At this point, Harrison Hamer showed up, rifle in hand, and took aim at the fleeing Phillips. Frank pushed the gun barrel up as the rifle went off and told Harrison he didn’t want Phillips shot in the back. At that point, the fight was finally over. Hamer had been shot twice, had killed McMeans and stopped his brother from shooting Phillips in the back. What is amazing is that the Nolan County grand jury was in session and had watched the whole fight from an upstairs window. While Hamer was being doctored, the grand jury met, heard his testimony, and “No Billed” him on the spot, declaring it self-defense.

By the 1930s, there was no deadlier gang operating than Clyde Barrow, Bonnie Parker and their associates. Across the country, they pulled numerous robberies and escaped several shootouts with law enforcement agencies. Not quite as famous as John Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde were still a high priority for lawmen.

On Jan. 16, 1934, the clamor to stop Bonnie and Clyde heightened when they pulled a daytime raid on the Eastham prison farm to help Raymond Hamilton and three other convicts escape. A prison guard was killed during the attack.
Less than a month later, the director of the Texas prison system contacted Hamer and asked him to bring the pair to justice. Hamer, who had quit the Rangers due to gubernatorial politics, was commissioned as a Texas highway patrolman so that he would have legal authority to make an arrest. He chose another ex-Ranger, B.M. “Mannie” Gault, as his partner. The pair hooked up with two Dallas County deputies, Bob Alcorn and Ted Hinton, who knew Bonnie and Clyde personally. One of the greatest manhunts in the Southwest was on.

In a short while it was learned that the robbers frequented an area of northwest Louisiana, which was the home of one of their associates, Henry Methvin, who was traveling with them full time, but his parents farmed near the town of Gibsland in Bienville Parish. The four Texans quickly joined forces with the Bienville Parish sheriff, Henderson Jordan, and his deputy, Prentis Oakley. Also involved in this phase of the pursuit was New Orleans FBI agent L.A. Kindell.

During his lifetime, Hamer had very little to say about the Bonnie and Clyde investigation. And, unfortunately, after his death some of his biographers made it sound as though Hamer was leader of the investigation, rarely mentioning the six other lawmen involved. It should be noted that the four Texas officers had no legal authority in Louisiana, and it’s a good bet that Sheriff Henderson Jordan was the actual team leader. However, it appears that all of the officers got along well and that each contributed to the investigation.

A plan was soon hatched, probably by Sheriff Jordan, with the Methvin family to lure their son away from Bonnie and Clyde and set the pair up for an arrest. In exchange for this help, Hamer would get the Texas governor to issue a pardon to Methvin for the crimes that he had committed in Texas. The officers felt that the arrest should be made in an isolated area due to the probability that Barrow and Parker would elect to resist and shoot it out.
Shortly before May 23, 1934, Methvin’s parents lured Henry away from his outlaw friends. They knew that Bonnie and Clyde would come back to the area of the Methvin farm to try to hook back up with Henry. With that in mind, the officers selected an ambush site on the Gibsland-Sailes road not far from the Methvin farm. They had Henry’s father park his truck on the side of the road and take off one of the tires, believing that this would cause the outlaw couple to stop and check on him.

Across the road, behind some brush, were Ted Hinton and Bob Alcorn, Henderson Jordan and Prentis Oakley, and Hamer and Gault. At least one man in the group, Hinton, had a BAR. Gault was carrying Hamer’s Model 8 Remington, in .25 Rem., while Hamer was armed with his Model 8, in .30 Rem., Old Lucky and a Colt .38 Super.

On the morning of the 23rd, the officers were about to call off their ambush when Barrow and Parker drove up to the scene. Sheriff Jordan and Capt. Hamer both called on them to surrender, but Clyde, who was driving, put his car in gear and attempted to drive off. Bonnie and Clyde died in a hail of bullets.

Years ago, I knew two old Texas Rangers, Dan Westbrook and Lee Trimble, who had worked with Hamer. On separate occasions they both told me the same story. They said that when the Barrow car started to pull away, Hamer fired two quick shots with his Model 8 and then sat down and lit a Camel. Autopsy photos clearly show two head shots on the pair. While there is no way to document this tale, it is certainly within Hamer’s ability to have made those shots.

In the wake of the ambush, Hamer and Gault were heralded as heroes in the state of Texas. Hamer refused all interviews and would not even attend a banquet set up to honor the officers; instead, he returned to his family and avoided the spotlight. The next year, the Texas Rangers became part of the Texas Dept. of Public Safety in an attempt to remove them from the chaos of political payoffs. Unfortunately, the new Texas governor, James Allred, disliked Hamer and would not restore him to his rightful place in the organization that he had served so well.

Above the other lawmen of his time, Frank Hamer had successfully made the transition from the days of boots and horseback patrol to suits and Ford automobiles. He was as skilled at conducting criminal investigations as he was at gunfighting. For the rest of his working years, Hamer was part owner of a lucrative private investigation and security firm. He passed away on July 10, 1955. To the very end, however, he was known as a Texas Ranger, a man at arms, who helped bring the lawless frontier to a close.