Stevens County: 1969 Hutch News interview with Claude French about Bonnie and Clyde

French held a variety of jobs

outside the gas field. He came out

in 1928 to work wheat harvest

before returning to southeast

Kansas to graduate from high

school. In 1929, he returned to the

area for good.

French was in downtown

Hugoton the night City Marshal

Charlie Newman was fatally shot

by Fred McBee: McBee had a few

alcoholic drinks before the incident

in the Jewell Cafe owned by Bonnie

Parker and Clyde Barrow — known

locally as Blackie and Jewell

Underwood or Blackie and Jewell

Sutherland.

I was us close to the city marshal

as 1 am to you (within arm's reach)

when he got shot out here. He was

Charlie Newman. Fred McBee shot

him. They are both dead now.

I think that somebody had given

Fred a shot in this cafe. He just wa»

a little over inebriated up on Main

Street and was causing a problem

and .the city marshal was going to

take him to jail. It was '31 or '32,

right in there.

They (Bonnie and Clyde) left that

night.

Woodsdale: Survivor Herbert Tonney's first-hand account of the Hay Meadow Massacre

As seen in the Stevens County history book, as well as Legends of America: http://www.legendsofamerica.com/ks-stevenscountywar.html "I do not need to swear to the truthfulness of my story, for I have already done so in many courts and under the cross-examination of some of the ablest lawyers in the country. I have repeated the story on the stand in a criminal case which cost the United States government more money than it has ever expended in any similar trial, unless perhaps that having to do with the assassination of President Lincoln. I can say that I know what it is to be murdered.

Woodsdale: Hutchinson News Story May 19, 1933

Mabel Willebrandt May Have Had
Reason For Wanting Federal Post
Former Assistant Attorney General Checked Up on Slayers of
Young Uncle in "No Man's Land" While
In Department of Justice.

Liberal, May 19.- Everyone remembers
Mrs, Mabel Walker Willebrandt,
the thoroughgoing lady
who was a s s i s t a n t attorney general
of the United States during the
Coolldge administration.
Miss Kate Wright of this city
has her own Ideas as to why Mabel
Walker took up law and headed
her career towards that branch of
her profession which would put h e r
Into contact with the d e p a r t m e n t of
justice. She may be wrong, but
a few y e a r s ago, w h e n Mrs. Willebrandt
was holding that office,
a department of justice agent visited
Miss Wright, whose father was
Charles R. Wright, pioneer lawyer
of this southwest country-

Woodsdale: Hutchinson News Story July 24, 1920 about the Stevens County Seat war

THE HAY MEADOW MASSACRE;
BLOODY DRAMA OF SOUTHWEST
Thirty-two years tomorrow,
.July 25, 1888, occurred one of the
tragedies of southwestern Kansas,
the Hay Meadow" Massacre, In
•which Sheriff Cross, of Stevens
• county, and a posse of four, were
all shot down In cold blood, four
of the five being killed outright,
by another posse headed by City
Marshal Sam Robinson, of Hugoton.
Tho following story of that frontier
tragedy of 32 years ago was written
by Tom -McNeal, of the Topeka Capital,
who was living in the southwest
at that time: