Marvin Ivan "Buck" Barrow was a member of the Barrow Gang. He was the older
brother of the gang's leader, Clyde Barrow. He and his wife Blanche were
wounded in a gun battle with police four months after they joined up with Bonnie
and Clyde. Marvin died of his wounds. Early life
Ivan Barrow was born in Jones Prairie, Marion County, Texas, 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 Dallas. At 18 or 19 Marvin 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 Marvin, 23, and Clyde, 17, were arrested with a truck full of
stolen turkeys they intended to sell for the holidays. Marvin 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 Marvin 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
Caldwell 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, Marvin 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
Marvin's escape, but that she hid with him and actually staged robberies with
him. The notion that Blanche did not know until later that Marvin 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 Marvin 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 Marvin 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, Marvin 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, Marvin, Clyde, and
W.D. Jones participated in a shootout with law enforcement officers at Joplin,
Missouri. Two officers, Newton County Constable Wes Harryman and Joplin City
Motor Detective Harry McGinnis, were killed.
On June 23, 1933, Marvin and W. D. Jones killed Alma, Arkansas 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, Marvin was mortally
wounded in the head during a shootout at the Red Crown Tourist Court at Platte
City, Missouri. The bullet opened up a large hole in Marvin's forehead that
exposed his brain and caused severe loss of blood. Blanche was also wounded in
the same gunfight. She and her husband escaped, however, along with Bonnie,
Clyde, and W. D. Jones. Despite his ghastly head wound, and loss of blood,
Marvin was sometimes fully conscious, and talked and ate.
On July 24, Marvin, near death, was wounded in the back during yet another
shootout, this time near an abandoned amusement park between Redfield and
Dexter, Iowa. Bonnie, Clyde, and W. D. Jones, all wounded in the same gunfight,
escaped. Marvin and Blanche, though, were captured.
Blanche survived her wounds, although losing sight in one eye. Extradited to
Missouri, she was tried for the attempted murder of Sheriff Holt Coffey
at Platte City. She was convicted and sentenced to ten years in prison.
Hospital His doctors commented in their report on
how clean Marvin's head wound was, given the circumstances. Bonnie and Clyde had
poured hydrogen peroxide into the head wound, cleaning it. On arrival Marvin
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
cavity. 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 pneumonia from the surgery on
his chest. They predicted either 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 Marvin. Death
When word of Marvin's dire situation reached Texas, Dallas County Sheriff
R.A."Smoot" Schmid wrote a letter of introduction to the local authorities
for Marvin 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 Marvin'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 Marvin . 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 Marvin and Clyde's shared gravestone, Marvin's year of birth is incorrect. His
mother gave the stone cutters their sister Nell's birth year for him.
However, she had recorded the birth dates of all her children in the family
Bible; there, Marvin's birth date is 1903.
References Bibliography
Barrow, Blanche Caldwell, edited by John Neal Phillips. My Life with Bonnie and
Clyde. Norman and London: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 0-8061-3625-1.
FBI file 26-4114, four volumes of files held by the FBI that document the
pursuit of the Barrow Gang. FBI Records and Information
Guinn, Jeff. Go Down Together. The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde. New
York: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 1-4165-5706-7.
Milner, E.R.. The Lives and Times of Bonnie & Clyde. Carbondale: Southern
Illinois University Press. ISBN 0-8093-2552-7.
Phillips, John Neal. Running with Bonnie and Clyde: The Ten Fast Years of Ralph
Fults. Norman and London: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 0-8061-3429-1.
External links