Red Crown Tourist Court Informations

Coordinates: 39°18′45″N 94°40′57″W / 39.3123659°N 94.6825828°W / 39.3123659; -94.6825828The Red Crown Tavern and Red Crown Tourist Court in Platte County, Missouri was the site of the July 20, 1933 gun battle between lawmen and outlaws Bonnie and Clyde and three members of their gang. The outlaws made their escape, but would be tracked down and cornered four days later near Dexter, Iowa and engaged by another posse. 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.

Built in 1931 by Parkville, Missouri banker and developer Emmett Breen at the junction of US 71 and US 71 Bypass (now Missouri Route 291), the red brick and tile Tavern included a popular restaurant and ballroom. Back behind the Tavern was the Tourist Court— two small cabins connected by two garages. The site is just northeast of the main Kansas City International Airport exit off I-29. Today it is within the city limits of Kansas City, and an Interstate entrance ramp runs almost squarely through the property.

Uncharacteristically, Clyde Barrow was looking for a place the gang might hole up for several nights. It was his usual practice to keep moving and never spend more than one night in any given spot, but the previous weeks had been difficult. On June 10, a one-car wreck at Wellington, Texas had left Bonnie Parker critically burned and near death. While the gang hid and tried to nurse Parker in a Ft. Smith, Arkansas tourist court, Buck Barrow and W.D. Jones were sent to raise funds; they bungled the robbery and killed the town marshal of Alma, Arkansas. 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.

To bankroll their stay, on July 18 the outlaws staged a freewheeling—if rather minor-league—crime rampage through the staid 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. They also broke open the vending and gumball machines and scooped out all the change, a move which would have unexpected consequences for them several days hence. After three such robberies in fifteen minutes they realized they had no more room for hostages, released everybody, and with another $150 headed for Kansas City; it was 250 mi (400 km) distant over 1933 roads, yet they were there in under four hours.

Buck agreed in principle with the idea of a long rest, but disagreed with the choice of Kansas City because the bloody Kansas City Massacre of some weeks earlier meant that numerous federal, state, and local police officers were yet seeking gangsters in the area. The brothers fought bitterly about the plan before lapsing into a toxic silence that enveloped the car. 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. What attracted him initially was the sturdy brick construction of the place, which made him feel secure, he would tell his family later. To his hot, dirty, cross passengers he said, "This is where we stay the rest of the night, even if we all get killed before morning."

The Slim's attendant directed Barrow to the Red Crown office in the Tavern building, but before they drove over, they covered Buck and Jones with blankets in the backseat so that when Blanche Barrow went in to book the room, she could claim they were a party of three; this was not to save money off the room tab, but Clyde's attempt to disguise the size and makeup of the party if any prying officers inquired about them. What he couldn't have known was that there would be officers aplenty, since the Red Crown was a favorite gathering spot of the Missouri Highway Patrol in the days before two-way radio in Patrol cars, when "officers and supervisors would often meet somewhere at mealtimes to exchange messages and receive orders."

It was a shaky plan from the start, and things only went downhill from there. Red Crown manager Neal Houser was immediately suspicious when Blanche flounced into the office in tight, provocative jodhpurs riding breeches, a get-up unheard of in stodgy Platte City and one much discussed at the time and still remembered by eyewitnesses forty years later. She booked both rooms out back for three guests, one night, then paid the $4 with a fistful of small change. 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. A short time later, the young woman reappeared at the Tavern's restaurant and bought five chicken dinners and five beers for the party of three. She paid for them with more small change. Houser insisted on following Blanche back to the cabins to record the car's license plate number, but had to content himself with just peering into the garage for it when Clyde wouldn't let him into the cabin. After he left, the five settled in for supper; since the two brothers were still not speaking to each other, it was a silent, somber repast.

The gang slept late the following morning; overnight, Clyde had taped newspapers up inside the windows of the left cabin, revealing another flaw in his selection of the Red Crown: with only two units, there were no other guests with whom to blend in. 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 ..." The aforementioned woman appeared again, again in her jodhpurs, again buying five meals for her party of three, and once again paying in small change. This time, however, 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.

Clyde had also instructed her to pay for another night's stay, but "to see how the people acted and what I thought about them, if I thought it would be safe to stay there another night." Blanche got a bad vibe off Houser as she dribbled more warm coins into his hands, but when she apprised Barrow of her fears, "Clyde said it was just my imagination, that everything would be all right. So I said no more."

It was not, however, just her imagination. Red Crown manager Houser had lawman restaurant patrons other than Sheriff Coffey—namely Captain William Baxter of the state patrol. Houser had a word with Baxter about his suspicions concerning his motel guests, and Baxter spoke with Coffey. When the hotelier mentioned the Oklahoma plates on their car, the officers began wondering just who it might be in the cabins with the taped-over windows, which limited visibility in both directions.

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," 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. The stranger was, of course, Blanche, buying bandages and atropine sulfate to treat Bonnie's leg burns. For Coffey and Baxter, Bernstein's call pushed the situation to critical mass: if the guests had indeed bought burn wound supplies, it may well be the scorched Bonnie Parker and the freeshooting Barrows within the brick cabins. Although "[m]ost of the general public had never heard of them" 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!"

But Coffey's was just a county sheriff's operation—"no protective gear, no radios, no weapons to speak of other than 'squirrel rifles and a few pistols'." Even with Baxter's help, both men knew they were seriously outgunned, and Platte County prosecutor David Clevenger suggested they confer with Jackson County Sheriff Tom Bash in nearby Kansas City, a big-city jurisdiction "whose available armaments included machine guns, steel bulletproof shields, tear gas launchers, and armored cars." Coffey headed over to Bash's Kansas City office, but did not get the response he had hoped for. "I'm getting pretty damn tired of every hick sheriff in the country coming in here and telling me they have a bunch of desperadoes holed up and wanting help. I'm afraid there's nothing I can do for you," Bash said. Coffey was tenacious, though, and eventually got Bash to agree to supply some men, some weaponry, bulletproof shields, and "a bulletproof car."

Participants and spectators—word was getting around town that there might be a replay of the "Kansas City Depot job" out at The Junction—began gravitating to the Tavern and to Slim's Castle across the road as the sweltering July day led to a muggy July night. The assault force numbered thirteen: six from Platte County, four from Jackson County, and three from the state patrol. Coffey and Baxter thought it best to wait until later to make their move, after the traffic of the intersection and its two busy establishments had thinned out. Everyone seemed to sense the impending action—except the outlaws, shrouded as they were by their newspaper curtains.

After dark, Blanche emerged and covered the short distance to the Tavern to get more soap and some fresh towels. As she entered,

She told her husband about the ominous behavior of the crowd in the Tavern, and he told her to go to the other cabin and tell Clyde (they apparently still were not speaking). Clyde, despite his often-cited "sixth sense" about impending danger, was unconcerned and told her not to worry about it. "'Okay,' I said. 'If we all get killed here tonight, you can't say I didn't warn you.'" She returned to her own cabin, followed shortly by Jones with a message from Clyde: he wanted her to fetch more food. This angered Blanche and she told Jones to tell Clyde that she wasn't going out any more that night, which in turn angered Clyde.

The lawmen watching the cabins were surprised when, at about 10:30, one of the doors opened and a young man emerged; up to this point, it had been the slender gal in the riding breeches who had done all the errand-running. Seventeen-year-old W.D. Jones crossed the road, went into Slim's Castle and ordered five sandwiches and five bottles of soda pop. Clerk Kermit Crawford noticed the young man seemed nervous and kept peering over at the millers-about in the Red Crown parking lot. It could not have seemed too out-of-the-ordinary to the young outlaw; he did not mention it to the boss.

All the preparations, reinforcements, and armaments made the Red Crown firefight something no other Barrow Gang gunbattle to date had been: a fairer fight. 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. "The poorly armed cops expected to confront small-timers whose firepower was equally limited," writes Jeff Guinn of the earlier confrontations, but tonight's encounter would be "a coordinated assault by well-prepared, well-armed officers aware of exactly who they were up against."

By 1 a.m., the revelers had mostly departed the Red Crown Tavern, so Sheriff Coffey, Captain Baxter and eleven patrolmen, county cops and Jackson County officers commenced their operation. Accounts differ in details, but Coffey certainly advanced on the cabins; he may have been accompanied by Baxter and possibly others, carrying one or more massive shields made out of thick boilerplate, "like medieval knights." Significantly, the two Jackson County officers pulled the armored car up to block the cabins' garage doors—so the gang was completely hemmed in. Coffey rapped sharply on the door of Buck and Blanche's cabin. Blanche called out that she wasn't dressed, to which Coffey replied, "Well put your trousers on and come out yourself." He then asked where the men were, and she told him, as loudly as she could so Clyde would hear it, that they were in the other cabin.

Clyde did indeed hear 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. Coffey's nineteen-year-old son Clarence was watching from behind and later said his father "was pushed back like he was hit by a high-pressure hose." The boilerplate shield stood up to actual penetration, but the BARs' impact was literally staggering to the sturdily-built sheriff. 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. They returned the fire, but even their substantial, .45-caliber Thompson "sub-guns" were no match for the bandits' thundering Browning output: one BAR slug exiting the cabin penetrated the rear wall of the kitchen in the Tavern, passed through both walls of a stove and wound up lodged in Coffey, Jr's arm; others penetrated Tavern walls at both ends of the place, and several ricocheted off the pavement of the Slim's Castle parking lot. People for miles around heard the gunfire on the quiet night air.

Inside their cabin, Clyde and Jones dashed through the internal door to the garage and prepared to get the car loaded and started, but when they peeked out the garage door, they saw the armored car blocking their exit. 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; the problem was, it was not all that bulletproof. The outlaws opened fire on it immediately and the armor-piercing rounds from their BARs found their way inside: driver George Highfill was hit in both knees and either the horn button or the horn itself was hit and it began blaring in an unyielding wail. The posse assumed this was a cease-fire signal and they did just that; many fell back. One headlight had been shot askew into a straight-up beam, 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. To add to the confusion, an officer back behind the cabins fired off a tear gas rocket that overshot (considerably) the cabins and came down across the road in the Slim's Castle parking lot—with the gas then blowing back over to fog the officers' eyes on the Red Crown side.

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