For two years the Barrow gang had robbed stores, banks and filling stations across the central United States, killing at least nine police officers along the way. Hamer tracked the couple for more than three months and predicted they would visit the family of gang member Henry Methvin in Bienville Parish. At about 9:15 a.m. on May 23, as Barrow's stolen Ford V-8 approached on Highway 154 near Gibsland, the posse opened fire from the bushes, firing about 130 rounds.
The couple had become national celebrities, partly through photographs recovered from a Joplin, Missouri, hideout in 1933 that showed them posing with guns and cigars. Public sympathy drained away after the Easter Sunday killings of two highway patrolmen near Grapevine, Texas, in April 1934, and Texas governor Ma Ferguson put a price on Bonnie's head for the first time.
The ambush was over in seconds. Deputy Prentiss Oakley fired first, probably before any order was given, and Barrow was killed instantly. The coroner counted 17 entrance wounds on Barrow and 26 on Parker, and film footage later showed 112 bullet holes in the car, which rolled into a ditch.
Crowds descended within hours. Souvenir hunters cut locks of Bonnie's hair, and the nearby town of Arcadia, where the bodies were taken, swelled from 2,000 to 12,000 people. More than 20,000 attended Bonnie's funeral in Dallas. The two had wanted to be buried side by side, but her family refused.
Key people: Bonnie Parker, Clyde Barrow, Frank Hamer