On March 31st 1933, Bonnie and Blanche put down a month's rent on
a furnished house at 1521 Joplin Street. The next day they came back
and said they changed their mind and got their money back.

That same day, April 1st, they or possibly Buck, rented the apartment
at 34th Street and Oak Ridge Drive. Shortly after they moved in, Buck
had approached Harold Hill a salesman who lived in the house,
directly west of the apartment at 3347 Oak Ridge Drive. It seems that
both places were owned by the same person, because Mr. Hill, as part
of his rental contract, had the right to use one of the two garage
places under the apartment. Buck wanted his permission and probably
offered extra rent to use both parts of the garage. Hill had ask him
why he needed it, and Buck said that they had a second car that they
wanted to store there. Buck then rented garage space from Sam Langford
at 3339 Oak Ridge Drive, for a third car. Neighbors said that Buck
and Blanche had used the car stored at Langford's garage most of the
time, and kept the garage doors at the apartment closed.

The gang arrived in Joplin on or before March 31st, moved into the
34th Street apartment on or after April 1st. They had three cars,
a Ford Roadster and the getaway car - the famous B-400, which was
kept under the apartment and wasn't used much, and the Marmon which
was kept at the Langford's garage around the corner. On April 13th,
in the late afternoon, Clyde and W.D. took the Roadster out "on a
scout". Clyde and W.D. returned after only a few minutes, either
because of a low tire or Clyde's sixth sense about impending trouble.
Just as Clyde was trying to get the Roadster into the garage, up comes
the law. Clyde and W.D. had tried to shut the door, but Harryman jumped
out of the police car and ran to block the door, and was blown away
by a shotgun blast. McGinnis then leaped from the back seat of the
same car, to try the same thing (keep the door from closing) and got
the same treatment. Boom! Boom! the two officers are down and the
remaining officers began a more cautious snipeing campaign. Everybody
in the house, Bonnie, Clyde, Buck, Blanche and W.D. ran around, got
down the stairs and piled into the B-400. They came out of the garage
and somebody went to the police car and released the brake, and maybe
even moved one or both of the wounded officers, they pushed the police
car out of the way, and it had rolled down the hill to the east, off
the street and into a bunch of trees, and they blasted off down the
hill to the east, one block to Main Street, turned right (southwest)
toward Oklahoma and vanished.

In the aftermath, the cops found a bunch of stuff. They also
seized two cars. A Ford Roadster owned by Earl Stanton of Miami, OK.
(This is from The Joplin Globe, dated April 16, 1933), and it said
that the Roadster was stolen "last Wednesday". This would be April
12th, only the day before the shootout. The second car is probably
the rarest Barrow car of all, the Marmon. It is rare, not because
there weren't many of them, but because it actually seems to have
been acquired legally. The Police had found the title to the car
in the name of Carl Beaty 31, of Dallas. They thought at first that
he was a member of the gang or that his name was one of Clyde's alias.
The Dallas police had found him and he signed a statement saying that
he did, indeed, sell the car to Buck Barrow on March 29th. The motor
numbers were checked and verified as the same Marmon Sedan. The Joplin
Police kept the car. The Marmon car had Kansas license plates which
Buck had purchased in Girard, Kansas, using his real name. 

The star of the show at Joplin, as far as the newspaper reporters
were concerned, was not Clyde, but Buck. All the documents that were
found at the site were about him or Blanche. He was the older brother,
so the reporters promply labeled him as the leader of the "gang."
He gets a lot more ink than Clyde, and of course, nobody knows W.D.
at all. They were not even sure if there was a third man for a long
time. The Langford garage that Buck had rented for the Marmon, is not
around the corner, but directly behind of the apartment. The apartment
seems to have been built as a garage for the house at 3347 Oak Ridge,
with the second floor living space (five rooms) as a bonus. Between
3347 Oak Ridge (on the corner) and 3339 Oak Ridge (Langford's house,
next door to the north) runs an alley that is a public street. This
runs behind the apartment and all the way to the next street, to the
east. To get to Langford's garage, Buck would drive down the alley
and turn 90 degrees to the north and pull in. He then had to walk all
the way around the apartment, and go in the front door. That was the
only drawback to the apartment as a hideout, no back door. Also, when
the shooting started, one of the policemen, ran around to the back,
so Clyde or Buck might not have wanted to chance a dash to the other
garage housing the Marmon.
 
The Joplin Globe, April 16th 1933, specifically says, that when
they received confirmation that Carl Beaty of Dallas had sold the
1929 Marmon to Buck, a check of the motor numbers, revealed that the
car was a Marmon sedan seized here. Over a year later, in the July
1934 issue of "True Detective" magazine, in an article written by
Ed Portley, Chief of Detectives, Joplin Mo. as told to C.F. Waers.
Mr. Portley retells the story of his department's efforts to trace
the Marmon. They knew that it was a 1929 Marmon sedan, Texas license
279-797, motor number T-8692. Mr. Portley then says, in the next
sentence, "The killers had escaped in this car". He goes on to say
that Carl Beaty, 1010 East Jefferson Street, Dallas, TX. sold the
car to Buck on March 29th. He received two Ford coupes and $100
in payment.
 
Was the Marmon, the getaway car, as Portley says a year after the
fact or was it left behind, as everything written at the time says?
Every reference to the getaway car, in the few days after the shooting,
describe it as a "Ford V-8 sedan."