Bonnie & Clyde Ambush Museum (and related sites)
On a lonely stretch of Highway 154 in rural Louisiana is a roadside marker designating the spot where crime duo Bonnie and Clyde met their end. A few miles away in Gibsland, their fascinating story is on full display at the Bonnie & Clyde Ambush Museum. Teeming with photographs, news articles, artifacts from the couple’s life on the run, ammunition, license plates, mannequins, personal affects, and just about every kind of memento produced for consumers, it is sure to whet the appetite for every person who has ever been even moderately intrigued by this true crime story.
Bonnie Parker was born in Rowena, Texas, in 1910. She married a man who went to prison in 1929. She remained married but severed contact with him. In January 1930 she met Clyde Barrow, himself Texas-born and a year-and-a-half her senior. Barrow was already a career criminal at that point, and after being imprisoned for a car theft a few months later, Bonnie visited him faithfully and even smuggled guns to help him escape. Though police recaptured him, he was released on parole in February 1932 and the pair reunited.
Bonnie began taking part in crimes pulled off by Clyde and an assortment of accomplices. A series of bank and grocery store robberies, car thefts, murder of law enforcement and civilians, and other activity had police on their trail, but it was early 1934 when they attracted more attention than ever. The gang orchestrated a jailbreak at Eastham Prison Farm, where Clyde had been incarcerated and suffered assaults by the staff and as a result sought revenge on the Texas Department of Corrections.
Texas Ranger Captain Frank Hamer accepted the assignment of hunting down the Barrow Gang. He and his posse successfully traced their movements and worked with Henry Methvin, one of the jailbreak escapees, to set up an ambush.
On the morning of May 23rd, 1934, the posse fired multiple rounds into the Ford V8 driven by Barrow as it slowed down at the sight of Methvin’s truck that had been purposely stalled along the side of the road. Hamer drove into Gibsland and called authorities from a payphone at a gas station to tell the news: Bonnie and Clyde were dead.
The event drew enormous attention from the public, which to that point had either romanticized or demonized the couple. Soon after the announcement, people surrounded the so-called “Death Car,” grabbing souvenirs in the form of clothing, shell casings, and items strewn about the blood-filled automobile. The Death Car would go on tour for many years, stopping at fairs, amusement parks, and other venues where visitors could sit inside of it for a nominal fee. The car is currently located at a casino in Primm, Nevada. Carver has a replica version of the vehicle on display, complete with bloody mannequins inside.
One of the many to become fascinated by the Bonnie and Clyde story was the man who runs the museum, Perry Carver. As a boy in Georgia, he saw the Death Car up close and personal thanks to a family connection to the car’s owner at the time. Mystified, he read about Bonnie and Clyde in a magazine and became hooked for life.
In 2009, the late L.J. “Boots” Hinton, the son of one of Hamer’s posse members, opened the Ambush Museum in a building formerly occupied by Ma Canfield’s, a restaurant where Bonnie and Clyde picked up their last meal. In 2015, Hinton passed curatorship of the museum to Carver, with whom he was friends due to their shared passion for the Bonnie and Clyde story. Since then, Carver has added his own memorabilia and is ready to share his knowledge and enthusiasm for the subject matter.
On my visit, we get into discussion, and he tells me about his life as a former rock star. That life was somewhere between the fateful encounter with the Death Car and his life now curating the museum. Carver, a tall man with glasses, wearing everyday clothes and sporting tattoos on both arms, has a passion for his chosen subject matter that fuels chatter with visitors.
Thanks to years of research on the couple and interactions with people close to their story, he understands the historical and cultural context of Bonnie and Clyde’s short and turbulent life which grasped the public’s imagination.
The strangeness of their influence in popular culture is evident in, for example, a record titled “Sing Along with Bonnie & Clyde.” The cover shows the couple at center, Clyde holding a gun and Bonnie a cigar. To their right is a picture of them speeding away after a bank robbery, shooting at police, and to the left a dance party is in full swing.
After my visit to the museum, I follow Carver’s directions to the site of their demise. A historical marker sits alongside the long, empty two-lane highway. It’s a small but powerful moment after the visit to the museum. This top picture is taken besides the monuments, looking towards the direction of Gibsland.
In town, the gas station where Hamer phoned in the result of the ambush also contains a historical marker.
If you have a vested interest in Bonnie and Clyde, this group of sites make for a bucket list trip to Gibsland. I was familiar with their story and impressed by the 1967 film starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, and the Netflix film The Highwaymen. I found a visit to the Bonnie and Clyde Ambush Museum, and stops at the accompanying historical sites, spellbinding. No matter where you fall on the scale, it is a worthy detour.
Visited: October l6, 2017
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