By now, most of you have heard that a hitherto unknown manuscript, written in longhand by Blanche Barrow, was discovered not long ago at the bottom of a cardboard box, one of many such containers filled with yellowing bank statements, canceled checks, and other mundane records from the estate (such as it was) of the former fugitive who died in 1988. Lorraine Weiser, long-time friend of Blanche Barrow and executrix of her estate, made the discovery quite by accident while sorting through all those boxes, which had been stored in her garage for more than a decade. Through a process that involved Lisa Hembry and the Dallas Historical Society, I was asked by Ms. Weiser if I thought the manuscript was authentic and if so, would I be interested in editing and annotating it for publication? Through my years of research and with the help of Ken Holmes, Jr., who possesses examples of Blanche Barrow's handwriting, I was able to confirm Ms. Weiser's first question. Regarding the second question, I needed no help in answering - yes! That was two years ago and I'm happy to say that the very pleasurable job of editing and annotating this important historical document was recently completed and that University of Oklahoma Press, who published my first book, Running with Bonnie and Clyde, has agreed to publish the memoir (probably in fall 2004). The manuscript, titled "I've Seen a Crime" by Blanche herself, was fun to edit, but not easy. Written while she was serving time in the Missouri state penitentiary, it has the cathartic style of someone trying to exorcize demons. The text is a stream-of-consciousness document with virtually no punctuation, few real sentences, and almost no paragraphs. Add to all of that, a sense of spelling that is largely phonetic coming from an author, whose eyesight was at best, blurred and riven with pain, and you begin to get the picture. The initial task, then, was to correct all of the above technical flaws without altering the author's original tone and intent, a process called 'regularizing'. And that, I am happy to say, was accomplished in both respects. Regarding editing and annotating this work, it helped that I was fortunate enough to have interviewed Blanche Barrow. I spoke with her on more than one occasion four years before her death, at a time when I was immersed in research for "Running with Bonnie and Clyde". Incidents portrayed in the memoir, were made so much easier to work with, after having talked with her about them. It also helped that the Barrow brothers' youngest sister, Marie, allowed me unfettered access to her substantial collection of letters, photographs, and other documents, including her mother's unpublished manuscript, long before much of it was scattered to the four winds, by way of sales and auctions. Another very new and equally helpful resource, also included amongst the varied items of Blanche's minuscule estate, was the text of a very brief, almost cryptic little memoir by Bonnie Parker's exceedingly private and closed-mouthed sister, Billie Jean, who died in 1993. These things, and hundreds of other resources (including some provided by Kent Biffle) were all employed in the job of editing and annotating Blanche Barrow's memoir. Portions of Blanche's narrative are tedious, almost maudlin in their attempt to convince someone, perhaps the author's father, more likely herself, that Buck was such an innocent victim of circumstances, that he had only paid a visit to his brother Clyde in an effort to get him to surrender to the police. Such was contradicted by fellow fugitive W. D. Jones who commented years later that Clyde would have never entertained the idea of surrendering, that Buck knew this from the outset, and that he simply told Blanche what she wanted to hear in order to get her to go with him to Missouri. Nevertheless, despite the author's prejudicial viewpoint toward her husband, these passages paint a very intriguing overall picture of the seductiveness of crime and the psychology of the fugitive mentality, this overwhelming sense of 'us against them'. Indeed, there are numerous points in the memoir where the 'us' becomes solely Buck and Blanche and 'them' is everyone else, including Bonnie and Clyde and W. D. Jones. And at times, 'them' refers only to the latter. Regardless of its lack of technique, Blanche Barrow's story is very coherent, descriptive, and often insightful. And as you might expect, the manuscript is full of detail and inside information about the personalities of these most secretive and enigmatic depression-era outlaws. Among other things, the manuscript documents numerous fights between Clyde and Buck, some coming to blows. The former was a very controlling personality. According to W. D. Jones and Blanche, Clyde dominated the decision-making. This often did not sit well with older brother Buck. Add to the mix, such variables as injuries, fatigue, and cramped living conditions (the two couples and Jones were often squeezed together in some tiny coupe, on one occasion a two-seater) and you have all the ingredients of dynamite. At least once, the two brothers drew weapons on each other. The group lived in nothing less than combat conditions. Suicide pacts existed not only between Bonnie and Clyde but Blanche and Buck as well. The latter couple were speaking openly of suicide just prior to the gun fight of July 19, 1933, the Platte City, Missouri battle that left Buck mortally wounded and Blanche blinded in one eye. The year before Clyde promised his mother he would never commit suicide but other family members doubted he would have kept that promise had there been no other way to avoid capture. And Bonnie told her sister that at one point, when she was briefly separated from Clyde during a gun battle in Iowa and thought he had been killed, she had W. D. Jones put his pistol to her head. She said his finger was on the trigger, ready to put a round in her brain when Clyde, wounded, suddenly showed up. A tremendous amount of friction existed between Bonnie and Blanche. In fact Blanche admitted that after Bonnie was nearly burned to death in an automobile accident near Wellington, Texas on June 10, 1933, Clyde had to drive to Dallas to pick up Billie Jean Parker to attend to Bonnie because Blanche refused to help. It was during this same period that Bonnie became addicted to the morphine-based pain killers stolen by Clyde to ease her suffering. She eventually kicked the drugs, however, but her injuries left her unable to stand on her own or walk without assistance. Blanche's memoir also contains a number of intriguing revelations, including: the fact that Clyde tried to recruit both Buck and Blanche to help him raid Eastham ten months before the actual raid of January 16, 1934; that during Bonnie's convalescence from the above-mentioned burns, her sister stayed with the group a good deal longer than was previously thought because she and W. D. Jones had become 'sweethearts', as Blanche put it; and that after the Platte City shoot-out of July 19, 1933, the battle where Buck and Blanche were both wounded, the group did not drive immediately to Iowa as some have thought, but lingered within a few miles of the battle, repairing blown tires and tending to their rather substantial injuries. By the following morning they were only fourteen miles from where they had started. Evidently this was made possible, because by all accounts, only one lawman in the area wanted to pursue them after the gun fight, but he was out-voted by his twelve colleagues who were all too happy to watch the fugitives drive away in their bullet-riddled car on only two inflated tires. |