Bonnie & Clyde Gang Members Rob Brown Grocery, Kill Alma’s Marshall
June of 1933 was perhaps the darkest point of the Depression Era in Arkansas. Shirley Crank was arrested at his home in Garland City after holding up the Citizens Bank and Trust of Camden. The so-called “flapper bandit,” Ruby Clark, and her alleged husband, W.M. Clark, were convicted of robbery, kidnapping and grand larceny in Fort Smith. Two brothers, Clifton and Gene Harback, were arrested on charges of killing a bank teller and severely wounding the town marshal at the First National Bank of Paris. Clem Holman was shot to death by police officers after attempting a highway stickup.
And the worst of the lot was still coming. In late June, the Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow gang holed-up at a tourist camp in Fort Smith after Bonnie suffered extensive burns to her leg when their stolen car overturned in a ravine near Wellington, Texas. They were just as low on cash as every other criminal in Arkansas. On June 23, two members of the gang — Buck Barrow, the brother of Clyde Barrow and W.D. Jones — drove from Fort Smith to Fayetteville to rob a grocery.
They checked out three grocery stores including Bates Brothers Market on Dickson Street, but Mr. Bates took their description and license number because he didn’t like the look of them. In the late afternoon, Buck Barrow dropped off Jones in front of the R.L. Brown Grocery at 111 W. Lafayette Street and then drove around the corner onto Mount Nord.
Jones got $20 from the grocery’s register and another 35 cents from the bag boy before stealing the delivery truck and driving around the block to where Buck was waiting. They headed south down U.S. Highway 71 at a high rate of speed. Fayetteville police called agencies to the south.
The town marshall in Alma, Henry D. Humphrey, took the call. He and Ansel M. “Red” Salyers, a Crawford County deputy sheriff, drove north. They hadn’t gone far before Barrow and Jones came flying past them and rear-ended a slower moving vehicle. Humphrey and Salyers turned around to pursue them and immediately found the wreckage of the two vehicles just beyond the top of the first hill.
Barrow and Jones were shaken by the impact of the crash but grabbed their guns as soon as they saw the two armed lawmen. Barrow shot Humphrey in the chest with a shotgun, knocking him into a ditch alongside the road. Salyers, armed with a Winchester, returned fire but recognized that he was out-gunned and fled toward a house to the west.
Barrow and Jones ran for the lawman’s car, the only vehicle still capable of running, and fled the scene, shooting at a passing motorist as they went. They eventually circled west toward Van Buren, switched cars by stopping another motor vehicle. The occupants were ordered out of their car but then managed to run away from Buck Barrow and Jones. The two killers eventually returned to the travel park, found Bonnie and Clyde at the tourist camp, and all quietly slipped out of town and disappeared into Oklahoma.
Marshall Humphrey died of his wounds on the morning of June 26.
Eleven months later on May 23, 1934, Bonnie and Clyde were shot dead by law officers in Louisiana.
More Reading
Knight, James R. “Incident at Alma: The Barrow Gang in Northwest Arkansas.” The Arkansas Historical Quarterly 56, no. 4 (1997): 399–426. https://doi.org/10.2307/40027888.