Bonnie and Clyde's personal hoglegs sold for $500K

Nashua, NH – Collectors bought a snub-nosed .38 revolver and a .45 cal. Colt Government Model owned by Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow at the hefty price of about $250,000 apiece.

The weapons were taken from the couple in 1934 when a posse of lawmen gunned them down on a rural stretch of Louisiana highway.

Authorities “gifted” the firearms to retired Texas Ranger Frank Hamer as part of the compensation package Texas authorities paid him for getting the job done, according to a press release from RR Sellers, which conducted the auction.

Ranger Hamer was employed at the time by the Texas Department of Corrections and accompanied by Deputies of Dallas County Sheriff Smoot Schmid, a former Harley-Davidson Motor Company dealer. He had been retained by the Director of the department to track down the desperadoes following the killing of a riding boss at Eastham Farm when the couple broke associate Raymond Hamilton out of the penitentiary by leaving two .45 caliber semiautomatic Colt Government Model pistols in a ditch near the prison's yard.

Those guns and others including Browning Automatic Rifles were believed to have been stolen from a National Guard Armory in Ranger, Texas. They were similarly bestowed upon the posse of lawmen who lay in wait and gunned the couple down.

Other inmates made a run for it, including Henry Methvin. He and his father lived on a farm near Arcadia, Louisiana, where the couple went to recuperate after an auto accident in which Ms. Parker suffered severe burns when the gas tank of the stolen car in which they traveled burst into flames.

The lawmen took the senior Methvin hostage and handcuffed him to a tree in woods near the road in the pre-dawn hours when he drove by in a Model A truck with a delivery of milk from his farm.

They jacked up the truck and took a wheel off it. When Mr. Barrow drove by later in the day, he slowed just long enough for the posse to get a bead on the car, which they riddled with .30 caliber bullets from BAR assault weapons obtained to match the firepower of those in use by the Barrow gang.

Neither Ms. Parker, nor Mr. Barrow were able to grab their weapons in the onslaught of gunfire, which riddled the vehicle.