‘He survived 52 gunfights’
depiction of Hamer is the most genuine the lawman’s family has seen.
“What many people who see the movie may not pick up on is how quiet my uncle was,” says Harrison, who during his 28-year air force career was once stationed in Suffolk.
“Long before he captured Bonnie and Clyde, he’d caught so many criminals. He was put into towns to clear them up. Having his surname as a young boy was like being a celebrity.
“Uncle Frank survived
52 gunfights and was shot several times but no one could finish him off. He was made of strong stuff.
“He was brought up hunting and that is how he became a good shot.
“Uncle Frank could shoot the eye out of a snake. I’d ask him about his heroics but not once would he discuss it. It was just his work to him.”
And despite the cult built up around Bonnie and Clyde, his work was rightly admired all over the world – Scotland Yard invited him to London in the mid1930s to act as an adviser. “Uncle Frank was approached to go to the UK but it never came off,” Harrison says. “I think the fact they wanted him shows how much he was respected not just in America but the world as well.”
The cult of Bonnie and Clyde lives on. Recently, they featured in a 2013 miniseries and they have been celebrated in 21st-century pop culture in songs by Taylor Swift and Ariana Grande.
And judging by the memorial stone on that dirt road in Gibsland marking the scene of their deaths, misguided affection for them shows no signs of abating. Countless couples have scrawled their names across the surface in tribute.
Hamer, who never wanted fame, would be shocked. Harrison says: “After putting an end to Bonnie and Clyde, they wanted to honour him with a Congressional dinner. He said, ‘You’re welcome to have the dinner but I won’t be there’. He didn’t like the fuss.
“If he were alive he’d be hugely embarrassed by the attention he is now getting. But he’d be equally angered by how Bonnie and Clyde have been portrayed as Robin Hood-type figures.”
He’d be angered by how they have been made Robin Hood figures HARRISON HAMER ON VILLAINS’ ICONIC STATUS