Relatives of the notorious outlaw-lovers, Bonnie and Clyde, are hoping to reunite the remains of the depression-era killers 90 years after they were gunned down by lawmen in Louisiana.
Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow engaged in a bloody crime spree in America’s southwest. Yet their reckless love affair along with a passion for killing gained the duo incredible notoriety before their deaths.
“At the time they were killed in 1934, they were believed to have committed 13 murders and several robberies and burglaries. Barrow, for example, was suspected of murdering two police officers at Joplin, Missouri and kidnapping a man and a woman in rural Louisiana. He released them near Waldo, Texas,” according to FBI.gov/history.
“Bonnie and Clyde’s crime spree led to one of the most colorful and spectacular manhunts the nation had seen up to that time.”
“Before dawn on May 23, 1934, a posse composed of police officers from Louisiana and Texas, including Texas Ranger Frank Hamer, concealed themselves in bushes along the highway near Sailes, Louisiana. In the early daylight, Bonnie and Clyde appeared in an automobile and when they attempted to drive away, the officers opened fire. Bonnie and Clyde were killed instantly,” the FBI wrote.
Now, 90 years after the fatal ambush, two of their relatives are pushing for Bonnie Parker to be reunited with Clyde Barrow in the vacant plot reserved for her at his side, the New York Post reported.
Bonnie, who was 23 when she died in 1934, was originally buried in Dallas’s Fishtrap Cemetery, just a mile from 25-year-old Clyde’s gravesite at Western Heights.
However, 11 years later, she was moved to Crown Hill Memorial Park, to be buried next to her mother, Emma, who passed away in 1945.
DeWayne Hughes, an official at Crown Hill, confirmed that Bonnie remains buried at the site. Yet two surviving relatives say that is not what Bonnie and Clyde desired.
“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 surviving descendants told the New York Post.
“But Bonnie’s mother decided she didn’t want her daughter buried next to Clyde. It was her proclamation that, ‘Clyde had her in life, he can’t have her in death,’ and mama won out.”
The source confirmed with The Post that two relatives of the outlaws, Rhea Leen Linder, Bonnie’s niece, who turned 89 in October, and Buddy Barrow Williams, a nephew of Clyde who is in his mid-70s, are fighting “a battle, thus far unsuccessfully,” to bring the remains of the legendary outlaws together.
Brad Dison, a historian who has interviewed Linder and Barrow and is writing a book about the fatal ambush of Bonnie and Clyde and the sheriff who led the posse, told the news outlet, “Buddy and Rhea’s efforts are still ongoing. They have not given up, but I think they’re skeptical that it will happen anytime soon. They want to honor Bonnie’s wishes that she be buried next to Clyde.”
