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- TOOK NO CHANCES, HINTON AND
ALCORN TELL NEWSPAPERMEN
- BY BOB ALCORN AND TED HINTON
- Deputy Sheriffs
- Story Held from Wednesday Night's
Extra.
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- The two
Dallas Sheriffs who, with four other officers killed Clyde Barrow
and Bonnie Parker near Gibsland, La., Wednesday, told their story
to a staff man of the Dallas Dispatch. It is carried
herewith in their own words.
- We had
been on the trail of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker for weeks
before we actually came upon the hot lead which ended in the
death of the pair Wednesday. It was more than a month ago
that Sheriff Schmid assigned us, with Frank Hamer and N. T.
Galt, to "get Clyde and Bonnie." We were told to
spare no expense and to take the time necessary.
"Smoot" wanted only one result - the death or capture
of Barrow and his girl.
- We were
out more than a month and the trail led us thru four
states. We had leads in Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana
and Texas. Ordered to get Barrow and the Parker woman, we
lived almost as they did for those long weeks. We slept
and ate and lived in a car. We spent night after night
waiting for them to appear. We had tip after tip and
followed this bit of information and that. Time after time
we thought we had them, but they always managed to slip away.
- Most of
the time we were following a pretty well defined circle of kinfolk
and hideouts.
- We
figured that if we sat on one spot on that route long enough,
Barrow and Bonnie would finally come by, and they did.
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Naturally, we picked the Louisiana vicinity because we felt
Clyde would be most likely to be there. Henry Methvin's
father had a farm down there, and we knew that Methvin would
lead Clyde to his home. But we weren't sitting on one spot
all the time. We've traveled thousands of miles on the
route we knew Clyde was taking. We watched many nights,
just like we did yesterday, on the roads between Shreveport and
Texarkana, and between Texarkana and Fort Smith, and other
places.
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- MANY HOT TIPS
- We couldn't count the number of
times we sat up all night watching a spot in the road,
thinking they would come along. Whenever we thought we
were actually "hot," we enlisted the aid of local
officers and got all the reinforcements we could.
- We had
waited at this spot on the graveled road near Gibsland for two
days and nights. We hadn't slept. We hadn't eaten
much. We were too anxious to eat and our nerves wouldn't
let us sleep, even had we dared. We hadn't shaved for
days, and we looked like four wild men. As usual, we
called in aid. We wanted all the men we could get, and
Sheriff Jordan and Deputy Oakley were right with us.
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- Death Car Is Sighted.
- It was
about 9 a. m., when we finally sighted the car. It was a
gray V-8 coach, and that was the car we were looking
for. We had been waiting at the top of a steep hill, and
the car had to slow down as it neared the top. There
wasn't any time to think. We didn't have a minute to
wonder if we were coming out alive. The name Clyde
Barrow and all the terror and danger it involved didn't mean a
thing. There were two people in that car and they
probably were Clyde and Bonnie. And that car was getting
nearer.
- The
land there is swampy and the forest on each side of the road
was so dense you couldn't see anyone 15 feet from the
highway. The ground was soft and the country is wild -
full of alligators and snakes and bugs and mosquitos.
- That
car kept coming. It was near enough now that we could
distinguish the people in the car. They looked like
Clyde and Bonnie. They were Clyde and Bonnie.
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All Yelled "Halt!"
There must
have been a signal given, but "who it came from is another
thing. We just all acted together, stepped out into the road
and raised our guns. We all yelled "Halt!" at
once.
They didn't
halt. The car was going slowly and Clyde let go of the
wheel. We could see him grab at a gun in his lap.
Bonnie was going for something on the other side.
Then all
hell broke loose. There were six men shooting at once.
Machine guns? No, thank God. We had shotguns and
Browning automatics. We had tried machine guns once before
(referring to the time Barrow escaped from a trap at Sowers, near
Dallas).
You
couldn't hear any one shot. It was just a roar, a continuous
roar, and it kept up for several minutes. We emptied our
guns, reloaded and kept shooting. No chances with Clyde and
Bonnie.
As we jumped
into sight, I could see Clyde reaching as if to get his gun.
But he never had a chance to fire a shot. Neither did Bonnie,
tho we learned a few minutes later that they both were carrying
rifles across their laps.
Each of us
six officers had a shotgun and an automatic rifle and pistols.
We opened
fire with the automatic rifles. They were emptied before the
car got even with us. Then we used shotguns.
Ted's was the
shotgun given him by Toy Woolley after his trial in Dallas for the
death of his wife. It was the gun Wooleley was cleaning when
the thing went off and killed the girl. Ted had the barrel
sawed off.
Empty Pistols Then.
After
shooting the shotguns, we emptied the pistols at the car, which had
passed us and ran into a ditch about 50 yards on down the
road. It almost turned over. We kept shooting at the car
even after it stopped. We weren't taking any chances.
There was
smoke coming from the car, and it looked like it was on fire.
I guess this was caused when one of the shotguns Clyde or Bonnie had
across their laps went off. They did not have time to raise their
guns, but the tightening of their muscles as they were filled with
lead might have pressed the trigger. The blast at close range
almost tore out the ?? of the door.
We all ran up
to the car. Ted opened the door on Bonnie's side and she
almost fell out.
40 Bullet Holes
She was
sitting with her head down between her knees, bent over the gun that
was in her lap. Her right hand had been shot away. She
was also shot in the mouth, and I learned later that there were
about 40 other bullet holes in her.
The door on
Clyde's side would not open. His head was hanging out the
window. He too had a shotgun across his lap and a pistol in
his hand. The back of his head was shot off.
Bob knew
right away that we had at last got the right ones. He knew
Clyde when the punk was stealing automobiles. He also knew
Bonnie, who used to be a waitress near the courthouse. You can
imagine how we felt. Our first thought was to tell the boss,
Sheriff Smoot Schmid so we got to the nearest town as quickly as we
could and telephoned.
"Did you
sleep good last night?" Ted asked Smoot. "No, I
didn't." he answered. "Well, you can go on home and
sleep now." Ted told him. "We just killed em
both." Smoot dropped the phone. Oakley meanwhile
went back to Arcadia for the coroner. In the back of the car
we found three machine rifles, two automatic shotguns, 10 automatic
pistols and 1500 rounds of ammunition. There were a couple of
magazines, a detective and a love story. In the seat beside
Clyde and Bonnie was a bacon and lettuce sandwich.
Before we got
back to the car, however, people just sprang up from everywhere.
Without
removing the bodies, we hitched the car onto the back of a truck and
towed it into Arcadia, where the bodies were taken to the
undertakers. That little town was filled with cars and people.
Tell Story
From
then on until we came to Shreveport late last night we had no rest
or peace. We had to tell the story a thousand times and pose
for a hundred photographers. But that's nothing to the
explaining Ted will have to do to his wife.
He hasn't
seen her for a month and 10 days.
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