Moreover, Wade Hampton McNabb was not one of the attempted escapees, so the scene where he is dramatically left behind is fictionalized.
While he did that, Bonnie stayed in the car and leaned on the horn to signal the men which way they should run. Though many of the details in this sequence are taken from the true story (Barrow's associates left weapons to aid in the escape, and one prison guard was killed while another was wounded), there are also some creative liberties taken that set the tone for how The Highwaymen blends fact with embellishment.Īccording to My Life With Bonnie & Clyde - a memoir written by Clyde's sister, Blanche Barrow - it was actually Clyde, not Bonnie, who fired a machine gun into the treeline while the men made their escape. The Highwaymen opens with a major event from towards the end of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker's crime spree: a planned jailbreak of several criminal associates from Eastham prisoner farm, where Clyde himself had once been an inmate.
