Two of the Southwest's more noted desperados during the early 1930's were Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker. Bonnie and Clyde (or the "Bloody Barrows", as they were then commonly called) terrorized the country, from Texas to Iowa and back, for two years, slaughtering at least a dozen men, most of whom were peace officers. They regularly visited Oklahoma in the course of their depredations.
             Raised in the slums of West Dallas, Clyde Chestnut Barrow (or Clyde Champion, as he preferred to be called) and Bonnie Parker Thornton apparently met in early 1930. He was the son of a former sharecropper who now ran a gas station in West Dallas. Both Clyde and his older brother, Buck, then in Huntsville Prison, had been arrested several times for burglary and car theft. Bonnie, as yet, had no record, but did have a husband, Roy Thornton, who was doing 99 years at Huntsville as an habitual criminal. She briefly found solace with Clyde Barrow but their budding romance was interrupted by police, who hauled Barrow off to Waco, where he was wanted for a series of burglaries and car thefts.
             Clyde pleaded guilty to two burglaries and five car thefts and was sentenced to two years, with 12 years probation. On March 11, 1930, he escaped from the Waco jail, with two other men, William Turner and Emory Abernathy. The suspicion was that Marvin "Buck" Barrow, having escaped three days earlier from Huntsville, arranged Clyde's jailbreak. According to Bonnie's relatives and Clyde's fellow escapee, William Turner, it was Bonnie who smuggled the a gun into Clyde's cell. At any rate, Barrow, Turner, and Abernathy left Bonnie behind and lit out for Middleton, Ohio, where they were arrested on March 18, after robbing a railroad depot of $57.97. The three were soon returned to Texas in chains, accompanied by Sheriff Leslie Stegall of Waco.
             Clyde's probation was revoked and, on April 21, 1930, as Clyde Champion Barrow, #63527, he was received at the State Penitentiary...