Bonnie and Clyde, Ambush In Arcadia, Louisiana
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There is an old adage, that crime does not pay. In most cases this is true. However it may make you immortal. Your name may live forever. Sometimes I wonder if it is better to die young than to die old. When people remember Bonnie and Clyde they think of them as forever young. The last memory I have of John Wayne was him standing aged and dying of lung cancer warning us to stop smoking. Bonnie and Clyde put Arcadia and Gipson on the map. The flea-market named after them draws thousands to the small town and you can't hardly find a motel within 30 miles.
This is a story my dad, George Wesley Whitlow, wrote in 1961 about Bonnie and Clyde as told to him by former Sheriff Henderson Jordan who was present during the ambush near Gibsland:
George was born in Hope Arkansas in 1927 and grew up as the Cotton Valley Flash because of his remarkable speed and skill as a center on the football fields of the Northwest Louisiana hills before he was called to the South Pacific with the United States Marines.
After serving with the Military Police he became a cop in Monroe, Louisiana where he walked a downtown Desiard Street beat and road a three wheel Harley Davison motor cycle.
He said there were manys a times he threw a somewhat intoxicated Jerry Lee Lewis out of honkey- tonks but he never had to fire a shot with his pearl handled 38 Smith and Wesson. Eventually daddy became the major in charge of traffic and played an important role in the design and traffic flow of the now Interstate 20 through Monroe.
Daddy was a president of the Louisiana Peace Officer's, Association, a close knit brotherhood of police agencies across the State of Louisiana.
After retiring with the Monroe Police Dept. he was an instructor at the Louisiana State University Law Enforcement Institute in Pleasant Hall. He made his students cry out loud while laughing at his gimmicks.
He was twice elected the president of the Optimist Club and a Shriner when he had a great part in funding the Louisiana purchase Gardens and Zoo and designing the train and the boat rides to mimic the Six Flags over Texas park we loved to attend during our vacations.
He was also
one of the greatest little league coaches ever to spit tobacco juice and he was one of the
worlds greatest dads. And he was a loving husband to my mom, Johnnie Claire
White Whitlow. Some of them may Remember them form as the owners of New-ta-you store
in the old two room school house by the Ole Mill Pond in Clarks, Louisiana, where
they bought junk and sold antiques. Although the store is closed, mom still dibbles with
buying estates, antiques, and collectibles. You can email me at 
for more information
Well at last here is his story of Bonnie and Clyde:
"Bonnie and Clyde"
Twenty-seven years ago this month, May 23, 1934, marked the end of the bloody career of 27-year-old Clyde Barrow and his 23-year-old cigar smoking girlfriend Bonnie Parker.
The two met shortly after Clyde was paroled from the Texas State Penitentiary in 1932. For the next 28 months the two spread terror, death and robbery, and kidnapped people throughout the Southwest USA .
At least 12 murders were attributed to the couple while they pillaged the countryside. The state of Texas hired one of its retired rangers, Capt. Frank Hamer, to track the criminals all over the United States.
Numerous times Hamer ran across the couple and on one occasion, in Dexter, Iowa, officers trapped the gang. In the gunfight that followed, two policeman were shot and killed and Clyde's brother, Marvin "Buck" Barrow, also died. Buck's wife was seriously wounded. She later recovered and was sent to prison.
Wednesday, May 24, 1934, dawned gloomy in the small Bienville Parish town of Gibsland on Highway 80 (now just off of I 20 not that far from Shreveport) in Northwest part of the state. At 7: AM Mrs. Rosa Canfield opened the cafe and immediately put on the dark roast coffee. Squirrels were playing in the oak tree across the road. She did not know the couple that came in just after she opened the cafe, but she had seen them around the small town.
The couple ordered coffee and donuts. Mrs. Canfield noticed the man seemed moody and despondent. However the woman seemed very polite. Mrs. Canfield did not know that the strangers who sat at the table were Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. Nor did she realize that the tan colored Ford automobile, license number 15-368, occupied by the couple was the stolen car sought by every peace officer in the parish.
Henderson Jordan, the 37- year- old sheriff of Bienville Parish was about to become a man of destiny. He had secretly met with a desperate man from Arcadia. The man was pleading for fair treatment of his son, Henry Methvin, an outlaw who had association with Clyde and Bonnie. The informant told the Sheriff that Bonnie and Clyde were to be in Gibsland, on Thursday, May 25 to rob the bank, and that they were staying in an abandoned house in the small village of Sailes. Acting on this information Sheriff Jordan and his deputy, P.M. Oakley, along with two deputies from Dallas County, Texas, Bob Alcorn and Ted Hinton, Officer B. M. Gault from the Texas Highway Patrol, and special officer Frank Hammer set up an ambush about 8 miles from Gibsland on a lonely gravel road (Highway 154) between Gibsland and Sailes.
As the couple approached the place where the ambush was set up, an approaching pickup truck made the outlaw pair slow down to about 20 miles per hour. Sheriff Jordan stepped into the road and commanded the couple to stop and get out of the car with their hands in the air.
Instead, Clyde reached for the automatic rifle lying on the floor of the car, and Bonnie reached for the sawed- off shotgun always carried in her lap. However, neither had a chance to fire a single shot, because as soon as the officers saw that their command was unheeded, and a gun fight was sure to develop, they opened fire on the couple and literally cut the car and the outlaws to bits. More than 75 bullet holes were counted in the car and at least 35 bullets struck each body.
Among the first to identify the outlaw couple at the Congor Funeral Home that doubled as a furniture store was Miss Sophie Stone, home demonstration agent, and H.D. Darby, an undertaker from Ruston. The pair had been kidnapped by the Barrow Gang some weeks before in Ruston and turned loose near the town of Waldo, Arkansas.
Upon news of the ambush death of the gangsters, the then president of the Peace Officer's Association and Chief of Police, L. E. LeBlanc of Lafayette, sent the following telegram to Sheriff Jordan: "Sincere congratulations to you and your deputies for your capable and courageous work in the trapping and killing of Clyde Barrow desperado, and his woman companion today. The Peace Officers Association is proud of you and the men who serve under you. Officers of your type make it difficult for criminals to exist and operate in the State. Signed L. e. LeBlanc, Pres. LPOA."
Well that's the story my daddy wrote about the gangsters. Daddy passed away in 1994 just after Christmas. I miss him and I still think of him every time hear the sound of a Harley and I miss his stories.
He once told me a story of how he had lived before in another time and how he and Wyatt Earp walked the dusty street up to the Ok Corral and he still remembered the feel of the bullet go deep into his chest. But that's another story and another time. Hope you enjoyed this page. Y'all come back now, ya here.
Excuse me Mam, but what are you sitting on??
It doesn't matter, I'm going to the flea-market.
This is but one of my many pages of stories from the heart. These stories and comments of a Midnite Cowboy will make you roll on the floor laughing, or cry a million tears. But you can't read them without it affecting you.
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