Public Enemies (59 page)

As Sheriff Jordan remembered the meeting:

Hamer carried Methvin’s proposal to Lee Simmons in Dallas. Simmons took it to the Texas governor’s mansion, where Ma Ferguson approved it in principle. She wrote a letter explicitly stating that if Henry Methvin would help apprehend Bonnie and Clyde, he would be pardoned of all crimes in Texas. Simmons gave the letter to Hamer.

This process took a week or more, during which Sheriff Jordan relayed updates to Ivy Methvin. “[A]ll of our meetings were held late at night on country roads back in the woods,” Jordan recalled. “When I got back to Methvin, I told him we had a deal.” Methvin, in turn, gave Jordan worrisome news. Since seeing him last, Bonnie and Clyde had again visited the Methvin home, and it was then Methvin had persuaded the couple to use the John Cole house.

In his own retelling, Frank Hamer makes no mention of Sheriff Jordan or Ivy Methvin. Hamer told the Texas Ranger historian Walter Prescott Webb that he managed to locate Bonnie and Clyde’s hideout in Bienville Parish. He gives no details, but he can only be referring to the John Cole house. As Hamer recalled:

Hamer and Jordan debated whether to storm the John Cole house the next time Bonnie and Clyde returned to Bienville Parish. According to Jordan, Ivy Methvin argued against doing so, saying they would only succeed in getting lawmen killed. As Henderson recalled:

Sheriff Jordan listened as Methvin suggested places for an ambush. Methvin said Clyde kept a mailbox at Shreveport. They had their laundry done in Bossier City. There was only a single dirt road between the John Cole house and the nearest town, Gibsland, Methvin said. Maybe they could surprise them along the road. After each of their meetings, Jordan telephoned Hamer, who was chasing leads across Texas.

Weeks dragged by with no sign of Clyde or Bonnie. By mid-May, with no confirmed sighting of the couple for over a month, Hamer decided to camp out in Shreveport and wait for their return to Bienville Parish. He wanted the FBI involved. On May 11 he stopped at the Dallas office and asked the SAC, Frank Blake, to give him Charles Winstead.
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Blake declined. Hamer also had no luck trying to lure the New Orleans agent, Lester Kendale, to Shreveport.

And so, late on Saturday night, May 19, Hamer and his three Texans checked into Shreveport’s Inn Hotel alone, ready to wait for news of Bonnie and Clyde’s return. Sunday morning, after a breakfast of ham, eggs, and grits, they spread out in the rooms and played poker. Sheriff Jordan came by with his deputy, Prentiss Oakley, and they went over plans for the ambush should the outlaws appear.

Nothing about Hamer’s trap is as confusing as accounts of those next two days. Years later, the participants could not even agree whether the ambush party itself lay in wait for one day or two. A close reading of court documents, however, makes clear that the final chapter of Bonnie and Clyde’s two-year crime spree began on Monday night, May 21, two days after Hamer’s posse arrived in Shreveport.

That evening Bonnie, Clyde, and Henry Methvin arrived back in Bienville Parish. Before bedding down at the John Cole house, Methvin asked to see his parents. Clyde pulled up to the Methvin shack after nightfall. He and Bonnie stayed in the car, while Henry talked in low tones with his mother. Henry asked if they had made arrangements with the sheriff. His mother said they had. Henry said Clyde would probably head into Shreveport the next morning to get sandwiches. He would make his move then. Henry told her to alert the sheriff and make sure the ambush was arranged. Ava Methvin said they would try.
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The next morning, Tuesday, May 22, Clyde drove them into Shreveport. He parked the tan Ford in front of the Majestic Café. Methvin ran in for sandwiches and soft drinks, sitting at the counter while a waitress prepared the order to go. As he waited, Clyde noticed a police car coming toward them. Leaving Methvin behind, Clyde jammed his foot onto the accelerator, the sound of his squealing tires causing heads to turn. Methvin realized he had been abandoned. It was the break he had been looking for. Slowly he eased out of the café, leaving the sandwich order unfilled. Looking both ways, careful to make sure Clyde was really gone, he walked out onto the sidewalk and made his escape. On the edge of town he caught a ride and by mid-afternoon was safely at his brother’s home back in Bienville Parish.
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Henry Methvin had held up his end of the bargain, but his parents were tardy holding up theirs. Not wanting to be seen with Sheriff Jordan, Ivy Methvin waited till that morning to find his intermediary, John Joyner, and send him to Arcadia with the news that Bonnie and Clyde had returned. In his testimony at Henry Methvin’s 1936 trial, Joyner said he was unable to locate Sheriff Jordan till after nightfall that Tuesday, May 22. Meantime, Bonnie and Clyde swung by the Methvin shack in search of Henry, startling the Methvins. When they left, the elder Methvin went in search of Jordan, too.

By the time Sheriff Jordan telephoned Frank Hamer in Shreveport, Hamer’s posse already knew Bonnie and Clyde had returned. According to Ted Hinton, he had telephoned the Shreveport police chief, thinking he would introduce the chief to Hamer as a courtesy. The chief surprised Hinton by telling him two of his officers believed they had seen Clyde outside the Majestic Café that morning.
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When the chief mentioned that a young man had fled the café shortly after, leaving his order behind, Hinton glanced at Bob Alcorn. “Henry Methvin,” Alcorn said.

They drove to the Majestic, found the waitress who had taken Methvin’s order, and spread several photographs before her. “See anybody in there who looks like the man who wouldn’t wait for his sandwiches?” Hinton asked. The waitress pointed at a photo of Methvin.

“That’s him,” she said. “Same eyes, same pimply face. There’s no mistake.”
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Not till that night did Sheriff Jordan, alerted by John Joyner, reach Hamer. It was time to set the ambush. They agreed to meet in Gibsland. Before leaving, Hamer dialed Lee Simmons in Austin and left a cryptic message: “The old hen is about ready to hatch. I think the chickens will come off tomorrow.”

According to Sheriff Jordan, the ambush party rendezvoused in Gibsland a little after midnight. There were seven of them: Jordan and his deputy, Prentiss Oakley, Hamer and Manny Gault, Bob Alcorn and Ted Hinton, and Ivy Methvin. They grabbed sandwiches, checked their guns, and drove down darkened dirt roads to the spot Jordan and Hamer had chosen. It was nothing more than a brush-covered embankment on the roadside, wreathed by mossy oaks and evergreens. Its only advantage was the view it gave of the road between Gibsland and the John Cole house. Standing back in the brush, they could see a good half mile in either direction. Hamer was satisfied. They pulled the cars back into the trees. In the darkness they constructed an impromptu blind of sticks and stray bushes and sat back to wait. If Clyde and Bonnie were coming to or from the John Cole house, they had to pass this point.

The hours passed slowly. “One of the longest nights I ever spent,” Jordan recalled. The men took turns dozing in the cars, two at a time. Those awake slapped at chiggers and mosquitoes. Ivy Methvin drove home and reappeared in his rattletrap truck just before dawn. He begged them to call the whole thing off. “He said we would all be killed,” Jordan recalled. “It was warm and the mosquitoes like to eaten us alive. Besides being concerned about the next morning, we had to listen to Methvin who was constantly talking about the fact that we were all about to be killed. Finally I told him [to] shut up.”
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Methvin’s irritating pleas only highlighted the debate over what to do if Bonnie and Clyde appeared. Jordan insisted they give the pair a chance to surrender. Hamer wouldn’t hear it. “Hamer and I had argued about that for days,” Jordan recalled twenty-five years later. “I wanted to step out in the road and demand their surrender, but Hamer said that if I did, I was a dead man.” Jordan didn’t care. As dawn broke, he was still determined to give the outlaws one last chance.

The sun rose. Hamer had been dwelling on how they could bring Clyde to a stop; they couldn’t easily shoot him if he whizzed by at fifty miles an hour. He told Methvin to park his truck in the road. They took off the left-front tire and placed the truck on a jack. If Clyde did drive by, Hamer wagered, he would stop to help out.

Seven o’clock came, then eight. A logging truck and a car or two passed. “After each car passed, Methvin would run over to us and beg us to call the whole thing off,” Jordan remembered. “Each time, I would patiently listen to him and then firmly send him back to his place on the road beside his truck. At one point I told him that if he did not get back to his truck and do what he was told to do, Bonnie and Clyde would not get the chance to kill him because I would.”

By nine they were debating whether to pack it in. Someone said give it another half hour. For a few minutes they went back to slapping mosquitoes and flicking at tics. Then, at 9:15, came the high-pitched whine of a car. It was approaching from the east at high speed. Everyone peered down the road. They saw it as it crested a rise: a tan Ford. Each of the men squinted at the car as it approached down the incline. “This is him,” Hinton whispered. “This is it. It’s Clyde.”

Bob Alcorn waited another moment till he could make out the driver’s face.

“It’s him, boys,” he said.

 

 

No one knows where Bonnie and Clyde spent their last night together. It almost certainly wasn’t the John Cole house, given their approach that morning from Gibsland. At 8:00 A.M. Clyde pulled up in front of Canfield’s Café, where he and Bonnie ate a light breakfast of donuts and coffee. Bonnie wore the same red dress she had been seen wearing off and on for days, Clyde a blue silk suit and a tie. They ordered sandwiches to go, and as they returned to the car to drive to the John Cole house, Bonnie began to eat hers. Clyde kicked off his shoes and placed his sunglasses on the dashboard.
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Eight miles south of Gibsland, they crested a rise and spotted Ivy Methvin standing beside his truck, which was jacked up in the road. Bonnie put her sandwich down, and placed it on the magazine spread across her lap. Beneath the magazine was a Colt .45. Clyde took his foot off the accelerator and let the Ford coast to a stop beside Methvin’s truck. Clyde turned his head to the right, toward Methvin and his truck, away from the six guns that were aimed directly at his head.

“Hey,” Clyde said to Methvin.

Just then Methvin doubled over as if in pain and stepped away. Twenty feet to Clyde’s left, hidden in the brush, Sheriff Jordan was just about to put down his gun and yell something—halt, surrender—he wasn’t sure what. Just then Clyde took his foot off the brake for a moment, and the Ford began to ease forward.

The moment the car moved, Jordan’s deputy, Prentiss Oakley, fired. In a split second each of the five other posse members fired. Bonnie screamed “like a panther,” Jordan remembered. The first bullets tore into Clyde’s head and shoulders. His foot left the brake and the car began to roll forward. But the shooting didn’t stop. On and on it went, a never-ending barrage, bullet after bullet, more than 150 in all, tearing into the car and their bodies as the Ford rolled forward. The car came to a stop against the embankment thirty yards down the road.

And then, silence. Hinton ran up to the driver’s-side door. Inside was a scene he would never forget—“like a slaughterhouse,” he would recall. Clyde lay back against the seat, his hair matted in blood. Hinton tried to open the door but there was no room; the car was wedged against the embankment. He scrambled over the hood and opened the passenger’s-side door. Bonnie fell out into his arms. She seemed so tiny, still soft and warm. He caught a whiff of her perfume. Her right hand had been shot off. She was covered with blood. He laid her back on the front seat and grabbed a pistol from beside Clyde. It was cold to his touch.
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Neither Clyde nor Bonnie had gotten off a shot.

Ivy Methvin ran up. There was a blanket in the backseat. Something was under it. “You’ve killed my boy!” Methvin snapped. Sheriff Jordan leaned into the backseat and pulled back the blanket. Beneath it was a row of guns. “We haven’t killed your boy, Mr. Methvin,” he said.

The county coroner was called. By the time he arrived, word had spread of the deaths, and a long line of dusty cars and logging trucks thronged the gravel road as dozens of the curious ogled the death car and Bonnie’s and Clyde’s bullet-riddled bodies. As Ted Hinton passed through the crowd, filming the scene with a movie camera he had brought, Sheriff Jordan had to restrain a man who produced a pair of scissors and was attempting to cut off one of Clyde’s ears. He was unable to stop someone else from shearing off locks of Bonnie’s hair.