INFAMOUS & NOTORIOUS AMERICAN GANGSTERS – THE LIFE AND DEATH OF OUTLAWS BONNIE AND CLYDE

AS FEATURED HERE AT THE CRIME THROUGH TIME COLLECTION HERE AT LITTLEDEAN JAIL ALONG WITH A MASS OF OTHER TRUE CRIME MEMORABILIA , MUDERABILIA , ETC 

VARIOUS IMAGES OF BONNIE AND CLYDE BEFORE AND AFTER THEY WERE SHOT BY THE LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS

Bonnie Elizabeth Parker (October 1, 1910 – May 23, 1934) and Clyde Chestnut Barrow (March 24, 1909 – May 23, 1934) were well-known outlaws, robbers, and criminals who traveled the Central United States with their gang during the Great Depression. Their gang was known as the “Barrow Gang” which included Bonnie and Clyde, and at times Buck Barrow, Blanche Barrow, Raymond Hamilton, W.D. Jones, Joe Palmer, Ralph Fults, and Henry Methvin. Their exploits captured the attention of the American public during the “public enemy era” between 1931 and 1934. Though known today for his dozen-or-so bank robberies, Barrow in fact preferred to rob small stores or rural gas stations. The gang is believed to have killed at least nine police officers and committed several civilian murders. The couple themselves were eventually ambushed and killed in Louisiana by law officers. Their reputation was cemented in American pop folklore by Arthur Penn’s 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde.^[1]

Even during their lifetimes, the couple’s depiction in the press was at considerable odds with the hardscrabble reality of their life on the road—particularly in the case of Parker. Though she was present at a hundred or more felonies during her two years as Barrow’s companion,^[2] she was not the machine gun-wielding cartoon killer portrayed in the newspapers, newsreels, and pulp detective magazines of the day. Gang member W. D. Joneswas unsure whether he had ever seen her fire at officers.^[3][4] Parker’s reputation as a cigar-smoking gun moll grew out of a playful snapshot found by police at an abandoned hideout, released to the press, and published nationwide; while she did chain-smoke Camel cigarettes, she was not a cigar smoker.^[5]

Author-historian Jeff Guinn explains that it was the release of these very photos that put the outlaws on the media map and launched their legend: “John Dillinger had matinee-idol good looks and Pretty Boy Floyd had the best possible nickname, but the Joplin photos introduced new criminal superstars with the most titillating trademark of all—illicit sex. Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker were young and unmarried. They undoubtedly slept together. Without Bonnie, the media outside Texas might have dismissed Clyde as a gun-toting punk, if it ever considered him at all. With her sassy photographs, Bonnie supplied the sex-appeal, the oomph, that allowed the two of them to transcend the small-scale thefts and needless killings that actually comprised their criminal careers.”^[6]

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NOTORIOUS AMERICAN GANGSTER … AND MIDWEST BANK ROBBER- JOHN “JACKRABBIT” DILLINGER PUBLIC ENEMY NUMBER 1

AS FEATURED HERE AT THE CRIME THROUGH TIME COLLECTION  LITTLEDEAN JAIL , ALONG WITH A MASS OF OTHER TRUE CRIME MEMORABILIA , MUDERABILIA , ETC 

BELOW IS A BRIEF PICTORIAL GALLERY,  HISTORICALLY INTERACTIVE INSIGHT AND ORIGINAL NEWSREEL FOOTAGE SURROUNDING THE LIFE AND DEATH OF PUBLIC ENEMY NUMBER 1 AND NOTORIOUS MIDWEST BANK ROBBER …. JOHN ” JACKRABBIT ” DILLINGER .

John Herbert Dillinger, Jr. (June 22, 1903 – July 22, 1934) was an American bank robber of German descent in the Depression-era United States. He was charged with, but never convicted of, the murder of an East Chicago, Indiana, police officer during a shoot-out. This was his only alleged homicide and was likely not his action. His gang robbed two dozen banks and four police stations. Dillinger escaped from jail twice.

In 1933–34, seen in retrospect as the heyday of the Depression-era outlaw, Dillinger was the most notorious of all, standing out even among more violent criminals such as Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, and Bonnie and Clyde. (Decades later, the first major book about ’30s gangsters was titled The Dillinger Days.) Media reports in his time were spiced with exaggerated accounts of Dillinger’s bravado and daring and his colorful personality. The government demanded federal action, and J. Edgar Hoover developed a more sophisticated Federal Bureau of Investigation as a weapon against organized crime and used Dillinger and his gang as his campaign platform to launch the FBI.^[1]

After evading police in four states for almost a year, Dillinger was wounded and returned to his father’s home to recover. He returned to Chicago in July 1934 and met his end at the hands of police and federal agents who were informed of his whereabouts by Ana Cumpănaş (the owner of the brothel where Dillinger sought refuge at the time). On July 22, the police and Division of Investigation^[2][3] closed in on the Biograph Theater. Federal agents, led by Melvin Purvis and Samuel P. Cowley, moved to arrest him as he left the theater. He pulled a weapon and attempted to flee but was shot three (four according to some historians) times and killed.

AMERICAN GANGSTER,…….” JOHN DILLINGER” PUBLIC ENEMY NO 1
Here’s some great vintage news reel footage relating to to the demise of Dillinger seen here laid out for all to see , shot by the federal authorities .

ITEMS ON DISPLAY AT LITTLEDEAN JAIL INCLUDE