Bonnie and Clyde: Did the murderous duo kill two Fort Worth police officers in 1934?
On the run, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow had parked their black Ford by the side of a Southlake road on Easter Sunday 1934. Two Fort Worth-based state troopers on motorcycles who were patrolling Texas 114 stopped by the car thinking the couple was in trouble and needed assistance.
The two young highway patrol officers, H.D. Murphy and Edward Wheeler, were immediately shot dead. Their pistols were still in their holsters when they were found moments later by their partner Polk Ivy, and the murderers were gone.
“It was a tragedy and just added to the number of people that they killed along the way,” said Connie Cooley, president of the Southlake Historical Society.
Sixty-two years later, in 1996, a six-foot state historical marker dedicated to the two slain officers was installed on the south side of Dove Road, just east of Texas 114. The memorial slab is located directly across from 500 West Dove Rd, about six miles northwest of downtown. It calls the outlaw couple “infamous criminals.”
There were two witnesses, both of whom said the couple was alone, according to the Southlake Historical Society: Southlake teen Jack Cook and his friends passed by the couple and a farmer living nearby had been sitting on his porch. But to this day it’s unclear who exactly shot the two officers — whether it was actually Bonnie and Clyde themselves or a member of their gang. Most historians say that Bonnie never fired a shot. They say that Clyde gunned down one officer and another member of their gang, Henry Methvin, killed the other.
The infamous criminals, who were responsible for a Depression-era robbery and murder spree across Texas and the Midwest, were known to hang around the area west of Grapevine, now Southlake. Clyde and his family had lived near what’s now Texas 114 and Kimball and may have attended the 1919 Carroll School. Some of Bonnie’s family members lived on Dove Road. In 1932, two known associates of Bonnie and Clyde had robbed the Grapevine Home Bank, now the site of Bermuda Gold & Silver, a family-owned custom design jewelry store at 404 S. Main St.
“Bonnie and Clyde spent a lot of time here,” said Grapevine Mayor William D. Tate at a 2015 City Council meeting when a Star-Telegram article about the gang was donated to City Hall. “Their parents lived not far from here for a while. There are a lot of stories. They had a lot of friends here. They never did rob the bank here because they had a lot of friends that had money in it. But the gang did.”
After the shooting, the killers drove to a house between Southlake and Roanoke owned by Bonnie’s family before fleeing. A month later, Bonnie and Clyde and gang members were killed by police in Louisiana. They’re buried separately in Dallas; Bonnie, 23, is buried at Crown Hill Memorial Park and Clyde, 25, is buried at Western Heights Cemetery.
“It was known that Bonnie and Clyde had numerous friends and relatives in the area,” said Tarrant County Commissioner and former Southlake Mayor Gary Fickes at the meeting. “Does this event reflect negatively on Southlake today? No, it’s just part of our history!”
Who were the slain officers?
“Obviously, people are enamored with Bonnie and Clyde,” Cooley said. “And a lot of people take issue with that, because instead of focusing on the gentlemen that were killed, they focus on Bonnie and Clyde. They were just bank robbing killers.”
Wheeler and Murphy were both new to the job. It was Wheeler’s second day on duty, and the officers had been at an open field for target practice before they turned up Dove Road. Widow Doris Edwards had gotten married to Trooper Wheeler, 26, less than two years prior to the shooting. Trooper Murphy, 22, left behind a fiancee, who wore her wedding dress to his funeral.
Edwards, who was frustrated with the glorification of Bonnie and Clyde, said she appreciated the memorial.
“It’s just stayed inside me and festered all this time – all the publicity on Bonnie and Clyde, glamorizing them,” Edwards told an Associated Press reporter. “I want the world to know what vicious killers and murderers they are.”
The monument reads: “We the people of the state of Texas acknowledge and thank Troopers Edward Bryan Wheeler and H.D. Murphy for the great sacrifice they made to keep the public safe. Troopers Wheeler and Murphy were shot to death Easter Sunday, April 1, 1934, near this site on West Dove Road by the infamous criminals, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. Wheeler and Murphy stopped their motorcycles near Parker and Barrow’s car, thinking a motorist needed assistance. When they approached, they were shot. Their efforts will stand the test of time. May God bless their souls.”
A wreath for the memorial was donated in 2004 by the J.E. Foust Funeral Home in Grapevine, where the officers were buried.
“There are folks who are looking for Bonnie and Clyde information. Others just happen to be in the area, they are looking at historical markers. A significant number of people go to the Texas Historical Commission website for marker information, and they follow Texas markers,” Cooley said. “People are intrigued by the fact that Bonnie and Clyde came through here, it’s probably the same group who go up to Joplin, Missouri, where they were for a while, and ones that are over in Louisiana where they were killed.”
A year earlier, in 1933, Bonnie and Clyde had murdered Tarrant County Deputy Sheriff Malcolm Davis in Dallas “with a sawed-off shotgun with buckshot.” He was engaged to Grapevine resident Florence McPherson. Deputy Davis and McPherson are buried in Grapevine Cemetery.
“I think the [1933] killing of Malcolm Davis and then shortly thereafter the two Texas highway patrolmen was the beginning of the end of Bonnie and Clyde,” Tate said. “In fact, probably the killing of Malcolm Davis brought the end to Bonnie and Clyde because Texas law started taking it pretty seriously when they started killing Texas lawmen, especially highway patrolmen who had never been killed in the line of duty before.”
This story was originally published September 13, 2022 at 9:36 AM.
