Bonnie and Clyde’s Final Ride

HISTORY This Week

The HISTORY® Channel

History, Education, Society & Culture

4.6 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 22 May 2023

⏱️ 33 minutes

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Summary

May 23, 1934. On a muggy Louisiana morning, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow speed toward the Texas border. They’ve been on the run for over a year—wanted for robbery and murder—and the lurid news accounts of their exploits have made them famous. But today, Bonnie and Clyde’s legendary crime spree comes to an end … in a hail of bullets. Why did some come to view these Depression Era outlaws as agents of chaos the country needed? And what was the real motivation behind their crimes?

Special thanks to our guest, John Neal Phillips, author of Running With Bonnie and Clyde: The Ten Fast Years of Ralph Fults.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The History Channel, Original Podcast.
0:03.3	The following contains accounts of sexual abuse and violence that may be disturbing to some.
0:08.0	Listener discretion is advised.
0:11.7	History this week, May 23rd, 1934.
0:20.8	I'm Sally Helm.
0:24.8	915 on a hot muggy morning in Louisiana.
0:29.3	Clyde Barrow is speeding down the road, heading toward the Texas state line.
0:35.4	Beside him in the car is his girlfriend, Bonnie Parker.
0:40.0	These two are wanted for dozens of properties and more than a dozen murders.
0:47.4	And Americans have been breathlessly following the manhunt, the search for Bonnie and Clyde.
0:54.8	In the most famous movie version of their story, which came out in 1967,
1:01.6	Bonnie reaches into the backseat and pulls a pair out of a cardboard box.
1:06.9	She takes a bite and then holds it out so that Clyde can take a bite too.
1:12.0	It's an intimate moment, a sign of their love which was famously unbreakable.
1:18.5	In real life, it wasn't a pair.
1:21.1	Bonnie was eating a sandwich, witnesses disagree on whether it was fried baloney or hamburger or
1:28.5	a BLT. But the next part of the story, the movie gets pretty much right.
1:35.2	Bonnie and Clyde see a broken down truck on the side of the road and realize that it belongs to
1:40.4	a friend of theirs who seems to need some help. So they slow down, which is exactly what the
1:48.0	lawmen waiting in the bushes had planned. And then so many bullets.
2:01.2	Clyde is killed instantly, shot in the head. Bonnie has time to scream and then she's killed too.
2:09.6	She's still holding her sandwich wrapped up in a paper napkin.
	...

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