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You Know:
Encounter with
Clyde Barrrow and Bonnie Parker
Ask
any Ranger who knew him and he will tell you that Bennie Krueger was
one of the best Rangers who ever lived and one of the finest men he
ever knew. But few know this story—a tale that could have ended in death
for Bennie.
It
was a cold fall evening in 1933 and Bennie was working as a police officer
on the Brenham (Texas) Police Department. He and Officer Arthur Sternberg
were sitting in their office trying to stay warm when the phone rang.
A lady was complaining that a suspicious-looking car was parked on the
side of the road near her house. Would the police please check it out?
Even though the car was parked outside the city limits and was not in
their jurisdiction, Bennie and Sternberg agreed to look into it.
Parking
behind the car, Bennie approached the driver’s side while Sternberg
came up along the passenger side. Bennie observed a man lying in the
front seat, with a man and woman lying under a blanket in the back seat.
When Bennie tapped on the rear window, the man lifted his head. Seeing
Bennie, he rolled the window down about two inches and asked what the
officer wanted. Bennie told him that the people in the nearby house
were concerned about them being parked there all night. Would they mind
moving on?
By
this time, the woman was awake and glaring at Bennie with a look that
made the hair on the back of his hair stand on end. Trying to ignore
the look, he moved on to the driver. The driver said they were waiting
on another party to join them but would move on. Bennie and Sternberg
followed the car through town and until it disappeared from sight.
Bennie
only wondered briefly about the piercing look from the woman in the
back seat of the car and then dismissed it.
But
his thoughts didn’t stay off the woman with the cruel eyes for long.
The next morning while reading a Houston newspaper, he learned that
the infamous Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow had somehow slipped through
a police dragnet and disappeared. Bennie knew immediately how lucky
he and Sternberg were to be alive.
Little
did he realize just how lucky. Later Bennie was in Huntsville at the
jail when one of the jailers told him that Bonnie and Clyde’s driver
was in their jail. Would Bennie like to talk to him? When Bennie went
to see the driver, he immediately knew that this was not the man he
had met that night several months before on the side of a lonely country
road.
The man confirmed
that he was not with Bonnie and Clyde that night, but that he had heard
the twosome talk about it. Bonnie had said that she had had a submachine
gun pointed straight at Bennie. The only reason she hadn’t fired was
that she was afraid of hitting Clyde.
Bennie
Krueger was as tough a Texas Ranger as ever came down the pike, but
he later related that when hearing this, his throat got dry and his
knees became a little wobbly. He said he realized that he was one of
the few officers to have ever confronted Bonnie and Clyde and lived
to talk about it.
Other
officers were not so fortunate. Two Highway Patrol motorcycle officers,
E. B. Wheeler and H. D. Murphy, were patrolling north of Dallas when
they came upon a car parked by the side of the road. Approaching the
parked car, they were met by a hail of gunfire. Wheeler went down first,
followed quickly by Murphy.
A
nearby farmer named Schieffer witnessed the murders. He said that two
men—Clyde Barrow and Henry Methvin—had shot the policemen. He said that
one of the officers had moved his leg. The woman in the backseat—Bonnie—also
saw the movement and had gotten out of the car with a shotgun in her
hand. Standing over the officers, she proceeded to pump twenty-gauge
shots into the officers.
Yes,
indeed, Bennie Krueger was very lucky to be alive.
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