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Consider this quote from Abe Lincoln
"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Editors note: This was reproduced with the permission of the Dexter Museum and the wording is exactly the same as the copy owned by the Museum. There have been no corrections or editing of any type.
The State Of Texas
DATE: November 18, 1933
County Of Dallas
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:
After I have been duly warned by WINTER R. KING, ASSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEY that I do not have to make any statement at all, and that any statement I make may be used in evidence against me on the trial for the offense concerning which this statement is heroin made, I wish to make the following voluntary statement to the aforesaid person:
My name is W. D. JONES:
I am 17 years old. I was born May 12th, 1916, in East Texas, but I do not know the town or county, I have known Clyde Barrow about 11 years, and have known Bonnie Parker, but have only seen her two or three times before I went with them to Tomply Texas.
About two days before Christmas, 1932, the exact day I cannot recall, L. C. Barrow, brother of Clyde Barrow, who had been a friend of mine for some time, and myself went riding with Maudine Brennan and another girl, here in Dallas. We started riding around with them about dark that evening. We had a half gallon of whiskey with us and were drinking this freely. We took the girls home about 8:30 in the evening. We were in L. C. Barrow's Ford Coupe, Model A.
After we took the girls home we went to some little stand on the right hand side of Eagle Ford Road, near the gravel pit-- I do not know the name of the stand. I stayed in the car and L. C. was on the ground by the side of the car talking with some boys. I don't know who any of them were as I was pretty drunk by this time.
Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker passed by where we were. They were driving a Ford V8 Coupe, with two wheels on running board, khaki top. L.C. saw them and suggested that we follow them, which we did. They drove on down a side road to a gravel pit and we drove up behind them and parked there. We talked to them there and Clyde suggested to me that I go with them “down the road, as he put it, be did not say where I agreed to go and I got in the car we started South of Dallas. We drove on to a point about three miles this side of Temple, Texas where we turned off the main road and parked on a side road, and remained in the car. I went to sleep. We woke up about eight o'clock and went to a tourist camp out on the highway a short ways from Temple. It was on the main highway going south out of Temple, and on beyond the Santa Fe Hospital. We got there about 8 o'clock and rented a cabin. We stayed in this cabin all that day and all that night without leaving the cabin to go anywhere.
Early the next morning, about eight o'clock, we left the Tourist camp and went into Temple. We went to a grocery store, I don't know the name of the store, but it was a big store right in the edge of Temple, on the side of town nearest the tourist camp we had been staying at. While we were in the Tourist Camp, Clyde Barrow handed me an old 45 calibre single-action pistol and told me that “we” were going to hold up the store. I didn't went to do it, but he insisted that I go in with him. He had a 45 calibre pistol, but I do not remember just what kind it was.
We parked around the corner from the store and Clyde Barrow and I got out and went into the store. Bonnie Parker stayed in the car. Clyde Barrow also had a sixteen-gauge automatic shotgun with a sawed off barrel strapped to his body and concealed under his overcoat when we went in there. When we got into the store, Clyde made some small purchases, and I believe we bought some eggs and some bread, and I was worried and scared about this hold-up, and I shook my head at him to indicate I would not take part in it, and I turned and started out of the store. He followed me and we got back in the car and started driving and Clyde raised hell with me because I hadn't helped him hold up the store. He called me a coward, and Bonnie laughed at me because I was afraid, and I am confident that Clyde was so mad that I barely escaped being killed by him at that time.
We drove around town for awhile. I told Clyde I wanted to go home. Clyde had been talking about holding up a filling station. We saw a Model A Ford Roadster parked on the street, and Clyde told me to get that car—meaning stealing it. We drove around the corner and parked and Clyde and I got out and went back and walked back by the Ford, and Clyde said if I wanted to go home, to get in that car. I did, and about that time a woman came out of the house and started screaming. I got out and started to run, and Clyde told me to get back in the car and start it. The car was parked the wrong way, so that the left side was next to the curb. Clyde was standing out in the street. I had gotten out on the curb side, but when Clyde told me that I got back in the car, and Did not stop in it. I crawled on through the car and got out on the street where Clyde was.
While this was happening, and old man had come out of the house and started toward the car, but Clyde, standing in the street, had pulled out his pistol by this time, and ordered him to stop and the old man stopped. Clyde got in the car, under the steering wheel, and was trying to start the car, and another and younger man came out of the house and came up to the car on the side where Clyde was sitting under the steering wheel, and Clyde raised his pistol and fired at this man three times. I did not see the man fall as I started running. Clyde got the car started and drove on down and I jumped on the running board and got in the car and we jumped out of if and ran back and got in the car with Bonnie Parker.
We drove out of Temple and drove nearly to Waco, traveling on small country roads and avoiding the highways. We parked on a little country road most of the day, and then went on at night turning off to the East before reaching Waco, and avoiding towns as much as possible. Late that night we went into a Tourist Camp but I don't know where it was. We stayed there until the next morning.
We went on down in East Texas the next day. Before we got to this Tourist Camp, Clyde Barrow made me get down in the turtleback seat and pushed the top of the seat down over me, so no one could see me, and didn't let me out of there until we got into the Tourist Camp so no one saw me, and when we left next morning, he did the same thing.
The next night we stayed at another Tourist Camp somewhere in East Texas. We hid out around East Texas staying in Tourist Camps and avoiding towns from this time, until Friday, January 6th, 1933, when we came back to Dallas.
On Friday, January 6th, 1933, Clyde Barrow, Bonnie Parker and I came back from East Texas, traveling in their Ford V8 Coupe, which had a khaki top, and in which we had been riding around and hiding out in East Texas, since Christmas Day, 1932, after Clyde Barrow had shot and killed a man at Temple Texas, in an attempt to steal a Ford Model A car from a street in Temple.
We got back to Dallas a little after dark, and drove out South Lamar Street, to 1214 South Lamar, where Bonnie's mother lived, I went in – to the door – and asked for Mrs. Parker, meaning Bonnie's mother. Some lady had come to the door and she called another girl, whom I learned later was Billie Parker, Bonnie's sister, and she came out to the car with me.
We drove on South on Lamar Street. I was about half drunk and didn't pay any attention to where we went, but we drove out on some country road, and stopped and all got out of the car, and Clde Barrow, Bonnie and Billie Parker all had quite a conversation which I did not listen to.
We got back in the car and drove back into West Dallas to Lillie McBride's home on Country Avenue, and Billie got out to ask for some women, whose name I did not learn. She got no answer and came back and got in the car. This was sometime between 9:30 and 10 o'clock at night, the night Malcolm Davis, the Fort Worth Deputy Sheriff, was killed.
We took Billie home and let her out and she told us good-bye. This was at her home on South Lamar.
We came back the same way we had gone, that is back up South Lamar to the Corinth St. underpass, through this to Industrial Blvd. and on this to Eagle Ford Road, and we then went to Mrs. Barrow's that is Clyde Barrow's mother's house. We talked to his mother there. His father was there also, but we didn't talk to him. We just stayed there a few minutes, and we then drove down Eagle Ford Road headed toward town, and turned to the left on County Ave. the street where Lille McBride lives. We went North on County Avenue for one block, turned to the left on a street I do not know the name of and went West on this street for one block, turned left off this street onto another street I do not know the name of, but which runs on into Eagle Ford Road, and we stopped at a house in this block, which faces West, and is the house where Floyd Hamilton, brother of Raymond Hamilton, lived at that time.
Bonnie Parker and I stayed in the car, and Clyde Barrow got out and went around behind the house. He just stayed a few minutes and came back and got in the car. He didn't say who he had talked to there. We then drove on South on this street to the corner of this street and turned left onto Eagle Ford Road, and headed back toward Dallas. We traveled one block toward town on Eagle Ford Road till we came again to County Avenue, and turned left onto County Avenue. We drop on past Lillie McBride's house, and past the first cross street beyond this, and then turned the car around and put the lights out.
We were still driving this same Ford V8 Coupe with the khaki top and the two wheels on the running board, which we had left Dallas in just before Christmas day, and Clyde was wearing his overcoat and has that 16 guage shotgun under his coat and swung from his arm or shoulder at this time. We also had a rifle in the car, and Clyde had a pistol, the same pistol he had used to shoot the man at Temple a few days before, I think it was a 45 calibre revolver.
Bonnie Parker had a 41 calibre pistol. This was the one I had at Temple, and I did not have any pistol. I do not know what kind of rifle it was, but Clyde had the rifle lying up on the back of the seat. There was also a 12 guage pump shotgun, sawed off, a hammerless gun, lying up there on the back of the seat also.
We pulled up and stopped in front of Lillie McBride's house, and Clyde told me to get under the wheel. He got out on the left hand side of the car and went around the back of it, and I crawled over Bonnie and got under the wheel. Clyde was trying to get some information about Raymond Hamilton who was in jail at Hillsboro.
Clyde walked around behind the car and on up to Lillie McBride's house, carrying his 16 guage shotgun in his hand. Bonnie and I were still sitting in the car. I don't know whether there was a light on in the house or not. I didn't notice. Clyde had gotten up on the porch before the first shot was fired. Then I heard a shotgun fire. I hadn't heard a word spoken up to this time. This was a shot fired by Clyde Barrow. Just about the time the shot was fired I saw two men come around the corner of Lille McBride's house, on the side of the house nearest the Eagle Ford Road. Then the shot rang out and Bonnie Parker told me to start the motor. I saw one of these two men fall and I began starting the motor. I don't know whether the two men fired or only one of them fired. I was so excited I didn't know how many shots they fired. Bonnie fired her pistol twice or three times, I am not sure which. Clyde fired again also, and I don't know how many other shots were fired. I do know where Clyde was standing when he fired the second time. He might have come back close to the car by the time he fired this shot.
Clyde told me to move over, cut from under the steering wheel, and I did. Bonnie had moved close to the door of the car while she was firing, and I moved over against her, and Clyde started the car driving very fast. He drove on down County Avenue to Eagle Ford, turning to the right, in a westerly direction. We had a siren on the car and he started it going full blast. We drove on up a block or two on Eagle Road, before turning on lights. We drove on past Mr. Borrow's filling station, where we had stopped before the shooting. We drove on to the first boulevard, and turned to the right. I think this was Westmoreland Road. We turned North on it. It was pouring down rain at this time, and had been raining off and on all that night. We crossed the river and turned to the left on Industrial Boulevard. We went on through the town of Irving. We went on toward Grapevine. We continued in this direction until we came to a short turn and drove on into the ditch. Clyde went up to a farmhouse and got three farmers who came down with a two mule team hitched to a wagon, and pulled the car out of the ditch for him. Clyde paid them for this. I think they got three dollars for it. They unhitched the mules from the wagon, and hitched them onto the back of the Ford and pulled it back up to the road. This was a country road of some kind, not a highway, and we went on sticking to country roads. We went on in a generally northwest direction, and I went to sleep when the car was still going. When I woke up next morning I believe we were in the edge of Oklahoma, because Clyde told me that's where we were.
I know Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker. Have know Clyde Barrow about 11 years, and met Bonnie Parker two or three times prior to the occasion a day or so before Christmas Day, 1932, when I went with the two of them from Dallas, Texas to Temple, Texas, on which occasion Clyde Barrow tried to hold up a grocery store, and did kill a man who sought to interfere when Clyde Barrow and I were attempting to steal an automobile parked on one of the city streets of Temple, Texas.
After these incidents, we hid out in small tourists camps in the eastern part of Texas for some days, returning to Dallas on the night of Friday, January 6th, 1933, on which occasion Clyde Barrow, Bonnie Parker and I went to Lillie McBride's house on County Avenue late at night. Some officers were waiting there to try to arrest Clyde Barrow, and Clyde shot and killed one of them, Malcolm Davis, a Deputy Sheriff from Ft. Worth, Texas, and Bonnie Parker also fired two or three shots at these officers with a pistol, but do not know whether she hit any of them or not. We made out escape in the darkness and under cover of a heavy rain, and made our way that night into the edge of Oklahoma.
I went to sleep while Clyde Barrow was driving towards Oklahoma that night, and when I woke up next morning, January 7th, 1933, Clyde and Bonnie told me we were in Oklahoma.
I don't know how much money Clyde had with him, but I didn't have any money at all except what Clyde would give me, a dollar or two at a time.
We rambled around through Oklahoma and Missouri until Buck Barrow got out of the penitentiary about March 22nd, 1933. We only came back to Texas one time during this period, and on that trip we came to Dallas, Texas and Clyde talked to his mother, Mrs. Barrow. This trip was at the time Buck got out and we left word with Mrs. Barrow where Buck was to meet us---at a little town just in the edge of Oklahoma – near Joplin, Missouri. When he met us there we went on to Joplin.
Up to this time, when Buck joined us, we had only pulled one job. That was at Springfield, Mo., where he had stuck up a filling station. I don't recall the date of this job, or how much money it netted.
When Buck Barrow joined us he was driving a Marmon Sedan. Buck's wife, Blanche, was with him at this time. We went on to Joplin, Mo. They rented a house at Joplin, where we stayed about two weeks. All five of use stayed there. We did no jobs while we were there. I didn't go out of the house often.
Clyde had two cars here, beside the Marmon Buck had. While we were staying there in this house, Buck and Clyde and I went in Clyde's Ford to steal this other car which we got at some little town near Joplin. We drove the two cars back to this rented house a few days before the gun battle.
The five of us were staying at this rented house. There were two beds in the house, and I slept on a Doufold bed or couch.
I had been trying for weeks to get Clyde to bring me back to Texas, and he finally agreed that he would do so, and Clyde and I started to leave in this Ford Roadster, and Clyde decided it wouldn't make the trip, and we turned back to get another car, and just as we got back to the house the law drove up and the gun battle happened.
I did not have any gun, because I had not been carrying any kind of gun after the man had been killed in Temple, Texas on Christmas Day. But Clyde, Buck and Bonnie had several guns, and I remember that Clyde had the same 16 guage automatic shotgun with which he had killed the Deputy Sheriff at Dallas on January 6th, and a large pistol not an automatic, but a double action pistol. He also had a 12 guage shotgun, and Buck had a 16 guage shotgun.
Three or four days before the gun battle at Joplin, Buck and Clyde brought in some eight or ten more guns, pistols and rifles, and they had a lot of ammunition for all of these guns. They had a big wooden box full. I don't know where they got all these guns.
This house they had rented there is a stone house, a two story house located at 34th and Oak Ridge Drive in Joplin, Mo., the bottom story of the house was a two car garage and the living quarters were on the top floor. You could drive into the garage and go through up the stairs to the top floor without coming outdoors. The house is the same house of which a picture was printed in the Joplin Globe on April 15th, 1933. The shooting happened on Thursday, April 13th, 1933. It was still daylight, but along late in the afternoon on April 12th, 1933, when Clyde and I came back to the house on 34th and Oak Ridge Streets in Joplin for the purpose of changing cars before resuming our trip to Texas.
We drove into the garage and Buck was in there and he closed the door and we got out. The garage was a double garage and the other Ford was in the garage. The Marmon Buck had was parked behind the garage outdoors. As we came up to the house, Clyde had made me slide down low in the seat to keep anyone from seeing me, and as we stopped in the garage, I discovered the Ford Roadster had a flat tire. They were standing there talking when one of them yelled the law was coming. I think it was Buck who yelled this. I think the laws had the house surrounded by that time. It was still daylight then.
Shots began to ring out from every direction. Clyde or Buck were both shooting. I started to run out the big double door of the garage. And I got shot just as I got to the door. Clyde or Buck one had opened the door, and they were between the two cars. I couldn't see them, but I could hear them talking. When I got shot I went “out”, that is I became unconscious..... But Blanche Barrow told me I ran back upstairs and fell in the middle of the floor.
I don't know what else happened here, and when I came to next we were in that Ford V8 Sedan on a country road, Clyde Barrow, Bonnie Parker, Buck Barrow and Blanche Barrow were all in the car.
It was dark when I came to. Clyde was driving at that time. He was driving very fast. We headed for the Texas Panhandle and drove as fast as we could away from Joplin. I go no medical attention of any kind until Saturday afternoon when Clyde bought some alcohol and Mercurochrome at Amarillo, Texas and dressed my wound.
We didn't go back to Joplin any more after this gun battle. But rambled around for several months through a good many states, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Indiana and Louisiana.
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I know Clyde Barrow and have known him for about 11 years. I had met Bonnie Parker two or three times before the occasion when I left Dallas with Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker a day or two before Christmas, 1932, and went to Temple, Texas where Clyde killed a man who tried to interfere with us when we were stealing a Ford car off the street there. We hid out in East Texas for awhile, returning to Dallas on the night of Friday, January 6th 1933, when some officers tried to arrest us at Lillie McBride's house on County Avenue in West Dallas, and Clyde Barrow killed one of the officers with a shotgun, and Bonnie Parker also fired two or three times at the officers with a pistol.
We escaped from Texas then, and rambled through Oklahoma and Missouri, and hid away for some weeks at Joplin, Mo., where we stayed until we had a pitched gun battle with some officers who tried to arrest us there. I was shot and unconscious, but the others shot their way out and carried me with them, and we escaped in a Ford car. We hid out for a time visiting various states including Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Indiana and Louisiana.
While we were in Louisiana, and before Clyde and Buck kidnapped the man and woman there, they put me out of the car to steal a Chevrolet automobile for them. I saw this was my chance to escape and I jumped in this car and made my get away and came back to Dallas, Texas.
I got back to Dallas about a month or a month and a half after the gun battle at Joplin, Mo. I cannot be any more definite as to the time. I stayed around Dallas several weeks. I stayed at my mother's at 2410 Henry Street in West Dallas. I saw and talked to Clyde Barrow's mother during this time. But didn't tell any of the Barrows anything about what all had happened.
Late one afternoon – or rather about two o'clock in the afternoon I was out at Bachman's Dam. I was walking along the road intending to go down to the lake and to go to a dance at Five Point Dance Hall that night. Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow drove up from behind me and stopped. They were in a V8 Coupe. I hadn't heard from them since I saw them last in Louisiana, and did not know they were back in town until this time.
They spoke to me and told me to get in the car and I got in. They asked me if I wanted to go with them, and I told them I did not, and Clyde said I was going anyway and I did.
We drove on in the direction of Wichita Falls, going mostly on country roads. We stayed that night at the first little tourist camp on the side of Vernon, Texas. We left there early the next morning. He hadn't told me where we were going or anything—just said we were going “up the country”.
We drove all day into the night. I went to sleep and while I was asleep we had a wreck. A bridge was out and Clyde drove off into the river. I was knocked out. Bonnie was burned on her right led from the thigh on down. A pretty bad burn.
Bonnie told me afterward that the next thing she remembered was that she came to and we were all in a farmhouse and she didn't know how we got there, and that I brought a rifle in the house, and she told me to take it to Clyde and I went out of the house with it, Bonnie told me I fired a shotgun there which wounded a woman in the hand. I don't know about anything that happened at this farmhouse, because if I did any of these things I was still out of my head from the injuries I had received in the wreck and know nothing about them.
Bonnie also told me two officers came to the house in a car and we captured them and took their car and the officers with us and started for Oklahoma. I still don't remember this. But I came to while we were in this car. Clyde Barrow was driving and Bonnie Parker and myself and the two captured officers were in the car.
A few minutes after I came to we met Buck Barrow, in the edge of Oklahoma on a bridge. He was driving a Ford V8 convertible coupe. Blanche Barrow, his wife, was with him. Clyde drove up on one end of the long bridge and blew his horn and stopped, and we sat there a few minutes and we heard another horn at the far end of the bridge. Buck stopped his car there and came running up towards us. Clyde got out of the car with the two officers, and told me to drive the Chevrolet down towards Buck's car and put Bonnie in it. I did that, and stayed there until Buck and Clyde came back and I got in the coupe with Buck and Blanche and Bonnie Parker, and Clyde got in the Chevrolet we had taken from the officers.
We headed on north into Oklahoma. On this trip I learned from their conversation that they had hold up a bank somewhere and had lots of money. We went on into Arkansas from there.
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I have know Clyde Barrow about 11 years, and know Bonnie Parker having seen her a few times before I left Dallas two or three days before Christmas, 1932, with Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, and went to Temple, Texas where Clyde Barrow killed a man who tried to prevent our stealing a car on the street. I was also with them in Joplin, Mo., on April 13th, and I was wounded. I was also with them when they kidnapped two officers at or near Wellington, Texas and took their car, and after this incident we were joined by Buck Barrow and Blanche Barrow, and the five of us wandered around for awhile, eventually going to Fort Smith, Arkansas. I don't remember the date.
We stayed at a tourist camp in the edge of Fort Smith. We had a Ford V8 Sedan and a Ford V8 Roadster when we got to Fort Smith which we had stolen somewhere in Oklahoma.
We stayed at this tourist camp several days before anything happened. Buck Barrow suggested be go and steal another car. He wanted a sedan in place of the roadster. Buck and I went on this mission. We went to another town. We didn't find a car we liked and started back. We had a wreck on the way back – this was in daytime. He was driving and hit some other car. I was knocked out and don't remember the details clearly. When I came to I was standing in the middle of the road with Buck's 16 guage shotgun in my hands. It was broken all to pieces and I had lost the plain gold band ring I wear on my little finger. I was frantically looking for this ring. I don't know how it had gotten off my finger but it had and I found it lying in the middle of the road.
While I was doing this I was conscious that shooting was going on around me. Another car had come up, meeting us, and at least one officer was in it – it was his car we got away from there in. I don't know if there were other officers in the car with him or not, but as my head cleared, I saw Buck Barrow in this officer's car, and trying to start it with one hand and shooting his pistol with the other hand, at a house about 200 feet away. Shots were coming from the house toward us, but I did not see who was shooting. I saw a man, evidently the officer whose car we got away in, lying on his back in the ditch by the side of the road, and Buck yelled to me to get his gun which was lying on the ground a few feet from him. I got this pistol, and climbed in the car with Buck, and we drove on going back the way the car was headed, and in the direction from which we had come.
I did not fire any shots at this time at all.
We circled around and got back on the road we had been going and went back to the tourist camp at Fort Smith, leaving the car before we got there. We didn't drive very far in the officer's car after this shooting when we came to a man and a woman in a car. Buck pulled across the road in front of them, and we made them get out of their car and we took it and went on towards Fort Smith, leaving it out at the edge of the town and going up to the back of the tourist camp on foot. All five of us left this tourist camp in the roadster we had there, and we left right away.
We came back down through Oklahoma again.
We stayed a day or two in Oklahoma and as we had lost most of our guns by that time and one night while we were in a tourist camp Buck Barrow and Clyde Barrow went off and burglarized an armory and brought back so many guns that it looked like a gun factory. There were some 46 government automatics, 45 pistols, several rifles and two or three cases of ammunition for the pistols and rifles.
We circled around awhile and went on in to Platte, Missouri. We went to a tourist camp, and when we drove in there Clyde and the two women, Bonnie Parker and Blanche Barrow were the only ones who were visible, as Buck Barrow and I had crouched down between the seats at Clyde's orders, so we wouldn't be seen.
The second night we were there the officers trailed us and we had another gun battle. We had two cabins in the camp. Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow and I were in one camp and Buck Barrow and Blanche Barrow had the other one. The officers went to Buck's cabin first and asked for a man or some boys. Clyde said “That's the law.” I heard Blanche Barrow tell them that boys were over in our cabin. Clyde looked out the door and grabbed his gun out from under the edge of the bed. He told me to get out there and start the car. He started shooting out of doors and windows. I got the key off the dresser and got into the garage. Bonnie had given me the key out of Clyde's pocket to the car, and I started the motor, and shooting was coming from all directions, Clyde told me to open the garage door and I was afraid to do it, and he came and together we opened the door. He made me help him. When we opened the door Buck and Blanche were right in front of the door. Blanche was holding Buck up, holding him under the arms. Clyde told me to go out there and get Buck. I refused to do it, and Clyde went out and got him just about to the door, and handed him to me, and I took hold of him then and while I putting Buck in the car Clyde was shooting. Buck had been wounded in the head.
I got Buck in the car. Bonnie Parker had managed to get in herself, and Blanche and I got in the back seat with Buck and Bonnie Parker and Clyde got in the front with Clyde driving, and he backed out of the garage and drove off with them shooting at us. Clyde afterwards counted 14 or 15 bullet-holes in the car, but none of us was hit. They did hit both the back tires however, and they went flat after we had gone some distance. We ran for a long while on the rim of one of them and ruined it. We patched one of them temporarily but it gave later. We put the spare on one wheel. We made our way to a point close to Dexter, Iowa, and hit out in some woods for three or four days. We still had the same car we got away from Platte City, Mo., in after the gun battle there.
Clyde would go into Dexter and get food, and medicine for Buck's wound. Buck's wound was pretty serious, but Buck wasn't out of his head, as I talked with him a lot there. While we stayed there in the woods, Buck and Blanche and Clyde and Bonnie slept in the car, and I slept on a car seat out on the ground and each night they hand cuffed me to a tree to prevent my making a getaway, as they feared I knew too much, and they knew I would escaped if possible.
While we were there we got a V8 sedan – we got this at some town about 40 to 50 miles from there. I got the car on this occasion, and we went back to the camp in the woods. Clyde unloaded all the stuff out of the car we had had the battle in Platte City, Mo., and put me to tearing up the pasteboard boxes of pistol shells. There were a lot of these and it took me a long time. We went to town to get fresh dressing for Buck's head, and we ate supper. I had filled an inner tube with these shells, and he put them back of the seat in the car. We slept there that night. We got up next morning and I had been released, and I was roasting some wieners we had left from supper the night before. Clyde and Bonnie were sitting on the cushion when they saw the officers coming and yelled. Shooting was going on before I could get straightened up. I ran around the other side of the car and there I got shot with buckshot.
One buckshot is still in my lip, one in my right little finger and one in chest just above right nipple. These buckshot I still have in me. I was shot through the calf of the left leg with a bullet, and a bullet from a machine gun struck me in the chest above the right nipple. I also was shot in left wrist, but don't know what with, and my right thumb was also shot. I was knocked down by the machine gun bullet that struck me in the chest. But I got to my feet again and went back around the car, and I think it was there that I got shot in my thumb.
Buck and Blanche were in the back seat of the car, and I don't know whether Buck was doing any shooting or not. Clyde was yelling for me to start the car like he always did when trouble happened, and I got in and tried to start it. Bonnie got in the car too. I don't know whether Bonnie did any shooting there or not. I was so scared I couldn't get it going, and Clyde was shooting all the time, and he came and stood by the door by my side and emptied his rifle standing there. He pulled me out and he got in the car and started it. I crawled up in the back end of the car. Clyde got it started and drove off. We backed off. Then turned around and drove on down a little road, but when he tried to turn around again, he backed the car up on a stump and it hung there and we couldn't get it off, and he made me get out and try to pry it off with a rifle, and we couldn't do it. I took his rifle and told him I was checking out and then Clyde decided to abandon the car, and told me to carry Bonnie, which I did, and we went off through the woods for about a half mile and we stopped and he decided he'd go get us a car to make our getaway in. Bonnie and I waited there, and in a little while he got in another gun battle up on the road and came back. We heard the shooting, and he came back and we went on further on foot. We went about a quarter of a mile, up to a house, and Bonnie and I waited in the cornfield and Clyde went up to the house and put his gun on three men there and took their car, and made them help put Bonnie Parker in the car and he and I got in and drove off. We rode some distance and wound around through side roads, and country roads for a distance of about 20 or 25 miles, and then we had a flat. In the gun battle back in the woods Clyde was hit several times, one through his right leg, one bullet grazed the side of his head. He had one buckshot in his right shoulder.
When we had this flat we took the tier off and we decided we ought to change cars, so Clyde took in after a Chevrolet and pulled up alongside and ordered the man to stop, which he did, but we were going pretty fast and Clyde couldn't stop our car very quick, running on the wheel, so the men had time to turn around and beat it before we could get back to him, and we went on the where we saw a 29 Chevrolet Sedan in the yard and Clyde handed me a pistol and told me to go get that car. I did and there was a man and a woman in the yard and the woman screamed but the man didn't do anything and I got in the car and backed it out and we all got in it and went on.
We traveled all around in this car, through Nebraska, Minnesota and into Colorado. In Colorado, we saw a newspaper that said they were looking for us there, and we thought they were getting pretty hot on our trail, so Clyde turned back through Kansas and down into Missouri and back into Oklahoma and on across into Mississippi, about 40 miles from Clarksdale, Mississippi, I got away from them again. They let me out to get a car for them. I got it, and Clyde intended to change into this car, but wanted some gas in it first, so he gave me $2.12 to get gas and sent me into a filling station and he was going to stop where he could watch me and told me to come back to him. I bought five gallons, instead of filling it up like he told me to, and I drove on up the road and he was supposed to follow me, but I turned off on a little country road. This was at night when I got on that country road, I cut my lights off and he didn't find me. I drove on a piece and got out and left the car and threw away a pistol and a big rifle I had with me, and ran on across the country, and put in most of the night running, and early the next morning, I got a ride on a truck into Clarksdale, Mississippi.
I have never seen Clyde Barrow or Bonnie Parker since that time. I hoboed my way back to Dallas on freight trains. I stayed here a day or two and went down near Sugarland, Texas, to pick cotton.
Then went to Waco from there and picked cotton, my mother and family were with me there and at Sugarland. Then went to Vernon, Texas with them and picked cotton there two weeks and went to Memphis and then back to Vernon, then came back to Dallas. I stayed here about three days then. I then went to San Antonio for about three days. Then went to Houston, and was arrested Thursday night about 8:30 at 1519 Franklin Street. This was on November 16th 1933.
About three weeks ago when I was in Dallas the last time, Carl Rushing stopped me in the middle of the street and asked me if I wanted to go places with him that night. I told him “Hell, no” and drove off. And I left town right after that.
From what I saw and what Clyde and Buck Barrow have told me, I know that they had killed at least six men and I don't know how many more that I don't know about.
I have examined a copy of the Joplin Globe bearing date Saturday Morning, April 15th 1933, on the front page at the top there are three pictures. One shows two men standing, and this is a picture of Clyde Barrow and me. I am the one on the right. The picture showing a man seated on the bumper of a car with a rifle across his knee is a picture of Clyde Barrow, and the picture of a man and woman is a picture of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker.
(signed) W. D. Jones