Bonnie and Clyde

**Chuck Bryant** (0:01)
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

**Josh Clark** (0:11)
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here too. Machine gun Jerry Roland. And this is Stuff You Should Know about Bonnie and Clyde, a true crime edition, but also a folk hero edition.

**Chuck Bryant** (0:25)
That's right. And it's given me an opportunity to get that Bonnie and Clyde song stuck in my head all day, which is great.

**Josh Clark** (0:32)
I've never heard that song.

**Chuck Bryant** (0:34)
Bonnie and Clyde, Bonnie and Clyde.

**Josh Clark** (0:40)
You're just making that up.

**Chuck Bryant** (0:41)
No, it's for real. I think it was Serge Gainsbourg, but I know the Luna version.

**Josh Clark** (0:47)
I came across that mention of that. So yeah, it was Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot.

**Chuck Bryant** (0:53)
Yeah, but Luna covered it. And speaking of, Luna leader, Dean Wareham's brother, Anthony, is a listener, so hello, Anthony.

**Josh Clark** (1:02)
Wow, we finally got to Anthony.

**Chuck Bryant** (1:05)
I tried to buy Dean's guitar off of Instagram a few weeks ago.

**Josh Clark** (1:10)
How'd it go?

**Chuck Bryant** (1:10)
Well, he put his guitar up, and it's the one that's on the cover of his book, Black Postcards, and he's used in the studio and on tour. And I was like, huh, let me just see how much he wants. And he said I missed it by a day, so.

**Josh Clark** (1:24)
That stinks. Well, maybe Anthony can pull some strings for you.

**Chuck Bryant** (1:27)
Yeah, like steal a guitar from Dean and just send it my way.

**Josh Clark** (1:30)
Yeah. And if Anthony did that, he'd be a lot like Clyde Barrow or Bonnie Parker.

**Chuck Bryant** (1:36)
Yeah, man, these guys like to steal stuff.

**Josh Clark** (1:39)
So yeah, did you see the PBS documentary, the American Experience documentary on him?

**Chuck Bryant** (1:44)
No, just the movie.

**Josh Clark** (1:45)
It was good. It's worth watching. I haven't seen the movie, so you put the two of us together, we have a full comprehension, right?

**Chuck Bryant** (1:50)
That's how it works.

**Josh Clark** (1:52)
But they basically got across that they stole, or Clyde stole, just literally is a way of life. He stole cars to get around, he stole money to buy food with. That's just how he lived. And they make the point, and I think Livia helps us with this, I think she makes the point too, these were the options that were open to them, especially Clyde, because he was raised dirt poor during the Depression.
And a lot of people were poor during the Depression, so if you were dirt poor during the Depression, you were really, really poor, and that's the life that Clyde Burrow was born into.

**Chuck Bryant** (2:32)
Yeah, for sure. And not to excuse crime, but that was just his background, and they've been glorified over the years, but kind of reading through this, it was like, oh man, they just would murder people at will, again, usually to get out of a scrape, but still, just like killing people, left and right, just to not get caught.

**Josh Clark** (2:54)
Yeah, particularly cops. And there's some disputes over, there's a pair of patrolmen that were killed, and it's disputed whether Bonnie was one of the gunmen or not.
There's some other crimes that they have had attributed to them that may or may not have been there doing, but there are definitely, there's a, the path behind them was littered with dead cops that they definitely murdered.
They were known to, like, if a cop came up to them, even if they had no idea who they were, and were trying to help, they'd just open fire and kill the guy. That was definitely their MO, typically with cops though. And this doesn't justify it, but this was also the era where the cops would just open fire on you too. There wasn't like a put your hands up kind of stuff. It was like, you're an outlaw, I'm going to start shooting at you first, ask questions later.

**Chuck Bryant** (3:47)
Yeah, not like these days where cops and ICE never just kill people.

**Josh Clark** (3:52)
Right.

**Chuck Bryant** (3:54)
Bad joke.

**Josh Clark** (3:56)
Yeah.

**Chuck Bryant** (3:57)
All right, well, and you know, maybe I'll make this point later too, but, and again, it doesn't justify it, but after Clyde's prison stint early on, like he was, to me, clearly killing people so he would never, ever have to go back to prison.

**Josh Clark** (4:15)
Right.

**Chuck Bryant** (4:15)
You know.

**Josh Clark** (4:16)