Bonnie Parker
Ah, the infamous and romanticised couple Bonnie and Clyde. A pair of criminals that travelled across the United States with a wider gang robbing and killing people during the era of the Great Depression. Together they are believed to have killed a minimum of nine police officers, as well as a handful of civilians.
Born in Texas 1910, Bonnie Parker was the second of three children. In 1926, six days before her sixteenth birthday, she dropped out of school and married Roy Thornton. The marriage, however, was short-lived. Though they never divorced, she never saw him again after January 1929. Bonnie was wearing the wedding ring he gave her when she died. After her marriage broke down, Bonnie moved in with her mother and worked as a waitress in Texas.
Bonnie ‘worked’ alongside Clyde Barrow for two years. During this time, it is believed she was present at more than one hundred felony activities. Though there is much speculation over how the pair met, the most credible story suggests the pair met in January, 1930 at one of Clyde’s friends’ homes. It is alleged they fell deeply in love almost immediately, and Bonnie only joined Clyde on his crime spree because she was in love. This narrative, however, undermines any autonomy Bonnie had. She was most likely not as innocent as this tale suggests.
On May 23rd, 1934, the couple were ambushed and killed by six law officers on a rural road in Louisiana. Tracking the couple since February that year, the police finally fired at 9:15 am after finding them speeding in a stolen Ford V8. Researchers have argued over how many times they were both shot, but figures generally range from seventeen to fifty times each. After news of their death spread, crowds gathered at the site of their killing and they scrambled to get pieces of the pair. Bloody locks were cut from Bonnie’s head, and pieces of her dress were torn and sold as souvenirs. In the stolen ford, officers found over a dozen guns and several thousand rounds of ammunition, but evidently kids, crime does not pay.