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Thursday, April 24, 1997

Last survivor remembers the hunt for Bonnie and Clyde

By JACOB BERNSTEIN

The Pasadena Citizen

PASADENA, Texas - The five men sat by the Louisiana logging road waiting for the arrival of the outlaws. It was a cool May morning in 1934. The men had assumed their ambush positions at around 3 p.m. the previous afternoon.

The night spent by the roadside was a small inconvenience for the chance to end their mission. Some of the men had hunted their quarry for more than three months across half a dozen states. Yet somehow, America's most famous couple had eluded them, leaving a trail of bank robberies and corpses in their wake.

At 9:30 a.m. on May 23, a lookout announced the stolen grey '34 Ford Deluxe was coming up the hill to its unsuspecting rendezvous.

Of all those present that fateful morning when the outlaws Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow met their deaths, only one is still alive today to tell the story.

He is 83-year-old Edd Miller, one of Pasadena's sturdiest and most illustrious civil servants. On the day when his life and Bonnie and Clyde's intersected, he was a 22-year-old Special Texas Ranger.

"Everybody in the country was looking for them," he said. "They were cold-blooded people."

The flamboyant couple had killed 15 people and robbed more than a dozen banks in eight states.

Even today, more than 60 years later, their deeds continue to fascinate and intrigue. How else to explain last week's auction in San Francisco, that netted $187,809 from the sale of a few of Clyde Barrow's effects?

Miller got a crash course in the misdeeds of the legendary couple in 1934, when he was recruited to join the hunt by the equally legendary Texas Ranger Frank Hamer.

Hamer had been called out of retirement after Bonnie and Clyde broke into Eastman Prison near Trinity in January of that year. They had shot and killed two guards and freed Barrow's cousin Raymond Hamilton from the death sentence he awaited in his cell.

After the escape, Lee Simmons, then-manager of the Texas prison system, spearheaded the effort to raise money to capture the couple, dead or alive.

Earlier, Hamer had quit the Rangers rather than serve under the first female governor of Texas, Miriam "Ma" Ferguson. But the challenge of capturing Bonnie and Clyde proved irresistible and he agreed to head the team.

"He was the best Ranger they had," said Miller.

A big man with a penchant for poker and whiskey, Hamer had killed 50 outlaws in his career, according to Miller.

But despite his reputation, he couldn't hunt Bonnie and Clyde alone - he needed a chauffeur. The man he picked was Miller.

"He told me when he swore me in that I would never be in the record," said Miller. "He didn't want anyone to know he couldn't drive at night."

By that time, Miller had already ridden the rails, fought fires in Arizona and helped keep the peace in the rough-and-ready oil fields of Kilgore and Arp. His cousin Lee Miller, Ranger Captain from San Antonio, recommended him for the job with Hamer.

The young Ranger slept in the car at night to guard the guns while Hamer wandered the clubs and beer joints looking for leads. Miller was paid $5 a day plus $5 for expenses, a princely sum at the time.

The pair cruised Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas, Alabama and Texas in search of the outlaws.

"The Texas Rangers went anywhere they wanted to go in those days," said Miller.

Finally, a tip relayed to a sheriff in Dallas brought the pair, along with another Ranger and two deputies, to Gibsland in Bienville Parish, La.

That May morning, all five of the men waited patiently until they saw the Ford coming down the hill - then poured round after round of rifle fire into the car. Miller estimates they put about 50 bullets into the car.

"Them days you didn't get scared, you had too many rifles," he said.

They found eight bullets in the body of 22-year-old Bonnie Parker and 25 to 30 in Clyde Barrow, who was 26. In the back of the Ford, the men discovered a tin box with over $10,000 in stolen money.

"Last time I saw it, the Rangers were counting it up," said Miller, with a smile.

The young Ranger rode in the wrecker that towed the car and bodies to nearby Arcadia for the inquest. The town of 2,000 swelled to triple its size from curious onlookers, the newspapers of the day reported.

Jesse Warren of Topeka, Kan. came to claim her stolen Ford. She later sold it to a carnival, according to Miller.

The car traded hands until it ended up with its current owner, Raymond Paglia of the Nevada-based casino Whiskey Pete's.

Paglia kept a high profile at the April auction, paying $85,000 for a bullet-riddled shirt worn by Clyde Barrow the day he died.

Shortly after the ambush, the young Ranger was laid off in Depression-era cutbacks. At 22, he had already had more adventure than most men see in a lifetime.

Miller later served stints as Pasadena's police chief and as a judge. Yet he will never forget the major excitement in the days of Bonnie and Clyde, he says.

"Today it's petty excitement but it's just as bad if it kills you," he said.

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