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It was Bonnie and Clyde.

Platte City, Missouri Tuesday, July 18

That night around ten o’clock the Barrow Gang cruised into a tourist court just north of Kansas City, outside the town of Platte City, Missouri. They had fled Fort Smith three weeks earlier after Buck and W.D. got into a wild shoot-out following a grocery store robbery in Fayetteville, Arkansas. After a vain attempt to find Pretty Boy Floyd—they did manage to find his brother Bradley—they had spent much of the time holed up in a motel at Great Bend, Kansas. Their only crime of note had been a raid on a National Guard armory at Enid, Oklahoma, where they made off with five Browning automatic rifles, a half-dozen Colt .45 automatics, and ten thousand bullets. There were so many guns in the backseat, Clyde joked, it was hard to find a place to sit.

By most accounts, the gang had left Great Bend the day before, July 17, camping that night in a field in southern Kansas. On Tuesday morning a farmer found bloody bandages at their abandoned campground and phoned the Kansas State Police. Knowing of Bonnie’s injuries, the police broadcast a multistate alert, urging sheriffs to be on the watch for unusual purchases of medical supplies. That night, after robbing three filling stations at Fort Dodge, Clyde passed the outskirts of Kansas City and arrived at a highway junction in Platte City. The two red-brick cabins the gang checked into stood alone behind a bar, the Red Crown Tavern. Blanche and Buck went in for lunch the next day but left when they spotted the local sheriff, a man named Holt Coffey. That afternoon Blanche drove into town and bought hypodermic syringes and atropine sulfate from a druggist. The druggist thought her purchase odd and telephoned Sheriff Coffey, who remembered the police alert.

The druggist told Sheriff Coffey that Blanche had mentioned that she was staying at the Red Crown tourist court, and with a quick call Sheriff Coffey confirmed that two couples were staying there. Alerted by state-police circulars, he was convinced he was dealing with the Barrow Gang. The sheriff contacted the Missouri Highway Patrol, which sent reinforcements from Kansas City, including an armored car. They decided to strike that night: By evening Sheriff Coffey had gathered thirteen deputies and troopers for the raid. Convening at the Red Crown at midnight, the group had Thompson submachine guns, metal shields, tear gas, and riot guns.

Around one A.M. they moved in, taking positions in front of the two darkened cabins, which were linked by a small garage. Two state troopers climbed to the top of the tavern and trained their guns on the cabin doors. The armored car quietly coasted to a stop in front of the cabins themselves, blocking any exit from the garage. When the car was in position, Sheriff Coffey crept toward the cabin on the left, the one occupied by Buck and Blanche. He banged on the door.

“Yes?” Blanche answered. She was washing some of Bonnie’s things in a sink. “Who is it?”

“I need to talk to the boys,” Sheriff Coffey answered.

“Just a minute,” Blanche said. “Let us get dressed.”

Clyde was lying in bed beside Bonnie in the adjoining cabin when he heard the exchange. He rose and grabbed his Browning. “That’s the law,” he whispered to W.D. “Get the car started.”

W.D. slipped into the garage as Clyde stepped to the front door. Opening it a few inches, he saw the armored car blocking their escape. He ran to join W.D. in the garage and jumped up on the rear fender of their Ford, peeking through a high window in the door. There, barely ten feet away, standing on the front porch of the leftmost cabin, stood Sheriff Coffey. Clyde raised his Browning and fired through the window. A bullet grazed the sheriff’s neck and he fell, then gathered himself and ran for the tavern.

All the officers opened fire, their bullets chewing up the cabins’ brick facades and shattering windows. Clyde dashed back through his cabin like a madman, firing the Browning through the windows. Everywhere officers scattered; inside the tavern,