The true story of smugglers: how Frank Hammer caught and killed Bonnie and Clyde

The story of Bonnie and Clyde has been told many times, many ways and, sorry, the pun, until the death.

But you've never seen him tell in the same way that Netflix's The Highwaymen chose to tell it after the fact. Its slogan is "unpublished history".

Bonnie and Clyde have long been glorified, their horrible crimes have been presented to them.

This celebrity status imposed on them is not new. Even as they committed their crimes, people worshiped them.

The women dressed like Parker and saw it as a sort of Robin Hood romantic story despite the death toll.

The shooting ended on May 23, 1934 when a former Texas ranger, Frank Hamer, was ambushed and killed with the help of a rifle. pump, a pistol and an automatic rifle.

However, you rarely hear about Hamer.

Instead, pop culture, movies, and songs – Beyonce and Jay Z even sang about them – make people feel and celebrate the criminals.

The famous Bonnie and Clyde film of 1967 describes Hamer as a fool for revenge after the duo humiliated him at their first meeting.

"Frank Hamer was not the mischievous jester with mustaches described in Bonnie and Clyde, he was arguably the greatest judicial officer of the twentieth century," Josh Fusco told USA Today.

Hamer's family would have been "devastated" by his portrayal of the "mean jester", using the word "humiliated" in court documents.

True story of the smugglers

In real life, Hammer was a force to be reckoned with and he never met the criminal duo until the day he ambushed them.

Netflix's Highwaymen modifies the story, taking it from Hamer's side, telling us an unparalleled story of the fall of Bonnie and Clyde.

"When you make a historical piece, you can sometimes do something that dramatizes the greatest truth," director John Lee Hanbad said in a featurette. "So we reduce 100 days of real life in two hours. So you combine things sometimes, but you also have to be dramatic and entertaining. So I think you want to be as faithful as possible to the story and as faithful as possible to the story, and make it as correct as possible from the historical point of view. "

Fusco found Hamer to tell his story and spoke to his son Frank Hamer Jr. to make sure they had corrected the wrongs that had been done to him. It took 15 years to make everything perfect.

The Highwaymen, therefore, are more precise than many adaptations that preceded it.

We see Hamer (Kevin Costner) and his ex-partner Maney Gault (Woody Harrelson) rally to defeat the notorious gangsters of the film, a bit older.

It's not really a spoiler to say that we know how that happened, Bonnie and Clyde were finally caught and killed, but that's not really how it ends, that's what it's all about. Is how it happened.

True story of Bonnie and Clyde

The true story of the couple's demise really begins when Raymond Hamilton, a member of Barrow Gang, leaves Eastham Prison with four other inmates, one being Henry Methvin, who later joined the gang.

They broke out using weapons smuggled into prison under a fence near Barrow a few days ago.

During the escape, two guards were shot. One of them was fatally injured. Parker waited in the van car.

The Eastham Breakout was the straw that broke the camel's back. The Texas law enforcement forces were fed up with Barrow, Parker and the gang.

The crew had committed robberies, killings, police shootings and frequent robberies since 1932, traveling anywhere from Louisiana to Minnesota, leaving behind destruction.

Finally, with the green light of Texas Governor Miriam "Ma" Ferguson, portrayed by Kathy Bates in the film, Texas Prison Systems' general manager called on old Hamer to come out of retirement to demolish it.

According to American History, he told her "to put Clyde and Bonnie on the spot, then shoot everyone in sight."

The agreement was that Hamer could have what he wanted from gang property as a payment.

Who was Frank Hamer?

Francis Hamer was a Texas Ranger and arguably one of the best lawyers of the 20th century.

He was infamous for denouncing a network of murderers in 1928 called "murder machine bankers".

He was not afraid to call hers. The group had been ordered by the Texas police to collect $ 5,000 in rewards from the Texas Bankers' Association by killing and mentoring criminals.

They would ask for "burglars dead banks – not a dime for those who live".

He retired after nearly 27 years, just before Ma Ferguson took over, resulting in the resignation of 40 rangers instead of working for her.

This showed how important the Bonnie and Clyde case was, not only did they return to serve under Ma, but the fact that Hamer was out of retirement.

Assbadination of Easter Sunday

Although the law tried to catch up with Bonnie and Clyde for a while, she always escaped them.

The audience was of no help, treating them as celebrities. Then two officers of the Texas Highway Police were murdered in cold blood.

Finally, the public began to lose his hero worship for the couple.

A witness said that Parker had executed an officer while intoxicated while laughing while she was killing him. Although it was later discredited, it is included, at least in one version, in The Highwaymen.

In fact, it was Barrow and Methvin who killed the officers, but Hamer blamed Parker for the killings – even after the ambush.

The ambush: How are Bonnie and Clyde really dead?

Hamer finally caught up with Bonnie and Clyde, after finding them and waiting for his moment.

That moment came in March 1934 when Methvin's family spoke with Sheriff Henderson Jordan in Louisiana.

Methvin agreed to prepare Bonnie and Clyde if the state of Texas forgave him. They accepted and things were set in motion.

On May 21, Methvin left Barrow and Parker telling them that he would later find them at his parents' home.

Hamer, Gault and deputies Sheriff Bob Alcorn and Ted Hinton, as well as Sheriff Jordan and his badistant Prentiss Oakley, were on the lookout.

The group set up roadside surveillance that led to the Methvin family home.

The events that followed were reviewed, resumed, and modified over time.

Each of the six shooters gave very different accounts of the final ambush and the death of Bonnie and Clyde.

The one pbaders-by choose to go is true to the location, it's the same as the real ambush, but it uses different account snippets.

Everyone agreed that Oakley had fired the first shot, immediately killing Barrow with a bullet in the head.

The two deputy sheriffs gave their account as follows:

"There must have been a signal, but who is it from? We simply all acted together, took the road and raised our arms. We all shouted "Halt!" At a time. They did not stop. The car was driving slowly and Clyde dropped the steering wheel.

"We could see him with a rifle in his lap, Bonnie was looking for something on the other side, then everything broke out." There were six men shooting at the same time.

"Machine guns? No, thank God. We had shotguns and Browning automatons … You could not hear any shots. It was just a roar, a continuous roar, and it lasted several minutes. continues to shoot, no luck with Clyde and Bonnie. "

It is not known if a warning has been given. Some shooters say that no warning has been given, the others are arguing.

Hamer claimed that it was not a case of filming first, ask later.

"They did it with their weapon in their hands," he said, hinting that they fought back.

Whatever the case may be, Barrow and Parker died from several shots in the head and their car was hit by bullets.

In the car, Hamer and the group found "an arsenal on wheels" with automatic rifles, sawed-off shotguns, 10 pistols and 5,000 rounds of ammunition.

Hamer took what was his due, all the weapons and their fishing gear.

The rest of the Barrow gang was finally arrested and arrested.

Methvin was pardoned as promised, but was later sentenced for murder in Oklahoma. He was released on parole in 1942 and died after drinking a drink on a railway.

Hamer was clearly not a man ready to retire, he became an attacker of oil companies and shipping interests deceased in 1955.

His story was twisted and distorted so far from reality that he was perceived as that baffoon in the 1967 film.

The Highwaymen at least give him back his dignity, telling a much more accurate story and restoring his legendary status.