The Barrow family graves

On a spring day in 1934, about 100 mourners gathered at Western Heights cemetery on Fort Worth Avenue.

During the graveside service for notorious outlaw clyde barrow, on May 25, 1934, a plane flew low and dropped flowers on the cemetery with a note reading, “From a flyer friend.” everyone knew that day would come. clyde barrow was only 25, but lawmen hadbeenpursuingthe robber and murderer for months. to becaptured alive meant a certain date with the electric chair.

Familyandfriends had buried clyde’s older brother, buck,atthe same cemetery on Aug. 1, 1933. He had been shot about a week earlier dur- ing a policeraidonthe barrowgang hideoutinIowa.And clyde’sparents, Henry and cumie barrow, did not buy a headstone for buck, whose real name was Marvin. Legend has it they were waiting for clyde’s funeral to make the purchase. After clydefinallymethisdeathin Louisiana, he was buried next to buck, and per his request,theirgravestone reads “Gone but not forgotten.”

Ontheanniversaryof clyde barrow’sdeathin bonnieParker’sgravestonealsowasstolen on the anniversary of their death in 1958, but she had not been buried near Barrow. A newspaper article from 1934 states she had requested to be buried next to him, but her request was not granted.That could be because Parker never divorced the man she wed at 16.

1968, the headstone was stolen. An anonymous tipster led police to the stone, whichwasstashedin the bushes near a North Dallas creek.

At least two churches have been caretakers of the cemetery since 1934, but it has gone through periods of neglect over the years. A firefighter mowed it a few years back, says Ken Holmes of OakCliff, who owns the Bonnie & Clyde Ambush Museum in Gibsland, La. But now it’s in the care of the Dallas Pioneer Society.The cemetery is open to the public, but sometimes the gate is locked, he says, because the pioneer society wants to keep people from driving into the cemetery. Holmes takes tour groups to the cemetery regularly, and he say he always leaves the gate ajar, but the guys who mow always lock it.

“It needs to be unlocked,” Holmes says. “People come from all over the world to see that grave.”

Two hundred forty six people are buried in the 130-year-old Western Heights Cemetery, including several Dallas pioneers and veterans of the Civil War. Their names are recognizable to few. But the little cemetery near the Belmont Hotel has lured the curious because of one of our city’s most notorious criminals for the past 85 years.