Bonnie and Clyde guns fetch $504,000

NASHUA, N.H.— Two guns once in the possession of notorious Depression-era gangsters Bonnie and Clyde when they were killed in a hail of gunfire sold at a New Hampshire auction Sunday for more than half a million dollars.

The guns were two of 134 artifacts that sold for a total of $1.1 million (U.S.) at the auction in Nashua. About two-thirds of the auctioned items were from Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, but items also came from other notorious criminals, including Al Capone, Pretty Boy Floyd and John Dillinger.

Bonnie Parker’s .38-calibre Detective Special that she had taped to her thigh when she was killed in 1934 drew the highest bid and sold for $264,000, said Bobby Livingston, vice-president of RR Auction, which held the auction.

Clyde Barrow’s 1911 Colt .45-calibre automatic sold for $240,000 to the same bidder, who didn’t want to be named, Livingston said.

“When rare items like that come up for sale you expect this kind of enthusiasm,” Livingston said. “There was some serious bidding going on.”

Many of the auction items came from the estate of the late collector Robert Davis of Waco, Texas.

Most of the items came from famous gangsters and outlaws, but some were linked to law enforcement officials including Elliot Ness, who led a team of federal agents known as The Untouchables that went after Capone’s gang, and Texas Ranger Frank Hamer, who led a posse that tracked down and killed Bonnie and Clyde in an ambush in Louisiana.