His sister Marie, barely school age when she and her parents moved to the West Dallas campground, remembered watching him put spurs on roosters for cockfighting, and his pit bull, the latter which tore the back off her dress.

The turkey adventure was an ironic joke to them; Buck was making ends meet by stealing automobiles in cities all over Texas and selling them for a comfortable $100 or so to fences out of state.

On November 29, 1929, several days after meeting Blanche, Barrow was shot and captured following a burglary in Denton, Texas.

He simply walked out of the prison, stole a guard's car, and drove to his parents' place in West Dallas, where Blanche was living.

In interviews with author/historian John Neal Phillips, Blanche was frank about the fact that she not only knew of Buck's escape but that she hid with him and actually staged robberies with him.

Two days after Christmas 1931, his mother and his wife drove him to the gate of Huntsville penitentiary, where he told surprised prison officials that he had escaped almost two years before and needed to resume his sentence.

Upon his release, on March 22, 1933, Buck Barrow, in the company of Blanche, joined his younger brother Clyde, Bonnie Parker, and W. D. Jones in Joplin, Missouri, where he participated in several armed robberies.

Two officers, Newton County Constable Wes Harryman and Joplin City Motor Detective Harry McGinnis were killed.

The bullet opened up a large hole in Buck's forehead that exposed his brain and caused severe loss of blood.

On July 24, Buck, near death, was wounded six times in the back during a shootout near an abandoned amusement park between Redfield and Dexter, Iowa.

[6] That bullet, doctors discovered, had entered his back, ricocheted off a rib, and lodged in his chest wall close to the pleural cavity.

Because he was in such a weakened state—his limbs had grown paralyzed from another bullet wound, and his temperature would not lower from 105—his doctors expected he would develop pneumonia from the surgery on his chest.

[8] "Due to the lack of medical attention," an interrogator noted, "the wound in Barrow's head gave off such an offensive odor that it was with the utmost difficulty that one could remain within several feet of him.

[10] When word of Buck's dire condition reached Texas, Dallas County Sheriff R.A." Smoot" Schmid wrote a letter of introduction to the local authorities for Buck and Clyde's mother, Cumie, and a deputy sheriff provided money to help cover her expenses in the 36-hour drive to Iowa.