My Critical Mistake

 The Devils Back Porch

I am in the Devil's Back Porch, Texas. Photo: Cameron Ehring 

For a lot of people, including myself, we can live in an area for a long time and never really know its unique history and people. Well, to be fair, we do know the names of some highways named after past politicians as if they paid for it. 

It is not because the history is secret. It is because we don't see farther than our manicured lawn and our commute to work.

For example, I lived in the Bay Area for decades. I love history and I thought I knew everything about San Francisco. One day, while Christmas shopping downtown, my travel companion and I decided by a whim to take one of those cheesy bus tours. I was grumbling because I really didn't want to do it. I grumbled louder as she led me to sit on the top in the freezing cold of December.  We froze our tails off while we listened to a very bright twenty something explain historical buildings, events, and people while my jaw dropped.  I never knew.  It was the best 20 bucks I spent in a while.  

Another example, I would pass the graveyards in Colma, California on my way to work every day. The graveyard is massive and looks more like a military cemetery with perfectly aligned white upright markers in rows upon rows. I had no idea Wyatt Earp was buried there until I was researching for this subject and came across it by accident thousands of miles away.

Now in Dallas, I decided to be more vigilant in understanding the rich and diverse history of the area. It turns out there's a lot more than a bunch of cattle ranches. I have lived here for over five years. That's called a quinquennial, (I had to teach my travel companion slash editor with her master's in English that word). Recently, I came across a bit of history I never realized since living here. Bonnie and Clyde lived just about 20 mins away from where I live now. It was called the Devil's Back Porch.

They met here. They robbed banks and businesses here. They took hostages here. They both went to prison here. They escaped prisons here. They killed people here. They killed deputies here. At a very young age, they were buried here.

Like Gainesville (see Finding Noah), I decided that because of its morbid history, this would be more fun as a paranormal investigation. I already had the team and equipment in place. More importantly, we already had experience in bridging the gap between life and the afterlife.

I researched the history, people, and events for weeks. During that time, we added to our investigative equipment an advanced and much more expensive smartphone app.  This one cost $2.99, three times the amount our first app, but it more than doubled our investigative capabilities. 

Circa 1945 (more than 10 years after Bonnie and Clyde's crime spree). West Dallas on the bank of the Trinity river in what was then called The Devil's Back Porch.  The photo is of a convenience store, drug store notary, minister, and cafe. It was on Eagle Ford Road which was the escape route of Bonnie and Clyde. The rutty dirt road had been paved by the time of this photo. The name was changed to Singleton Blvd in 1942 because of “unfavorable incidents in the past which had been associated with Eagle Ford Road” (Dallas Observer, April 1942).  Photo: public domain

We planned to go to West Dallas, known as the Devil's Back Porch in the 1930's. At that time it was an impoverished neighborhood of gangsters, slightly legal saloons, strip clubs, gambling, and brothels. It was a rundown few square miles of refugees fleeing the Great Depression with only dirt streets and thick mud in the rainy months. Even today we must take a bridge over the Trinity River to West Dallas.  The bridge is known here as "a bridge to a mugging."

We knew the risks. We were a team of paranormal experts with upgraded equipment and a Mini Cooper convertible. We were on a mission.

Circa est.1933.  Bonnie and Clyde taken by a camera they found in the back seat of a car they had stolen close by where I live (notice Texas license plates.) The film was developed and printed after authorities found the film in one of their hideouts. They even dressed up for the photo shoot on the side of the dirt road. Most major newspapers carried the photos and they became a sensation. One of the pictures on the film was the infamous photo of Bonnie wielding a gun and smoking a cigar. She did it as a joke. When the public labeled her the Smoking Cigar Bonnie she was upset. She once told a hostage, "Tell them I don't smoke cigars." Photo: public domain

Bonnie and Clyde, along with other gang members, lived within blocks of each other.  Bonnie and Clyde first met at their friend's house, Lillie McBride. It was also a safe house for Clyde and his friends.  Later, after an infamous and deadly shootout, the Lillie McBride House became the unintended launching pad for Bonnie and Clyde, who for a very brief period were as popular as the Beatles in the 60's, but for very different reasons. The couple's two year run and crime spree that would catch the imagination of the post war public during the Great Depression would cost them their lives. And they knew it. It didn't matter to them.

We decided to make our way to Lillie McBride's house first.

Lillie McBride "Shootout" house in West Dallas. It still stands as of the writing of this blog although there are plans to demolish it. photo: Cameron Ehring

The house is infamous for a brazen fight between Clyde and six Dallas deputies. One of them met his death. 

In January of 1933, the officers surrounded and entered the house of Lillie who wasn't there. The police weren't even looking for Clyde or Bonnie.  They were looking for a guy named Chambless who had just robbed a bank in Grapevine. Inside they found the 18 year old sister of one of Clyde's gang members and her two young children. She knew Bonnie and Clyde were coming to visit Lillie, so she turned on a red light as warning in front of five officers while the sixth guarded the back door. As Bonnie and Clyde approached Lillie's house they saw the red light and kept driving. They waited and drove by again. The light was off. Bonnie waited in the car while Clyde walked up with a sawed off 16 gauge shot gun. The young sister saw him coming up and opened the front door yelling "don't shoot! Think of my children inside!" Clyde shot a shell though the front window. The deputy guarding the back porch ran around and Clyde shot him point blank with the shotgun leaving a hole through his chest. He ran a few blocks to what was then called Eagle Ford Road where he knew Bonnie would be waiting. They sped off down the rutty dirt road.

Historic Lillie McBride House in West Dallas. Photo Cameron Ehring

This is the room where the five officers, an 18 year old and her two you children, were waiting. The officers were waiting for Chambless when Clyde walked up with a trench coat and sawed off shotgun underneath. photo: Cameron Ehring

It was the first time Clyde shot a lawman. The incident was on the front page of the newspaper for three days and set off a statewide manhunt. There would be a half dozen more over the next two years, including two officers in Grapevine that Bonnie pulled the trigger on. Finally, that was enough. The governor (the first woman governor in TX) pulled a retired Texas Ranger into duty. He put a posse together to hunt them down, even though the FBI was on the case. The Ranger had no jurisdiction outside of the state. The deadly ambush happened in Louisiana.

The porch where Clyde shot the lawman point blank while five others crouched inside the house. Photo: Cameron Ehring

The team broke out all of our paranormal equipment. People romanticize the role we investigative teams play.  But there is a lot of preparation and manual labor that the public eye doesn't see.  

In paranormal investigations, part of the job is to break out the equipment, analyze communication from the netherworld, pack up, and get on the road for the next site.  We did the same here on the porch of the shootout house.

The equipment set up didn't seem that hard today.  Maybe it was the adrenaline.  

We took the phone out of a pocket and launched our new $2.99 app.

It went something like this:

"Officer Davis, can you hear us?" we raised our voices.  (Davis was the officer shot by Clyde.)

STATIC

"Can you tell us anything about what happened here?"

STATIC

We asked more questions and only got more static.

As we listened to the white noise coming from our phone, we determined that apparently Davis didn't feel the need to linger his spirit here at the house. I wouldn't.

We were undaunted. We knew we had the best equipment $2.99 could buy, and we were confident in our expertise, historical knowledge, and technique. We broke down our equipment, packed it in our ghost-hunter Mini Copper, and made our way to Clyde's burial site which is just a few miles away in West Dallas or in the 1930's, the Devil's Back Porch.

This is the long forgotten Western Heights Cemetery in West Dallas where Clyde Barrow is buried.  The funeral was that of a very poor family and what they could afford.  He shares a headstone with his older brother, Buck, who was part of the gang and was killed in a police shootout a year before. Photo: Cameron Ehring

Bonnie and Clyde were buried separately even though it was not either's wish.  Bonnie wrote a lot of poetry. In fact, before her father passed she was a very good student and wanted to be a movie star. Police found this poem along with the undeveloped film. Here's the last few lines from her poem "Suicide Sal".

"If they try to act like citizens and rent them a nice little flat.
About the third night; they're invited to fight, by a sub-gun's rat-tat-tat.

They don't think they're too smart or desperate they know that the law always wins.

They've been shot at before; but they do not ignore, that death is the wages of sin. Some day they'll go down together they'll bury them side by side.

To few it'll be grief, to the law a relief but it's death for Bonnie and Clyde." 

Bonnie's mother did not approve of Clyde (only God knows why) and she buried her in a cemetery five miles away.

There were no signs or maps pointing to Clyde Barrow's grave.  Photo: Cameron Ehring

Finding Clyde's site would be difficult.  Photo Cameron Ehring

A path in the overgrown grass and weeds that led to Clyde Barrow's gravesite. Photo: Cameron Ehring

The site was easy to find as soon as we came across a trail in the overgrown grass. We followed the trail which led us to Clyde and Buck's graves.

Clyde and his older brother Buck's gravesite. Clyde was 25.  Buck was 28 when he was killed a year prior. Clyde spent time in prison right after meeting Bonnie. He was sadistically abused by his cellmate and guards including rape. He even took an axe to his big toe to avoid the chain-gang. (Ironically he was paroled the next week.) HIs mother said he came back a changed man. He despised the justice system. Photo: Cameron Ehring

Once again we unpacked our paranormal equipment.  We began our well practiced communication with the non-living. 

There was nothing but static.  We began to doubt our latest investment in paranormal investigation gear, we patiently continued. As trained ghost hunters, we knew there was never a guarantee as spirits are by nature very flighty.

Perseverance and courage are the two revered characteristics of a good paranormal investigator.

We made our way to our last stop in West Dallas, the gravesite of Bonnie Parker.

Bonnie Parker's gravesite.  She is buried next to her mother's and her unmarked sister's grave. It was moved 10 years later  to this location a mile or two away from her original grave because of constant vandalism.  Photo: Cameron Ehring

Bonnie's burial attracted two thousand viewers. For a woman that was a cold blooded cop killer she certainly had and still has a lot of admirers.  I am reading a birthday card that was left at the site with a lot of other notes a week before we arrived.  Photo Cameron Ehring.

Visitors to Bonnie's site leave lipstick.  Photo: Cameron Ehring

We got to the gravesite and learn from a birthday card that Bonnie's birthday was just a week earlier.  She would have been 86 today. This is good news! Maybe she is lingering with all the fans visiting her. We decided to see.

For the third time, we took out our paranormal equipment, raised our voices, and asked questions with the same response from our equipment. Static.

There was static and my ghost hunting team member and I shared glances at each other.  Then over the static came a female voice,

One question I asked was, "Is it your birthday?"  I immediately felt silly asking a nonliving entity in the netherworld, who I doubted had any reason to keep a calendar, the date of her birthday.
 
Frustrated, we sat down and looked around. My team member pointed out that we were sitting near hundreds of graves. How did we know who we were talking to over our advanced equipment?

I looked around.  He was right of course. There were a lot of graves here, all very close by, and it could be any these corpses' birthday. I felt even more embarrassed.  

 

"Who are we talking to?"

Then through the static a voice came,

"YOURSELVES."

This is the only proof we needed.  The perfect end to a long investigative day. After much research, I already knew that Bonnie was known for her sarcastic sense of humor.  

Clearly, we had reached the real Bonnie Parker.

 

This is a circa 1934 photo of Bonnie and Clydes shot up car.  You can see Bonnie slumped over.  Clyde was killed instantly, Bonnie kept screaming until a ranger put five more bullets into her at point blank.  The car is now on display at Whisky Pete's Casino in Las Vegas, NV.  As gangsters they were better at not getting caught than stealing big bucks. Their notoriety made all this much harder over time. Some hits only resulted in $10. The largest they ever got was $1,500.  Photo: open domain.

I thought about our journey and investigation on the way home in our ghost busters Mini Cooper. I contemplated what everyone then and now seeks -- fame.  Bonnie, like any girl her age back then, wanted to be in Hollywood. They robbed banks during the Great Depression and the couple caught the public's imagination. They were Robin Hood, taking from the rich and giving it to the poor, or so the public narrative went, fueled by the press. At first, they loved the notoriety, the newspaper headlines, the front page photos, and the fan following. But within the two years the fame took its toll. They had no place to hide. They could not walk the streets or get a meal at a local diner. They slept in their stolen car or camped in the woods without water, electricity, a warm meal, or even a tent. Their fame caught up to them. It was no longer fun. Finally as a Texas Ranger and his posse chased them down, that fame left them no where to run.

Take care,

Dain

https://hometownbyhandlebar.com/?p=27793
http://texashideout.tripod.com/poem.html
https://oakcliff.advocatemag.com/2019/12/bonnie-and-clyde-shootout-house-in-west-dallas-to-be-demolished-or-moved/
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5151347/Final-moments-gangsters-Bonnie-Clyde.html
https://maps.roadtrippers.com/us/primm-nv/attractions/bonnie-and-clydes-death-car
https://www.redriverhistorian.com/dallas.html
https://www.beaumontenterprise.com/news/article/Locals-recall-stories-of-Bonnie-and-Clyde-passing-7939869.php
https://www.historynet.com/bonnie-clydes-revenge-on-eastham.htm

PS

Bonnie and Clyde lived in the wrong time.  A century later maybe they would be walking the beaches of Malibu with ankle bracelets.  Photo: Unknown