How The Love Of Fried Chicken Blew Bonnie And Clyde's Cover

Almost a hundred years after they made headlines with their criminal exploits, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow remain potent romantic archetypes. There's something about the idea of two lovebirds robbing their way across America that still captures the imagination — not least because anyone would probably get caught within five minutes if they tried doing it today. It certainly didn't hurt that a movie made about their crimes, starring the famously good-looking Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty, brought the energy of the French New Wave to American cinema and became a cultural landmark all its own. But despite the glamorous glow that surrounds their legacy, the lives of Bonnie and Clyde were lonely and precarious — to the point where an errant order of fried chicken almost got them caught.

It turns out that, once you achieve a certain level of notoriety, you can't just waltz into any restaurant you please, at least not without a gang like Al Capone's behind you. But while Capone could frequent an infamous cafe with relative security, Bonnie and Clyde's outfit didn't have the luxury of such reliable safe havens. Bonnie and Clyde, alongside the rest of the Barrow Gang, mostly subsisted on canned meat (likely not paying any attention to which canned meats to eat and which to avoid) and cold sandwiches, with the occasional takeout order or surreptitious cookout thrown in. As you can imagine, that got pretty boring after a while, and following a particularly trying month that saw Bonnie suffer severe burns on her leg after a car crash, Clyde just wanted to find some place to relax and eat fried chicken. And so, in 1933, they wound up at the Red Crown Tavern and Tourist Cabins in Platte City, Missouri, where they would only barely escape with their lives.

As Bonnie, Clyde, and the rest of the Barrow Gang tried to settle into their temporary new digs, Clyde's sister-in-law Blanche went to order fried chicken from the manager of the Red Crown. The sight of a young woman ordering five huge fried chicken dinners (even though they were supposedly only a party of three) would have raised eyebrows on its own; when she did it again the next night, suspicions were fully raised. And, unfortunately for the Barrow Gang, Clyde picked the absolute worst place to crash. The local police often ate at the Red Crown Tavern, enjoying their famous fried chicken (maybe they used double-frying to make their chicken ultra-crispy, maybe they used powdered sugar in the dredge — we can't say for sure). Whatever the case, the owner knew the cops and decided to call them.

Not long after, the police showed up to the Red Crown ready for a battle — and they got one. In a hail of bullets, Buck Barrow, Clyde's older brother and Blanche's husband, was grievously wounded and would die days later after another shootout; Blanche herself was blinded in one eye and later arrested. While Bonnie and Clyde, as well as others in the Barrow Gang, managed to escape, the shootout only made their situation more perilous: There would be very little in the way of security or fried chicken from then on. A little under a year later, Bonnie and Clyde would be ambushed and shot to death by the police in Louisiana.