The ambulance had been traveling for hours when it stopped for gas at 6 in the evening at Johnnie Withers’ service station at the corner of Green Avenue and 15th Street.
The long ride would soon turn even longer, especially for 25-year-old Buster Parker. He was traveling with the McKamy-Campbell Funeral Home ambulance on his way to pick up the bullet-riddled body of his younger sister, Bonnie.
The date was May 23, 1934, 85 years ago.
Banner headlines across the country, including the daily Orange Leader, told of the lawmen’s ambush of notorious killers Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker.
Johnnie Withers filled up the ambulance with gasoline. He gave Buster Parker and the funeral home worker the bad news. They were 200 miles off course.
The two had been driving to Gibson in south Louisiana for Bonnie’s body. Green Avenue, part of the Old Spanish Trail Highway (later U.S. 90) through the South, offered a rare bridge to cross the Sabine River into the adjacent state. They were correct in the route to Gibson.
But Bonnie and Clyde were killed in Gibsland, Louisiana, in the north part of the state near Arcadia, south of Shreveport.
The newspaper carried a Page One story with the headline “Ambulance For ‘Bonnie’ Passes Through Here” with Withers’ story. The paper reported the funeral home driver made a long-distance call from the gas station telling authorities they would eventually arrive.
Buster Parker was 25 years old at the time. His sister was 23 when she died. Withers said he “appeared somewhat disinterested” because he had been expecting the death for a long time.
The story about the undertaker and Buster Parker may be the only sure sign that Bonnie and Clyde had a connection to Orange. However, stories of them traveling through town have been told for at least 85 years.
“Actually knowing what Clyde and Bonnie did, and when, is challenging. They diddn’t leave a diary, and newspaper reporters never caught up with them for interviews. They were never tried for any crimes committed after Clyde got out of prison, so no sworn testimony exists. Instead, others told their story.” Karen Blumenthal wrote that in her book, Bonnie and Clyde: The Making of a Legend. The book was published last year and is at the Orange Public Library.
Books have been written about the criminal couple ever since their death. Their families even wrote books. When they were alive, their travels, crimes, and spottings were reported in newspapers and magazines, including popular pulp “true crime” detective books.
Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker were from Dallas and even during their crime spree, they would find a way to meet their families around that area. Their travels in stolen cars, usually the Ford V-8 models that Clyde preferred, took them into Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, and New Mexico. None of the towns where the couple were documented to have been were much south of Waco.
The two were known to steal guns and ammunition from National Guard. Some historical reports say they stole guns from the armory in Beaumont, which was on 11th Street, also part of the Old Spanish Trail. Others never mention the Beaumont armory.
Clyde liked the World War I Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR) with .30 caliber shots and armories had the rifles.
However, no one knows. Tales and legends of Bonnie and Clyde being in towns are popular lore across American.
The Old Spanish Trail was one of the country’s first highways and Orange was on it. A highway bridge across the Sabine was at the end of Green Avenue and in 1934, it was one of the few bridge crossings. The Deweyville Swing Bridge on Highway 12 had not been built.
Las Sabinas, the historical journal of the Orange County Historical Society, had a story from Orange police officer Eddie Barker in a 2000 edition. Barker was a night patrol officer with the Orange Police Department, and was the first here to do fingerprints. He later became one of the first fulltime firemen and was later fire marshal.
Barker’s son, Dan (now deceased) recalled that his father made $80 a month as a police officer. The Orange Leader in 1970 did a feature story on Eddie Barker when he retired.
The former police officer told the writer the OPD heard Bonnie and Clyde were in the vacinity.
“We got a report one night that they have been seen at a spot out of town. A couple of us went to see what we could find. (Then he chuckled.) All we found was a smoldering camp fire. Of course, we could never tell if they had really been there or not. But I thought to myself later it was a stupid stunt for the two of us to pull.”
He was right about that. The Barrow gang was known for shooting police officers and a prison guard during a break-out.
And as the 85th anniversary of their demise has come, the legends and fascination with the outlaws hasn’t ended. Netflix has a hit with “The Highwaymen,” a film about Texas Rangers Frank Hamer and Maney Gault chasing Bonnie and Clyde until the successful ambush. The movie stars Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson.
So who knows, maybe Bonnie was riding in the rumble seat of a Ford V-8 as it traveled down Green Avenue to 15th Street and then Park Avenue on a still Texas night in the 1930s.
-Margaret Toal, KOGT-
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