Marvin Ivan Barrow (March 14, 1903 – July 29, 1933) was a member of the
Barrow GangThe Barrow Gang was an American criminal organization of the 1930s active between 1932 and 1934. They were well known outlaws, robbers, and criminals who as a gang traveled the Central United States during the Great Depression. Their exploits were known nationwide...
. He was the older brother of the gang's leader,
Clyde BarrowBonnie Elizabeth Parker and Clyde Chestnut Barrow were well-known outlaws, robbers, and criminals who traveled the Central United States with their gang during the Great Depression. Their exploits captured the attention of the American public during the "public enemy era" between 1931 and 1934...
. He and his wife
BlancheBennie Iva "Blanche" Frasure was the wife of Marvin "Buck" Barrow and the sister-in-law of Clyde Barrow. Buck and Blanche were part of the Barrow Gang from late March 1933 until their capture on July 24, 1933.-Early life:Blanche Barrow was born in Garvin, Oklahoma...
were wounded in a gun battle with police four months after they joined up with Bonnie and Clyde. Buck died of his wounds.
Early life
Ivan Barrow was born in Jones Prairie,
Marion CountyAs of the census of 2000, there were 10,941 people, 4,610 households, and 3,120 families residing in the county. The population density was 29 people per square mile . There were 6,384 housing units at an average density of 17 per square mile...
,
TexasTexas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
, the third child of Henry and Cumie Barrow. An aunt, watching the little boy "running around acting like a horse," gave him the nickname "Buck." He stopped going to school around age 8 or 9, enjoying fishing and hunting far better.
In the early 1920s the older Barrow children left the family farm one by one, to marry and start careers in the city of
DallasDallas is the third-largest city in Texas and the ninth-largest in the United States. The Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex is the largest metropolitan area in the South and fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States...
. At 18 or 19 Buck too went to Dallas, ostensibly to work for his brother repairing cars, but he quickly became part of the West Dallas petty-criminal underworld. His sister Marie, barely school age when she and her parents moved to the West Dallas campground, remembered watching him put spurs on roosters for cockfighting, and his pit bull, which tore off the back of her dress. He married twice and divorced twice during this time, and had three children by those marriages. Just before Christmas 1926 Buck, 23, and Clyde, 17, were arrested with a truckful of stolen turkeys they intended to sell for the holidays. Buck took the rap for himself and his brother and went to jail for a week, but the turkey adventure was an ironic joke, as by now Buck was making ends meet by stealing automobiles in cities all over Texas and selling them for a comfortable $100 or so to fences out of state.
On November 11, 1929, Barrow met
Blanche CaldwellBennie Iva "Blanche" Frasure was the wife of Marvin "Buck" Barrow and the sister-in-law of Clyde Barrow. Buck and Blanche were part of the Barrow Gang from late March 1933 until their capture on July 24, 1933.-Early life:Blanche Barrow was born in Garvin, Oklahoma...
in an unincorporated part of Dallas County called West Dallas. They fell in love almost immediately.
On November 29, 1929, several days after meeting Blanche, Buck Barrow was shot and captured following a burglary in Denton, Texas. He was tried, convicted, and sentenced to four years in the Texas State Prison System. On March 8, 1930, however, Barrow escaped from the Ferguson Prison Farm near Midway, Texas. He simply walked out of the prison, stole a guard's car, and drove to his parents' place in West Dallas where Blanche was living.
In interviews with author/historian John Neal Phillips, Blanche was frank about the fact that she not only knew of Buck's escape, but that she hid with him and actually staged robberies with him. The notion that Blanche did not know until later that Buck was an escaped convict was fabricated by the Barrow family and Blanche herself as a means of convincing Missouri State authorities to reduce her prison sentence following her capture in July 1933.
On July 3, 1931, Blanche and Buck were married in Oklahoma. Blanche was not interested in pursuing a criminal career. She and other members of the Barrow family convinced Buck to turn himself in to Texas prison authorities and complete his sentence. Two days after Christmas 1931 his mother and his wife drove him to the gate of Huntsville penitentiary, where he told surprised prison officials that he had escaped almost two years before and needed to resume his sentence. They welcomed him in.
During his two years at Huntsville Buck sent repentant letters home, written for him by fellow prisoners. Before he had served two years of his six-year sentence he was abruptly pardoned, partly as part of Texas governor Ma Ferguson's plan to decrease prison crowding and partly due to the lobbying efforts of his wife and his mother.
Upon his release, March 22, 1933, Buck Barrow, in the company of Blanche, joined his younger brother Clyde, Bonnie Parker, and W. D. Jones in Joplin, Missouri where he participated in several armed robberies.
Murder
On April 13, 1933, Buck, Clyde, and W.D. Jones participated in a shootout with law enforcement officers at
Joplin, MissouriJoplin is a city in southern Jasper County and northern Newton County in the southwestern corner of the US state of Missouri. Joplin is the largest city in Jasper County, though it is not the county seat. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 50,150...
. Two officers, Newton County Constable Wes Harryman and Joplin City Motor Detective Harry McGinnis, were killed.
On June 23, 1933, Buck and W. D. Jones killed
Alma, ArkansasAlma is a city in Crawford County located in the western part of U.S. state of Arkansas, along I-40 about 13 miles from the Oklahoma border. Alma's population is 4,734, making it the sixth largest city in the Fort Smith, Arkansas-Oklahoma Metropolitan Statistical Area...
City Marshal Henry D. Humphrey during a gunfight on the road between Alma and Fayetteville. Clyde Barrow was not involved in the Humphrey killing.
Platte City and Dexfield Park
On July 19, 1933, Buck was seriously wounded in the head during a shootout at the
Red Crown Tourist CourtThe Red Crown Tavern and Red Crown Tourist Court in Platte County, Missouri was the site of the July 20, 1933 gun battle between lawmen and outlaws Bonnie and Clyde and three members of their gang. The outlaws made their escape, but would be tracked down and cornered four days later near Dexter,...
at
Platte City, MissouriPlatte City is a city in Platte County, Missouri, along the Little Platte River. The population was 3,866 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Platte County.-Geography:Platte City is located at...
. Blanche was also wounded in the same gunfight. She and her husband escaped, however, along with Bonnie, Clyde, and W. D. Jones.
Five days later, on July 24, 1933, Buck, near death, was wounded in the back during yet another shootout, this time near an abandoned amusement park between Redfield and
Dexter, IowaDexter is a city in Dallas County, Iowa, United States. The population was 689 at the 2000 census. It is part of the Des Moines–West Des Moines Metropolitan Statistical Area...
. Bonnie, Clyde, and W. D. Jones, all wounded in the same gunfight, escaped. Buck and Blanche, though, were captured.
Blanche survived her wounds, although losing sight in one eye. Extradicted to Missouri, she was tried for the attempted murder of Sheriff
Holt CoffeyHolt Coffey was the sheriff of Platte County, Missouri from 1933 until 1937 and again from 1941 until 1945. Coffey, along with newly elected Platte City Prosecutor David Clevenger, was responsible for cleaning up much of the small time crime around Platte County, a suburb of freewheeling Kansas...
at Platte City. She was convicted and sentenced to ten years in prison.
Hospital
His doctors commented in their report on how clean Buck's head wound was, given the circumstances. On arrival Buck was generally lucid and told doctors that aspirin helped the pain in his head and the only real pain he felt was from his other gunshot wounds, particularly the one in his back. That bullet, doctors discovered, had entered his back, ricocheted off a rib and lodged in his chest wall close to the
pleural cavityIn human anatomy, the pleural cavity is the potential space between the two pleura of the lungs. The pleura is a serous membrane which folds back onto itself to form a two-layered, membrane structure. The thin space between the two pleural layers is known as the pleural cavity; it normally...
. Because he was in such a weakened state—his limbs had grown paralyzed from another bullet wound and his temperature would not lower from 105—his doctors expected he would develop
pneumoniaPneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung—especially affecting the microscopic air sacs —associated with fever, chest symptoms, and a lack of air space on a chest X-ray. Pneumonia is typically caused by an infection but there are a number of other causes...
from the surgery on his chest. They predicted that that or infection of his head wound would kill him in a few days.
Lawmen visited him in the hospital to get his final statements. Though doctors kept him numb with opiates, they also injected him with stimulants at least twice, that he might answer questions. "Due to the lack of medical attention," an interrogator noted, "the wound in Barrow's head gave off such an offensive odor that it was with utmost difficulty that one could remain within several feet of him." He agreed with Deputy Red Salyers that he had shot and killed Marshal Humphrey in Arkansas. He was able to chat with the doctor, who asked him, "Where are you wanted by the law?" "Wherever I've been," replied Buck.
Death
When word of Buck's dire situation reached Texas,
Dallas CountyAs of the census of 2000, there were 2,218,899 people, 807,621 households, and 533,837 families residing in the county. The population density was 2,523 people per square mile . There were 854,119 housing units at an average density of 971/sq mi...
Sheriff R.A."Smoot" Schmid wrote a letter of introduction to the local authorities for Buck and Clyde's mother Cumie, and a deputy sheriff provided money to help her cover the costs of the 36-hour drive to Iowa by Model-A. She and her youngest son LC arrived for Buck's last conscious hours. As his pneumonia strengthened he became delirious and finally slipped into a coma, from which he did not wake.
Henry and Cumie Barrow put off buying a gravestone for Buck. They were sure Clyde would follow him into death any day, and whether for practical or loving reasons or a mix of both, decided to wait for Clyde. Clyde liked the idea and suggested the epitaph to go over himself and his brother: "Gone But Not Forgotten."
On Buck and Clyde's shared gravestone, Buck's year of birth is incorrect. His mother gave the stonecutters their sister Nell's birth year for him. However, she had recorded the birth dates of all her children in the family Bible; there, Buck's birthdate is 1903.