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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:

On several occasions I went alone to this secret place. It was my hope to take [Clyde] and Bonnie alive; this I could do only by finding them asleep. It would have been simple to tap each one on the head, kick their weapons out of reach, and handcuff them before they knew what it was all about . . . There was always plenty of sign in the camp—stubs of Bonnie’s Camels (Clyde smoked Bull Durham), lettuce leaves for their white rabbit, pieces of sandwiches, and a button off Clyde’s coat. I found where they had made their bed.cx

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:

I was beginning to get concerned about Methvin because he was literally scared to death. He was so scared of Bonnie and Clyde, but he was also scared to be with us in capturing them. He kept saying that we did not know what we were doing . . . He said that they had no concern at all for human life. If we tried to capture them, they would just kill all of us.

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.24 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