April 30, 1932
The day begins like any other for J. W. Bucher inside his small grocery store and filling station outside Hillsboro, Texas. Other than him, the store’s empty. Not another person in sight. Even the gas pump outside is lonely.
Times are tough. Many of his customers are running tabs, unable to pay for the necessities of life. Despite the challenges, J.W. and his wife do what they can to assist their neighbors without going broke and being forced to close.
Today, like every other day, J.W. is in the store when a car pulls up to the gas pump outside. A young man hops out of the car and enters the store carrying a package.
“I'd like to sell you some knives,” says the man as he places the package on the counter in front of J.W.
The sixty-two-year-old grocer shakes his head slowly, looks the young man in the eye, and says, “Times are too tough down here in cotton country to sell knives from this store.” J.W. glances toward the stairs that lead to the small apartment where he and his wife live. He knows all too well how tight money is now, and J.W. is also aware that Mrs. Bucher is fully aware of the store’s precarious financial state.
If he buys the knives from this young man — and they are exceptionally nice blades — J.W. is going to have to justify the purchase not only to himself but to his blushing bride. That’s not something he looks forward to.
Eventually, however, J.W.’s charitable side wins the internal argument with the more practical side of his personality, and he buys the knives. Once they agree on a price, J.W. goes to the room directly behind the front counter. In full view of the young man who came in with a package of knives, J.W. opens the safe and extracts enough cash to pay for his purchase. The deal is done. The man leaves, J.W. Bucher goes back to work, and his wife will be none the wiser until the day is done.
Hours later, J.W. and his wife are sleeping, only to be awakened by the sound of someone banging on the store’s front door.
“Wake up, Dad,” shouts a man. “I want some guitar strings.”
J.W. is still rubbing sleep from his eyes when the man outside yells, “It’s me, Dad, the boy who sold you those knives.”
Grumbling and mumbling, Mister and Missus Bucher tumble from their warm bed and go downstairs to let the man inside. It’s a small sale — a package of guitar strings — but it’s a sale, and these days every penny matters, J.W. explains to his wife. And besides, he says, this guy is never going to leave until he gets his damn strings.
Together they go downstairs, letting the man inside the store. Not alone this time, he is now with a tiny young lady who can’t weigh more than ninety-eight pounds soaking wet.
As J.W. hands the man his guitar strings, the man hands J.W. a large bill. “Ten dollars?” J.W. asks.
“Smallest I got left from what you paid for the knives,” says the man. J.W. looks at his wife and nods his head toward the door to the backroom. Mrs. Bucher takes the $10 and goes to the back room to make change. When she turns back toward the store, she finds herself staring down the barrel of a pistol in the hands of the young man.
Glancing toward her husband, she sees J.W. in a similar predicament. The young lady has a gun pointed right between her husband’s eyes. A robbery! You can’t trust anyone, Mrs. Bucher thinks.
J.W. is not about to be robbed by a little girl, so he grabs the barrel of the revolver. He yanks hard. But the young lady has her finger on the trigger, and the gun fires, blasting Mr. Bucher right between the eyes. When the young man hears the shot, he fires a round into J.W.’s head before the man crashes to the blood-soaked wooden floor.
He swings the gun back toward Mrs. Bucher. The young woman does the same. With both the pistol and the revolver aimed at her face, and her husband laying dead on the floor, Mrs. Bucher does the only thing she can. She hands over the money and watches the young man and woman back their way out of the store, get into their car, and drive away.
And there you have it, according to the June 24, 1934, edition of the San Francisco Examiner -- the first of a dozen murders committed by Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow.
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