# Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker:Psychopathic Killers or Ordinary Folk
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clyde-barrow-and-bonnie-parker-psychopathic-killers-or-ordinary-folk/509605
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [September 10, 2009, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clyde-barrow-and-bonnie-parker-psychopathic-killers-or-ordinary-folk/509605 "2009-09-10T20:50:22Z")
**Posts on this page:** 10
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)
#### Post date: [September 11, 2009, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clyde-barrow-and-bonnie-parker-psychopathic-killers-or-ordinary-folk/509605/21 "2009-09-11T19:07:53Z")
> [@handsomeharry](#):
>
> Clyde was always a POS thief and punk bully. He was a member of some local gang of crooks, and had numerous arrests before he went to Eastham. Of course, he was living in the back of a gas station for some time in his youth, so it could be nurture, rather than nature that made him like he was.
> Bonnie’s first husband was in prison when she met Clyde, so, my guess is that she was the kind of person that liked guys like that.
Hon, back in the day many people lived in apartments above or tacked onto their businesses. It would not have been unusual for his family to live behind the family gas station.
Would you say Col Sanders went bad?
WIKI:
At the age of 40, Sanders cooked chicken dishes and other meals for people who stopped at his service station in Corbin, Kentucky. Since he did not have a restaurant, he served customers in his living quarters in the service station. His local popularity grew, and Sanders moved to a motel and restaurant that seated 142 people and worked as the chef. Over the next nine years, he developed his method of cooking chicken. Furthermore, he made use of a pressure fryer that allowed the chicken to be cooked much faster than by pan frying.
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### Author:  [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)
#### Post date: [September 11, 2009, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clyde-barrow-and-bonnie-parker-psychopathic-killers-or-ordinary-folk/509605/22 "2009-09-11T19:15:22Z")
> [@palindromemordnilap](#):
>
> Maybe this has nothing to do with it, but the '30s seem like a time when outlaws were sort of glorified.
My Father lived through the depression, and was annoyed that the movie “glorified those gangsters” when I saw it as a kid.
How much truth is there to B&D tearing up folks mortgage papers at the bank?
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### Author:  [@lobotomyboy63](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lobotomyboy63)
#### Post date: [September 11, 2009, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clyde-barrow-and-bonnie-parker-psychopathic-killers-or-ordinary-folk/509605/23 "2009-09-11T21:47:56Z")
> [@Susanann](#):
>
> I would think just the opposite.
>
> In the old days of the 1920’s or 1930’s, few, if any, employers had the capability or inclination to be able to determine if job applicants were ever convicted of a crime.
>
> Contrast that to today, virutally every employer asks, and anyone can do a background check on the internet.
>
> There are so few jobs left in America today, that an ex-con has to compete with unemployed college graduates.
>
> I would think its much harder for an ex-con to get a job today.
Well, people in those days weren’t nearly as mobile. My father (b.1921) was born 12 miles from where he lived. Ultimately he died further away (helicopter took him to a bigger hospital than the hometown’s, you know) but he’s buried just 12 miles from his birthplace. And if you’re looking for a job locally, surely they’ve at least heard what you did, regardless of what you put on your app.
Even today people can favor those from their area. My hs girlfriend went to college, got a degree in education, and ended up teaching in our home town. She was up against people with better degrees and more experience when she interviewed, but being a hometown girl and a known quantity, they chose her.
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### Author:  [@LouisB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LouisB)
#### Post date: [September 11, 2009, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clyde-barrow-and-bonnie-parker-psychopathic-killers-or-ordinary-folk/509605/24 "2009-09-11T22:51:32Z")
My paternal grandfather was a constable (Precinct 7) in Dallas during the Bonnie and Clyde years; my father and my uncle were his deputies. All of them were extremely grateful that their paths never crossed. My best friend’s mother attended school with Bonnie, in Cement City, in East Dallas. She always said that Bonnie was smart, made good grades, and was very attractive. Contrary to popular legend, they were feared and not idealized. My father always referred to them as “amoral chicken thieves.” Back then, a chicken thief was pretty much a low life. After the two of them were killed in Louisiana, their bodies were brought back to Dallas and were on more or less public display, depending on who you knew. My father and a friend of his went to view both bodies; my father always maintained that many of the people who did so simply wanted the assurance that they were really and truly dead. One of them, I’ve forgotten which one, was buried in a cemetery not too far from our house; I used to sometimes take a look at the headstone while waiting for a bus. I think it was Clyde’s grave but I’m not sure. Their death car was on display at the Texas State Fair for years. I saw it many times over the years.
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### Author:  [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)
#### Post date: [September 11, 2009, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clyde-barrow-and-bonnie-parker-psychopathic-killers-or-ordinary-folk/509605/25 "2009-09-11T23:36:08Z")
> [@LouisB](#):
>
> my father always maintained that many of the people who did so simply wanted the assurance that they were really and truly dead.
🙂
> [@LouisB](#):
>
> Their death car was on display at the Texas State Fair for years. I saw it many times over the years.
Not as morbid as being in a casino, but still…
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### Author:  [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)
#### Post date: [September 11, 2009, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clyde-barrow-and-bonnie-parker-psychopathic-killers-or-ordinary-folk/509605/26 "2009-09-11T23:54:49Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#):
>
> How much truth is there to B&D tearing up folks mortgage papers at the bank?
None. They robbed very few banks. They weren’t good enough criminals to rob banks. They mostly stole from gas stations and country stores, and managed to get enough to maintain a lifestyle of eating and sleeping in stolen cars. Some criminal masterminds.
While there may have been some level of public support (or at least indifference), that went away when they started making a habit of killing cops. That was looked down on, then as now.
Even Dillinger (who _was_ sort of glorified) always felt it necessary to deny killing a cop, despite evidence that he did.
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### Author:  [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2009, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clyde-barrow-and-bonnie-parker-psychopathic-killers-or-ordinary-folk/509605/27 "2009-09-12T01:31:25Z")
> [@Frank](#):
>
> None. They robbed very few banks.
Clyde is said to have carried a BAR with the stock sawn off. He should get some points for cool.
Thanks for clearing up the Great Bank Robber Theory. 🙂
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### Author:  [@handsomeharry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handsomeharry)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2009, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clyde-barrow-and-bonnie-parker-psychopathic-killers-or-ordinary-folk/509605/28 "2009-09-12T01:37:41Z")
> [@aruvqan](#):
>
> Hon, back in the day many people lived in apartments above or tacked onto their businesses. It would not have been unusual for his family to live behind the family gas station.
> .
IIRC, it wasn’t the family gas station. That would make a lot of difference from Col. Sanders’ situation.
Also, the “Colonel’s” legacy of treachery and deceit, as well as the many political assassinations for which he was responsible should be enough of an answer to your other question!!
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### Author:  [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2009, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clyde-barrow-and-bonnie-parker-psychopathic-killers-or-ordinary-folk/509605/29 "2009-09-12T01:51:11Z")
> [@handsomeharry](#):
>
> IIRC, it wasn’t the family gas station.
[It was.](http://www.pbase.com/pgkps/image/63959853/large) Barrow was in his mid-teens and already pretty much on his way to a life of crime by then, though. Not that his childhood was middle-class or anything, not by any means. His parents were sharecroppers, and for some time after the move to Dallas lived in a shantytown beneath an aqueduct.
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### Author:  [@salinqmind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/salinqmind)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2009, 4:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clyde-barrow-and-bonnie-parker-psychopathic-killers-or-ordinary-folk/509605/30 "2009-09-12T04:41:18Z")
OP, what was the name of the book you read?
I’ve read Going Down Together (just out recently) and also the memoir by Blanche Barrow. (She was given a smallish sum for the rights to use her name in the movie by Warren Beatty, but she didn’t like it at all, especially Estelle Parson’s (playing her) performance.)
I don’t think they were psychopathic killers at all, it seems to me people got shot in the heat of the moment, but they didn’t kill deliberately and sadistically (and Bonnie never shot anyone, but posed holding a gun. The newspapers published the goofing-around pictures and Bonnie was astonished to read how her ‘legend’ grew.) They both grew up very, very poor in Texas - Dallas, was it? - living in shacks their families had knocked together. No jobs around, being a waitress or trying to get a job in the cement factory were the best things offered.
They seemed to spend most of their time driving enormous distances around the center of the US, always circling around and coming back to visit with their relatives. Clyde wanted to join up with the more famous gangs of criminals of the time, but ‘the Barrow gang’ was considered small fry who only robbed general stores for a few bucks at a time.
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