The Route 66 Movie Theatre in downtown Webb City, Missouri, will host a screening of researchers’ work on Bonnie and Clyde on Tuesday, featuring a film about the 1930s outlaws.
Local historians Jason and Aiden Chambers, a father-and-son team, will give a presentation and discuss an artifact found during a recent dig at the Bonnie and Clyde shootout site in nearby Joplin, reported the Joplin Globe.
“This is an event for everyone to come and learn what really happened in the area,” Aiden Chambers said. “In no way are we glorifying them and their actions. We’re just talking about what they did and how it affected history.” […]
In June, Aiden Chambers and his father helped preservationist Jeff Hill with the removal of the Oronogo’s Farmers and Miners bank vault to the Bonnie & Clyde Ambush Museum in Louisiana. The bank was the site of a failed heist by the Barrow gang in 1932. Aidan said the bank’s location wasn’t really known before, and his research helped pinpoint it in the city.
Later this summer, Jason and Aiden Chambers also worked with Hill on a dig at the Joplin shootout site. Barrow and Parker briefly stayed at the Joplin house in 1933, leaving in a shootout with local law enforcement that resulted in the deaths of Newton County Constable Wes Harryman and Joplin police Officer Harry McGinnis.
After that, the venue will screen the 1967 classic film “Bonnie and Clyde,” starring Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway and Gene Hackman. The highly influential movie earned 10 Academy Awards.
The Bonnie and Clyde shootout site in Joplin has been turned into an Airbnb where guests can stay overnight. The outlaws stayed there for 13 nights in 1933 before shooting their way out of town, leaving behind a camera with a roll of film containing the first publicized pictures of the Barrow Gang.
Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow primarily robbed banks in Oklahoma, Missouri, New Mexico and Texas, including along the Route 66 corridor. In addition to all the heists, the couple was believed to have committed 13 murders.
Police officers shot and killed Bonnie and Clyde in a roadside ambush near Sailes, Louisiana, in 1934.
More about the outlaws can be found on the FBI’s site.
(Image of Bonnie and Clyde via the FBI)