Treherne, John. The Strange History of Bonnie and Clyde. Briarclif Manor, NY: Stein and Day, 1985 

 

 

John Treherne’s book The Strange History of Bonnie and Clyde explores the real life story of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. The book follows the two mischievous outlaws in their killing sprees in the Midwest. The chapter Final Bullets describes the death of Bonnie and Clyde in an ambush in Louisiana. This final shootout was the most famous scene in Arthur Penn’s 1967 film and is the final touch in his vision of the two criminals as heroes.
The chapter begins with Ted Hinton and Bob Alcorn’s efforts’ to catch Bonnie and Clyde. He and a number of other policemen had tracked the couple to Gibsland, Louisiana, the hometown of their then partner in crime, Henry Methvin. Hinton and the others following the group had began to think of a way they could trap the sneaky crooks, “the hunters of Bonnie and Clyde had discovered early of their quarries’ most vulnerable trait: the strong psychological dependence on their families” (195). After the lawmen learned of Methvin, they tracked his family to Gibsland and preceded to arrange an Ambush that would finally put an end to the pair’s spree. Methvin had been separated from Bonnie and Clyde, and Hinton and Alcorn suspected that they would try and rendevue with him at his fathers house in Gibsland. The officers, 4 from Texas and 3 from Louisiana, hid in bushes along the side of a road just south of Gibsland. After two days of tiresome waiting, they finally captured Irvin Methvin, Henry’s father and used his car as decoy for Bonnie and Clyde. However, the arrest of Irivin Methvin was entirely illegal, along with their seizure of his vehicle for the ambush. The officers were almost ready to quit on the ambush when Bonnie and Clyde came rolling down the road. The rest reads just like the movie, with the two being riddled by bullets while they sat in the car, with no time to fire a single shot.
Treherne’s book recounts the actual death of Bonnie and Clyde as described by the officers hunting them and gives truth to the final scene of the Penn’s film. The book, however, is from the policemen’s vantage point and creates an entirely different imagery of the final shootout. Methvin and his father had no intention or previous knowledge of a setup like C.W. Moss and his father did in the movie. The blood soaked shootout in the film, however, seems faithful to its original story, and the scene that set critics aflame was possibly the most loyal to the real account.