Public Enemies_ America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI - Bryan Burrough [194]
While the nation thrilled to stories of Dillinger’s exploits, another, far less public pursuit was under way in the Southwest. Inexorably, Frank Hamer was closing in on Bonnie and Clyde.
The two manhunts were a study in contrasts. Newspapers from Chicago to London treated Dillinger as an international phenomenon, bringing in psychologists and sociologists to render opinions on his significance, but northern journalists all but ignored Bonnie and Clyde. Though they remained front-page news in Dallas, the couple’s crimes typically rated no more than five or six paragraphs in the New York and Chicago papers. Sunday features on Dillinger in places like Pittsburgh and Buffalo carried sidebars introducing readers to Clyde or Pretty Boy Floyd; both were treated as minor-league outlaws, gas-station bandits doing battle with hick sheriffs. Bonnie was seldom mentioned at all; her fame would be largely posthumous. No one, not even their fellow public enemies, gave Bonnie and Clyde respect.
The papers reflected law-enforcement priorities. Hoover allowed an agent or two to track sightings of Bonnie and Clyde, but never treated the case seriously. While the FBI mobilized every office in pursuit of Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde merited a posse of four men.ct
Both hunters and prey stayed on the move. After murdering three law-enforcement officers in a span of five days in early April, Clyde, Bonnie, and Henry Methvin had fled north into Kansas, then circled back to Texas to see their families. They dropped Methvin in Wichita Falls and sent him ahead to arrange the rendezvous. On the train into Dallas, Methvin rode with a pair of Texas Rangers who couldn’t stop talking about Bonnie and Clyde. Downtown, he walked to the Sanger Hotel to find Clyde’s sister Nell, who worked in a shop there; it was the same hotel where Hamer stayed when in Dallas. Unable to locate Nell, Methvin went to the Parkers’ house, gathered up family members, and drove to the meeting point east of Dallas, near the town of Mount Pleasant.
That night, lying on blankets by their cars in an isolated meadow, the Barrow and Parker families made their strongest arguments yet to persuade Clyde and Bonnie to leave the country. If you won’t surrender, Mrs. Parker begged, go to Mexico. Run for the border. Clyde turned their arguments against them. If they went to Mexico, he said, they would never see their families again. “Seeing you folks is all the pleasure Bonnie and I have left in life now,” he said. “Besides each other, it’s all we’ve got to live for. Whenever we get so we can’t visit our people, we might as well die and be done with it. We’re staying close to home, and we’re coming in as long as we’re alive.”
Clyde then unveiled his plan. They had been visiting the Methvins over in Louisiana, he said. They had seen a house they could buy. Bonnie wanted to fix it up, mend the roof, maybe put up lace curtains. Once they were settled, all the families could come to Louisiana and visit them. Mrs. Parker just shook her head. Everyone knew how this would end. After a while all the serious talk grew tiresome. Clyde spent much of the evening leafing through clippings and cartoons from the Dallas papers, laughing.
From Dallas they returned north. Running low on money, Clyde drove to his favorite Iowa hunting grounds in search of a bank. On Monday, April 16, Clyde and Henry Methvin robbed the First National Bank in Stuart, Iowa, just five miles west of Dexter, the town where Buck Barrow had been killed the previous July. From Iowa Clyde drove south, picking up Joe Palmer in Joplin, where Palmer had returned after becoming separated from the others after the Easter Sunday shoot-out. From Joplin they drove south to Louisiana, where Bonnie and Clyde hoped to vacation at the Methvins’ home. Ivy Methvin, who was now talking regularly with Sheriff Henderson