#edited to note that i dont think Ralph fults was actually there when clyde enacted the plan to break people out of Eastham

[aidenwaites]

ABSOLUTELY

The thing about Bonnie, Clyde, and other members of the Barrow gang is that many of them were first pegged as criminals when they were teenagers- the collection of the crimes themselves ranged from petty theft to car burglary. From the point of the first arrest onward, it's a very common story between them that they ended up in this cycle of arrest-escape-arrest. And for Clyde at least, it didn't seem to make a difference if he finished his sentence or not. After he stole his first car at age 17 (a rental car that, upon return, the rental agency apparently didn't want to press charges), every time a stolen car was reported in West Dallas, he'd be brought in for questioning. Enough so that it cost him any attempts at holding down a job.

This is the late 1920s, the economy is on the brink, and the Texas prison system exists in a time of its own kind of turmoil. Production is down, money is being lost, escapees and escape attempts are high, and crime itself is rising. The public opinion of the justice system is very low. It passes between general managers who don't want to take the role. "Spot killings" aren't uncommon, in which an inmate is killed by guards and the death is passed off as due to an escape attempt. Brutality, overcrowding, overworking on the prison farms, every kind of awful conditions a prison could have.

While imprisoned together, Clyde at the age of 21 and Ralph Fults at the age of 19, Clyde witnesses guards provoke, then beat, Fults. In Fults' biography, this seems to be the moment that Clyde begins to really feel a sense of indignation and injustice towards the system, and then two begin plotting together. Fults, it should be noted, wasn't as phased- he'd already been disillusioned somewhere around the age of 16, when he was living in a reformatory school and given upwards of 30 lashes with a weapon referred to as "the bat," a heavy strip of leather soaked in oil, as a punishment for whispering to another boy during a church service.

Clyde's first murder happens in prison, when he kills a fellow inmate for repeatedly assaulting him. Another inmate who was already bearing a longer sentence took the fall for Clyde.

Ralph and Clyde have a plan that once they're free of the Eastham Prison Farm, they'll return to break other inmates out. It's a promise they eventually follow through on. Clyde at some point has another inmate cut toes off of his foot so that he can be sent to a medical facility and won't have to return to Eastham's fields, a story not uncommon to Eastham.

The crime-spree era/public enemy era of Bonnie and Clyde, the time leading up to their deaths, is largely made up of existing on the run for days or weeks at a time. The robberies they commit are, in actuality, fairly small. It's the early 1930s, the nation is in the heart of the depression, the public's view of the government is extremely distrustful and wary. A journalist had been working to publish an exposé on the awful conditions of the prison system by this point. Criminals of the likes of the Barrow gang are becoming something of celebrities for the general public- for the gang themselves, their lives are nothing but staying on the run. President Herbert Hoover is in a bad place publicly and the FBI, not yet called as such, is in need of a win. Crimes are committed and attributed to notorious criminals without any real proof, and it isn't until years later that all of those timelines are really straightened out.

Clyde Barrow holds true to his goal of returning to Eastham to help fellow inmates escape. In the attempt, a guard is killed (though not by Clyde), and a target is painted on Bonnie and Clyde's backs. The public opinion on them shifts after the death of a grocery store clerk during one of their hits.

The ambush of Bonnie and Clyde, aged 23 and 25, is considered a major win by the FBI- their car, dubbed the "death car," remained in FBI possession and on display for many years. Raymond Hamilton- another associate of theirs- is executed at the age of 21, in part for a murder he could not have committed. Clyde's brother, Buck, dies of gunshot wounds sustained during a shootout. Those who lived past this point, such as Blanche Barrow (who was half-blind from injuries sustained during this time), Ralph Fults, and family of Bonnie and Clyde reported that even up to the 80s, long after they'd completed sentences for any criminal charges, they regularly recieved phone calls from Texas police to let them know they were keeping tabs on them. This quote from Blanche Barrow's memoir/biography, edited and written in part by John Neal Phillips, sums it all up pretty well.

The thing about Bonnie and Clyde is the more you learn about Bonnie and Clyde (and the rest of their acquaintances) the more it becomes a story about the state of law enforcement in the midwest during the great depression, the abuse of inmates, and the public image of the fbi