What Bonnie And Clyde's Life In Prison Was Really Like
Bonnie and Clyde may be the most infamous romance in the history of American crime, but their individual stints in prison were anything but romantic.
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00:00Bonnie and Clyde may be the most infamous romance in the history of American crime,
00:04but their individual stints in prison were anything but romantic.
00:08In February 1930, only weeks into his romance with Bonnie Parker, Clyde Barrow was caught
00:13by the police after a string of burglaries and car thefts. After admitting to a number
00:17of his crimes, Barrow began serving a two-year sentence at the McLennan County Jail in Waco,
00:21Texas, just shy of his 21st birthday. But he didn't stay long.
00:25On the night of March 11, after Parker smuggled in a pistol for her new boyfriend, Barrow
00:29and two other inmates broke out of the jail. According to the Waco Times-Herald, when
00:34the jailer opened Barrow's cell to give one of the prisoners a bottle of milk, he was
00:37met at gunpoint with the chilling words,
00:39"'Stick him up.'"
00:40The fugitives managed to reach Ohio before the law recaptured them. And while the judge
00:45presiding over the case had ordered Barrow's convictions to be served concurrently, after
00:48the jailbreak, Barrow was resentenced to 14 consecutive years behind bars.
00:53Barrow was also moved from the relatively pushy jail in Waco to one of the most notorious
00:57prison farms in the country, Eastham State. At Eastham State, Barrow quickly learned how
01:02brutal prison life could be. The prison functioned as a working farm, where prisoners were forced
01:07to run to and from the fields where they weeded and picked corn and cotton. If they didn't
01:12run, they were beaten by the guards.
01:14But the main source of Barrow's torment wasn't the physical labor or the guards, but his
01:18fellow inmate Ed Crowder, a large, tough 29-year-old robber who oversaw the dormitory where Barrow
01:23lived.
01:25You think he's getting sweet on you, Clyde?
01:27I don't know what's worse, the high-riders whip or the big guy's affections.
01:31It was alleged that Crowder physically and sexually assaulted Barrow on a regular basis
01:35for months, and neither the guards nor his fellow prisoners intervened. For context,
01:40Barrow stood 5'7 and weighed 150 pounds, and he appeared to be so young that some newspapers
01:45even nicknamed him Schoolboy. He was no match for Crowder. But since all people have a breaking
01:50points, Barrow eventually had enough. He hit a lead pipe in his pant leg, lured Crowder
01:55into a bathroom, and crushed his skull.
01:57But Barrow would also escape any punishment for Crowder's murder, as fellow prisoner Aubrey
02:02Skelly willingly took the rap for the crime. A grand jury eventually chalked up the incident
02:06to self-defense.
02:07On top of the backbreaking farm work at Easton, the inmates had little to eat that wasn't
02:12rancid and were always at the mercy of the corrections officers. The guards would stick
02:16naked prisoners into tiny tin shacks in the broiling Texas heat as punishment for bad
02:21behavior, sometimes even covering them in honey to attract bugs.
02:24While Barrow was considered a model prisoner, the brutality of the inmates' work and treatment
02:29led Barrow to cut off two of his toes with an ax. Though, it's unclear if he did it to
02:34himself or had someone else perform the deed. The authorities sent him to the prison hospital,
02:38and just two weeks later, in February 1932, he was paroled.
02:42But since Barrow had grown to hate Easton so much, he, Bonnie Parker, and their gang
02:46raided it in January 1934, helping five inmates escape.
02:50How did it happen?
02:52Clyde did a nickel at East Ham. He knew the system. Planted guns, ran it like a military
02:57operation.
02:58Not long after Clyde's release from prison in 1932, he, Bonnie Parker, and a rotating
03:03roster of gang members began robbing banks and businesses, stealing cars, and kidnapping
03:07police officers. But in April 1932, after making off with two vehicles in Tyler, Texas,
03:12a posse gave chase and captured Parker and another member of the gang while Barrow managed
03:17to escape. Upon her arrest, Parker lied to authorities, telling them she'd been kidnapped
03:21and did her best to wait patiently for the grand jury to hear her case. Parker spent
03:25the next two months in the Kaufman County Jail, during which she wrote poetry, and her
03:30jailer would often allow her to sit outside on the lawn.
03:32And while Barrow's family visited Parker in jail, providing her with food and clothing,
03:36she was lonely, scared, and not too happy with her outlaw lover. She even promised her
03:40mother that she was through with Barrow. But in mid-June 1932, the grand jury decided not
03:45to indict Parker, and she walked free.
03:48Neither Bonnie Parker nor Clyde Barrow would ever see the inside of a cell again. Following
03:52Parker's release from jail, the pair left a trail of dead law enforcement officers as
03:56they blasted and robbed their way through the American Southwest and the heartland.
04:01By the time they were ambushed and killed on May 23, 1934, they were accused of at least
04:0613 murders and numerous other crimes. As the pair blazed their path into the history
04:10books, Parker continued writing poetry, including the ballad of Bonnie and Clyde, which foreshadowed
04:15their deaths in the final lines.
04:17"'Someday they'll go down together, and they'll bury them side by side. To few it'll be grief,
04:22to the law a relief, but it's death for Bonnie and Clyde.'"
04:26While the pair was inseparable during their final two-year rampage across the country,
04:30it didn't stop the Parker and Barrow families from going against Bonnie and Clyde's express
04:33wishes and burying them in two separate Dallas cemeteries roughly 10 miles apart from each
04:38other.