Bonnie and Clyde: Encyclopedia II - Bonnie and Clyde

Bonnie and Clyde - Prison and release

By mid-February 1930, Clyde and Bonnie were seeing each other regularly, to the point where the police staked out her mother's house hoping to catch the wanted Barrow. They arrested him there, and he was sentenced to prison for two years (seven concurrent, two-year terms for burglary and auto theft). Except for a one-week escape ending with his recapture in Ohio, Clyde remained incarcerated in the Texas state prison at Eastham Farm until early 1932. It was there, at Eastham Camp 1, that it appears he first killed another man — a fellow prisoner named "Big Ed", alleged to have beaten and raped Clyde. A prisoner serving a life sentence took the blame willingly for this killing. Fellow inmate Ralph Fults said that it was Eastham where Clyde turned "from a schoolboy to a rattlesnake."

After his release in 1932, Clyde moved to Massachusetts, purportedly to make a clean start. However, he returned to Texas within weeks, embroiled in a plan to raid Eastham prison and free associate Raymond Hamilton and others. He recruited help and set about arming and financing the operation.

In April, a night watchman saw Barrow and Ralph Fults breaking into a hardware store (the location of the store is disputed; local newspapers reported that it was Mabank, Texas). They escaped after exchanging fire, rejoined Bonnie, and attempted to leave the "hot" area. The incident followed a pattern for Bonnie and Clyde that persisted until their deaths — desperate evasion at high speed down sometimes impassable roads, stealing cars and swapping stolen plates regularly. Though Clyde's astounding driving skill and ability to evade capture were later grudgingly respected by law enforcement, this situation ended poorly, perhaps because the gang was finally reduced to stealing mules for transportation in the Texas farm country. Clyde escaped, and Bonnie and Fults were arrested. She claimed to have been kidnapped, and a grand jury failed to indict her. Having spent two months in the Kaufman, Texas jail, Bonnie returned to Dallas in June 1932, and was soon back on the road with Clyde.