Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde

[onager]

...by Jeff Guinn

Great read! I just finished it. Contrary to all the mythologizing, especially a certain Warren Beatty movie, Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker had to be two of the most incompetent and unglamourous criminals who ever lived.

And contrary to all the stories about them being redneck Robin Hoods who "helped the common people," the vast majority of their robberies were Mom-and-Pop gas stations and grocery stores.

This was in the depths of the Great Depression, but as Jeff Guinn meticulously documents, the Barrows and Parkers were so dirt-poor that even the Depression couldn't have made their situations much worse.

Guinn had access to two previously unpublished manuscripts written by Bonnie Parker's mother and sister, and he really unsnarls a lot of the mystery, mythology and confusion about Bonnie & Clyde's brief career.

e.g., years ago I read Ted Hinton's Ambush. Hinton was a member of the posse who killed Barrow and Parker on a Louisiana backroad in May 1934. Hinton insisted that the posse had to live in the bush for two days, waiting for the pair to drive into their gunsights. Guinn proves that the posse actually spent only part of one night at the site. And in talking to people who knew Ted Hinton, the author learns that Hinton never told his big story the same way twice.

For another example, most sources (like Wikipedia) say Bonnie suffered third-degree burns when their car crashed and caught on fire. The truth may be worse. She was burned by battery acid in the accident, which literally ate away her skin until her leg-bone was exposed. She spent nearly a year crippled from the burns, to the point where Clyde had to carry her most of the time.

In the book's last chapters, Guinn covers the mythologizing (and marketing) of Bonnie and Clyde, and brings the story right up to date by tracing their various family members and other connections into the twenty-first century.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_b?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=go+down+together+guinn

Real Bonnie and Clyde completists will want a book mentioned favorably in Guinn's sources: On the Trail of Bonnie and Clyde Then and Now by Winston G. Ramsey.

In this 2003 publication, British author Ramsey exhaustively traces every back road, motel, and bank visited by Bonnie and Clyde. This is an absolutely awesome piece of work, including many rare photos.

For those not familiar with the British company After The Battle Publishing and their "Then and Now" series: "Then and Now" means they work from old photographs, then find the same location today and photograph it. The company usually does this with WWII battle sites such as Normandy and the London Blitz. All their books are lavish, coffee-table-sized tomes and, along with hundreds of photos, are crammed full of maps and text.

In this book, Ramsey found a modernized bank once robbed by the Barrow Gang. The back door thru which they escaped is still in place.

Ramsey has one detailed and fascinating account of how Clyde Barrow acquired his favorite weapon, the military-issued Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR) (which seriously outgunned most police departments of the era).

Barrow stole his BARs from National Guard armories, which had incredibly lax security back in the 1930's. Ramsey tracks down a former Texas National Guard armory that was located in the town's movie theater, with only a simple padlock on the front door. From that one armory the Barrows acquired 4 BARs, 12 Colt .45 military-issue automatic pistols, and thousands of rounds of ammunition.

I ordered this book direct from After The Battle Publishing in the UK, but Amazon can get it as an import:

http://www.amazon.com/Trail-Bonnie-Clyde-Then-Now/dp/1870067517/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242425500&sr=1-1

[raccoon]

1. Thanks for the heads up. Isn't it amazing how two people like this can

become transformed into folk heroes by the popular imagination? And of course they aren't the only ones.

I recently made up my mind that Robin Hood was pure fiction. There undoubtedly were outlaws back then, but nothing like as romantic as the Robin Hood legend has come to be.

[mitchum]

2. Finally got a copy this weekend...

it is incredibly well done.
I have always known that the reality of the two was not much like their depiction, but the exhaustively researched book fills in so many missing areas.
I first heard about Bonnie and Clyde from my grandfather a couple of years before the Arthur Penn movie came out. When he told me about them, they were still cracker folk heroes.

However, all that being said, the movie is a masterpiece that kicked off the golden age of American cinema.

[murielm99]

3. I am reading this book right now.

It is very, very good.