The Aftermath

By today’s standards such an incident would precipitate an investigation, particularly when a maverick law enforcer such as Hamer clearly took the law into his own hands. Despite there having been no warrants against Bonnie to justify killing her, Hamer and the Louisiana authorities had decided that execution was the preferred option.Whatever the view of such an act from a moral perspective, what certainly was questionable behaviour by Hamer and some of his posse was to keep several of the stolen guns found in Bonnie and Clyde’s car as souvenirs and then later sell them.In the town of Gibsland, Louisiana a ‘Bonnie & Clyde Festival’ is held every year on Highway 154 on the anniversary of their deaths. Sadly the innocent victims of the Barrow gang, which number around 34, are not remembered with the same degree of idolatry.Along with ghoulish memorabilia, a romanticised Oscar winning movie and even a poem by Bonnie herself published for the world to read, the mythology of the two illiterate, cold-hearted criminals, continues unabated.