher (a death Clyde knows Hamilton had nothing to do with ... since Clyde was outside Bucher's home, behind the wheel of a getaway car, when his confederates in the crime, Ted Rogers and Johnny Russell, murder Bucher). Shortly after 1933 begins, Clyde delivers a radio to McBride for her to deliver to her brother ... a radio containing hacksaws hidden inside for Hamilton to cut through the bars of his cell (the outlaw had just been moved from lockup at the Dallas County jail to a cell in the town of Hillsboro, where the Bucher murder took place). Checking on 1/6 whether the radio has been delivered to Hamilton (it has and Hamilton is discovered sawing away at the bars of his cell on 1/8), Clyde misses both McBride and the deputy sheriff who shows up later, but tells Fairris that he will return to talk to McBride later that night, which in company with Bonnie and W.D., is exactly what he does.
Bucher
Hamilton
Knowing Clyde might be showing up, when Fairris puts her children to sleep and the house goes dark, she cons the waiting lawmen into allowing her to leave a red light on as a night light for her children, unaware that it is also a signal that the coast is very much not clear for a visit. At around midnight, a Ford V-8 coupe drives slowly by the house with its headlights off, and thinking Chambless is about to stop in, the officers have Fairris extinguish the light. Minutes later, the car is back and parks outside, and with no warning signal on, Clyde, carrying a shotgun by his side, walks up to the front porch. Before reaching it however, Fairris swings the front door open and screams, "Don't shoot! Think of my babies!" Like telling a rattlesnake not to strike when a rodent crosses its path, Clyde instead reacts instantly by sending a blast of buckshot through one of the home's front windows, just missing the three lawmen who throw themselves to the floor. Trying to fire into the home again, Clyde discovers the shotgun has jammed, and exposed horribly, he claws at the spent cartridge inside, trying to make his weapon viable again. Bad shell out, new one in, the shotgun is working again just as first Davis, and then Rhodes come running around the corner of the house. Firing from almost point-blank range, Clyde blows a hole in Davis's chest, sends another blast at Rhodes as the lawman drops to the ground, before vanishing into the shadows between houses in the neighborhood, heading towards nearby Eagle Ford Road.
Clyde
Newspaper Recreation Of The Murder
Behind him, the McBride neighborhood is in chaos as W.D. begins firing wildly from the car into the front of the hoiuse, while the lawmen react and fire back as neighbors begin stumbling from their homes to see what all the commotion is about. Only Bonnie keeps her head, ordering W.D. to stop shooting as he might hit Clyde, while she starts the car and screeches away down the street (as expected, they pick up Clyde a few blocks away, and with the killer now behind the wheel again, the trio heads out of Texas. Rain now pouring down, Davis is rushed to a nearby hospital (thankfully, a helping bystander is missed by a bullet sent his way by one of the lawmen who thinks he is firing on another outlaw), but dies from his horrific chest wound. Crime scene now swarmed by authorities, when McBride finally arrives back at her home at 3:00 in the morning, she is instantly placed under arrest.
Headlines
Questions
At first, Chambless is believed to be the killer, but when he surrenders to police on January 18, it quickly becomes clear that he had nothing to do with the murder, having been under arrest in Los Angeles, California for suspicion of robbery on the 6th. Soon, witness accounts and on-site evidence point to the correct killer, Clyde Barrow. Badly embarrassed by the public fiasco his department has participated in during his first days in office, Sheriff Schmid becomes an avowed nemesis of the young killer and swearing his men will end Barrow's criminal career, he assigns two deputy sheriffs full time to the case, Ted Hinton and Bob Alcorn, both have had dealings with both the Barrows and the Parkers in the past. They will have to wait until 1934 for payback however, for the next few months, their quarry is aimless wandering the back roads of Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Missouri.
Chambless Fingerprint Card
Hinton And Alcorn - 1934
Less than a year since being paroled from Huntsville Prison, at only 22-years-of-age, Clyde has committed a host of cheap robberies through the southwest, and has killed three men, Eugene Moore, Doyle Johnson, and Malcolm Davis (the authorities also want him for two more killings) ... and his murderous behavior will get even worse in 1933 ... in March, during a vacation with his brother Buck and Buck's wife Blanche, there will be a gun battle in Joplin, Missouri that will cost two police officers their lives. More death and more running into 1934, both Bonnie and Clyde will eventually be gunned down on a lonely rural back road in Bienville Parish, outside of Gibsland, Louisiana on May 23, 1934 (W.D. is already in jail, telling stories about being forced to be a member of the Barrow gang) by a posse of six men led by legendary Texas Ranger, Frank Hamer (he is believed to have killed between 53 and 70 bad boys during his days in law enforcement in Texas) ... firing Browning Automatic Rifles into what will become known as the Bonnie & Clyde Death Car, two of the men in the ambush party that brings down the outlaws are Bob Alcorn and Ted Hinton.
Doomed Lovers
The Death Car Moments After The Ambush
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