Red Crown Tourist Court

The shootout was depicted in Arthur Penn's 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde, though the sign on the motel in the movie reads "Platte City, Iowa," not Missouri.

[3][4] The resultant police attention forced the gang to move on despite Parker's dire condition, and by mid-July, Barrow hoped they could put their feet up for several days in the same place.

[5] To bankroll their stay, on July 18 the outlaws staged a freewheeling—if rather minor-league—crime rampage through the quiet streets of Fort Dodge, Iowa, stopping at one gas station after another, ransacking the cash registers and robbing and kidnapping the attendants, shoving them onto the backseat.

[7] Late that night they pulled in to refuel at Slim's Castle, a service station, café, and convenience store at the busy Platte City intersection known locally as "The Junction," and the Red Crown Tourist Court across the street caught Clyde Barrow's eye.

"[11] The Red Crown manager Neal Houser was immediately suspicious when Blanche entered the office in tight, provocative jodhpurs riding breeches, an outfit unheard of in Platte City and one much discussed at the time and still remembered by eyewitnesses forty years later.

[9] Houser watched out his rear window as the driver of the car carefully backed it—nose out, "gangster style"—into the left garage and closed up the doors.

Overnight, Clyde had taped newspapers up inside the windows of the left cabin,[14] revealing another flaw in his selection of the Red Crown: with only two units, there were no other guests with whom to blend in.

[15] This was apparent to everyone but the outlaws: even The Platte County Landmark noted "Windows curtained with newspapers, continually peeping out of windows by the gang, refusing to admit any of the station [tavern] employees to the cabins, hiding from view all of the members except one woman, created a suspicion on the part of Neal Houser ..."[16] Blanche appeared again, again in her jodhpurs, again buying five meals for her party of three, and once again paying in small change.

This time, she felt the air of suspicion around her and when later she learned his identity, realized it had been the eyes of Platte County Sheriff Holt Coffey boring into her as she completed her transaction.

When the hotelier mentioned the Oklahoma plates on their car, the officers began wondering who might be in the cabins with the taped-over windows, which limited visibility in both directions.

[19] Later that afternoon, Sheriff Coffey got a call from Louis Bernstein, the druggist at Platte City Drugs, about a stranger who had just left his store: "a good-looking gal in a slinky riding habit,"[20] the eager pharmacist reported.

Both drug stores and law enforcement agencies had been alerted by Oklahoma, Texas, and Arkansas officials to be on the lookout for strangers seeking certain medical supplies.

[21] For Coffey and Baxter, Bernstein's call pushed the situation to high alert: if the guests had bought burn wound supplies, it may well be the scorched Bonnie Parker and the Barrows within the brick cabins.

Although "[m]ost of the general public had never heard of them"[6] that afternoon, Coffey's son Clarence was on the scene as it dawned on his dad whom he would be going up against: "The look on my father's face," he told the papers then and later, "I'll never forget that!"

Clerk Kermit Crawford noticed the young man seemed nervous and kept peering over at the people milling about in the Red Crown parking lot.

At Stringtown, Joplin and Alma, officers had wandered into encounters with the Barrows totally unaware that they were about to go up against gunmen with vastly superior weaponry—and with no compunction about using it quickly and ferociously.

Clyde heard it—and he and Jones unleashed a mighty torrent of fire, joined almost immediately by Buck, all three shooting their BARs right through the windows and doors of the cabins.

The flying glass and wood chip debris abraded the officers, but they were able to fall back, miraculously without being hit by any outlaw gunfire.

The vehicle outside was not a military or Brinks-truck style armored car, but a normal-appearing automobile with bulletproof glass and extra boilerplate embedded in its body for protection.

One headlight had been shot askew into a straight-up beam,[38] and Highfill decided his machine was just not up to this particular challenge, so he backed it away from the action, and the cabins' garages were no longer barricaded.

[39] Clyde Barrow recognized a stroke of luck when he saw one—the main impediment to his escape just backed away—and he bundled Jones and Parker into the car, easily accomplished through the internal door.

[40] When they made their dash, the officers opened up again with their large caliber Tommy guns, and a bullet fired by Baxter hit Buck in the left temple and exited out his forehead.

His party all aboard, Clyde roared past Holt Coffey and the others, straight out of the Red Crown parking lot and onto Highway 71.

One Thompson burst raked over the rear window and sent slivers of shattered glass into both eyes of Blanche Barrow, and a fragment of bullet into her head, right at the hairline.

In its July 21 issue, The Platte County Landmark described the day-after scene as "a large crowd of sightseers" converged to get a look: The cabins presented a torn up appearance Thursday morning, bearing many evidences of the terrible battle.

Several bullets found their way through the station [tavern] proper but failed to hit any of the many visitors who had been warned of possible trouble and made to stay indoors.

The Landmark's unusual take on the carnage was: The bandit battle was a great celebration for the Red Crown and came upon its second anniversary, being just two years ago that day the tavern opened for business.

[53] Changing highways ultimately ended the business, as the construction of access roads for the nearby interstate demanded the demolition of the Red Crown and Slim's Castle.

As recently as 2003, After The Battle Books investigator Marty Black was able to find chunks of brickwork from unidentifiable buildings deep in the thatch on the site.

In 1999, Farmland Industries built its headquarters slightly northeast of the Red Crown site, in a spot that would have been back behind both the Tavern and the Tourist Court cabins.