Reunite Bonnie and Clyde! Robbers’ relatives want duo buried together 90 years on
Bonnie and Clyde’s vicious crime spree — including the killings of nine law enforcement officers — ended in their own deaths but 90 years on two of their relatives are pushing for their wish to be buried together to finally come true. Getty Images
Bonnie and Clyde’s reckless love affair and bloody crime spree through America’s Depress-era southwest made them virtual folk heroes — the Romeo and Juliet of the 20th century, with a passion for killing.
Now, 90 years after their fatal ambush by lawmen in Louisiana, two of their relatives are pushing for Bonnie Parker to finally be reunited with Clyde Barrow in the vacant plot reserved for her at his side.
Bonnie, who was 23 when she died on May 23, 1934, was originally buried in Dallas’s Fishtrap Cemetery, just a mile from 25-year-old Clyde’s gravesite at Western Heights.
But 11 years later, she was moved to Crown Hill Memorial Park, to be buried next to her mother, Emma, who died in 1945.
But it was not what Bonnie and Clyde wanted.
“Bonnie and Clyde’s wish when they were on the run was to be buried together because they knew that one day they would be captured and killed together,” a source close to two of the robbers’ surviving descendants told The Post.
Bonnie Parker, who with lover Clyde Barrow captured the American public’s attention and revulsion in the depths of the Great Depression, died 90 years ago — but her wish to spend eternity with her partner in crime was ignored. Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
The Oscar-winning “Bonnie and Clyde” secured the duo’s place in the cultural canon, with Faye Dunaway playing Bonnie and Warren Beatty her lover, Clyde. Continued interest in their story includes people visiting their graves. Everett Collection / Everett Collection
“But Bonnie’s mother decided she didn’t want her daughter buried next to Clyde. It was her proclamation that, ‘Clyde had her in life, he can’t have her in death,’ and mama won out.”
The source confirmed that two relatives of the outlaws, Rhea Leen Linder, Bonnie’s niece, who turned 89 in October, and Buddy Barrow Williams, a nephew of Clyde who is in his mid-70s are waging “a battle, thus far unsuccessfully,” to bring Bonnie together again with Clyde.
Williams last year published a memoir, “Growing Up Barrow.”
Bonnie was buried first in one cemetery a mile from her lover, and then in 1945 moved to be buried beside her mother. An earlier attempt to move her from there failed because of her mother’s wish to be buried with her. ZUMAPRESS.com
Clyde was buried with his older brother, but the grave is in a cemetery which has been poorly maintained. People visit both and have left half-drunk bottles of Corona (top right) beer, a bullet and a marijuana joint in tribute. ZUMAPRESS.com
Historian Brad Dison, who has interviewed Linder and Barrow and is writing a book about the fatal ambush of Bonnie and Clyde and the sheriff who led the posse, told The Post, “Buddy and Rhea’s efforts are still ongoing.
“They have not given up, but I think they’re skeptical that it will happen anytime soon. They want to honor Bonnie’s wishes that she be buried next to Clyde.”
An official of Crown Hill cemetery, DeWayne Hughes, confirmed to The Post that Bonnie was still buried there.
Clyde was mugshotted in Dallas before his full. bloody spree began. He and Bonnie met in 1930, after this was taken, their mutual obsession turning into an interstate murder spree. Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
The couple’s posthumous glamor owed much to carefully-posed photographs of both of them which were found in an undeveloped film they had left behind in a hideout in Joplin, Missouri, which they had fled in 1933. AFP/Getty Images
Several years ago, Hughes had had a conversation with Linder, and an attorney, about having Bonnie reinterred next to Clyde at Western Heights.
But Hughes apparently would not accept Linder’s claim that she was Bonnie’s closest living relative, and was also abiding by Bonnie’s mother’s wish that her daughter not be buried next to Clyde.
And a member of a group that wants to restore Western Heights recently claimed that Crown Hill doesn’t want Bonnie moved “for fear of losing tourism her grave brings.”
Tourists in Dallas continue to visit both grave sites. A visit by local officials last spring found Clyde’s grave to be a virtual shrine, littered with empty liquor bottles, a marijuana joint, a bullet, and flowers left by tourists.
Emma Parker (left, with her daughter Billy Mace) insisted that her daughter Bonnie be kept from Clyde in death, then that she be buried with her, which caused Bonnie’s remains to be reinterred in their current plot in 1945. Bettmann Archive
Clyde’s mother, Cumie Barrow (second left) was put on trial in 1935 after his death, along with her daughters-in-law Audrey (left) and Fay (second right) and a fourth woman, Mary O’Dare. All were convicted of harboring the outlaws. ASSOCIATED PRESS
Linder was originally named Bonnie Ray Parker when she was born, five months after her notorious aunt’s death, to Bonnie’s oldest brother, Hubert “Buster” Parker, but changed her birth name to Rhea.
Rhea Linder has never argued that Bonnie and Clyde were anything other than “outlaws.”
In an interview she once gave to historian Dison she asserted, “There’s no way that they could be condoned or glorified… but they were people.
“To be buried together was their wish. They went down together. They knew what the ending was going to be.”
This 1932 photo of Bonnie and Clyde became a key part of their lore, although the photoshoot only came to light partly by chance, when they abandoned the undeveloped film in a former hideout. Bettmann Archive
Dunaway and Beatty painstakingly recreated the shoot, although with more Hollywood glamor than the original. The movie ensured the criminal have a permanent place in pop culture.
Once described as “America’s most ruthless” and “kill-crazy outlaws,” their exploits inspired a slew of books, songs, and films, with stars Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway playing the desperados in the Academy Award-winning 1967 film, “Bonnie and Clyde.”
The movie glamorized the violent pair and put them on the pop culture map forever.
Both had poor families and little education when they met in January 1930. Bonnie was 19, Clyde 20.
Bonnie had married at 15, to another criminal and met Clyde when her husband was in prison. They were quickly mutually obsessed.
J. Edgar Hoover was the director of the FBI’s predecessor, the Department of Investigation, when he put his name to this detailed “wanted” poster which warned that officers needed to use “extreme caution” if they saw the pair. Getty Images
The posse which ambushed Bonnie and Clyde after tracking them to Gibsland, Louisiana, took the warning of extreme caution to mean overwhelming force. The couple’s Ford V8 was riddled with bullets; they died instantly. Bettmann Archive
When her new lover was jailed, she smuggled a gun to him to help him escape. He was recaptured but by then they were head-over-heels in love and exchanging passionate letters.
He lovingly called her “little wife”; she was under five feet tall and weighed all of 100 pounds but they never married.
Once out on parole, Clyde and Bonnie began a wild crime spree, with their gang’s first killing of a storekeeper in April 1932 followed by a series of killings, including of nine law enforcement officers and at least four civilians, as they robbed banks, stores and filling stations.
In April 1934, wanted coast-to-coast, they and their gang killed two patrolmen in Grapevine, Texas, then days later gunned down a constable and abducted a police chief in Miami, Oklahoma.
After the ambush, with 167 bullet holes recorded as having been found in the car, the posses paraded Bonnie and Clyde’s bloodied bodies. Days later both were buried separately in Dallas, Texas. ASSOCIATED PRESS
There is one joint marker for Bonnie and Clyde: The spot were the posse ended their wild two year murder spree which claimed the lives of nine law enforcement officers on top of at least four civilians. Universal Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
In May, Frank Hamer, a former Texas Ranger, tracked them to Gibsland, Louisiana where they were ambushed before dawn by a posse who hid at the side of a highway and opened fire as the couple’s Ford V8 getaway car approached. They were killed instantly.
Despite the already widespread glorification of the pair, lawmen paraded their bodies and declared them “a pair of human rats with no more decent traits than any rat would have.”
But back in Dallas, thousands turned out for their funerals — and the separate burials which could be undone 90 years on.