May 23, 1934 | Bonnie and Clyde Are Killed in Police Ambush

By The Learning Network
Library of CongressBonnie Parker and Clyde Darrow posing in front of Darrow’s Ford V-8. Such images glamorized the couple and made their life of crime appealing to Depression-era Americans.
Historic Headlines

Learn about key events in history and their connections to today.

On May 23, 1934, the bank robbers Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were shot to death in a police ambush as they were driving a stolen Ford Deluxe along a road in Bienville Parish, La.

The May 23 New York Times wrote that a group of Texas rangers and other authorities laid a “carefully laid death trap,” and as Bonnie and Clyde approached, they “riddled them and their car with a deadly hail of bullets.” After the car crashed, “the officers, taking no chances with the gunman who had tricked them so often, poured another volley of bullets into the machine.”

The episode ended a two-year crime spree that resulted in 13 deaths. Bonnie and Clyde, who had each grown up in poor Texas families, met each other in 1930. The 21-year-old Clyde had been arrested multiple times for theft and other nonviolent crimes when he was a teenager. The 19-year-old Bonnie, married at age 15, soon separated when she fell in love with Clyde, and she remained devoted to him.

Clyde spent two years in prison and emerged in February 1932 a more violent man. He formed a small gang that committed numerous robberies of gas stations and small stores. The turning point in Clyde’s criminal life came that April — as Bonnie served a short prison sentence — when his accomplices killed a store owner during a robbery. Knowing that he would likely face murder charges, Clyde became determined to never be caught. That summer, he committed his first murder, killing a police officer.

The couple became famous after a March 1933 episode in Joplin, Mo., where they were hiding out with Clyde’s brother Buck and sister-in-law Blanche. When the police came to investigate the hideout, the four gangsters shot their way out, killing two police officers to flee the scene. Inside the building, the police found a poem written by Bonnie and numerous photos of the couple, including shots of Bonnie smoking a cigar and holding a rifle.

The photos created a glamorous image for the couple, described by The Times as the “notorious Texas ‘bad man’ and murderer, and his cigar-smoking, quick-shooting woman accomplice.” They became folk heroes of the Depression era, a time when resentment against banks and financial institutions made many criminals, including John Dillinger, George (Baby Face) Nelson and Charles Arthur (Pretty Boy) Floyd, popular with the public.

Their fame also prompted authorities to ramp up efforts to catch them as the gang continued to evade capture. Bonnie suffered a serious leg injury in a car accident and Buck died after a shootout, but Bonnie and Clyde were able to press on and survive numerous shootouts with law enforcement. In January 1934, Clyde enacted revenge against his former prison by engineering a breakout.

Five days after Easter of that year, the gang committed its last killing of an officer and took a second one hostage, releasing him after Bonnie told him to tell the public that she did not smoke cigars. Their end would come seven weeks later with the Bienville Parish ambush.

Connect to Today:

The death of Bonnie and Clyde did not put an end to their popular appeal. Over the near century since their deaths, the couple has been the subject of numerous songs, books, films and a recent Broadway musical. In a review for a film starring Faye Dunaway as Bonnie and Warren Beatty as Clyde, The Times’s movie critic Bosley Crowther wrote that the film was not the “faithful representation” it claimed to be and that it “treats the hideous depredations of that sleazy, moronic pair as though they were as full of fun and frolic as the jazz-age cutups in ‘Thoroughly Modern Millie.’”

Why do you think the popularity of Bonnie and Clyde has lasted so long? In what ways are today’s criminals “glamorized”? In your opinion, how, if at all, does a romanticized view of violent crime impact society? Why?

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gabe May 24, 2012 · 2:39 pm

Of interest: there is a wonderful new e-single called “Bonnie Parker Writes a Poem.” A history of how these two became the stuff of legends. //goo.gl/NNTTY

Ariel Hessing June 9, 2012 · 12:01 am

Running the ’32 Ford with V8 B400 and with Clyde Barrow knowing the dirt back roads in 7 states better than the police, no one could stay with these two. No one ever did. It took an ambush on an informant tip May 23, 1934 to finally take the pair down and into history.

makayla July 15, 2012 · 5:19 pm

i dont know about yall people but i love bonnie and clyde i would love to have meat them…..

Tad August 2, 2012 · 5:54 pm

These two were nothing more than ruthless murderers. They got exactly what they deserved.

Winston Cambridge, England August 9, 2012 · 7:57 pm

Quite remarkable that they were able to elude authorities as long as they did. American folk heros are often renegade free spirits I would say…extraordinary.

ken nix August 15, 2012 · 12:08 pm

they will be remembered forever,good or bad ! there’s a reason for everything , even learing about bonnie and clyde !

Ariel H August 28, 2012 · 5:07 pm

Historians of early 20th Century America often find the Public Enemy era intriguing, as it shows up in stark contrast to the back drop of the Great Depression during which it unfolds.

Kellen V September 3, 2012 · 11:37 pm

Today law enforcement would throw more resources
into catching people like this maybe. I guess they were able to stay on the run so long and be continuously active partly cause the states and feds had no $ to chase em around.

Jarvis Rodman September 3, 2012 · 11:45 pm

If they were Black no one would remember them.

Macias September 4, 2012 · 1:43 am

Bonnie & Clyde have always been my favorite outlaws of all time. That I even drove to Gibsland La. to visit the museum and the ambush site.

Alice Porter September 4, 2012 · 3:03 pm

It is a romantic story in some ways. They were desperados. They only had eachother, and they lived life and died together, but people being killed during several of their exploits tarnishes the legend.

Elizabeth Garcia (Darrow, Raper) September 5, 2012 · 3:54 am

Uhm Clyde Barrow, then it switched to Darrow, what’s his last name? If in fact it is Darrow. He’s related to me!!!! :O

Ariel H September 5, 2012 · 12:09 pm

It is actually ‘Clyde Barrow’ Elizabeth, not Darrow; however; you are probably related to the great American lawyer, ‘Clarence Darrow’, who defended ‘John T. Scopes’ in the famous ‘Scopes Monkey Trial’ of 1925, in which Darrow opposed William Jennings Bryan about teaching evolution vs. creation in public school. The case was tried in a little town in Tennessee called Dayton. It is considered to be one of the most important legal cases in American history.

Cleo Cherise September 15, 2012 · 11:08 am

They never surrendered. That is romantic.

Officer Brown September 22, 2012 · 3:37 pm

They would have no chance today. They would be caught within days or possibly even hours of their first major crime.

Ariel H September 24, 2012 · 2:03 pm

Officer Brown, no offense, but you really cannot compare individuals from another time and era to the present day and assess how they would fare. The entire world is different from the way it was in the early 1930s, with massive changes in forensics and technology having taken place in the intervening years. Barrow and Parker could be expected to be equipped very differently today than they were back then, and we simply do not know what a modern day Bonnie & Clyde would be like, or what technology and/or weaponry they would avail themselves of. In general, comparisons of performance between different historical eras are not particularly meaningful and do not lead to an insightful look at history.

Gerri Osborn September 28, 2012 · 12:39 pm

I tired of hearing lies about Bonnie and Clyde. I have read everything I can get my hands on regarding them. There was nothing in their history she was a prostitute thats riduculous how do people get off just telling lies.

Franklin Avery September 28, 2012 · 4:04 pm

By all legitimate historical accounts, Bonnie Parker was loyal to Clyde Barrow, and she never engaged in prostitution.

Shawna Duherst September 30, 2012 · 12:47 am

They gained a folk hero fan following, because everyone felt acutely at the time the failure of government to save them from the Depression, and there was a sense of hopelessness and betrayal. These two went a different way. Nothing could stop them from feeling young and alive. They knew it would be shortlived. Bonnie knew. It was in her poetry. Clyde knew it too. They lived each day as though it were a final triumph.

Svenson Johansen October 4, 2012 · 7:06 pm

They have their narrow place in history, but when they checked out, it was time for them to go.

Ashley Coles October 10, 2012 · 11:57 pm

The 1967 film was ahead of its time in movie making I think. Warren Beaty and Fay Dunway were timeless and perfectly cast.

Kesha Drummond December 7, 2012 · 1:36 am

I like boy girl crime teams. Seems like they were destined to run out of luck. It was inevitable. Had they been captured, they would have been sentenced to the electric chair, been incarcerated separately, and died alone. It’s better that it ended the way it did.

Derrick December 12, 2012 · 1:23 pm

These two were never gonna surrender.

Tommy February 26, 2013 · 12:44 pm

Bonnie & Clyde were solid lovers they say they were up with Samson & deliiah. Romeo & Juliet. Etc. They wrote the history of ups &. Downs of crime sprees

Patrick R. G. I May 31, 2013 · 10:02 am

Bonnie and Clyde were viewed as celebrities in the public eye during the early 1930s for obvious reasons. They were lovers who did illegal things for money during the greatest economic collapse in American history. Although they killed many innocent people during their bank robberies, their story is very unique and isolated in American History.