In the early evening hours of February 24th 1935, Raymond Hamilton and Ralph Fults were driving through Fult's hometown of Anna, Texas in a stolen grey 1935 Ford V8. They had a planned rendezvous with a couple of bootleggers to pick up some guns belonging to Fults. They took the Weston cut off, a seldom traveled road that traverses the Trinity River just north of McKinney, Texas. A freezing rain had begun to fall when they reached the culvert where the two bootleggers were supposed to meet up with them. When he didn't see them waiting at the planned meeting place, Fults had become suspicious. Fults then told Hamilton that they had better leave, as something didn't seem right! Suddenly a burst of gunfire had erupted from both sides of the darkened culvert. Hamilton floored it in an attempt to escape the volley of bullets which had now begun to riddle their car to pieces. The car was being reduced to rubble under the heavy blows delivered by the lawmens powerful barrage of gunfire. Raymond had sustained a head wound but was able to keep going. Fults had begun to fire back at the posse with his Browning automatic rifle through the rear window which had been blown away. The freezing rain was now entering the car by way of the openings left by the windows which were now blown away by the gun blasts. Eventually they made it far enough away to escape the wrath of the attacking lawmen. It had been a "set up", but the outlaw pair managed to escape. |
A funeral was scheduled Wednesday for Ralph Smith Fults, the last member of the Bonnie and Clyde gang who later in his life discouraged children from a life of crime. He was 82. Fultz, who died Monday at his Dallas home, was remembered for his years of robbing banks with Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker in the 1930s. His later years were spent as a security guard at a Dallas orphanage. Born in Texas, Fults began his career as a criminal at 14 when he stole candy from a general store in McKinney, according to author John Neal Phillips, who wrote about the Barrow gang. Fults met Clyde Barrow while the two were being transported to prison at Huntsville, Texas. After two years, both were paroled and formed the Barrow gang in Denton, north of Dallas. In 1935, Fults was arrested and sent to a Mississippi prison for nine years. He returned to Texas in 1947 and was granted full pardons in 1954. As a security guard at the orphanage from 1964 to 1984, Fults spoke to youngsters about his conversion to Christianity and urged them to stay away from crime. |
