🔎 Start your learning adventure with Investigation Declaration

How did the press get the infamous photos of Bonnie and Clyde?

Follow hidden Route 66 history as Scott and Jenn investigate Bonnie and Clyde's real hideouts and discover lost photographs that reveal the gangsters' actual movements across America. We'll uncover the lesser-known stops along the Mother Road and share what historians found that changes the popular narrative.

📍 Google Maps to Bonnie and Clyde Hideout

📍 Google Maps to the Museum

🎥 Video version of this podcast

00:00 Bonnie and Clyde

01:23 Route 66 Joplin

03:00 Number 1 Travel and History Podcast

04:30 Finding the Hideout

06:45 Who Was in the Barrow Gang

08:12 The Botched Police Raid

09:46 Museum Artifacts Tour

13:05 Bonnie and Clyde Backstory

14:32 Romance Versus Reality

17:49 Downfall and Ambush

20:11 Route 66 Side Quest - Galena Kansas

21:43 Stolen Necklaces Mystery

24:36 Bonnie and Clyde Legacy

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Imagine pulling into a quiet residential neighborhood in southwest Missouri during

the height of the Great Depression.

The year is 1933.

Route 66 is only seven years old, buzzing with bootleggers, travelers,

and bank robbers looking for an easy escape across state lines.

A stylish young gang rents a garage apartment on Oak Ridge Drive.

For 13 days, five people hole up inside, drinking whiskey, writing poetry,

playing cards, and spending stolen cash.

Then, on April 13th, the police close in.

A five-man team arrives expecting small-time bootleggers, but walk

straight into a storm of gunfire.

Two lawmen lose their lives, and the outlaws tear away down the highway,

escaping into the Missouri fog.

In their frantic rush to flee, they leave behind clothing,

jewelry, handwritten poems, and an undeveloped roll of Kodak film.

Within 48 hours, those photographs are printed in newspapers across the country.

In a single flash, the obscure Barrow Gang is transformed into

the most famous outlaw couple in American history: Bonnie and Clyde.

Welcome to Talk with History.

One filmmaker, one historian leading history-inspired world

travels for the curious, the history lovers, and the explorer in us all.

I'm your host, Scott, here with my wife and historian, Jenn.

Hello.

Today, we're continuing our Route 66 deep dive series as we roll down

the Mother Road to Joplin, Missouri.

We're tracking down the exact hideout where the Barrow gang staged their

deadly shootout, and we'll visit the Joplin History and Mineral Museum to

see the actual artifacts left behind.

We're taking you to the front door of that historic garage apartment and

walking through the museum displays where you can see Bonnie's original

jewelry, the camera model that took those iconic roadside photos, and the

police records from that fateful day.

Stick around to the end because we'll reveal the wild story of how Bonnie's

stolen necklaces ended up in this museum and how the infamous botched

raid on Route 66 turned two Texas bandits into nationwide legends.

I'm Scott Bennie, so keep your hands on the wheel and check your rear view mirror.

We're chasing outlaws down Route 66.

All right, Jenn.

So we We're on episode number three or four of our Route 66 series here.

Yes.

All right, and as- as heard in the intro, Joplin, Missouri, Bonnie

and Clyde, very popular topic.

The video's got some good traction right now, so if you're

curious, you can go check it out.

It'll be in

the- They're always…

Yeah, they're always a popular-

They're always a popular topic.

However, before we get into that topic, I wanna mention that we were recently

ranked as the number one travel and history podcast on FeedSpot, which is

like a podcast website data aggregator, and this list just popped up the other

day, and I saw that we were the number one, we were the number one podcast,

so I thought that was pretty cool.

Yeah, congratulations.

This is a h- a big testimony to your hard work, Scott.

Yeah, we are the number one history travel podcast.

So if you're looking for, uh, travel and history combined into one podcast as you

drive to the location, or if you're just curious about it, we tell you how to

visit, the history behind it, and just in this case, in Joplin, Missouri, we

were traveling Route 66 and looking for interesting anecdotes, historical, uh,

events that took place along Route 66.

So this is not really, like, on the actual route.

It's off the route, but it's in the city that it goes through.

Yeah, so Route 66 goes through Joplin, Missouri, and we've got, at the end of

this series, we will do kind of like a, an overview, a whole video where you can

watch one video and see every spot along the way, and Joplin, Missouri is gonna

be one of those locations that we cover.

But just off the road, I mean, it was, like, maybe a mile or two- Yeah … is

this apartment and then the museum.

So the museum is almost on Route 66.

Yeah.

I remember we just turned right, and we were back on Route 66 from the

museum that houses all these artifacts.

The apartment is off Route 66, but the apartment is available on Airbnb.

Yeah.

So if you are driving Route 66, and you're like, "I wanna stay

in Joplin, Mississippi. I wanna stay somewhere cool," you can stay

in this Bonnie and Clyde garage apartment that they were in in 1933.

For about two weeks they were there.

And the thing is, it looks almost like it did then.

A- and I was surprised because both you and I, we went out, and

we actually went there first, and then we went to the museum.

So we went there first.

There's a little sign out front.

It talks about the history there.

And the museum itself actually looks relat- or not the museum.

I'm sorry.

The, the apartment itself looks relatively modern, right?

It's got this kinda stone kinda front to it, the side to it.

It's got the, the garages and then windows up top, and we're like, "Oh,

I wonder if they've rebuilt this.

Maybe this is just the location." But when we went to the museum

and we saw an old picture from the '30s or '40s, whenever that picture

was from, it looks exactly like-

Yeah

… it did back then.

So we, what we saw is basically exactly what it looked like.

Yeah, so it's a- It's located at 3347 1/2 Oak Ridge Drive, uh, and

its door opens up onto 34th Street.

Uh, it was built in 1927, and it's this two-story building w- on a

poured concrete foundation, and it looks like concrete bricks.

It looks like they probably formed the concrete into,

like, these concrete bricks.

It's American Craft style, but, uh, they never, they haven't changed that facade.

It looks exactly the same if you hold up the pictures.

The garage doors, of course, have been updated, the windows.

The front door is different, but everything about the

outside looks the same.

And then if you're in the space upstairs, like, that's the space that they were in.

Um, they rented it.

So what was also interesting is when we went to Joplin, uh, Museum,

the guy there gave me the actual receipt, like a copy of the receipt

of when they rented the building.

That's cool.

And I… We'll, we'll put a picture of it up here so you can see it,

but they rented it April 1st, 1933.

Uh, and they rented it for $21, and it was supposed to be for

the entire month they had it for.

And as they are there, so, so Bonnie and Clyde are both there.

We're gonna talk about Bonnie and Clyde and how they made their infamy.

I want people to know, at the time, people don't know Bonnie is

a part of this gang yet, right?

They know Clyde Barrow.

They know his brother, um, Buck, 'cause they're probably

infamous lawbreakers at the time.

They've already been in and out of prison.

Buck has just been released from prison.

He's on parole.

Yeah, so they're, they're known, they're known by the, by law enforcement.

Yes.

And so Buck is joined by his wife, Blanche.

They have one other person with them, uh, W.D. Jones.

And so there's five of them who rent this apartment for a month, and this is

so they can kinda relax and have a good time and enjoy the fruit of their spoils.

Yeah.

Uh, and so but they start to get rowdy, and they have drunken card games.

And, uh, I know Clyde accidentally fires one of his automatic rifles by mistake.

Oh, I didn't know that.

And it brings attention to the law in the area.

They think that they're bootleggers.

Oh, so that's how it kinda, that's how they, they caught up.

'Cause I, I- I was thinking about that.

I was like, "Why would the police show up thinking it was bootleggers?"

Because they weren't out there trying to sell whiskey or sell illegal

alcohol or anything like that.

But that makes more sense if they're just being loud, rowdy, and

accidentally shooting their guns.

Yeah, and they're getting drunk, right?

Yeah.

I guess they're buying, like, a case of beer a day-

Yeah

… for five of them.

Uh, and so that's when they, the suspicion of the lawmakers come out there.

So th- there was a raid organized on April 13th, 1933.

So again, they're not there for barely two weeks, right?

And that's when, uh, two armed carloads of police pull up, and the gang

intercepts them with gunfire, right?

Because they're already an- on the loose and, and they're pulling off

heists.

Yeah, they've, they've, they've been robbing banks.

Yeah.

So they've got guns and ammunition, right?

Yeah.

And, and we'll talk about the pictures here in a little bit, but they're taking

these pictures while they're here at this, you know, or at least over the course

of, of before the, the police show up.

And so in the pictures, there's all these guns and all this stuff, so

they have the weapons to fight back.

Yeah, uh, they're kind of taking a break, right?

They're living off their spoils, but, uh, they respond with gunfire.

Two policemen are killed in this, uh, rai- th- this raid, one instantly.

One gets injured and then dies later.

And th- what they leave behind in a rush is their clothing, and they leave

behind an undeveloped roll of film, and they leave behind some weapons and

things along that nature, and so jewelry.

And so that is kind of what first gets put into the newspaper.

They develop these photographs, and these are the infamous photographs

of Bonnie with the pistol on her hip with her foot up on the car.

And the cigar.

Yeah.

The cigar in her mouth, her pushing the, the rifle against Clyde's

chest, like, holding it, and this is, they don't even know her name yet.

In the paper, they say, "An unidentified female." So d- she hasn't quite gotten to

that, that status of Bonnie and Clyde yet.

Uh, and what's neat about it is they have Recreations of

those photographs at the museum.

They have the, the camera that was used to take those photographs, not

the actual camera, but the model.

Yeah.

But they do have her actual jewelry that was found there.

Um, and I also wanna talk a little bit about if you're a fan of Bonnie and Clyde,

you probably have seen the 1967 movie with Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty.

They do depict this in that movie.

If you saw the 2019 Highwaymen with Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson, they go to

this apartment and look at the things- Oh,

I didn't know that

… to know who they're looking for, and that's when they first

comment how small Bonnie is.

Oh, and that was something that they brought up in the, at the museum.

Yes.

That was, like, commented and that's kinda like when they finally

knew who they were looking for.

Yes.

Okay.

I mean, she's less than 100 pounds, barely five foot, right?

Clyde's not that big either, but so you can compare, like, when they stand

beside each other, like, she's smaller than him, and that's when they first

make the comment of how small she is.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, they don't have her actual clothing at the museum.

They say the clothing was all given away and donated.

Right.

Uh, but they have what look like the clothing that they got that day.

So you can see kind of the idea.

So that means there's probably, like, Bonnie's clothes is

probably in somebody's attic- Yeah

in Joplin, Missouri.

Totally.

That's crazy.

And they liked to dress nicer.

So you can see Clyde's wearing suits.

Bonnie's wearing nicer dresses, and she likes the costume jewelry.

Yeah.

Now, that is the actual jewelry, and, and we'll talk more about how they got that.

That was really cool because they have it right there on display.

So just kind of to, to reset the scene, so we went to the apartment,

filmed out there, and then we went and tracked down this museum.

And this museum is kind of, like, inside a community center.

Very easy to get to.

There was, like, a big train thing going on.

Yeah.

Like, they were doing, like, a, a train-

Expo

… expo type thing.

Mm-hmm.

But they were very kind.

The, if, for the folks watching at the museum, they were very helpful.

They let us in.

The folks that were in the, in that corner of where the museum normally would just

have their stuff, they had something else sitting out, so the, the people working

there kinda cleared everything out for us.

And then they l- they just let us kinda film everything.

It was nice.

It was all in one spot.

And so this museum, you, you can go see it right now.

If you wanna use the History or Drive app, we'll have it marked

on the History or Drive app.

In fact, one of our lifetime members put in the private Facegrup, Facebook

group for lifetime members of the History or, History or Drive app,

he just used our app for a big trip.

And so he went, his name is Barry, and he went through Nebraska,

Missouri, Kansas, and he used our app while he was on his trip.

He already had some stuff preplanned, but as he was out there, he mentioned that

he'd pull it up and see what else was around in, in his area, and that's exactly

what we're trying to help, help people do.

So he's a good example of that.

So if, if you're in the Missouri area, you know, re- if you remember

Route 66, we came down from St. Louis.

We're coming down through Joplin.

We're gonna head our way towards Okla- Kansas … Kansas and Oklahoma.

Um, if you're in that general area, you can pull up the app.

In fact, I have it, it's mapped right now.

If you go to historyordrive.com and you decide to, to try it out,

um, you can go see exactly where it is, and you can watch the video.

It's really cool.

It's really cool.

So Bonnie and Clyde- Who are they, right?

We know them as these infamous rebels, uh, definitely outlaws.

They're definitely not good people.

They are murderers.

Murderers, right?

So Bonnie Elizabeth Parker meets up with Clyde, um, Chestnut Champion Barrow.

Uh, they are kind of during the Great Depression.

They're during this public enemy era, when you think of 1931 to 1934,

the big gangster movies of the time.

Think of James Cagney in Public Enemy.

They kind of embody that in reality, right?

They are these people.

Uh, they're, have criminal acts of robbing stores.

They rob banks.

They kidnap people.

They murder people, and their big timeframe is 1932

till their deaths in 1934.

So they really don't have a big span.

It's two years, and this hideout is 1933, in April of '33, and this

is when these photographs, even the most famous photograph that you will

see on Wikipedia was one of the ones discovered here in Joplin, Missouri.

Uh, this is when people learn of Bonnie.

So again, she has maybe a year and a half when they know who she is,

a part of this g- this outlaw team.

But because of what they did and the storytelling behind it, the movies

behind it, they've gone down in notoriety as these famous outlaws.

Yeah.

Well, and one of the things that I was, when I was kinda prepping for

this that- That made this a little bit more, I'll say, digestible in the

public, is the pictures they took.

Sure, there's the ones where they're holding the guns and she's got the

cigar, but there's also some of just her and Clyde, and they look

like a young married couple that's traveling across the country.

That's what it looks like.

So people, you can kind of identify with that.

So people at the time, they see this young couple, right?

Clyde holding her i- in, in his arms, and they're standing in front of a car,

like, as if they were traveling somewhere.

So people in an, in a weird way kind of-

Romanticized it

… yeah, romanticized it, and they were, they were kinda drawn to that, 'cause

you can… If you can picture yourself in, in, in someone else's shoes, right?

Or in this, in this picture, you're more naturally drawn to that.

Now, what we had to kinda keep reminding ourselves, and when you were, when we were

making the videos, these were bad people.

They killed 12 people.

They were murderers and, and they eventually got what they deserved.

They killed nine officers and three civilians, two at

the Joplin, Missouri place.

So I want to remind people, Bonnie and Clyde were never married,

because Bonnie was married to someone else the entire time.

So Bonnie is married right before she turns 16 years old to Roy

Thornton, and Thornton is a bad guy.

They don't spend a lot of time together.

Thornton's in jail, right?

But when Bonnie is killed in May of 1934, uh, she's still wearing the

wedding ring from that marriage.

They never divorce.

But because she's kind of estranged from him, she meets, uh, Clyde in 1930, this

is four years after she's been married.

She considers herself married to Clyde.

Okay.

They considered themselves a couple, so she keeps the wedding ring as a token to

her relationship with Clyde, not because of her real marriage to Roy Thornton.

But technically, they're never married.

Yeah.

I, so I, so I didn't actually know that, so that was, that's, that's news to me.

Yes, but they very much are romanticized, right?

Yeah.

These two people together in love, you know, definitely misguided, but they are

devoted, and they're willing to put their lives on the line continuously for each

other, and it becomes very romanticized.

Let's not f- forget all the people they kidnapped- Yeah … and killed and robbed.

So it just becomes a very, uh, glamorized thing.

Now, because it's 1930, they're using Route 66, they're using these

old roads, and because communication doesn't travel as fast, they're able

to kinda get in and out of places.

But once these photographs come out, once people identify this is Clyde

Barrow and Bonnie Parker, they're running around with, uh, Clyde's brother and

his wife and maybe some other people.

From time to time, they had one to five others with them.

It made it harder for them, harder for them to go to hotels, harder

for them to go to diners, because that was what was in the newspapers.

Yeah.

That w- was out about them.

So this is the time, too, they can't rent any more garage apartments.

Now they have to camp out.

Now they've got to hide out.

Now they've got to break into locations and stay, and that's when the law

really does start to catch up with them.

And they are ambushed in May of 1934 right outside of, I think

it's Gibson, Gibsonland, Louisiana.

And that's May 23rd, 1934.

And what's so interesting about the lawmen that catch up with them, and

again, the really great movie, Highwaymen, 2019, with Kevin Costner and Woody

Harrelson do, does a great job of this.

Uh, they're not gonna take 'em alive.

They're just not.

They don't even think about it as an option.

They just are gonna make sure that they put an end to Bonnie and Clyde.

So if you remember, the ambush is just, their car is riddled with bullets.

The bodies are riddled with bullets.

Only Clyde and Bonnie are in the car, and they make sure that they have ended

this crime spree of these two people.

Which, and again, almost romanticizes them at the end-

Yeah … because they die together.

Uh, they're brought back to their original, uh, city right

outside of, uh, Dallas, Texas.

And what's interesting is Bonnie- Would write this poetry.

And one of the poems is actually found there that she writes called The Story of

Suicide Sal, which is not her love story about Bonnie and Clyde where she said the

two of them will be buried side by side.

In the end, Bonnie and Clyde are not buried side by side.

Yeah.

Lots of people have been to their graves.

Uh, there were a lot of spectators who came to where their bodies were, came to

those funeral homes, tried to get pieces of clothing, tried to get photographs.

Uh-

Wow

… it was crazy.

And so their families, especially Bonnie Parker's family,

wanted no s- no part of that.

Yeah.

And so they buried them separately.

Uh, and you can visit their graves today.

But what's very interesting about this hideout, again, that it looks

the same, that it's really a part of American history in getting these

first photographs of Bonnie and Clyde.

This is the first place that actually cements Bonnie's part-

Yeah

in this outlaw couple.

But when you see those actual necklaces, there's something

about that when you're there.

They have the door from the upstairs.

There's a door.

They have the original door, and they have a model of the, of the

rifle that Body- Bonnie's holding.

Now, like I said, they confiscated that rifle in the house, and that rifle was

won in an auction and put on display in the pawn shop in Galena, Kansas.

Yep.

So I want people to realize Joplin, Missouri is right on the

border to Galena, Kansas of those 13 miles of Route 66 in Kansas.

Yep.

So you're crossing the border right there, and somebody who won that, uh,

rifle in auction put it up for display in a pawn shop right along Route 66.

So if you wanna see the, uh, the apo- the apartment, you wanna go see the

artifacts at the museum, you can drive right over to the pawn shop in Galena,

it's right along Route 66, and see the shotgun from those famous photographs.

Yeah, and there's other stuff to see in Galena too, 'cause that's where

they have the, the cars on the route.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, cars on the route, so they've got, like, an example of Tow Mater.

Yep.

Right?

That it helped inspire the movie Cars and stuff.

Like, so there's other stuff in Galena, Kansas, 'cause it, Route

66 goes right through there.

And so if you're going through, if you're driving Route 66 from Joplin through

Galena, Kansas, and you're gonna stop, and I think that'll be one of the, the points

on, in History of Drive is Galena, Kansas.

You can also, if it's open, it wasn't open when we went over,

um, you can also go into the pawn shop and see, see that rifle.

Yes, and what's neat, too, is they have the original car door of the lawmen that

come there, uh, to stop Bonnie and Clyde.

Uh, the two men that are killed there are Newton County Constable John,

uh, Wesley Herringman, and Joplin Police Detective Harry McGinnis.

Uh, so their pictures are both there on the wall.

We show them in the video.

Uh, they're among the 12 others that are killed by Bonnie and Clyde.

But when we talk about the necklaces and how they got these necklaces.

So this was pretty cool, and I didn't think about it when we went

in there, 'cause I just thought that they were examples, right?

Just kinda like the, the weapon that they have on display.

It's an, it's an example of what, what Bonnie had.

Or the camera is an

example.

Or the, the camera, and the c- it's not the actual camera itself, right?

And actually, the camera type for all my fellow video/photo nerd friends,

um, is a Kodak Brownie box camera.

So that's the kind of camera that they used.

But that's what's on display, and if you watch the video, and I'll

put clips over of this if you're watching the video version of this,

um, you can see it right there.

And so it shows some of the photos and s- and stuff like that.

But then you're looking at the necklaces, and I'm taking, you know, B-roll of

the necklaces and things like that, and I didn't think about, like, whether

or not they were the actual ones.

And then the guy who kind of helps run the museum, he's former Navy.

Mm-hmm.

I can't remember his name off the top of my head.

If I could remember, I, I'd, I'd mention it.

But, uh- He comes up and he's like, "Hey, did you know those are the actual

necklaces that, that Bonnie left in the apartment?" And we're like, "What?

How did that happen?"

So he tells the story that the detective who took them as evidence, and they were

in the evidence room for a very long time, decided to give them to his girlfriend.

So

he took them out of evidence and gave them to his girlfriend.

And then the girlfriend's granddaughter, who inherited them,

contacted the museum and said, "I don't want anyone to get in trouble.

I don't want to get rid of these.

I know they're important.

Would you like to have them?" And he said, "Absolutely."

So she gave them over, she gave the custody over, and not wanting to get

anybody in trouble or anything like that, so they have the original necklaces

that were Bonnie Parker's necklaces.

And it's costume jewelry.

Yeah.

But super cool.

Of the era, the 1930s, that original stuff that she would wear.

And you could tell she definitely liked to dress up, uh, but it's

super neat to see them there.

They also have the Boston Globe on the wall, a recreation of the newspaper- Yeah

… with those first original photographs printed, and it says, "Clyde Barrow beside

an unidentified female." So this is how you know… I mean, within a year, this

is April 1933, they're killed May 1934.

Within a year she's gonna become famous and they're- Yeah, a household name

and they're gonna become famous as a, a, a duo.

Uh, and but their lifespan is not very long here.

Uh, but it's super neat to go there, tell that story.

It's such an interesting part of American history.

It's on Route 66.

Uh, you can stay in the location.

The o- location looks almost the same today.

You can just stand there with these artifacts of American history and

Bonnie and Clyde, uh, before you hit Kansas, uh, along the way.

So it was neat to do, and, uh, thank you to the museum for allowing

us such access to those things.

Yeah, super fun.

As you leave the quiet streets of Joplin and look back at the unassuming

apartment on Oak Ridge Drive, it's wild to think about how much history

turned on a single afternoon.

13 days of laying low ended with two fallen officers, a frantic escape

down Route 66, and a forgotten roll of Kodak film that changed everything.

Standing in the Joplin History Museum in front of Bonnie's actual necklaces

and those famous newspaper clippings reminds us that the glamorized

mythology of outlaws was built on real tragedy, real sacrifice, and

a fast road with no good way out.

Our Route 66 centennial journey continues across state lines.

In our next episodes, we roll straight into Oklahoma City to

explore the legendary halls and Western heritage of the National

Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum.

Make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss a single mile of the road ahead.

We'll talk to you next time.

Thank you.

This has been a Walk With History production.

Talk With History is created and hosted by me, Scott Bennie.

Episode researched by Jennifer Bennie.

Check out the show notes for links and references mentioned in this episode.

Talk With History is supported by our community at thehistoryroadtrip.com.

Make sure you hit that follow button in that podcast player,

and we'll talk to you next time