Bonnie & Clyde in Dexter, Iowa, 1933

BARROW, PARKER, SHERMAN, FELLERS, RILEY, PENN, HARRYMAN, BUCHER, HUMPHREY, FERGUSON, MCGINNIS

Posted By: Jeff Klein (email)
Date: 6/29/2004 at 23:26:17

Transcribed from the Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune, July 24, 1933

CORNER BARROW GANG IN IOWA

OFFICERS SHOOT IT OUT WITH BANDITS; CAPTURE TWO GANG MEMBERS, AS THREE ESCAPE

Guthrie Center, IA, July 24 – (AP)

Clyde Barrow, bandit suspect, and his two companions were believed surrounded by a posse of 200 men near here today and about four miles north of the Des Moines - Omaha highway.

Barrow, a woman and a man believed to be Jack Sherman, escaped earlier this morning from a wooded tract at Dexter where Marvin Barrow and his wife were captured.

CRITICALLY WOUNDED

Dexter, IA, July 24 (AP)

Marvin Barrow and his wife, bandit suspects, were captured here today in a battle with state and county officers.

Barrow was critically wounded. He is not expected to live, a physician who treated him, said.

Two men and a woman, believed to be Clyde Barrow, Jack Sherman and a woman, escaped in a car stolen from Valley Fellers, a farmer.

Three squads of state and county officers surrounded the woods where the five suspects were hidden early this morning. As they closed in, the suspects began to fire with machine guns. The officers returned the fire, wounding Barrow. “Rags” Riley, Polk county deputy sheriff, was wounded in the encounter.

FIND ARSENAL

Near Barrow and his wife, the officers found two machine guns, 34 automatic 45’s and five revolvers.

The three who escaped abandoned their car at Polk City, held up an oil station attendant and proceeded towards Des Moines in the attendant’s car. Somewhere en route they are believed to have left the woman, said to be “Mrs. Barrow”.

The five had been hidden in the woods for five days. Suspicion was aroused when Ed. Penn, farmer, found bloodstained bandages in the woods while he was hunting blackberries.

AROUSE SUSPICIONS

Workers in a restaurant became suspicious after one of the men for several days had purchased five dinners to take with him.

Officers were notified, and the search which led to the shooting today was started.

Marvin Barrow gave his address as Route Six, Dallas, Tex, where he said his mother, Mrs. C.B. Barrow lives. He had been wounded in the head several days ago at a Fort Dodge tourist camp, Barrow said. In the battle today he was shot through the hips and sustained a severe shoulder wound.

BELIEVED WOUNDED

Officers were certain that Clyde Barrow and the woman also were wounded seriously. They believed the name, Jack Sherman, given for the third man by Marvin Barrow, was an alias.

Marvin Barrow said they had purchased their supply of guns from a soldier at Fort Sill, Okla., for $150. Barrow, who was taken to a Perry hospital, was released from Huntsville, Texas penitentiary in March.

Mrs. Barrow also was taken to the Perry hospital for treatment.

Shattered pieces of glass penetrated her eyes in the battle.

The Barrows are wanted at Mt. Ayr for robbery, officers said here.

WANTED FOR MURDER

Kansas City, July 24 – (AP)

Four murders and the wounding of three officers are charged against the Barrow brothers, Marvin Ivy (Buck) Barrow and Clyde, Dallas, Texas outlaws, one of whom was wounded and captured in a gun fight today with Iowa officers near Dexter.

The search for the Texas gunmen was intensified after their spectacular escape from Platte county, Missouri, officers, reinforced by Jackson county deputy sheriffs, June 19, after a gun fight in which three officers were wounded.

The two men, with two women, were surrounded in a Platte county tourist camp by a dozen officers armed with machine guns and protected by shields. Instead of complying with an order to surrender, the fugitives poured a stream of fire on the officers, emerged from their cabins and dashed away in their automobile.

Officers believed one of the women was severely wounded and that one of the brothers probably was struck by the officers’ bullets. The finding of bloody clothing in the neighborhood shortly after the gun fight confirmed the officers’ belief.

MURDERED OFFICERS

Wes Harryman, Newton county, Mo., constable, and Harry McGinnis, a Joplin, Mo., detective were shot to death April 13 when they went to a house in Joplin to search it for liquor. Later a pardon to one of the Barrow brothers, issued by Governor Ferguson of Texas, was found in the house.

Hillsboro, Texas, officers seek the desperadoes for the murder of J.W. Bucher, a filling station operator, and they have been identified as the gunmen who fatally wounded H.D. Humphrey, Alma, Ark. Officer, in a gun fight in June 1933.

The brothers are charged with numerous bank robberies and the kidnapping of several officers.