Outlaw Couple
Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker committed a string of violent crimes - robberies, kidnappings, prison escapes, and murder, including killing law enforcement officers - across the Midwest from 1932 until they were shot to death by law enforcement in an ambush near Sailes, LA on May 23, 1934. Bonnie and Clyde apparently met at the home of Clarence Clay, a friend of Barrow's January 1930 in Dallas, TS, when Barrow was 21 and Parker was 19. The BOI got involved after the pair had stolen several cars, which they then would abandon in different states.
The last one was a 1934 Ford Deluxe, stolen from Ruth Warren of Toeka, KS. They preferred Fords since the larger engines had more speed and horsepower than the law enforcement officers' cars, and they could outrun them.
While the BOI technically only had jurisdiction on the charge of transporting a stolen automobile, dedicated agents used all the Bureau resources available to assist in the hunt, including providing wanted posters, fingerprints, photographs, descriptions, and criminal history to law enforcement agencies. BOI and other agencies tracked them to Louisiana, and a posse of police officers from Louisiana and Texas concealed themselves in bushes along the highway before dawn. When Barron and Parker tried to flee in the Ford, they were killed in a hail of gunfire.
FBIBonnie and Clyde
She was just shy of five feet tall, all of 100 pounds, a part-time waitress and amateur poet from a poor Dallas home who was bored with life and wanted something more. He was a fast-talking, small-time thief from a similarly destitute Dallas family who hated poverty and wanted to make a name for himself.Together, they became the most notorious crime couple in American history-Bonnie and Clyde.
Background
Clyde Champion Barrow and his companion, Bonnie Parker, were shot to death by officers in an ambush near Sailes, Bienville Parish, Louisiana on May 23, 1934, after one of the most colorful and spectacular manhunts the nation had seen up to that time.Barrow was suspected of numerous killings and was wanted for murder, robbery, and state charges of kidnapping.
The FBI, then called the Bureau of Investigation, became interested in Barrow and his paramour late in December 1932 through a singular bit of evidence. A Ford automobile, which had been stolen in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, was found abandoned near Jackson, Michigan in September of that year.
At Pawhuska, it was learned another Ford car had been abandoned there which had been stolen in Illinois. A search of this car revealed it had been occupied by a man and a woman, indicated by abandoned articles therein. In this car was found a prescription bottle, which led special agents to a drug store in Nacogdoches, Texas, where investigation disclosed the woman for whom the prescription had been filled was Clyde Barrow's aunt.
Further investigation revealed that the woman who obtained the prescription had been visited recently by Clyde Barrow, Bonnie Parker, and Clyde's brother, L. C. Barrow. It also was learned that these three were driving a Ford car, identified as the one stolen in Illinois. It was further shown that L. C. Barrow had secured the empty prescription bottle from a son of the woman who had originally obtained it.
On May 20, 1933, the United States Commissioner at Dallas, Texas, issued a warrant against Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, charging them with the interstate transportation, from Dallas to Oklahoma, of the automobile stolen in Illinois. The FBI then started its hunt for this elusive pair.
Early Years
Bonnie and Clyde met in Texas in January 1930. At the time, Bonnie was 19 and married to an imprisoned murderer; Clyde was 21 and unmarried. Soon after, he was arrested for a burglary and sent to jail. He escaped, using a gun Bonnie had smuggled to him, was recaptured and was sent back to prison. Clyde was paroled in February 1932, rejoined Bonnie, and resumed a life of crime.In addition to the automobile theft charge, Bonnie and Clyde were suspects in other crimes. At the time they were killed in 1934, they were believed to have committed 13 murders and several robberies and burglaries. Barrow, for example, was suspected of murdering two police officers at Joplin, Missouri and kidnapping a man and a woman in rural Louisiana. He released them near Waldo, Texas.
Numerous sightings followed, linking this pair with bank robberies and automobile thefts. Clyde allegedly murdered a man at Hillsboro, Texas; committed robberies at Lufkin and Dallas, Texas; murdered one sheriff and wounded another at Stringtown, Oklahoma; kidnaped a deputy at Carlsbad, New Mexico; stole an automobile at Victoria, Texas; attempted to murder a deputy at Wharton, Texas; committed murder and robbery at Abilene and Sherman, Texas; committed murder at Dallas, Texas; abducted a sheriff and the chief of police at Wellington, Texas; and committed murder at Joplin and Columbia, Missouri.
The Crime Spree Begins
Later in 1932, Bonnie and Clyde began traveling with Raymond Hamilton, a young gunman. Hamilton left them several months later and was replaced by William Daniel Jones in November.Ivan M. "Buck" Barrow, brother of Clyde, was released from the Texas State Prison on March 23, 1933, having been granted a full pardon by the governor. He quickly joined Clyde, bringing his wife, Blanche, so the group now numbered five persons. This gang embarked upon a series of bold robberies that made headlines across the country. They escaped capture in various encounters with the law. However, their activities made law enforcement efforts to apprehend them even more intense. During a shootout with police in Iowa on July 29, 1933, Buck Barrow was fatally wounded and Blanche was captured. Jones, who was frequently mistaken for "Pretty Boy" Floyd, was captured in November 1933 in Houston, Texas, by the sheriff's office. Bonnie and Clyde went on together.
On November 22, 1933, a trap was set by the Dallas, Texas sheriff and his deputies in an attempt to capture Bonnie and Clyde near Grand Prairie, Texas, but the couple escaped the officer's gunfire. They held up an attorney on the highway and took his car, which they abandoned in Miami, Oklahoma. On December 21, 1933, Bonnie and Clyde held up and robbed a citizen at Shreveport, Louisiana.
On January 16, 1934, five prisoners, including Raymond Hamilton (who was serving sentences totaling more than 200 years), were liberated from the Eastham State Prison Farm at Waldo, Texas, by Clyde Barrow, accompanied by Bonnie Parker. Two guards were shot by the escaping prisoners with automatic pistols, which had been previously concealed in a ditch by Barrow. As the prisoners ran, Barrow covered their retreat with bursts of machine-gun fire. Among the escapees was Henry Methvin of Louisiana.
The Last Months
On April 1, 1934, Bonnie and Clyde encountered two young highway patrolmen near Grapevine, Texas. Before the officers could draw their guns, they were shot. On April 6, 1934, a constable at Miami, Oklahoma fell mortally wounded by Bonnie and Clyde, who also abducted a police chief, whom they wounded.The FBI had jurisdiction solely on the charge of transporting a stolen automobile, although the activities of the Bureau agents were vigorous and ceaseless. Every clue was followed. "Wanted notices" furnishing fingerprints, photograph, description, criminal record, and other data were distributed to all officers. The agents followed the trail through many states and into various haunts of the Barrow gang, particularly Louisiana. The association with Henry Methvin and the Methvin family of Louisiana was discovered by FBI agents, and they found that Bonnie and Clyde had been driving a car stolen in New Orleans.
On April 13, 1934, an FBI agent, through investigation in the vicinity of Ruston, Louisiana, obtained information which definitely placed Bonnie and Clyde in a remote section southwest of that community. The home of the Methvins was not far away, and the agent learned of visits there by Bonnie and Clyde. Special agents in Texas had learned that Clyde and his companion had been traveling from Texas to Louisiana, sometimes accompanied by Henry Methvin.
The FBI and local law enforcement authorities in Louisiana and Texas concentrated on apprehending Bonnie and Clyde, whom they strongly believed to be in the area. It was learned that Bonnie and Clyde, with some of the Methvins, had staged a party at Black Lake, Louisiana on the night of May 21, 1934 and were due to return to the area two days later.
Before dawn on May 23, 1934, a posse composed of police officers from Louisiana and Texas, including Texas Ranger Frank Hamer, concealed themselves in bushes along the highway near Sailes, Louisiana. In the early daylight, Bonnie and Clyde appeared in an automobile and when they attempted to drive away, the officers opened fire. Bonnie and Clyde were killed instantly.
Biography.comBonnie and Clyde
Possibly the most famous and most romanticized criminals in American history, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were two young Texans whose early 1930s crime spree forever imprinted them upon the national consciousness. Their names have become synonymous with an image of Depression-era chic, a world where women chomped cigars and brandished automatic rifles, men robbed banks and drove away in squealing automobiles, and life was lived fast because it would be so short.
1Bonnie and Clyde became famous, but not for what they had hoped
As a boy born into the family of a poor farmer, Clyde "Bud" Barrow's great love was music. Bud loved to sing and play an old guitar on the farm. He taught himself how to play the saxophone, and it seemed as if he might pursue a career in music.Little Bonnie Parker also loved music growing up in west Texas, and she also loved the stage. She performed in school pageants and talent shows, singing Broadway hits or country favorites. Bright and pretty, she told friends that they would see her name in lights one day. She was a big movie fan and imagined a future for herself on the silver screen.
Bonnie and ClydeClyde and Bonnie never quite surrendered their dreams
Bonnie's movie magazines were usually found left behind in the stolen cars that police recovered, and Clyde carried his guitar until he had to leave it behind during a police shootout (he later asked his mother if she would contact the police to see if they would return it; they said no). Clyde loved music right up until the end - found in Bonnie and Clyde's ambushed "death car" was his saxophone.
2Bonnie and Clyde didn't spend much time robbing banks
Movies and TV have tended to portray Bonnie and Clyde as habitual bank robbers who terrorized financial institutions throughout the Midwest and south. This is far from the case. In the four active years of the Barrow gang, they robbed less than 15 banks, some of them more than once. Despite the effort, they usually got away with very little, in one case as little as $80. The few successful bank robberies associated with Bonnie and Clyde were mostly committed by Clyde and criminal associate Raymond Hamilton. Bonnie would sometimes drive the getaway car, but often she was not involved at all, staying at a hideout while the rest of the gang robbed the bank.
3Bonnie didn't smoke cigars
The most famous picture of Bonnie shows her holding a pistol, her foot up on the bumper of a Ford, a cigar clamped in her mouth like Edward G. Robinson in Little Caesar. This is part of a collection of comic photographs clearly made for Bonnie and Clyde's own amusement. They were found on undeveloped film that was abandoned at the gang's Missouri hideout when police attacked the house. In one picture, Bonnie points a rifle at Clyde's chest, as he half surrenders with a smile on his face; another picture shows Clyde kissing Bonnie in exaggerated movie-star fashion.
Bonnie and ClydeThese photographs, as well as Bonnie's poems, also found at the hideout, were largely responsible for making Bonnie and Clyde famous. Newspapers all over the country reprinted the cigar picture. All evidence shows, however, that Bonnie was a cigarette smoker like Clyde (Camels seemed to be their preferred brand).
4Bonnie died a married woman - but not to Clyde
Not generally known is the fact that Bonnie got married when she was 16. Her husband's name was Roy Thornton, and he was a handsome classmate at her school in Dallas. The decision to marry was not hard for the young girl to make; her father was dead, her mother worked a hard job at a factory, and Bonnie herself had little prospect of doing much else but waiting tables or working as a maid. Marriage seemed like a way out.
Bonnie and ClydeThe marriage was a disaster
Unbeknownst to Bonnie, Roy was a thief and a cheat; she referred to him later as a "roaming husband with a roaming mind." He would disappear for long periods of time, and when he returned he would be drunk and abusive. Bonnie took to sleeping at her mother's. Eventually, one of Roy's schemes backfired, and he ended up with a five-year sentence for robbery. He was still in prison when he heard of his wife's death in the company of Clyde Barrow.Bonnie died with her wedding ring still on her finger. Divorce was not really an option for a known fugitive.
5Bonnie and Clyde both had trouble walking
Convicted on multiple counts of stealing cars and robbing stores (as well as one jailbreak), Clyde was sentenced to 14 years at Eastham Prison Farm, a notoriously harsh hard-labor penitentiary, in 1930. Clyde only served a year and a half of his sentence thanks to his mother, whose pleas to the governor of Texas resulted in Clyde's parole. In those seventeen months, however, Clyde had been starved, violently abused by guards, and raped repeatedly by another prisoner (who he eventually stabbed to death, with one of Clyde's "lifer" friends accepting responsibility for it).Unable to take "the bloody ‘Ham," as it was nicknamed, Clyde decided to hobble himself in order to escape the difficult work detail. Using an ax, he or a fellow inmate chopped off two toes on his left foot. Little did he know that his mother's plea would be successful six days later. Clyde's balance was never the same, and his walk was slightly hobbled from then on. He also had to drive in his socks, since he couldn't balance correctly on the pedals of a car while wearing shoes.
Clyde was driving in his socks in the summer of 1933 when Bonnie would suffer an even greater injury. Clyde, known for his reckless fast driving, did not see a "detour" sign for a road that was under construction. He missed the turn and plunged down into a dry riverbed. The shattered car battery spurted acid all over Bonnie's right leg. Bonnie was carried to a nearby farmhouse, and only the quick application of baking soda and salve stopped the burning away of her skin and tissue.
Bonnie's leg would never be the same after the accident. Because the couple had a lot of experience with nursing gunshot wounds, the leg eventually healed, but not properly, since Clyde could not take her to a real doctor. Witnesses described Bonnie as hopping more than walking for the last year of her life, and often Clyde would simply carry her when she had to get somewhere.
6Bonnie and Clyde were devoted to their families
They both had devoted families who stuck by them through their worst times, and they constantly made every effort to stay in touch with and support their relatives.Bonnie and Clyde made frequent trips back to the West Dallas area, where their families lived, throughout their criminal career. Sometimes they would return for visits multiple times in one month. Clyde's standard method was to drive quickly past his parents' house and throw a Coke bottle with a note out of his car window; his mother or father would recover the bottle, which contained directions on where to meet outside of town.
When Bonnie and Clyde had money, their families benefited from their largesse; when they were struggling, wounded or destitute, their families helped them with clean clothes and small amounts of money.
7Bonnie and Clyde were unwilling killers who released more people than they hurt
On the run constantly, Bonnie and Clyde could never rest easy; there was always a chance that someone would become aware of their presence, notify the police, and create the opportunity for bloodshed. This happened over and over through their short and violent career-violent because, once cornered, Clyde would kill anyone in order to avoid capture and a return to prison. Fourteen lawmen died along the way. If it were possible, however, Clyde would more often abduct someone (sometimes a cop), make a getaway, and then release the person somewhere down the line. In more than one instance, he gave the unharmed kidnapped victim money to get back home.
8Bonnie and Clyde were difficult to embalm and they knew their embalmer
Bonnie and Clyde famously died in a hailstorm of bullets shot at their car by an assembled posse of Texas and Louisiana lawmen. Stopping to help Henry Methvin's father fix his apparently broken-down truck on a Louisiana road, Clyde pulled the car to a stop when the posse opened fire without warning. Approximately 150 rounds later, Bonnie and Clyde lay dead in their car, which was pockmarked with several holes. Not taking any chances, the leader of the posse, Frank Hamer, even approached the car and fired several additional shots into the already dead Bonnie's body. Her hand still held part of the half-eaten sandwich that would be her last meal.
Bonnie and ClydeThe coroner's report detailed 17 holes in Clyde's body and 26 holes in Bonnie's body. Unofficially, there may have been many more. C.B. Bailey, the undertaker assigned to preserve the bodies for the funerals, found that the bodies had so many holes in them in so many different places that it was difficult to keep embalming fluid in them.Assisting Bailey was a man named Dillard Darby, who had been kidnapped by the Barrow gang a year earlier after his car had been stolen by them and he'd tried to retrieve it.
9Bonnie liked to write poetry
In school, Bonnie liked to make up songs and stories. She also liked to write poems. Once she was on the run with Clyde, she had plenty of new material to write about. Stewing in jail for a short spell in April 1932, Bonnie wrote ten poems that she grouped as Poetry from Life's Other Side. They were poems about the lives of criminals and the women who suffered because of them, including "The Story of Suicide Sal," about a woman who joins a gang and is left to rot in prison by an uncaring man:
The Story of Suicide Sal
Now if he returned to me some time, Tho he hadn't a penny to give, I'd forget all this "hell" he has caused me, And love him as long as I live.Bonnie continued to write her poems as the Barrow gang moved towards its inevitable end. Written shortly before her death, the autobiographical poem called "The End of the Line" showed no illusions about her and Clyde's situation:
The End of the Line
They don't think they're too smart or desperate, They know the law always wins; They've been shot at before, But they do not ignore That death is the wages of sin.Some day they'll go down together; And they'll bury them side by side, To a few it'll be grief- To the law a relief- But it's death for Bonnie and Clyde.
Bonnie and Clyde did go down together, her head at rest on his shoulder in their death car, but they were buried separately. Bonnie's epitaph reads "As the flowers are all made sweeter by the sunshine and the dew, so this old world is made brighter by the lives of folks like you." Clyde's reads, simply and accurately enough, "Gone but not forgotten."
WIKIPEDIA Bonnie and Clyde
Bonnie Elizabeth Parker (October 1, 1910 – May 23, 1934) and Clyde Chestnut (Champion) Barrow (March 24, 1909 – May 23, 1934) were American criminals who traveled the Central United States with their gang during the Great Depression. The couple were known for their bank robberies, although they preferred to rob small stores or rural funeral homes. Their exploits captured the attention of the American press and its readership during what is occasionally referred to as the "public enemy era" between 1931 and 1934. They were ambushed by police and shot to death in Bienville Parish, Louisiana. They are believed to have murdered at least nine police officers and four civilians.Bonnie Parker
Bonnie Elizabeth Parker was born in 1910 in Rowena, Texas, the second of three children. Her father, Charles Robert Parker (1884–1914), was a bricklayer who died when Bonnie was four years old. Her widowed mother, Emma (Krause) Parker (1885–1944), moved her family back to her parents' home in Cement City, an industrial suburb in West Dallas where she worked as a seamstress. As an adult, Bonnie wrote poems such as "The Story of Suicide Sal" and "The Trail's End", the latter more commonly known as "The Story of Bonnie and Clyde".In her second year in high school, Parker met Roy Thornton (1908–1937). The couple dropped out of school and married on September 25, 1926, six days before her 16th birthday. Their marriage was marred by his frequent absences and brushes with the law and proved to be short lived. They never divorced, but their paths never crossed again after January 1929. Parker was still wearing the wedding ring Thornton had given her when she died. Thornton was in prison when he heard of her death, commenting, "I'm glad they jumped out like they did. It's much better than being caught." Sentenced to five years for robbery in 1933 and after attempting several prison breaks from other facilities, Thornton was killed while trying to escape from the Huntsville State Prison on October 3, 1937.
Clyde Barrow
Clyde Chestnut (Champion) Barrow was born in 1909 into a poor farming family in Ellis County, Texas, southeast of Dallas. He was the fifth of seven children of Henry Basil Barrow (1874–1957) and Cumie Talitha Walker (1874–1942). The family moved to Dallas in the early 1920s as part of a wider migration pattern from rural areas to the city, where many settled in the urban slum of West Dallas. The Barrows spent their first months in West Dallas living under their wagon until they got enough money to buy a tent.Barrow was first arrested in late 1926, at age 17, after running when police confronted him over a rental car that he had failed to return on time. His second arrest was with his brother Buck soon after, for possession of stolen turkeys. Barrow had some legitimate jobs during 1927 through 1929, but he also cracked safes, robbed stores, and stole cars. He met 19-year-old Parker through a mutual friend in January 1930, and they spent much time together during the following weeks. Their romance was interrupted when Barrow was arrested by Dallas County Sheriffs Deputy Bert Whisnand and convicted of auto theft.
Barrow was sent to Eastham Prison Farm in April 1930 at the age of 21. He escaped from the prison farm shortly after his incarceration using a weapon Parker smuggled to him. He was recaptured shortly after and sent back to prison. Barrow was repeatedly sexually assaulted while in prison, and he retaliated by attacking and killing his tormentor with a pipe, crushing his skull. This was his first murder. Another inmate who was already serving a life sentence claimed responsibility.
In order to avoid hard labor in the fields, Barrow purposely had two of his toes amputated in late January 1932, either by another inmate or by himself and because of this he walked with a limp for the rest of his life. However, without his knowledge, Barrow's mother had already successfully petitioned for his release and he was set free six days after his intentional injury. He was paroled from Eastham on February 2, 1932, now a hardened and bitter criminal. His sister, Marie said, "Something awful sure must have happened to him in prison because he wasn't the same person when he got out." Fellow inmate Ralph Fults said that he watched Clyde "change from a schoolboy to a rattlesnake".
In his post-Eastham career, Barrow robbed grocery stores and gas stations at a rate far outpacing the ten or so bank robberies attributed to him and the Barrow Gang. His favorite weapon was the M1918 Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR). According to John Neal Phillips, Barrow's goal in life was not to gain fame or fortune from robbing banks but to seek revenge against the Texas prison system for the abuses that he had sustained while serving time.
Famous Pictures Posing for the Camera
Ambush and Deaths
By May 1934, Barrow had 16 warrants outstanding against him for multiple counts of robbery, auto theft, theft, escape, assault, and murder in four states. Texas Ranger Frank Hamer, who had begun tracking the gang on February 12, led the posse. He had studied the gang's movements and found that they swung in a circle skirting the edges of five mid-western states, exploiting the "state line" rule that prevented officers from pursuing a fugitive into another jurisdiction. Barrow was consistent in his movements, so Hamer charted his path and predicted where he would go. The gang's itinerary centered on family visits, and they were due to see Methvin's family in Louisiana. Unbeknownst to Hamer, Barrow had designated Methvin's parents' residence as a rendezvous in case they were separated. Methvin had become separated from the rest of the gang in Shreveport. Hamer's posse was composed of six men: Texas officers Hamer, Hinton, Alcorn, and B.M. "Maney" Gault, and Louisiana officers Henderson Jordan and Prentiss Morel Oakley.On May 21, the four posse members from Texas were in Shreveport when they learned that Barrow and Parker were planning to visit Ivy Methvin in Bienville Parish that evening. The full posse set up an ambush along Louisiana State Highway 154 south of Gibsland toward Sailes. Hinton recounted that the lawmen were in place by 9 pm, and waited through the whole of the next day (May 22) with no sign of the perpetrators.
At approximately 9:15 am on May 23, the posse was still concealed in the bushes and almost ready to give up when they heard a vehicle approaching at high speed. In their official report, they stated they had persuaded Methvin to position his truck on the shoulder of the road that morning. They hoped Barrow would stop to speak with him, putting his vehicle close to the posse's position in the bushes. The vehicle proved to be the Ford V8 with Barrow at the wheel and he slowed down as hoped. The six lawmen opened fire while the vehicle was still moving. Oakley fired first, probably before any order to do so. Barrow was shot in the head and died instantly from Oakley's first shot and Hinton reported hearing Parker scream. The officers fired about 130 rounds, emptying each of their weapons into the car. The two had survived several bullet wounds over the years in their confrontations with the law. On this day any one of several of Bonnie and Clyde's wounds could have been the cause of death.
According to statements made by Hinton and Alcorn:
Officer StatementsEach of us six officers had a shotgun and an automatic rifle and pistols. We opened fire with the automatic rifles. They were emptied before the car got even with us. Then we used shotguns. There was smoke coming from the car, and it looked like it was on fire. After shooting the shotguns, we emptied the pistols at the car, which had passed us and ran into a ditch about 50 yards on down the road. It almost turned over. We kept shooting at the car even after it stopped. We weren't taking any chances.Victims
Bonnie and Clyde killed twelve people, including nine law enforcement officers during their two years of criminal activity from February 1932 to May 1934.
- John Napoleon "JN" Bucher of Hillsboro, Texas: murdered April 30, 1932 in Hillsboro, TX
- Deputy Eugene Capell Moore of Atoka, Oklahoma: murdered August 5, 1932 in Stringtown, OK
- Howard Hall of Sherman, Texas: murdered October 11, 1932 in Sherman, TX
- Doyle Allie Myers Johnson of Temple, Texas: murdered December 26, 1932 in Temple, TX
- Deputy Malcolm Simmons Davis of Dallas, Texas: murdered January 6, 1933 in Dallas, TX
- Detective Harry Leonard McGinnis of Joplin, Missouri: murdered April 13, 1933 in Joplin, MO
- Constable John Wesley "Wes" Harryman of Joplin, Missouri: murdered April 13, 1933 in Joplin, MO
- Town Marshal Henry Dallas Humphrey of Alma, Arkansas: murdered June 26, 1933 in Alma, AR
- Prison Guard Major Joseph Crowson of Huntsville, Texas: murdered January 16, 1934 in Houston County, TX
- Patrolman Edward Bryan "Ed" Wheeler of Grapevine, Texas: murdered April 1, 1934 near Grapevine, TX
- Patrolman Holloway Daniel "H.D." Murphy of Grapevine, Texas: murdered April 1, 1934 near Grapevine, TX
- Constable William Calvin "Cal" Campbell of Commerce, Oklahoma: murdered April 6, 1934 near Commerce, OK