Today is the anniversary of the ambush that killed Bonnie and Clyde on Mary 23 1934, a little off of what is now Interstate 20, an hour east of Shreveport. They lived their lives expecting to die but kept escaping because Clyde was more experienced at shooting people than the small town cops they ran into. It's hard to believe today, 75 years later, that this little group of folks could move around a five state area for years, committing crimes and living in public places, and never get caught. Described by culturists as the first celebrity criminals, they were also pre-cursors of today's self-referential and -reverential twenty-somethings who used the media to burnish their mystique, took pictures of themselves posed "in character," and turned themselves into american idols that the public followed, supported, and destroyed.
In order to finish them off, the law had to take unprecedented and illegal tactics, including shooting them to pieces with no warning when Bonnie had no warrants for violent crime outstanding. Clyde, however, had shot to death at least nine policeman, and a few others. (See
Wikipedia).
That day's story in the New York Times describes Clyde Barrow's body as "a smear of red, wet rags."
Movie of Death Scene
Is it better to burn out than to fade away? At least if you do so before everybody gets tired of you...
Movie of Death Scene
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