W. D. Jones
Encyclopedia
William Daniel Jones (May 12, 1916 – August 20, 1974) was a member of the Barrow Gang
, whose spree throughout the southern Midwest
in the early years of the Great Depression
became part of American criminal folklore
. Jones ran with Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker
for eight and a half months, from Christmas Eve
1932 to early September 1933. He was one of two gang members who were consolidated into the "C. W. Moss" character in the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde
. "Moss was a dumb kid who run errands and done what Clyde told him. That was me, all right."
in Henderson County, Texas
with six children, five sons and a daughter. W.D. was their second youngest child. After postwar cotton prices collapsed they gave up trying to farm, and around 1921-22, in the same wave that brought the Barrow family and hundreds of other poor families from the country to the unwelcoming city, the Joneses settled in the industrial slum of West Dallas, in the 1920s a maze of tent cities
and shacks without running water, gas or electricity, set on dirt streets amid smokestacks
, oil refineries
, "plants
, quarries
, lagoons
, tank farms
and burrow pits
" on the Trinity River
floodplain
. It was while his family was living in the squatters' camp
under the Oak Cliff Viaduct
that W.D., then about five, first met Clyde Barrow, then age 11 or 12.
When W.D. was six years old his entire family was stricken by what was probably Spanish flu, which lingered after the 1918 pandemic in pockets of the United States where unhealthy conditions prevailed. His father and sister died in the same hour, his oldest brother two nights later, all of pneumonia (frequently the coup de grâce delivered by that strain of flu). Tookie Jones and four of her sons survived.
Jones grew up illiterate
. Before or after the illness that devastated his family he got partly through the first grade; he recalled that he left school to sell newspapers. He had been friends with LC Barrow, the youngest son of his mother's friend Cumie, since their families' first days in West Dallas. The Joneses and the Barrows were close: when Buck Barrow
was to stand trial in San Antonio for car theft, Tookie and her two youngest boys accompanied the Barrows and their two youngest children as they traveled by horse and wagon, 300 miles south, to attend. Both boys had big brothers named Clyde; W.D.'s brother Clyde drove his wife and Buck Barrow's girlfriend Blanche
across the country to Tennessee
in the summer of 1930 to see Buck while he was on the lam
. The Barrows, too, had been hit by disease in the West Dallas camp: Clyde, his father and his younger sister Marie were hospitalized by something so severe that years later Clyde was rejected by the Navy due to its lingering effects.
and collected license plates for LC's brothers to use on cars they stole; he was picked up in Dallas at least once "on suspicion" of car theft and was arrested with LC in Beaumont, Texas
for car theft. On Christmas Eve 1932, Clyde Barrow and his girlfriend Bonnie — already on the run, and glamorous outlaws to W.D. — stopped by home. Barrow was between assistants, and he and Parker brought Jones along with them when they left. The next afternoon in Temple, Texas
, in a botched attempt at stealing a car, Jones or Barrow shot and killed the car's owner, a 27-year-old new father, grocery clerk Doyle Johnson. Newspaper accounts reported that the fatal shots came from the passenger side of the car. According to Jones, Barrow used this report to keep him with him and Parker. Jones was indicted for Johnson's murder by a Bell County
grand jury, but was not tried.
Not quite two weeks later, in Dallas on the night of January 6, 1933, the three stumbled into a trap set for another criminal and Barrow killed Tarrant County
Deputy Malcolm Davis, shooting him point-blank in the chest with a 16-gauge shotgun. Jones and Parker were waiting in the car for Barrow and were as startled as the neighbors were when gunfire broke out. Jones "grabbed a gun and began blasting the landscape." Parker shouted to him to stop, that he might hit someone, and she circled the car around the block to catch up with Barrow. Though in his confession to police Jones said that he was starting the motor while Parker fired her pistol out the passenger window, thirty-five years later he told Playboy
magazine, "As far as I know, Bonnie never packed a gun.... during the five big gun battles I was with them, she never fired a gun." In October 1934 Jones was tried and convicted as an accessory to Deputy Davis's murder as part of an arrangement with Dallas County
Sheriff R.A."Smoot" Schmid.
After the murder of Malcolm Davis, Barrow, Parker and Jones lay low. They drove through the hills of Missouri
and Arkansas
and may have wandered as far east as Tennessee. They made news only on the night of January 26, when they kidnapped Springfield, Missouri
police officer Thomas Persell. Twice in early spring they dressed up and photographed each other and their gun collection beside the road. They saw how their pictures came out at the same time thousands of newspaper readers did: in April the rolls of film were captured by police, developed, and published. The playful pictures brought unintended consequences, particularly one of Bonnie Parker squinting defiantly at the camera, her foot planted on the bumper of a stolen car, a gun at her outthrust hip and a cigar hanging from her mouth. Dallas County Deputy Sheriff Ted Hinton
recalled that the "brazen pride" displayed in the pictures made law enforcement officers that much more determined to catch them.
The three returned to Dallas on March 24 or 25 and learned that on the 23rd, Clyde's older brother Buck
had been pardoned from Huntsville penitentiary. On the night of March 25 they surprised Buck and his wife Blanche
at Blanche's mother's home and persuaded Buck to come vacation with them in strategically located Joplin, Missouri
.
, somewhere near Shamrock
or Amarillo
, they pulled over to examine their wounds. "Clyde wrapped an elm branch in gauze and pushed it through the hole in my side and out my back. The bullet had gone clean through me so we knew it would heal."
The unexpected viciousness of the apartment dwellers' response, the haul of weaponry recovered, and especially the rolls of film they left behind made the Barrow Gang suddenly wanted and recognizable far beyond Texas. In their immediate descriptions of the gun battle the police officers remembered only two shooters, whom they named as Clyde and Buck Barrow; no witness remembered a third man. Jones was never correctly identified while he was with Clyde Barrow; when he had to introduce himself during his time with the Barrows he used the name "Jack Sherman." From the Joplin photos police variously identified him as Buck Barrow, Pretty Boy Floyd
and Hubert Bleigh.
, still not recovered from his Joplin wounds and perhaps tired of the constant bickering in the car as well as afraid for his life, Jones disappeared from the gang. (A fictionalized version of the Ruston car theft and subsequent kidnapping is the Gene Wilder
-Evans Evans
segment in Bonnie and Clyde
.) According to his statement to Dallas police November 18, "[T]hey [the Barrow brothers] 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 getaway and came back to Dallas, Texas." The car he stole in Ruston was found 130 miles away, at the edge of the Mississippi River
, in the eastern Arkansas
railroad town of McGehee
.
Clyde didn't want to believe that the docile W.D. had deliberately abandoned the gang, but to Buck it was obvious, and a relief, that "the kid" had. Jones made his way back to Dallas and spoke with Mrs. Barrow at least once while he was there. In late May the gang sent Blanche to Dallas to bring money and news to the families; Barrow instructed her to bring Jones with her to their rendezvous. When Blanche passed this request on, both mothers were polite, but demurred; Mrs. Barrow told Blanche faintly that "she did not know if he wanted to go with Clyde or not"; LC and Mrs. Parker at least pretended to try to find him. Barrow arranged at least one more meeting, expressly asking his mother to find and return Jones then, but to no avail. Finally he and Parker drove into Dallas and picked him up themselves, on June 8 or 9. In his statement to Dallas police Jones said, "[A]bout two o'clock in the afternoon.... I was walking along the road intending to go down to the lake
and to go to a dance at the Five Point Dancehall that night. Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow drove up from behind me and stopped. They were in a V8
Coupe
....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." After this, even when the five-person gang had two cars, "Clyde always wanted W.D. to be in the car with him."
outside Wellington, Texas
. "Suddenly the road disappeared." The car sailed into the air, turning over as it went, and crashed into the dry riverbed, rolling several times and coming to rest on its side. Battery acid poured onto Bonnie Parker, eating away the flesh of her right leg as she screamed and struggled. A farm family came to their aid, but quickly contacted police; "Bonnie told me I fired a shotgun there which wounded a woman in the hand." Barrow and Jones kidnapped the responding officers, Sheriff George Corry and Marshal Paul Hardy, to make their escape.
"Bonnie never got over that burn. Even after it healed over, her leg was drawn under her. She had to just hop or hobble along." Barrow, who limped himself, accommodated the new delays, expenses and detours her disablement created in his life without hesitation, and while she healed he or Jones carried her wherever she needed to go.
The gang holed up in a tourist cabin in Fort Smith
, Arkansas
, tending Parker, unable to move on until she recovered — or died — from her catastrophic injury. "She'd been burned so bad none of us thought she was gonna live. The hide on her right leg was gone, from her hip down to her ankle. I could see the bone at places." During this time Barrow's love for Parker drove him to put his own life on the line several times to try to help her.
, they crested a hill on Highway 71
and smashed into the back of a slower moving vehicle. The driver climbed out of his car and grabbed two rocks; the Barrows jumped out of their car, Buck with a shotgun and Jones with a BAR. Town Marshal Henry Humphrey of Alma
and Crawford County Deputy Sheriff Ansel M. "Red" Salyers were also on Highway 71, driving toward Fayetteville to investigate the grocery store robbery. In the opposite lane the first car passed them — they waved to the driver, whom they knew — then seconds later came the speeding V-8. They heard the crash and turned around, and at the scene they recognized the V-8's Kansas plate. As Marshal Humphrey drew his gun and got out of the car, Buck shot him in the chest. Jones fired a round from the BAR at Salyers. Salyers ducked behind his car and fired back with a rifle, then as Jones fumbled to reload dashed toward a farmhouse. Buck's shotgun had jammed; he ran to Salyers's car, yelling to Jones to get Humphrey's pistol. From the farmhouse a hundred yards away, Salyers took aim and managed to shoot off two of Jones's fingertips as the robbers careened away in his automobile. A few miles from Fort Smith Buck and Jones hijacked a couple's car at gunpoint, then realized the roads into Fort Smith were blocked. The car was found abandoned in the mountains. They staggered in the door of the tourist cabin ten hours after they had left. The Barrow Gang packed up what they could and decamped.
The next month, Deputy Salyers drove 500 miles to a hospital in Perry
, Iowa
, to get a final statement from the dying Buck Barrow. Barrow admitted to Salyers that he had murdered Marshal Humphrey, and that he and the man with him — who he finally confessed was "Jack Sherman"— had been shooting to kill them both. Officer Humphrey's pistol was found in the Barrows' debris at Dexfield Park. In November, Jones told police that he had been stunned in the car crash and his memory of any ensuing action was hazy, but he was confident that only Buck was shooting. He did remember standing in the highway looking for a gold ring he had lost. However, the following February at the harboring trial, Jones read a statement in which he said both he and Buck had killed Humphrey.
, protecting themselves from expected machine gun fire with metal shields, advanced on the double cabin at the Red Crown Tourist Court
in Platte City, Missouri
. In the ensuing firefight Buck Barrow was shot in the head as he and Blanche ran to get inside the garage. Jones had started the V8's engine but was afraid to open the garage door, then was afraid to help Blanche drag Buck inside. As they flew toward the highway Blanche was partly blinded by shards of glass from the car's exploding windows. Clyde drove them north two hundred miles, running for a long time on flats, then rims, the floor of the car sloshing with Buck's blood. State and federal agents tracked them north following reports of blood-soaked and burned clothes and bandages in fields and on the sides of the road. The Barrow Gang finally hid in a brake of trees at the edge of an abandoned amusement park outside Dexter
, Iowa
. They attempted to leave the park the next day but, helplessly, returned: Buck's injuries were too severe.
During the night of July 24 nearly one hundred law officers, National Guardsmen and interested, armed, mostly deputized citizens — some with dates — crept up to the edges of the field, and as the sun rose a new shootout began. Parker, Barrow and Jones were badly wounded. Buck, unable to run, was shot six more times, and he and Blanche, who would not leave him, were captured. "Half stumbling, half swimming," Jones dragged and carried Parker a mile and a half while Barrow fought away the last of the posse. Bonnie told her sister that as she and W.D. hid in the brush, their wounds dripping blood, they heard distant gunfire and then a long silence. Bonnie began to weep and to wish they had a gun with them, so she could die with Clyde. But at last, Barrow crawled out of the woods. Gesturing with an empty pistol he commandeered a car from a farmer and the trio escaped.
They kept driving. Throughout August they plied the back roads from Nebraska to Minnesota to Mississippi, pausing in only the smallest towns to steal fresh cars and money for gas and food. They slept in the cars, parked in remote fields or woods or in ravines; the following winter, Barrow would observe that he hadn't slept in a bed or even changed his clothes since his brother Buck was killed. Near the end of the month Barrow and Jones rebuilt the gang's security by robbing the armory at Plattville, Illinois of more BARs, handguns and ammunition.
Jones was as loyal a subordinate as Clyde and Bonnie could have hoped for, but he did not want to accompany them into death or even any farther into pain and fear. They were aware that Jones wanted to leave them. Nevertheless, Jones stayed until Barrow and Parker were well enough to take care of themselves without help before leaving. "I left Clyde and Bonnie after they was healed up enough to get by without me.... I'd had enough blood and hell."
According to Barrow family members, the three made their way back to West Dallas and split up there on September 7. This may have been the story Clyde and Bonnie told. According to W.D., they were forty miles outside of Clarksdale, Mississippi
on the night in early September when he saw a way to escape. They had just stolen a new car and Barrow had given him $2.12 to fill its tank. Jones put in a few gallons, then drove ahead as if to find a secluded place to stop and change cars. But when he was out of Barrow's sight he turned down a country road, turned off the car's headlights, and sped up. After a few miles he left the car and fled for his mother's home in Houston
. No matter which story is true, it's likely that Jones never saw Clyde or Bonnie again.
It is possible that Barrow coached Jones on what to say if he was ever arrested, or that the two of them agreed on a basic theme for Jones's official story: that Clyde, Bonnie and Buck had done all shooting and robbing and that W.D., a minor child, was an unwilling member of the gang, forced to ride with them at gunpoint, unconscious with fear or trauma most of the time, and chained to trees and car bumpers at night. Jones may or may not have had Barrow's blessing to blame every serious transgression on those who had nothing to lose, but on November 18, 1933, he relayed to Dallas police just such a scenario.
Dallas possession of an important Barrow Gang member was an ace up the sleeve for the politically ambitious Sheriff Schmid, who kept Jones a secret for ten days, perhaps hoping Clyde Barrow would try to storm the jail and break Jones out. Jones for his part insisted that he was grateful to be safely behind bars. On the night of November 22 the sheriff and his deputies Alcorn, Caster and Hinton
bungled an ambush of Barrow and Parker in Sowers, Texas
, on the outskirts of Dallas. The Dallas press jeered loudly — even the newsboys hawked the story as "Sheriff escapes from Clyde Barrow!" — until Schmid put W.D. Jones on display. Wide-eyed and "shaking with fear," Jones met the press; his deal with Sheriff Schmid was apparent in the sensational headline, "Saw Clyde Shoot Deputy."
Jones and the sheriff agreed that he would be tried as an accessory to Clyde Barrow's January 6 murder in Dallas of Deputy Davis, which would protect him against extradition to Arkansas for the June 23 shootout on Highway 71 in which Marshal Humphrey was killed. "They tried me for killing a sheriff's man at Dallas," Jones told Playboy in 1968. "Clyde done it, but I was glad to take the rap. Arkansas wanted to extradite me, and I sure didn't want to go to no Arkansas prison. I figure now that if Arkansas had got me, one of them skeletons they've dug up there
might have been me."
Jones was in the Dallas County jail on the morning of May 23, 1934, when Barrow and Parker were ambushed and killed on the Sailes-Gibsland road
in north Louisiana
. When reporters crowded in to tell him the news, he said, "I admit that I am relieved," and shook his head.
At his trial the following October all state witnesses recommended against the death penalty. Jones was convicted of a crime codified in 1931, "murder without malice." Though the district attorney and the prosecuting attorney recommended a sentence of 99 years, on October 12 the jury handed down a sentence of fifteen years.
In February 1935 Jones and nineteen other family members and associates of Barrow and Parker were defendants in the federal government's test-case trial en masse for "harboring." He received the maximum sentence for harboring, two years, applied to run concurrently with his Texas sentence. After six years in the Huntsville penitentiary he was paroled.
Jones lived the rest of his life in Houston, for many years next door to his mother. He married, but his wife died in the mid-1960s. He became addicted to pain-killing drugs. After 1967, the year Arthur Penn's
romanticized film
ignited a new generation's interest in the Barrow Gang, his arrests made the local news. Jones said of Bonnie and Clyde
, "[It] made it all look sort of glamorous, but like I told them teenaged boys sitting near me at the drive-in showing: 'Take it from an old man who was there. It was hell.'" Local TV reporters had brought him to see the film.
In 1968 Jones described his life on the run with Bonnie and Clyde in a colorful interview with Playboy magazine and spoke here and there to young people warning them away from the life of crime. Later in the year he filed a petition against Warner Bros.-Seven Arts
, charging that the filmmakers, who had never contacted him, had maligned his character by implying that he had played a role in the betrayal of Barrow and Parker. Nothing came of the filing.
"'I've never lived it down,' he said of his outlaw days. 'I've tried but I guess I never will.'"
In the early morning hours of August 20, 1974 Jones accompanied an acquaintance to a friend's home where she thought she would be given a place to sleep. The friend did not allow her in, an altercation ensued, and at 3:55 a.m. the friend shot Jones three times with a 12-gauge shotgun. "The man told police that Jones was a 'nice' person when sober but that he knew of Jones' reputation and was afraid of him." He was buried on August 22 at Brookside Memorial Park in Houston.
's, May 21, 1913. In 1950 Jones filled out Social Security forms stating that he was born May 12, 1916, the same date he gave Dallas police in his November 1933 confession; in 1968 he told Playboy he was 16 on Christmas Eve 1932 and that Clyde Barrow was seven years older than he. A news article noting an arrest in September 1973 gives his age as 59. His death certificate gives his age as 58 and lists his birthday as May 15. Since he filled out his Social Security forms himself, while a relative filled out his death certificate, it would be safe to assume that his birthday is May 12 — however, May 15, 1916 is the date on his gravestone.
Barrow Gang
The Barrow Gang was an American criminal organization of the 1930s active between 1932 and 1934. They were well known outlaws, robbers, and criminals who as a gang traveled the Central United States during the Great Depression. Their exploits were known nationwide...
, whose spree throughout the southern Midwest
Midwestern United States
The Midwestern United States is one of the four U.S. geographic regions defined by the United States Census Bureau, providing an official definition of the American Midwest....
in the early years of the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
became part of American criminal folklore
Folklore
Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...
. Jones ran with Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker
Bonnie and Clyde
Bonnie Elizabeth Parker and Clyde Chestnut Barrow were well-known outlaws, robbers, and criminals who traveled the Central United States with their gang during the Great Depression. Their exploits captured the attention of the American public during the "public enemy era" between 1931 and 1934...
for eight and a half months, from Christmas Eve
Christmas Eve
Christmas Eve refers to the evening or entire day preceding Christmas Day, a widely celebrated festival commemorating the birth of Jesus of Nazareth that takes place on December 25...
1932 to early September 1933. He was one of two gang members who were consolidated into the "C. W. Moss" character in the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde
Bonnie and Clyde (film)
The film was originally offered to François Truffaut, the best-known director of the New Wave movement, who made contributions to the script. He passed on the project to make Fahrenheit 451. The producers approached Jean-Luc Godard next...
. "Moss was a dumb kid who run errands and done what Clyde told him. That was me, all right."
Youth
James and Tookie Jones were sharecroppersSharecropping
Sharecropping is a system of agriculture in which a landowner allows a tenant to use the land in return for a share of the crop produced on the land . This should not be confused with a crop fixed rent contract, in which a landowner allows a tenant to use the land in return for a fixed amount of...
in Henderson County, Texas
Henderson County, Texas
As of the census of 2000, there were 73,277 people, 28,804 households, and 20,969 families residing in the county. The population density was 84 people per square mile . There were 35,935 housing units at an average density of 41 per square mile...
with six children, five sons and a daughter. W.D. was their second youngest child. After postwar cotton prices collapsed they gave up trying to farm, and around 1921-22, in the same wave that brought the Barrow family and hundreds of other poor families from the country to the unwelcoming city, the Joneses settled in the industrial slum of West Dallas, in the 1920s a maze of tent cities
Shanty town
A shanty town is a slum settlement of impoverished people who live in improvised dwellings made from scrap materials: often plywood, corrugated metal and sheets of plastic...
and shacks without running water, gas or electricity, set on dirt streets amid smokestacks
Chimney
A chimney is a structure for venting hot flue gases or smoke from a boiler, stove, furnace or fireplace to the outside atmosphere. Chimneys are typically vertical, or as near as possible to vertical, to ensure that the gases flow smoothly, drawing air into the combustion in what is known as the...
, oil refineries
Oil refinery
An oil refinery or petroleum refinery is an industrial process plant where crude oil is processed and refined into more useful petroleum products, such as gasoline, diesel fuel, asphalt base, heating oil, kerosene, and liquefied petroleum gas...
, "plants
Physical plant
Physical plant or mechanical plant refers to the necessary infrastructure used in support and maintenance of a given facility. The operation of these facilities, or the department of an organization which does so, is called "plant operations" or facility management...
, quarries
Quarry
A quarry is a type of open-pit mine from which rock or minerals are extracted. Quarries are generally used for extracting building materials, such as dimension stone, construction aggregate, riprap, sand, and gravel. They are often collocated with concrete and asphalt plants due to the requirement...
, lagoons
Oil spill
An oil spill is the release of a liquid petroleum hydrocarbon into the environment, especially marine areas, due to human activity, and is a form of pollution. The term is mostly used to describe marine oil spills, where oil is released into the ocean or coastal waters...
, tank farms
Oil depot
An oil depot is an industrial facility for the storage of oil and/or petrochemical products and from which these products are usually transported to end users or further storage facilities...
and burrow pits
Borrow pit
A borrow pit, also known as a sand box, is a term used in construction and civil engineering. It describes an area where material has been dug for use at another location. Borrow pits can be found close to many major construction projects...
" on the Trinity River
Trinity River (Texas)
The Trinity River is a long river that flows entirely within the U.S. state of Texas. It rises in extreme north Texas, a few miles south of the Red River. The headwaters are separated by the high bluffs on the south side of the Red River....
floodplain
Floodplain
A floodplain, or flood plain, is a flat or nearly flat land adjacent a stream or river that stretches from the banks of its channel to the base of the enclosing valley walls and experiences flooding during periods of high discharge...
. It was while his family was living in the squatters' camp
Squatting
Squatting consists of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied space or building, usually residential, that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have permission to use....
under the Oak Cliff Viaduct
Oak Cliff
Oak Cliff is a community in Dallas, Texas, United States that was formerly a separate town located in Dallas County; Dallas annexed Oak Cliff in 1903...
that W.D., then about five, first met Clyde Barrow, then age 11 or 12.
When W.D. was six years old his entire family was stricken by what was probably Spanish flu, which lingered after the 1918 pandemic in pockets of the United States where unhealthy conditions prevailed. His father and sister died in the same hour, his oldest brother two nights later, all of pneumonia (frequently the coup de grâce delivered by that strain of flu). Tookie Jones and four of her sons survived.
Jones grew up illiterate
Literacy
Literacy has traditionally been described as the ability to read for knowledge, write coherently and think critically about printed material.Literacy represents the lifelong, intellectual process of gaining meaning from print...
. Before or after the illness that devastated his family he got partly through the first grade; he recalled that he left school to sell newspapers. He had been friends with LC Barrow, the youngest son of his mother's friend Cumie, since their families' first days in West Dallas. The Joneses and the Barrows were close: when Buck Barrow
Buck Barrow
Marvin Ivan Barrow was a member of the Barrow Gang. He was the older brother of the gang's leader, Clyde Barrow. He and his wife Blanche were wounded in a gun battle with police four months after they joined up with Bonnie and Clyde...
was to stand trial in San Antonio for car theft, Tookie and her two youngest boys accompanied the Barrows and their two youngest children as they traveled by horse and wagon, 300 miles south, to attend. Both boys had big brothers named Clyde; W.D.'s brother Clyde drove his wife and Buck Barrow's girlfriend Blanche
Blanche Barrow
Bennie Iva "Blanche" Frasure was the wife of Marvin "Buck" Barrow and the sister-in-law of Clyde Barrow. Buck and Blanche were part of the Barrow Gang from late March 1933 until their capture on July 24, 1933.-Early life:Blanche Barrow was born in Garvin, Oklahoma...
across the country to Tennessee
Tennessee
Tennessee is a U.S. state located in the Southeastern United States. It has a population of 6,346,105, making it the nation's 17th-largest state by population, and covers , making it the 36th-largest by total land area...
in the summer of 1930 to see Buck while he was on the lam
Fugitive
A fugitive is a person who is fleeing from custody, whether it be from private slavery, a government arrest, government or non-government questioning, vigilante violence, or outraged private individuals...
. The Barrows, too, had been hit by disease in the West Dallas camp: Clyde, his father and his younger sister Marie were hospitalized by something so severe that years later Clyde was rejected by the Navy due to its lingering effects.
With the Barrow Gang
By age 15 or 16 W.D. Jones was known to the local police. He hung around the Barrows' service station on Eagle Ford RoadEagle Ford, Dallas, Texas
Eagle Ford is a neighborhood in West Dallas, Texas, United States.-Adjacent areas:*Ledbetter Gardens *Westmoreland Heights *Trinity River *City of Irving *City of Grand Prairie...
and collected license plates for LC's brothers to use on cars they stole; he was picked up in Dallas at least once "on suspicion" of car theft and was arrested with LC in Beaumont, Texas
Beaumont, Texas
Beaumont is a city in and county seat of Jefferson County, Texas, United States, within the Beaumont–Port Arthur Metropolitan Statistical Area. The city's population was 118,296 at the 2010 census. With Port Arthur and Orange, it forms the Golden Triangle, a major industrial area on the...
for car theft. On Christmas Eve 1932, Clyde Barrow and his girlfriend Bonnie — already on the run, and glamorous outlaws to W.D. — stopped by home. Barrow was between assistants, and he and Parker brought Jones along with them when they left. The next afternoon in Temple, Texas
Temple, Texas
Temple is a city in Bell County, Texas, United States. Located near the county seat of Belton, Temple lies in the region referred to as Central Texas. Located off Interstate 35, Temple is 65 miles north of Austin and 34 miles south of Waco. In the 2010 Census, Temple's population was 66,102, an...
, in a botched attempt at stealing a car, Jones or Barrow shot and killed the car's owner, a 27-year-old new father, grocery clerk Doyle Johnson. Newspaper accounts reported that the fatal shots came from the passenger side of the car. According to Jones, Barrow used this report to keep him with him and Parker. Jones was indicted for Johnson's murder by a Bell County
Bell County, Texas
Bell County is a county located in the U.S. state of Texas. Bell County was founded in 1850. It is part of the Killeen–Temple–Fort Hood Metropolitan Statistical Area. In 2000, the county's population was 237,974; in 2010 the U.S. Census Bureau reported that its population had reached...
grand jury, but was not tried.
Not quite two weeks later, in Dallas on the night of January 6, 1933, the three stumbled into a trap set for another criminal and Barrow killed Tarrant County
Tarrant County, Texas
Tarrant County is a county located in the U.S. state of Texas. As of the 2010 U.S. Census, it had a population of 1,809,034. Its county seat is Fort Worth. Tarrant County is the sixteenth most populous county in the United States and the third most populous in Texas. The county is named in honor...
Deputy Malcolm Davis, shooting him point-blank in the chest with a 16-gauge shotgun. Jones and Parker were waiting in the car for Barrow and were as startled as the neighbors were when gunfire broke out. Jones "grabbed a gun and began blasting the landscape." Parker shouted to him to stop, that he might hit someone, and she circled the car around the block to catch up with Barrow. Though in his confession to police Jones said that he was starting the motor while Parker fired her pistol out the passenger window, thirty-five years later he told Playboy
Playboy
Playboy is an American men's magazine that features photographs of nude women as well as journalism and fiction. It was founded in Chicago in 1953 by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner's mother. The magazine has grown into Playboy Enterprises, Inc., with...
magazine, "As far as I know, Bonnie never packed a gun.... during the five big gun battles I was with them, she never fired a gun." In October 1934 Jones was tried and convicted as an accessory to Deputy Davis's murder as part of an arrangement with Dallas County
Dallas County, Texas
As of the census of 2000, there were 2,218,899 people, 807,621 households, and 533,837 families residing in the county. The population density was 2,523 people per square mile . There were 854,119 housing units at an average density of 971/sq mi...
Sheriff R.A."Smoot" Schmid.
After the murder of Malcolm Davis, Barrow, Parker and Jones lay low. They drove through the hills of Missouri
Missouri
Missouri is a US state located in the Midwestern United States, bordered by Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. With a 2010 population of 5,988,927, Missouri is the 18th most populous state in the nation and the fifth most populous in the Midwest. It...
and Arkansas
Arkansas
Arkansas is a state located in the southern region of the United States. Its name is an Algonquian name of the Quapaw Indians. Arkansas shares borders with six states , and its eastern border is largely defined by the Mississippi River...
and may have wandered as far east as Tennessee. They made news only on the night of January 26, when they kidnapped Springfield, Missouri
Springfield, Missouri
Springfield is the third largest city in the U.S. state of Missouri and the county seat of Greene County. According to the 2010 census data, the population was 159,498, an increase of 5.2% since the 2000 census. The Springfield Metropolitan Area, population 436,712, includes the counties of...
police officer Thomas Persell. Twice in early spring they dressed up and photographed each other and their gun collection beside the road. They saw how their pictures came out at the same time thousands of newspaper readers did: in April the rolls of film were captured by police, developed, and published. The playful pictures brought unintended consequences, particularly one of Bonnie Parker squinting defiantly at the camera, her foot planted on the bumper of a stolen car, a gun at her outthrust hip and a cigar hanging from her mouth. Dallas County Deputy Sheriff Ted Hinton
Ted Hinton
Ted Hinton was a Dallas County, Texas, Deputy Sheriff, the youngest of the posse that ambushed and killed Bonnie and Clyde near Gibsland, Louisiana, on May 23, 1934.-History:...
recalled that the "brazen pride" displayed in the pictures made law enforcement officers that much more determined to catch them.
The three returned to Dallas on March 24 or 25 and learned that on the 23rd, Clyde's older brother Buck
Buck Barrow
Marvin Ivan Barrow was a member of the Barrow Gang. He was the older brother of the gang's leader, Clyde Barrow. He and his wife Blanche were wounded in a gun battle with police four months after they joined up with Bonnie and Clyde...
had been pardoned from Huntsville penitentiary. On the night of March 25 they surprised Buck and his wife Blanche
Blanche Barrow
Bennie Iva "Blanche" Frasure was the wife of Marvin "Buck" Barrow and the sister-in-law of Clyde Barrow. Buck and Blanche were part of the Barrow Gang from late March 1933 until their capture on July 24, 1933.-Early life:Blanche Barrow was born in Garvin, Oklahoma...
at Blanche's mother's home and persuaded Buck to come vacation with them in strategically located Joplin, Missouri
Joplin, Missouri
Joplin is a city in southern Jasper County and northern Newton County in the southwestern corner of the US state of Missouri. Joplin is the largest city in Jasper County, though it is not the county seat. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 50,150...
.
Joplin, Missouri
Jones was a combatant in the April 13, 1933 Joplin shootout with law officers in which Constable Wes Harryman and motor detective Harry McGinnis were killed by shotgun. Police estimated that this infamous shootout lasted about one minute, from first shot to last. The most serious injury to the Barrows was to W.D. Jones. He was struck in the left side, possibly by a shot fired through the garage's glass window by Detective McGinnis or through the still-open garage door by Officer Harryman's only fired round, though Officer Kahler of the Missouri State Highway Patrol, recalling the battle in 1980, said that he himself shot Jones below the right shoulder blade, many seconds after the two fatally wounded officers were down. The Barrows fled westward; they stopped once at a gas station for aspirin and rubbing alcohol. They moved Jones into the front seat and wrapped him in the blanket that usually covered the guns; Parker prised open his wound with knitting needles and poured rubbing alcohol into it. In the Texas PanhandleTexas Panhandle
The Texas Panhandle is a region of the U.S. state of Texas consisting of the northernmost 26 counties in the state. The panhandle is a rectangular area bordered by New Mexico to the west and Oklahoma to the north and east...
, somewhere near Shamrock
Shamrock, Texas
-Demographics:As of the census of 2000, there were 2,029 people, 852 households, and 550 families residing in the city. The population density was 979.7 people per square mile . There were 1,072 housing units at an average density of 517.6 per square mile...
or Amarillo
Amarillo, Texas
Amarillo is the 14th-largest city, by population, in the state of Texas, the largest in the Texas Panhandle, and the seat of Potter County. A portion of the city extends into Randall County. The population was 190,695 at the 2010 census...
, they pulled over to examine their wounds. "Clyde wrapped an elm branch in gauze and pushed it through the hole in my side and out my back. The bullet had gone clean through me so we knew it would heal."
The unexpected viciousness of the apartment dwellers' response, the haul of weaponry recovered, and especially the rolls of film they left behind made the Barrow Gang suddenly wanted and recognizable far beyond Texas. In their immediate descriptions of the gun battle the police officers remembered only two shooters, whom they named as Clyde and Buck Barrow; no witness remembered a third man. Jones was never correctly identified while he was with Clyde Barrow; when he had to introduce himself during his time with the Barrows he used the name "Jack Sherman." From the Joplin photos police variously identified him as Buck Barrow, Pretty Boy Floyd
Pretty Boy Floyd
Charles Arthur "Pretty Boy" Floyd was an American bank robber. He operated in the West South Central States, and his criminal exploits gained heavy press coverage in the 1930s. Like most other prominent outlaws of that era, he was killed by law enforcement officers...
and Hubert Bleigh.
Ruston, Louisiana
Two weeks later on April 27, in the middle of a car theft in Ruston, LouisianaRuston, Louisiana
Ruston is a city in and the parish seat of Lincoln Parish, Louisiana, United States. The population was 20,546 at the 2000 census. Ruston is near the eastern border of the Ark-La-Tex and is the home of Louisiana Tech University. Its economy caters to its college population...
, still not recovered from his Joplin wounds and perhaps tired of the constant bickering in the car as well as afraid for his life, Jones disappeared from the gang. (A fictionalized version of the Ruston car theft and subsequent kidnapping is the Gene Wilder
Gene Wilder
Gene Wilder is an American stage and screen actor, director, screenwriter, and author.Wilder began his career on stage, making his screen debut in the film Bonnie and Clyde in 1967. His first major role was as Leopold Bloom in the 1968 film The Producers...
-Evans Evans
Evans Evans
Evans Evans is an actress known for playing the part of Velma Davis in the 1967 film Bonnie & Clyde....
segment in Bonnie and Clyde
Bonnie and Clyde (film)
The film was originally offered to François Truffaut, the best-known director of the New Wave movement, who made contributions to the script. He passed on the project to make Fahrenheit 451. The producers approached Jean-Luc Godard next...
.) According to his statement to Dallas police November 18, "[T]hey [the Barrow brothers] 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 getaway and came back to Dallas, Texas." The car he stole in Ruston was found 130 miles away, at the edge of the Mississippi River
Mississippi River
The Mississippi River is the largest river system in North America. Flowing entirely in the United States, this river rises in western Minnesota and meanders slowly southwards for to the Mississippi River Delta at the Gulf of Mexico. With its many tributaries, the Mississippi's watershed drains...
, in the eastern Arkansas
Arkansas
Arkansas is a state located in the southern region of the United States. Its name is an Algonquian name of the Quapaw Indians. Arkansas shares borders with six states , and its eastern border is largely defined by the Mississippi River...
railroad town of McGehee
McGehee, Arkansas
McGehee is a city in Desha County, Arkansas, United States. The population was 4,219 at the 2010 census.-History:The history of the city of McGehee and the history of the railroad through McGehee are intricately interwoven...
.
Clyde didn't want to believe that the docile W.D. had deliberately abandoned the gang, but to Buck it was obvious, and a relief, that "the kid" had. Jones made his way back to Dallas and spoke with Mrs. Barrow at least once while he was there. In late May the gang sent Blanche to Dallas to bring money and news to the families; Barrow instructed her to bring Jones with her to their rendezvous. When Blanche passed this request on, both mothers were polite, but demurred; Mrs. Barrow told Blanche faintly that "she did not know if he wanted to go with Clyde or not"; LC and Mrs. Parker at least pretended to try to find him. Barrow arranged at least one more meeting, expressly asking his mother to find and return Jones then, but to no avail. Finally he and Parker drove into Dallas and picked him up themselves, on June 8 or 9. In his statement to Dallas police Jones said, "[A]bout two o'clock in the afternoon.... I was walking along the road intending to go down to the lake
Bachman Lake
Bachman Lake is a small freshwater lake located in the Love Field neighborhood of northwest Dallas, Texas . It covers in northwest Dallas and lies on the northwest boundary of Dallas Love Field in the airport's landing path...
and to go to a dance at the Five Point Dancehall that night. Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow drove up from behind me and stopped. They were in a V8
Ford Model B (1932)
The Model B was a Ford automobile with production starting with model year 1932 and ending with 1934. It was a much updated version of the Model A and was replaced by the 1935 Ford Model 48...
Coupe
Coupé
A coupé or coupe is a closed car body style , the precise definition of which varies from manufacturer to manufacturer, and over 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." After this, even when the five-person gang had two cars, "Clyde always wanted W.D. to be in the car with him."
Wellington, Texas
On the night of June 10, racing to meet Buck and Blanche in Oklahoma, Barrow was traveling too fast to notice a detour sign at the bridge over the Salt Fork of the Red RiverRed River (Mississippi watershed)
The Red River, or sometimes the Red River of the South, is a major tributary of the Mississippi and Atchafalaya Rivers in the southern United States of America. The river gains its name from the red-bed country of its watershed. It is one of several rivers with that name...
outside Wellington, Texas
Wellington, Texas
Wellington is a city in Collingsworth County, Texas, United States. The population was 2,275 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Collingsworth County.-Geography:Wellington is located at ....
. "Suddenly the road disappeared." The car sailed into the air, turning over as it went, and crashed into the dry riverbed, rolling several times and coming to rest on its side. Battery acid poured onto Bonnie Parker, eating away the flesh of her right leg as she screamed and struggled. A farm family came to their aid, but quickly contacted police; "Bonnie told me I fired a shotgun there which wounded a woman in the hand." Barrow and Jones kidnapped the responding officers, Sheriff George Corry and Marshal Paul Hardy, to make their escape.
"Bonnie never got over that burn. Even after it healed over, her leg was drawn under her. She had to just hop or hobble along." Barrow, who limped himself, accommodated the new delays, expenses and detours her disablement created in his life without hesitation, and while she healed he or Jones carried her wherever she needed to go.
The gang holed up in a tourist cabin in Fort Smith
Fort Smith, Arkansas
Fort Smith is the second-largest city in Arkansas and one of the two county seats of Sebastian County. With a population of 86,209 in 2010, it is the principal city of the Fort Smith, Arkansas-Oklahoma Metropolitan Statistical Area, a region of 298,592 residents which encompasses the Arkansas...
, Arkansas
Arkansas
Arkansas is a state located in the southern region of the United States. Its name is an Algonquian name of the Quapaw Indians. Arkansas shares borders with six states , and its eastern border is largely defined by the Mississippi River...
, tending Parker, unable to move on until she recovered — or died — from her catastrophic injury. "She'd been burned so bad none of us thought she was gonna live. The hide on her right leg was gone, from her hip down to her ankle. I could see the bone at places." During this time Barrow's love for Parker drove him to put his own life on the line several times to try to help her.
Fayetteville, Arkansas
With Barrow's attention focused on Parker, the problem of acquiring food and rent money fell to Buck and Jones. On June 23, as the two were fleeing the scene of a clumsy grocery store robbery fifty miles away in FayettevilleFayetteville, Arkansas
Fayetteville is the county seat of Washington County, and the third largest city in Arkansas. The city is centrally located within the county and is home to the University of Arkansas. Fayetteville is also deep in the Boston Mountains, a subset of The Ozarks...
, they crested a hill on Highway 71
U.S. Route 71
U.S. Route 71 is a north–south United States highway. This original 1926 route has remained largely unchanged by encroaching Interstate highways. Currently, the highway's northern terminus is in International Falls, Minnesota at the Canadian border, at the southern end of the Fort...
and smashed into the back of a slower moving vehicle. The driver climbed out of his car and grabbed two rocks; the Barrows jumped out of their car, Buck with a shotgun and Jones with a BAR. Town Marshal Henry Humphrey of Alma
Alma, Arkansas
Alma is a city in Crawford County located in the western part of U.S. state of Arkansas, along I-40 about 13 miles from the Oklahoma border. Alma's population is 4,734, making it the sixth largest city in the Fort Smith, Arkansas-Oklahoma Metropolitan Statistical Area...
and Crawford County Deputy Sheriff Ansel M. "Red" Salyers were also on Highway 71, driving toward Fayetteville to investigate the grocery store robbery. In the opposite lane the first car passed them — they waved to the driver, whom they knew — then seconds later came the speeding V-8. They heard the crash and turned around, and at the scene they recognized the V-8's Kansas plate. As Marshal Humphrey drew his gun and got out of the car, Buck shot him in the chest. Jones fired a round from the BAR at Salyers. Salyers ducked behind his car and fired back with a rifle, then as Jones fumbled to reload dashed toward a farmhouse. Buck's shotgun had jammed; he ran to Salyers's car, yelling to Jones to get Humphrey's pistol. From the farmhouse a hundred yards away, Salyers took aim and managed to shoot off two of Jones's fingertips as the robbers careened away in his automobile. A few miles from Fort Smith Buck and Jones hijacked a couple's car at gunpoint, then realized the roads into Fort Smith were blocked. The car was found abandoned in the mountains. They staggered in the door of the tourist cabin ten hours after they had left. The Barrow Gang packed up what they could and decamped.
The next month, Deputy Salyers drove 500 miles to a hospital in Perry
Perry, Iowa
Perry is a city in Dallas County, Iowa, United States, along the North Raccoon River. The population was 7,633 at the 2000 census. It is part of the Des Moines–West Des Moines Metropolitan Statistical Area....
, Iowa
Iowa
Iowa is a state located in the Midwestern United States, an area often referred to as the "American Heartland". It derives its name from the Ioway people, one of the many American Indian tribes that occupied the state at the time of European exploration. Iowa was a part of the French colony of New...
, to get a final statement from the dying Buck Barrow. Barrow admitted to Salyers that he had murdered Marshal Humphrey, and that he and the man with him — who he finally confessed was "Jack Sherman"— had been shooting to kill them both. Officer Humphrey's pistol was found in the Barrows' debris at Dexfield Park. In November, Jones told police that he had been stunned in the car crash and his memory of any ensuing action was hazy, but he was confident that only Buck was shooting. He did remember standing in the highway looking for a gold ring he had lost. However, the following February at the harboring trial, Jones read a statement in which he said both he and Buck had killed Humphrey.
Platte City and Dexfield Park
On July 20 around one a.m, thirteen lawmen led by Sheriff Holt CoffeyHolt Coffey
Holt Coffey was the sheriff of Platte County, Missouri from 1933 until 1937 and again from 1941 until 1945. Coffey, along with newly elected Platte City Prosecutor David Clevenger, was responsible for cleaning up much of the small time crime around Platte County, a suburb of freewheeling Kansas...
, protecting themselves from expected machine gun fire with metal shields, advanced on the double cabin at the Red Crown Tourist Court
Red Crown Tourist Court
The Red Crown Tavern and Red Crown Tourist Court in Platte County, Missouri was the site of the July 20, 1933 gun battle between lawmen and outlaws Bonnie and Clyde and three members of their gang. The outlaws made their escape, but would be tracked down and cornered four days later near Dexter,...
in Platte City, Missouri
Platte City, Missouri
Platte City is a city in Platte County, Missouri, along the Little Platte River. The population was 3,866 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Platte County.-Geography:Platte City is located at...
. In the ensuing firefight Buck Barrow was shot in the head as he and Blanche ran to get inside the garage. Jones had started the V8's engine but was afraid to open the garage door, then was afraid to help Blanche drag Buck inside. As they flew toward the highway Blanche was partly blinded by shards of glass from the car's exploding windows. Clyde drove them north two hundred miles, running for a long time on flats, then rims, the floor of the car sloshing with Buck's blood. State and federal agents tracked them north following reports of blood-soaked and burned clothes and bandages in fields and on the sides of the road. The Barrow Gang finally hid in a brake of trees at the edge of an abandoned amusement park outside Dexter
Dexter, Iowa
Dexter is a city in Dallas County, Iowa, United States. The population was 689 at the 2000 census. It is part of the Des Moines–West Des Moines Metropolitan Statistical Area...
, Iowa
Iowa
Iowa is a state located in the Midwestern United States, an area often referred to as the "American Heartland". It derives its name from the Ioway people, one of the many American Indian tribes that occupied the state at the time of European exploration. Iowa was a part of the French colony of New...
. They attempted to leave the park the next day but, helplessly, returned: Buck's injuries were too severe.
During the night of July 24 nearly one hundred law officers, National Guardsmen and interested, armed, mostly deputized citizens — some with dates — crept up to the edges of the field, and as the sun rose a new shootout began. Parker, Barrow and Jones were badly wounded. Buck, unable to run, was shot six more times, and he and Blanche, who would not leave him, were captured. "Half stumbling, half swimming," Jones dragged and carried Parker a mile and a half while Barrow fought away the last of the posse. Bonnie told her sister that as she and W.D. hid in the brush, their wounds dripping blood, they heard distant gunfire and then a long silence. Bonnie began to weep and to wish they had a gun with them, so she could die with Clyde. But at last, Barrow crawled out of the woods. Gesturing with an empty pistol he commandeered a car from a farmer and the trio escaped.
They kept driving. Throughout August they plied the back roads from Nebraska to Minnesota to Mississippi, pausing in only the smallest towns to steal fresh cars and money for gas and food. They slept in the cars, parked in remote fields or woods or in ravines; the following winter, Barrow would observe that he hadn't slept in a bed or even changed his clothes since his brother Buck was killed. Near the end of the month Barrow and Jones rebuilt the gang's security by robbing the armory at Plattville, Illinois of more BARs, handguns and ammunition.
Jones was as loyal a subordinate as Clyde and Bonnie could have hoped for, but he did not want to accompany them into death or even any farther into pain and fear. They were aware that Jones wanted to leave them. Nevertheless, Jones stayed until Barrow and Parker were well enough to take care of themselves without help before leaving. "I left Clyde and Bonnie after they was healed up enough to get by without me.... I'd had enough blood and hell."
According to Barrow family members, the three made their way back to West Dallas and split up there on September 7. This may have been the story Clyde and Bonnie told. According to W.D., they were forty miles outside of Clarksdale, Mississippi
Clarksdale, Mississippi
Clarksdale is a city in Coahoma County, Mississippi, United States. The population was 20,645 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Coahoma County....
on the night in early September when he saw a way to escape. They had just stolen a new car and Barrow had given him $2.12 to fill its tank. Jones put in a few gallons, then drove ahead as if to find a secluded place to stop and change cars. But when he was out of Barrow's sight he turned down a country road, turned off the car's headlights, and sped up. After a few miles he left the car and fled for his mother's home in Houston
Houston, Texas
Houston is the fourth-largest city in the United States, and the largest city in the state of Texas. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, the city had a population of 2.1 million people within an area of . Houston is the seat of Harris County and the economic center of , which is the ...
. No matter which story is true, it's likely that Jones never saw Clyde or Bonnie again.
Arrest and sentence
Jones kept a low profile after his return to Houston, picking cotton and digging vegetables on area farms to support himself, but on November 16 he was arrested without incident in Houston by Dallas County deputies Bob Alcorn and Ed Caster, who drove him to the Dallas County jail. An acquaintance in Houston had identified him to police as the mystery Barrow accomplice.It is possible that Barrow coached Jones on what to say if he was ever arrested, or that the two of them agreed on a basic theme for Jones's official story: that Clyde, Bonnie and Buck had done all shooting and robbing and that W.D., a minor child, was an unwilling member of the gang, forced to ride with them at gunpoint, unconscious with fear or trauma most of the time, and chained to trees and car bumpers at night. Jones may or may not have had Barrow's blessing to blame every serious transgression on those who had nothing to lose, but on November 18, 1933, he relayed to Dallas police just such a scenario.
Dallas possession of an important Barrow Gang member was an ace up the sleeve for the politically ambitious Sheriff Schmid, who kept Jones a secret for ten days, perhaps hoping Clyde Barrow would try to storm the jail and break Jones out. Jones for his part insisted that he was grateful to be safely behind bars. On the night of November 22 the sheriff and his deputies Alcorn, Caster and Hinton
Ted Hinton
Ted Hinton was a Dallas County, Texas, Deputy Sheriff, the youngest of the posse that ambushed and killed Bonnie and Clyde near Gibsland, Louisiana, on May 23, 1934.-History:...
bungled an ambush of Barrow and Parker in Sowers, Texas
Sowers, Texas
Sowers, Texas is a ghost town located approximately 11 miles northwest of Dallas, Texas in Dallas County. Today, the once rural community is located entirely within the boundaries of Irving, Texas.Of the original townsite, only the cemetery remains....
, on the outskirts of Dallas. The Dallas press jeered loudly — even the newsboys hawked the story as "Sheriff escapes from Clyde Barrow!" — until Schmid put W.D. Jones on display. Wide-eyed and "shaking with fear," Jones met the press; his deal with Sheriff Schmid was apparent in the sensational headline, "Saw Clyde Shoot Deputy."
Jones and the sheriff agreed that he would be tried as an accessory to Clyde Barrow's January 6 murder in Dallas of Deputy Davis, which would protect him against extradition to Arkansas for the June 23 shootout on Highway 71 in which Marshal Humphrey was killed. "They tried me for killing a sheriff's man at Dallas," Jones told Playboy in 1968. "Clyde done it, but I was glad to take the rap. Arkansas wanted to extradite me, and I sure didn't want to go to no Arkansas prison. I figure now that if Arkansas had got me, one of them skeletons they've dug up there
Tom Murton
Thomas O. Murton , generally known as Tom Murton, was a penologist best known for his wardenship of the prison farms of Arkansas...
might have been me."
Jones was in the Dallas County jail on the morning of May 23, 1934, when Barrow and Parker were ambushed and killed on the Sailes-Gibsland road
Gibsland, Louisiana
Gibsland is a town in Bienville Parish, Louisiana, United States. Conveniently near Interstate 20 and less than an hour from both Shreveport and Monroe, Louisiana, Gibsland offers small town living with access to urban amenities...
in north Louisiana
Louisiana
Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...
. When reporters crowded in to tell him the news, he said, "I admit that I am relieved," and shook his head.
At his trial the following October all state witnesses recommended against the death penalty. Jones was convicted of a crime codified in 1931, "murder without malice." Though the district attorney and the prosecuting attorney recommended a sentence of 99 years, on October 12 the jury handed down a sentence of fifteen years.
In February 1935 Jones and nineteen other family members and associates of Barrow and Parker were defendants in the federal government's test-case trial en masse for "harboring." He received the maximum sentence for harboring, two years, applied to run concurrently with his Texas sentence. After six years in the Huntsville penitentiary he was paroled.
After the Barrow Gang
"There's a bullet in my chest, I think from a machine gun, birdshot in my face and buckshot in my chest and right arm." "When I tried to join the Army in World War Two after I got out of prison, them doctors turned me down because their X-rays showed four buckshot and a bullet in my chest and part of a lung blown away".Jones lived the rest of his life in Houston, for many years next door to his mother. He married, but his wife died in the mid-1960s. He became addicted to pain-killing drugs. After 1967, the year Arthur Penn's
Arthur Penn
Arthur Hiller Penn was an American film director and producer with a career as a theater director as well. Penn amassed a critically acclaimed body of work throughout the 1960s and 1970s.-Early years:...
romanticized film
Bonnie and Clyde (film)
The film was originally offered to François Truffaut, the best-known director of the New Wave movement, who made contributions to the script. He passed on the project to make Fahrenheit 451. The producers approached Jean-Luc Godard next...
ignited a new generation's interest in the Barrow Gang, his arrests made the local news. Jones said of Bonnie and Clyde
Bonnie and Clyde (film)
The film was originally offered to François Truffaut, the best-known director of the New Wave movement, who made contributions to the script. He passed on the project to make Fahrenheit 451. The producers approached Jean-Luc Godard next...
, "[It] made it all look sort of glamorous, but like I told them teenaged boys sitting near me at the drive-in showing: 'Take it from an old man who was there. It was hell.'" Local TV reporters had brought him to see the film.
In 1968 Jones described his life on the run with Bonnie and Clyde in a colorful interview with Playboy magazine and spoke here and there to young people warning them away from the life of crime. Later in the year he filed a petition against Warner Bros.-Seven Arts
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
, charging that the filmmakers, who had never contacted him, had maligned his character by implying that he had played a role in the betrayal of Barrow and Parker. Nothing came of the filing.
"'I've never lived it down,' he said of his outlaw days. 'I've tried but I guess I never will.'"
In the early morning hours of August 20, 1974 Jones accompanied an acquaintance to a friend's home where she thought she would be given a place to sleep. The friend did not allow her in, an altercation ensued, and at 3:55 a.m. the friend shot Jones three times with a 12-gauge shotgun. "The man told police that Jones was a 'nice' person when sober but that he knew of Jones' reputation and was afraid of him." He was buried on August 22 at Brookside Memorial Park in Houston.
His date of birth
Marie Barrow, born in 1918, remembered Jones as being the same age as her brother LC, who was born in 1913, and that therefore he was not a minor in 1933. She may have confused Jones's birthday with Ray HamiltonRaymond Hamilton
Raymond Hamilton was a member of the notorious Barrow Gang during the early 1930s. By the time he was 21 years old he had accumulated a prison sentence of 362 years.-The Barrow Gang:...
's, May 21, 1913. In 1950 Jones filled out Social Security forms stating that he was born May 12, 1916, the same date he gave Dallas police in his November 1933 confession; in 1968 he told Playboy he was 16 on Christmas Eve 1932 and that Clyde Barrow was seven years older than he. A news article noting an arrest in September 1973 gives his age as 59. His death certificate gives his age as 58 and lists his birthday as May 15. Since he filled out his Social Security forms himself, while a relative filled out his death certificate, it would be safe to assume that his birthday is May 12 — however, May 15, 1916 is the date on his gravestone.
External links
- A few seconds of newsreel footage of the men's harboring trial of February 1935. YouTube
- "Rampage Road: On the Trail of Bonnie and Clyde." The Dallas News
- Architectural description, floor plan and photos of the interior and exterior of the Joplin garage apartment: Application for "Bonnie and Clyde Garage Apartment." National Register of Historic Places
- W.D.'s grave on video: CrawlShots: Brookside Cemetery, Houston Pt 2 YouTube