Bonnie and Clyde’s reckless love story and bloody crime spree across the Depression-era Southwest turned them into virtual folk heroes: the Romeo and Juliet of the 20th century, with a passion for killing.
Now, 90 years after her fatal ambush by law enforcement officers in Louisiana, two of her relatives are pushing for Bonnie Parker to finally be reunited with Clyde Barrow in the empty plot reserved for her at his side.
Bonnie, who was 23 when she died on May 23, 1934, was originally buried in Dallas’ Fishtrap Cemetery, just a mile from 25-year-old Clyde’s grave in Western Heights.
But 11 years later, she was moved to Crown Hill Memorial Park, to be buried next to her mother, Emma, who died in 1945.
But it wasn’t what Bonnie and Clyde wanted.
“Bonnie and Clyde’s wish when they were on the run was to be buried together because they knew that one day they would be captured and killed together,” a source close to two of the robbers’ surviving descendants told The Post.
Bonnie Parker, who with her lover Clyde Barrow captured the attention and revulsion of the American public in the depths of the Great Depression, died 90 years ago, but her wish to spend eternity with her accomplice was ignored. Universal History Archive / Universal Images Group via Getty Images The Oscar-winning film “Bonnie and Clyde” secured the duo’s place in the cultural canon, with Faye Dunaway playing Bonnie and Warren Beatty playing her lover, Clyde. Continued interest in her story includes people visiting her graves. Everett Collection / Everett Collection
“But Bonnie’s mother decided she didn’t want her daughter to be buried next to Clyde. It was her proclamation that ‘Clyde had her in life, he can’t have her in death,’ and her mom won.”
The source confirmed that two relatives of the outlaws, Rhea Leen Linder, Bonnie’s niece, who turned 89 in October, and Buddy Barrow Williams, Clyde’s nephew who is in his 70s, are fighting “a battle, so far without success.” “. to reunite Bonnie with Clyde again.
Williams published a memoir, “Growing Up Barrow,” last year.
Bonnie was first buried in a cemetery a mile from her lover, and then, in 1945, she was moved to be buried next to her mother. An earlier attempt to remove her failed due to her mother’s desire to be buried with her. ZUMAPRESS.com Clyde was buried with his older brother, but the grave is in a cemetery that has been poorly maintained. People visit both and have left half-drunk bottles of Corona beer (above right), a bullet, and a marijuana joint as a tribute. ZUMAPRESS.com
Historian Brad Dison, who interviewed Linder and Barrow and is writing a book about the fatal ambush of Bonnie and Clyde and the sheriff leading the group, told The Post: “Buddy and Rhea’s efforts are still ongoing.
“They haven’t given up, but I think they are skeptical that this will happen anytime soon. They want to honor Bonnie’s wishes that she be buried next to Clyde.”
A Crown Hill Cemetery official, DeWayne Hughes, confirmed to The Post that Bonnie was still buried there.
Clyde was the subject of a mug shot in Dallas before serving his sentence. He started the bloody spree. He and Bonnie met in 1930, after this was taken, and his mutual obsession turned into an interstate murder spree. Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Several years ago, Hughes had had a conversation with Linder and a lawyer about the possibility of reburying Bonnie next to Clyde in Western Heights.
But Hughes apparently would not accept Linder’s claim that she was Bonnie’s closest living relative, and also honored Bonnie’s mother’s wish that her daughter not be buried next to Clyde.
And a member of a group that wants to restore Western Heights recently claimed that Crown Hill does not want Bonnie moved “for fear of losing the tourism her grave brings.”
The couple’s posthumous glamor owes much to carefully posed photographs of them found on undeveloped film left in a hideout in Joplin, Missouri, from which they had fled in 1933. AFP/Getty Images
Tourists in Dallas continue to visit both graves. A visit by local officials last spring found that Clyde’s grave was practically a shrine, filled with empty liquor bottles, a marijuana joint, a bullet and flowers left by tourists.
Linder was originally named Bonnie Ray Parker when she was born, five months after the death of her notorious aunt, daughter of Bonnie’s older brother Hubert “Buster” Parker, but changed her birth name to Rhea.
Rhea Linder has never argued that Bonnie and Clyde were anything more than “outlaws.”
Emma Parker (left, with her daughter Billy Mace) insisted that her daughter Bonnie be taken from Clyde after her death, and then buried with her, resulting in Bonnie’s remains being reinterred in her current plot in 1945. Bettmann Archive Clyde’s mother, Cumie Barrow (second left) was tried in 1935 after his death, along with her daughters-in-law Audrey (left) and Fay (second right) and a fourth woman, Mary O’Dare . All were convicted of harboring outlaws. ASSOCIATED PRESS
In an interview he once gave to historian Dison, he stated: “There is no way they could be tolerated or glorified… but they were people.
“Being buried together was their wish. They fell together. “They knew what the end was going to be.”
Once described as “America’s most ruthless” and “kill-mad” outlaws, their exploits inspired a host of books, songs and movies, with stars Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway playing the desperate ones in the award-winning film. 1967 Academy Award, “Bonnie and Clyde.”
This 1932 photo of Bonnie and Clyde became a key part of their story, although the photo shoot only came to light partly by chance, when they abandoned the undeveloped film in an old hiding place. Bettmann Archive Dunaway and Beatty painstakingly recreated the shoot, albeit with more Hollywood glamor than the original. The film ensured that the criminal had a permanent place in pop culture.
The film glamorized the violent couple and put them on the pop culture map forever.
They both had poor families and little education when they met in January 1930. Bonnie was 19 and Clyde was 20.
Bonnie had married another criminal at age 15 and met Clyde when her husband was in prison. They quickly became mutually obsessed.
J. Edgar Hoover was the director of the FBI’s predecessor, the Bureau of Investigation, when he put his name on this detailed wanted poster warning that agents should use “extreme caution” if they saw the couple. Getty Images The gang that ambushed Bonnie and Clyde after tracking them to Gibsland, Louisiana, took the warning of extreme caution as overwhelming force. The couple’s Ford V8 was riddled with bullets; They died instantly. Bettmann Archive After the ambush, with 167 bullet holes recorded as being found in the car, the group paraded the bloody bodies of Bonnie and Clyde. Days later both were buried separately in Dallas, Texas. ASSOCIATED PRESS
When her new lover was imprisoned, she smuggled him a gun to help him escape. They recaptured him, but by then they were already madly in love and were exchanging passionate letters.
He affectionately called her “little wife”; She was less than five feet tall and weighed 100 pounds, but they never married.
Once paroled, Clyde and Bonnie began a savage crime spree, with the first murder of a merchant by their gang in April 1932, followed by a series of murders, including nine law enforcement officers and at least four civilians. , while they robbed banks, stores. and service stations.
In April 1934, wanted from coast to coast, they and their gang killed two patrolmen in Grapevine, Texas, and days later they shot dead an officer and kidnapped a police chief in Miami, Oklahoma.
There is a joint marker for Bonnie and Clyde: the spot where the gang ended their savage two-year killing spree that claimed the lives of nine law enforcement officers plus at least four civilians. Universal Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
In May, Frank Hamer, a former Texas Ranger, tracked them to Gibsland, Louisiana, where they were ambushed before dawn by a group that hid on the side of a road and opened fire when the couple’s getaway Ford V8 car crashed. was approaching. They died instantly.
Despite the already widespread glorification of the pair, law enforcement officers had their bodies displayed and declared them “a pair of human rats with no more decent features than any rat would have.”
But back in Dallas, thousands attended his funerals and separate burials that could be undone 90 years later.
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