Buck Barrow

Main article: Bonnie and Clyde

Buck Barrow
Blanche and Buck Barrow, 1931
Born	March 14, 1903(1903-03-14) Marion County, Texas
Died	July 29, 1933(1933-07-29) (aged 30) Perry, Iowa
Cause	Gunshot
Conviction(s)	stolen goods
Status	Deceased
Spouse	Blanche Barrow (1931 - 1933, his death)

Marvin Ivan ("Buck") Barrow (March 14, 1903 – July 29, 1933) was a member of the Barrow Gang. He was the older brother of the gang's leader, Clyde Barrow. He and his wife Blanche were wounded in a gun battle with police four months after they joined up with Bonnie and Clyde. Buck died of his wounds.

Early life

Ivan Barrow was born in Jones Prairie, Marion County, Texas, the third child of Henry and Cumie Barrow. An aunt, watching the little boy "running around acting like a horse," gave him the nickname "Buck."^[1] He stopped going to school around age 8 or 9, enjoying fishing and hunting far better.

In the early 1920s the older Barrow children left the family farm one by one, to marry and start careers in the city of Dallas. At 18 or 19 Buck too went to Dallas, ostensibly to work for his brother repairing cars, but he quickly became part of the West Dallas petty-criminal underworld. His sister Marie, barely school age when she and her parents moved to the West Dallas campground, remembered watching him put spurs on roosters for cockfighting, and his pit bull, which tore off the back of her dress.^[2] He married twice and divorced twice during this time, and had three children by those marriages.^[3] Just before Christmas 1926 Buck, 23, and Clyde, 17, were arrested with a truckful of stolen turkeys they intended to sell for the holidays. Buck took the rap for himself and his brother and went to jail for a week, but the turkey adventure was an ironic joke, as by now Buck was making ends meet by stealing automobiles in cities all over Texas and selling them for a comfortable $100 or so to fences out of state.

On November 11, 1929, Barrow met Blanche Caldwell in an unincorporated part of Dallas County called West Dallas. They fell in love almost immediately.

On November 29, 1929, several days after meeting Blanche, Buck Barrow was shot and captured following a burglary in Denton, Texas. He was tried, convicted, and sentenced to four years in the Texas State Prison System. On March 8, 1930, however, Barrow escaped from the Ferguson Prison Farm near Midway, Texas. He simply walked out of the prison, stole a guard's car, and drove to his parents' place in West Dallas where Blanche was living.

In interviews with author/historian John Neal Phillips, Blanche was frank about the fact that she not only knew of Buck's escape, but that she hid with him and actually staged robberies with him. The notion that Blanche did not know until later that Buck was an escaped convict was fabricated by the Barrow family and Blanche herself as a means of convincing Missouri State authorities to reduce her prison sentence following her capture in July 1933.

On July 3, 1931, Blanche and Buck were married in Oklahoma. Blanche was not interested in pursuing a criminal career. She and other members of the Barrow family convinced Buck to turn himself in to Texas prison authorities and complete his sentence. Two days after Christmas 1931 his mother and his wife drove him to the gate of Huntsville penitentiary, where he told surprised prison officials that he had escaped almost two years before and needed to resume his sentence. They welcomed him in.

During his two years at Huntsville Buck sent repentant letters home, written for him by fellow prisoners. Before he had served two years of his six-year sentence he was abruptly pardoned, partly as part of Texas governor Ma Ferguson's plan to decrease prison crowding and partly due to the lobbying efforts of his wife and his mother.

Upon his release, March 22, 1933, Buck Barrow, in the company of Blanche, joined his younger brother Clyde, Bonnie Parker, and W. D. Jones in Joplin, Missouri where he participated in several armed robberies.

Murder

On April 13, 1933, Buck, Clyde, and W.D. Jones participated in a shootout with law enforcement officers at Joplin, Missouri. Two officers, Newton County Constable Wes Harryman and Joplin City Motor Detective Harry McGinnis, were killed.

On June 23, 1933, Buck and W. D. Jones killed Alma, Arkansas City Marshal Henry D. Humphrey during a gunfight on the road between Alma and Fayetteville. Clyde Barrow was not involved in the Humphrey killing.

Platte City and Dexfield Park

On July 19, 1933, Buck was seriously wounded in the head during a shootout at the Red Crown Tourist Court at Platte City, Missouri. Blanche was also wounded in the same gunfight. She and her husband escaped, however, along with Bonnie, Clyde, and W. D. Jones.

Five days later, on July 24, 1933, Buck, near death, was wounded in the back during yet another shootout, this time near an abandoned amusement park between Redfield and Dexter, Iowa. Bonnie, Clyde, and W. D. Jones, all wounded in the same gunfight, escaped. Buck and Blanche, though, were captured.

Blanche survived her wounds, although losing sight in one eye. Extradicted to Missouri, she was tried for the attempted murder of Sheriff Holt Coffey at Platte City. She was convicted and sentenced to ten years in prison.

Clyde and Buck Barrow's Grave 32°45′56″N 96°50′45″W / 32.7655373°N 96.8458633°W / 32.7655373; -96.8458633 (Burial site of Marvin Ivan ("Buck") Barrow)

Hospital

His doctors commented in their report on how clean Buck's head wound was, given the circumstances. On arrival Buck was generally lucid and told doctors that aspirin helped the pain in his head and the only real pain he felt was from his other gunshot wounds, particularly the one in his back. That bullet, doctors discovered, had entered his back, ricocheted off a rib and lodged in his chest wall close to the pleural cavity. Because he was in such a weakened state—his limbs had grown paralyzed from another bullet wound and his temperature would not lower from 105—his doctors expected he would develop pneumonia from the surgery on his chest. They predicted that that or infection of his head wound would kill him in a few days.^[4]

Lawmen visited him in the hospital to get his final statements. Though doctors kept him numb with opiates, they also injected him with stimulants at least twice, that he might answer questions.^[5] "Due to the lack of medical attention," an interrogator noted, "the wound in Barrow's head gave off such an offensive odor that it was with utmost difficulty that one could remain within several feet of him."^[6] He agreed with Deputy Red Salyers that he had shot and killed Marshal Humphrey in Arkansas. He was able to chat with the doctor, who asked him, "Where are you wanted by the law?" "Wherever I've been," replied Buck.^[7]

Death

When word of Buck's dire situation reached Texas, Dallas County Sheriff R.A."Smoot" Schmid wrote a letter of introduction to the local authorities for Buck and Clyde's mother Cumie, and a deputy sheriff provided money to help her cover the costs of the 36-hour drive to Iowa by Model-A.^[8] She and her youngest son LC arrived for Buck's last conscious hours. As his pneumonia strengthened he became delirious and finally slipped into a coma, from which he did not wake.^[9]

Henry and Cumie Barrow put off buying a gravestone for Buck. They were sure Clyde would follow him into death any day, and whether for practical or loving reasons or a mix of both, decided to wait for Clyde. Clyde liked the idea and suggested the epitaph to go over himself and his brother: "Gone But Not Forgotten."^[10]

On Buck and Clyde's shared gravestone, Buck's year of birth is incorrect. His mother gave the stonecutters their sister Nell's birth year for him. However, she had recorded the birth dates of all her children in the family Bible; there, Buck's birthdate is 1903.^[11][12]

References

1. ^ Barrow p. 226 fn. 6.
2. ^ Guinn 19, 27.
3. ^ He and his first wife had twin boys, one of whom died at five months. He and his second wife had a daughter.
4. ^ Phillips 157; Guinn 229; "Barrow Unconscious at Perry, IA, Hospital." Associated Press, unknown newspaper, July 26, 1933. Bonnie and Clyde's Hideout
5. ^ Phillips 157.
6. ^ FBI file 26-4114 Sec. 1, p. 307.
7. ^ Phillips p. 155.
8. ^ Guinn 229; Barrow 289 fn.8; FBI file 26-4114 Sec. 1, p. 317.
9. ^ Guinn pp. 229-30.
10. ^ Guinn p. 236.
11. ^ Guinn pp. 12-13; Barrow pp. 230-31 fn.15.
12. ^ "Buck Barrow". Find a Grave. http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=3444. Retrieved August 10, 2010. .

Bibliography

• Barrow, Blanche Caldwell, edited by John Neal Phillips (2004). My Life with Bonnie and Clyde. Norman and London: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 0806136251.
• FBI file 26-4114, four volumes of files held by the FBI that document the pursuit of the Barrow Gang. FBI Records and Information
• Guinn, Jeff (2009). Go Down Together. The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde. New York: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 1416557067.
• Milner, E.R. (1996). The Lives and Times of Bonnie & Clyde. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. ISBN 0809325527.
• Phillips, John Neal (2002). Running with Bonnie and Clyde: The Ten Fast Years of Ralph Fults. Norman and London: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 0806134291.

External links