Letter up for auction

Bonnie and Clyde made it quite clear how they felt about a former member of their gang in a letter they sent to him as he sat in the Dallas County Jail.

He was a coward, they wrote, and they should have killed him when they had the chance.

The four-page letter to Raymond Hamilton was written in April 1934 in Bonnie Parker’s neat cursive and signed by Clyde Barrow. It could fetch more than $40,000 when it’s sold next month by Boston-based RR Auction, said the auction house’s executive vice president, Robert Livingston.

Based on the language, experts think Barrow, who had poor writing skills, likely dictated the letter to Parker.

The couple was livid with Hamilton, in part because of a disagreement over how to split $4,000 stolen from a Texas bank just two months earlier. “I should have killed you then I would have saved myself much bother and money looking for you,” reads the letter, which is full of 1930s gangster jargon. Branford Marsalis is 56 Country musician Jimmy Olander (Diamond Rio) is 55 Actor Chris Burke is 51 Rock musician Dan Vickrey (Counting Crowes) is 50 Actress Melissa McCarthy is 46 Latin pop singer Thalia is 45 Actor Mike Colter is 40 Actor Macaulay Culkin is 36 R&B singer Cassie Ventura is 30 Actor Evan Ross is 28 Actor Dylan O’Brien is 25 Actress Keke Palmer is 23

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