Don’t forget to buy me a shot and a beer or a cup of coffee using venmo. My venmo name is ganglandwire.

I just finished a weeklong motorcycle tour of Bonnie and Clyde sites with my friend retired K-9 Sergeant Kate Kozal. I shot video of each location and edited these into eight short documentaries about Bonnie and Clyde. These are up on my Gangland Wire You Tube channel so watch them. I am inserting a link to a playlist of all eight videos. As a special bonus, we visit the actual meat processing store where Joey Doves Aiuppa got his 500 doves dressed and prepared them to take home. We also visit Big Brutus. You will have to watch to learn more about Big Brutus. We found the son of a Barrow gang kidnap victim and snagged an interview and visited a couple of museums with Bonnie and Clyde exhibits as well as the memorials to several law enforcement officers killed by the gang.

Some other news, I am working with my friend and guest host Screenwriter Cam Robinson on a script for a new documentary titled Murder on 12th Street. In this film, I tell the story of the 1970s Nick Civella war with the upstart Carl Spero crew.  I am working with a Kansas City film producer to get reenactments video made instead of depending on poorly shot surveillance photos newspaper headlines. I have those, but I am going to do a lot of video reenactments.

One short story now. Kate and I left on motorcycles in the rainy morning in Kansas City. We stopped on the north edge of Kansas City just off the Kansas Ciyt airport property to record a segment about the big shootout at the Red Crown Tavern. Missouri placed a historical marker where they engaged in a gun battle with Platte County and Jackson County Missouri deputies and State troopers. They even had to face an armored police car. The superior firepower of their 30.06 Browning Automatic Rifles enabled them to escape but not before the officers mortally wounded Buck Barrow. The forecasters called for thundershowers as we headed north. We stopped in a small town and gathered information about a modern day murderer and bank robber who hid out here for a period. It was getting to be noon by the time we crossed into Iowa for our next Bonnie and Clyde stop in Dexter, Iowa. We knew this was about ½ way across the state just northwest of Des Moines.

We ran into two different flooded out road crossings and finally arrived in Dexter about 5:00 PM. We found the site where the Barrow gang camped after they fled the Kansas City shootout only to be confronted by an Iowa posse. Bonnie and Clyde slipped away, but they captured Buck and Blanche Barrow. Buck would die shortly after in a local hospital. As we were leaving a man and his wife stopped, and he turned out to the son of the man that Bonnie and Clyde kidnapped and stole his car as they fled from their Iowa campground. We recorded an interview and started south. As it got dark, we could see we were driving south into a violent thunderstorm with giant lightening blots striking everywhere.

Kate has a great weather radar app, and we could tell this thunderstorm was moving north and east. It was dark by then, and we had been riding since 9:00 AM. We headed west and drove almost to Nebraska when we noticed the lightning was now east of pour position. We checked the radar, and the storm was moving steadily north and east, and we were now west of the storm. We started south, and around midnight, we finally arrived in Missouri. As we got about 60 miles north of Kansas City, another thunderstorm appeared, but we just plowed on South. For the next thirty miles, we rode in blinding rain with lightening blots lighting up our way. Finally just outside of Kansas City at about 2:00 AM, the storm passed, and after almost ten straight hours on a motorcycle, we arrived wet and bedraggled. I would venture to say this was the most dangerous thing I have ever done since I worked on the tactical response squads and served high-risk search warrants.