A look back at when Bonnie and Clyde hid out in the Fort Worth Stockyards

Everyone knows the infamous Bonnie and Clyde for their romanticized criminal life on the run. But did you know that the two stopped in Dallas and Fort Worth?

“Bonnie Parker, auburn-haired cigar-smoking young woman has been fleeing about the country with Clyde Barrow for the last year while the Dallas desperado evaded capture.” the Star-Telegram reported on Dec. 3, 1933

They both grew up in Dallas. Parker was 19 and married when she met Barrow in Dallas in 1930. He was 21 and single.

Parker was a petite 5-foot-5 and only 100 pounds, according to FBI wanted signs. She didn’t come from much money and worked as a waitress and wrote poems. Barrow came from a family that wasn’t rich, but wasn’t necessarily poor. He started as a thief. With Parker, he became a killer.

The couple’s criminal activity was prevalent in the Lone Star state. Though, there are also reports of their crimes in Oklahoma, Missouri, Louisiana, Arkansas, Kansas, Iowa and Illinois.

So, in honor of it being Halloween season, here is a nugget of history about one of the biggest real-life nightmares that happened nearly a century ago in Texas.

The ‘Dallas desperado’ and the ‘cigar-smoking young woman’

Copy photo of a mug shot of Clyde Champion Barrow, arrested on January 22, 1928, taken at a Fort Worth jail [copy photo made 1951].

Before Barrow met Parker in Dallas in 1930, he was already a criminal — arrested twice in Dallas and once in Fort Worth. Parker was not yet a criminal, but her husband, who she never crossed paths with again after 1929, had frequent run-ins with the law.

Shortly after meeting Parker, Barrow was changed for burglary and sentenced to 14 years in a Waco prison. He spent nine days in a cell before Parker snuck him a handgun and he escaped. Later that same year, Barrow was re-arrested and spent two years in the Texas State Penitentiary before his parole in 1932.

The Waco Times Herald reported on Clyde Barrow’s escape from a prison in Waco in 1930.

The parolee and the young woman reunited (with a few others) and started a two-year string of crimes.

The Star-Telegram newspaper reported on Bonnie and Clyde’s car burglary after escaping the police on Nov. 23, 1933.

In 1933, a Texas sheriff sought to arrest Parker and Barrow in Grand Prairie after dozens of reported robberies. The sheriff failed, and the two managed to abandon the car they were driving and steal a 1932 Ford V-8 Sedan. They escaped 340 miles north to Miami, Okla. The stealing of the Ford V-8 got the FBI involved in the couple’s manhunt.

The Star-Telegram reported on Parker and Barrow’s hand in the Eastham State Prison break on Jan. 17, 1934.

In 1934, the couple helped five prisoners escape from Eastham State Prison Farm in Waldo. Barrow fired a machine gun at the prison to distract from the running fugitives. Some of the prisoners shot and killed two guards with an automatic pistol.

Parker and Barrow also shot two officers in Grapevine later that year as well.

Star-Telegram front page on Monday, April 2, 1934.

Other crime reports in Texas have been linked to the pair, like murders in Hillsboro, Abilene, Sherman and Dallas, as well as more robberies in Lufkin and Dallas, auto theft in Victoria and the kidnapping of a sheriff and police chief in Wellington.

The Star-Telegram reports on Clyde Barrow on April 8, 1934.

These are just a few of the nefarious acts by Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. According to the FBI, the couple is believed to have killed 13 people throughout their countless burglaries and robberies.

Car used by Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow at time of their deaths, May 1934. Sheriff C.D. Little at far right.

The couple was shot dead in a police shootout in Louisiana on May 23, 1934. They died together in a stolen 1934 Ford Model 730 Deluxe sedan which was shot more than 100 times during the shootout.

“They met their death just as they had skipped across the country — with a machine gun and pistols at an arm’s reach — in a fast automobile frantically trying to move from one place to another before officers learned their whereabouts,” the Star-Telegram reported on May 24, 1934.

Bonnie and Clyde in the Fort Worth Stockyards

Parker and Barrow left their blood-stained mark on Fort Worth as well.

The Stockyards Hotel at 109 E. Exchange Ave. in Fort Worth has a “Bonnie and Clyde Junior Suite” dedicated to the killer couple that features historic artifacts and a poem written by Parker to Barrow.

Barrow allegedly stayed in the Stockyards Hotel in 1933 as a hideout during one of the couple’s heists. This corner room offered the perfect view to keep watch over Main Street and the primary north-south international highway.

Parker stayed at the Oasis Hotel (now the Downtown Cowtown Isis Theatre and a Boot Barn) down the street at 2407 N. Main St. The two separated their hotel stays in case of police raids.

Parker is buried at the Crown Hill Memorial in Dallas, while Barrows is buried next to his brother in Dallas’ Western Heights Cemetery.

The FBI calls Parker and Barrow “the most notorious crime couple in American history.” And they etched themselves into DFW’s history, too.

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