Outlaws made deadly mark in Southlake

Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow are two of the most notorious outlaws of the 20th century—their violent exploits cut a wide path through the central United States, including this area.

Stories and playful photos of the gun-toting gangster and his cigar-smoking moll have romanticized the pair as young lovers entrapped in a life of crime to survive, hiding out from the law.

"There was nothing romantic about them," said Anita Robeson, president of the Southlake Historical Society. "They were cold-blooded killers."

The murders of nine law enforcement officers and at least three others were attributed to the Barrow Gang between 1932 and 1934. Those killings included the deaths of state highway patrolmen E.B. Wheeler and H.D. Murphy, who were gunned down along Hwy. 114 in an area that is now Southlake.

The shootings of the two patrolmen on Easter Sunday, April 1, 1934, was not the pair's first time in the area. There are no reports that they ever robbed a local bank as part of about 200 robberies they committed in their criminal rampage through 20 states, according to Grapevine Historical Society accounts. Other Barrow gang members reportedly robbed a Grapevine bank.

But Bonnie and Clyde may have been extremely familiar here. Raised in impoverished West Dallas, Clyde and his family lived for a while near Hwy. 114 and Kimball Avenue, Robeson said.

"He possibly attended the 1919 Carroll School when he was a boy," she said.

Bonnie had close ties to the area and the pair may have been visiting on the day of the patrolmen's shooting, according to historical accounts.

Longtime Southlake landowner Zena Rucker said Bonnie's mother was best friends with a woman named Ma Williams, who lived in an old farmhouse that later became part of the Rucker holdings.

Bonnie and Clyde, along with their gang, were known to hide out in an area north of Denton Creek in Denton County, according to historical accounts.

"This was during Prohibition and there were lots of stills out there," Rucker said.

Jack Cook, who died in October at age 96, had a brush with the pair just after the patrolmen's shooting. A lifelong resident of the Dove Road area in Southlake, Cook and another farmer who witnessed the shootings of Wheeler and Murphy described the shooters as Bonnie and Clyde and said they were alone. Gang member Henry Methvin later said he had also participated, according to the Southlake Historical Society.

Cook, who was a teenager in 1934, recounted to the Southlake Historical Society that Bonnie and Clyde fled to an area home after the shootings, where the homeowners "put the children in the cellar" and made the outlaws a sandwich before they fled.

The shooting occurred when Murphy and Wheeler, along with Trooper Polk Ivy, were patrolling the area west of Grapevine.

They stopped near an open field off Hwy. 114 for target practice.

Afterward, Ivy drove west toward Roanoke. Murphy and Wheeler—a rookie on his second day—turned north onto Dove Road to assist a stopped car, according to the Southlake Historical Society account.

When he realized Wheeler and Murphy were not behind him, Ivy retraced the route and found the troopers lying dead in Dove Road, their pistols still holstered.

Another Grapevine resident had died in gunfire involving Clyde a year earlier.

Malcolm Davis was working as a Tarrant County sheriff's deputy when he joined other Tarrant County officers trying to arrest the outlaw in Dallas in connection with a Grapevine robbery that had been attributed to Barrow gang members.

Davis was shot and killed in the skirmish, according to a Grapevine Historical Society account, and is buried in Grapevine Cemetery.

After the patrolmen were shot, Bonnie and Clyde were closely tracked by a posse of lawmen. They were ambushed and killed on May 23, 1934, near Arcadia, La.

Bonnie, 23, and Clyde, 25, are both buried in Dallas.

A six-foot memorial marker to Wheeler and Murphy was dedicated in 1996.

The memorial is near the intersection of State Highway 114 and Dove Road, where they were shot to death.