Bonnie Parker

Bonnie Elizabeth Parker (October 1, 1910 – May 23, 1934) and Clyde Chestnut Barrow a.k.a. Clyde Champion Barrow (March 24, 1909 – May 23, 1934) were American criminals who traveled the central United States with their gang during the Great Depression, robbing people and killing when cornered or confronted. Their exploits captured the attention of the American public during the Public Enemy Era, between 1931 and 1935. Though known today for their dozen-or-so bank robberies, the duo most often preferred to rob small stores or rural gas stations. The gang is believed to have killed at least nine police officers and several civilians. The couple was eventually ambushed and killed by law officers near Sailes, Bienville Parish, Louisiana. Their reputation was revived and cemented in American pop folklore by Arthur Penns 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde.Even during their lifetimes, their depiction in the press was at considerable odds with the hardscrabble reality of their life on the road, especially for Bonnie Parker. While she was present at a hundred or more felonies during the two years she was Barrows companion, she was not the cigar-smoking, machine gun-wielding killer depicted in the newspapers, newsreels, and pulp detective magazines of the day. Gang member W. D. Jones later testified he could not recall ever having seen her shoot at a law officer, and the cigar myth grew out of a playful snapshot police found at an abandoned hideout. It was released to the press and published nationwide. While Parker did chain smoke Camel cigarettes, she never smoked cigars.According to historian Jeff Guinn, the hideout photos led to Parkers glamorization and the creation of legends about the gang. He writes:John Dillinger had matinee-idol good looks and Pretty Boy Floyd had the best possible nickname, but the Joplin photos introduced new criminal superstars with the most titillating trademark of all—illicit sex. Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker were wild and young, and undoubtedly slept together.==Bonnie Parker== Bonnie Elizabeth Parker was born in Rowena, Texas (south of Abilene and southwest of Dallas), the second of three children. Her father, Charles Robert Parker (1884 – 1914), was a bricklayer who died when Bonnie was four. Her mother, Emma (Krause) Parker (1885 – 1944) moved her family to her parents home in Cement City, an industrial suburb now known as West Dallas, where she worked as a seamstress. As an adult, Bonnie found expression writing poems such as The Story of Suicide Sal and The Trails End (known since as The Story of Bonnie and Clyde).In her second year in high school, Parker met Roy Thornton. They dropped out of school and were married on September 25, 1926, six days before her 16th birthday. Their marriage, marked by his frequent absences and brushes with the law, was short-lived. After January 1929, their paths never crossed again. However, they never divorced, and Bonnie was wearing Thorntons wedding ring when she died. Thornton was still in prison when he heard of her death. He commented, Im glad they went out like they did. Its much better than being caught.In 1929, after the breakdown of her marriage, Parker lived with her mother and worked as a waitress in Dallas. One of her regular customers in the café was postal worker Ted Hinton, who would join the Dallas Sheriffs Department in 1932. As a posse member in 1934, he would participate in her ambush. In the diary she kept briefly early in 1929, Parker wrote of her loneliness, her impatience with life in provincial Dallas, and her love of talking pictures.

Bio from Wikipedia - See more on en.wikipedia.org Text under CC-BY-SA license