Clyde grew up in Texas dirt poor with seven other siblings and they lived in a tent; this was during the Great Depression. Starting when he was a teenager he began a life of crime robbing stores and banks (he could crack safes), and stealing cars. He was arrested for armed robbery when he was 17 and was sent to prison. Another inmate repeatedly raped him and then one day he grabbed a pipe and killed the man. He didn't get charged for the murder as another cell mate said he did it because he already had a life sentence.
Clyde was never the same after this as he became extremely violent. Clyde wasn't sure how long he was going to be in prison and back then they had to do hard labor so one day he asked a buddy to use one of the work tools to cut off two of his toes so he could get out the hard work. He walked with a limp the rest of his life. The irony is that about a week after he had his toes cut off, he was unexpectedly released from prison. One of many bad decisions he made in his life.
Bonnie got married to another man before she met Clyde and she was only 15 years old at the time but she split from him when he got arrested for robbery and went to prison. The only two men she ever loved were criminals. Bonnie didn’t want to be a criminal she wanted to be a poet. A couple of her poems were found at a hideout in Joplin, Missouri and the Joplin Globe newspaper printed them. One poem was called: "The Trail's End" which was a prophetic account of how she and Clyde ended up dying.
Kind of like the Jesse James' Gang, Bonnie and Clyde had a following for all the things they were getting away with but when they started murdering people, including law enforcement, the public turned against them. Although 13 deaths were attributed to them, Bonnie was believed to have never committed murder although she did carry a gun and threatened people.
Before joining up with Clyde, Bonnie worked as a waitress at a diner. One of her regular customers who she happened to have a good relationship with was one of the deputies who ended up killing her. The deputies who shot Bonnie and Clyde were given $200 apiece and they were allowed to keep some memorabilia from the famous pair.
Because of their fame, their funerals brought in around 20,000 people. There were flowers everywhere and the greatest contributor of the flowers were from newspaper companies across the mid-west because Bonnie and Clyde helped them sell so many papers.