American Experience

NEWS ANNOUNCER

Thousands attend the homecoming of Clyde Barrow. In this Dallas funeral home, his body lies as a never-ending line of men, women, and children from every walk of life file by his casket for a fleeting glimpse of the boy who had wrought so much death and destruction. Everyone wants to see how such a bad boy looked in death.

NARRATOR

Over three days in May of 1934, throngs of onlookers flocked to two Dallas funeral homes, hoping to catch a last glimpse of the outlaws Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker.

BUDDY BARROW

My dad said there were just lines and lines of people. They were mobbing the place. They couldn't have a decent funeral because everybody was just crowding around, taking souvenirs.

NEWS ANNOUNCER

Clyde's body is borne to the grave. He died at the hands of the law.

FREDA DILLARD

My grandpa went down to the funeral home to Clyde's viewing. It was probably a little bit of excitement for them. He was only one of thousands.

NEWS ANNOUNCER

Three miles across the city from where Clyde's body lay lies the body of Bonnie Parker, and here the crowd is even greater.

NARRATOR

Bonnie and Clyde had been on a two-year crime spree that left a trail of dead bodies in their wake. They were little more than a local curiosity until photos of the couple were discovered at a crime scene in 1933. Overnight, the country became transfixed by the scandalous images, press accounts of improbable escapes, and their illicit romance.

CLAIRE POTTER

Bonnie and Clyde, who people are sort of making up stories about or getting sightings of, all of a sudden, there are pictures, there are guns, there's evidence.

BARROW

It was a nonstop soap opera. Everybody was tuned into the radios, everybody was reading the papers, and actually, it was almost like they were rooting them to get away.

NARRATOR

Bonnie and Clyde would join the ranks of other celebrity gangsters like John Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, and Baby Face Nelson, so-called public enemies who emerged out of nowhere during the Great Depression to capture the country's imagination.

BRYAN BURROUGH

In a world where there was very little to get excited about in the summer of 1933, Bonnie and Clyde were pretty big news.

JEFF GUINN

Everybody was talking about the criminals, the bad guys.

But Clyde and Bonnie had the one thing the others didn't

the whole true romance and the sexy scandal.

NARRATOR

Bonnie and Clyde's notoriety would force them to take even greater risks to remain free and on the open road, as law enforcement's hunt was kicked into overdrive.

JOHN NEAL PHILLIPS

There wasn't gonna be any arrest or any trial; it was going to be an execution.

NARRATOR

Clyde Chestnut Barrow was born in the Texas cotton belt on March 24, 1909, one of seven children of itinerant farmers Henry and Cumie Barrow. By 1925, the whole Barrow clan had followed a wave of other farmers who were flooding cities in search of work. With all their worldly possessions packed into a horse-drawn cart, the Barrows settled on the outskirts of Dallas in an impoverished backwater known as The Devil's Back Porch.

GUINN

Clyde Barrow grew up in an unincorporated slum so poverty-stricken we couldn't imagine it today. And there's a campground right on the west bank of the Trinity River, and it's mostly mud, and there's one well, there's a few outhouses, and this is where the indigent lived.

BARROW

My grandfather and grandmother, they were just poor people trying to survive. And they camped out there in just that wagon, that little mule, and that's how they lived-- no money, no food, just poor as you could be.

GUINN

So from the time this kid can really think, all he knows is there's no hope. "This is it. "I'm going to be poor, I'm going to be hungry, and I'm going to be put down the rest of my life."

NARRATOR

Clyde chafed at the prospect of a life of poverty. Though he was slight-- five feet, six inches, never more than 130 pounds-- Clyde was bright, energetic, and a dreamer.

He saw what he wanted just across the river in Dallas

a prosperous city with skyscrapers, endless entertainment, and streets lined with high-end shops. Dallas exposed Clyde to a life that was far beyond his grasp.

BARROW

He had dreams. You know, he wanted to do something rather than be poor the rest of his life. He hated poverty and he hated looking like poverty.

NARRATOR

With a taste for expensive suits and little interest in honest work, Clyde Barrow picked up the bad habits of his older brother Buck, who had already settled into a life of petty crime. What started with the two brothers stealing chickens quickly grew into armed robbery, and by the time he was 17, Clyde was perfecting his signature crime.

GUINN

This is the first era of car theft. The electric starter system is put in cars. You could hotwire one. And Buck was a master of it, and he passed the skill along to little brother. Clyde Barrow didn't see stealing so much as a crime as almost an obligation. "I want to get out of here. This is the only way I can do it." (camera shutter clicks)

NARRATOR

By 1929, Clyde's crimes were regularly drawing the attention of local police. In November of that year, Clyde, Buck, and an accomplice broke into an auto shop in the town of Denton, just outside Dallas. Local law enforcement spotted the robbers trying to flee and opened fire. (gunfire)

BARROW

They shoot Buck and they capture Buck, but Clyde runs all the way back home.

GUINN

It's a close call, but it's worth it because as long as he's stealing cars and getting a few dollars for them, he's somebody, and to him, that's worth any risk.

NARRATOR

Despite his brush with the law, Clyde's family was happy to have him close to home, and just a few months later, he would meet a young girl from the same side of the tracks who shared his yearning for a better life.