POLICEMEN SHOT DOWN.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20285, 20 April 1934, Page 1

POLICEMEN SHOT DOWN.

Girl Watches Companions Kill Them. SEATTLE, April 12. Clyde Barrow and Raymond Humilton, with their blonde companion “ Suicide Sal ’ Parker, killed one policeman and wounded, perhaps killed, another officer early to-day, before they escaped across the Oklahoma border into the wilds of Kansas. Several posses aie in hot pursuit. Chief of Police Percy Boyd and Constable Cal Campbell, from a town named Commerce, were motoring across recently flooded country when they overhauled another car, stuck in the mud. Halting to lend aid, they immediately recognised the two desperadoes and their cigar-smoking girl friend. As they reached for their pistols a machine-gun rattled from inside the car. Campbell fell dead and Boyd was severely wounded. At this moment two other cars, laden with tourists, arrived, and Barrow, with drawn revolver, coolly forced the drivers to push him out of the mud on to hard ground. Taking the body of Boyd aboard their car, the bandits sped away. A dozen miles across the Kansas border they encountered a farmer with a huge v.aggon blocking the highway. “ Get out of the way! ” they ordered. “We have just killed two policemen, and we don’t mind killing you, too, if you delay us.” The farmer quickly let them pass, and by noon the desperadoes had been swallowed up in the endless Kansas plains. Previous Murder. Last Sunday Barrow, who is “ Public Enemj' No. i ” in the Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas country, killed two policemen. They were motor-cycle patrolmen Murphy and Wheeler, who had been following a motor-car in Kansas City. The car drew up at the kerb and they approached, unsuspectingly. Suddenly Barrow appeared around the side of the car, shot the two men dead, and disappeared with “ Suicide Sal,” who had been looking on. This woman, whose real name is Bonnie Parker,, and who writes morbid poetry in her spare time, provided the police with a clue to the murder, for they found on the footpath the stub of a cigar with the imprint of her small teeth. On the same dav Hamilton was busy in West Texas. lie robbed the Mexia Bank, and then, to cover his retreat, kidnapped a townswoman from her car. sat beside her to protect him against police bullets and drove off to Houston. There he released her unharmed.