The handwritten letter came attached to a sheaf of folded yellowed newspapers dated May, 1934.

Mrs. DeLuca,

I'm sending some old newspapers of the deaths of Bonnie and Clyde. I'm hoping you or some of your staff can come up with a story about them in The Daily Sentinel. After all, Clyde was a local boy, having been born and raised in the Martinsville area and still has lots of relatives living in the Nacogdoches vicinity.

I was six years old when they were gunned down in Louisiana.

I remember the older people talking a lot about them, lots of people cheering them on. I recall one time my mother's sister and her family came to our house they were all excited. They said their son was taking a short-cut home through the woods and ran up on Bonnie and Clyde and the Hamiltons camped out (this was near Douglas). Later in the years, I did read in the papers this was one of their favorite places to hide out. I remember lots of other things that happened in this lawless time, like the kidnapping of the Lindberg baby, John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson and lots of others.

If you can come up with something to write in The Sentinel, I'm sure it will make good reading.

Hall Nichols

Cushing

While I appreciated Mr. Nichols' confidence in my writing ability, I wasn't sure there was anything left to say about Bonnie and Clyde that hadn't been said before, much less anything that would make "good reading."

But I was wrong.

I figured nothing could top the movie version of Bonnie and Clyde's story for entertainment value. Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway were a pretty unbeatable combination. Plus, Faye Dunaway had the benefit of a designer wardrobe that was to die for (no pun intended) while the real Bonnie just had make do with what she could snatch off the rack between bank heists and shoot-outs.

So anyway, I was thinking, "Yeah, yeah, I know the story. They were young, they were in love and they had issues with authority ..." and "One picture of an old car shot full of holes looks pretty much like another."

But I looked at the newspaper anyway. And then I looked at it again. And again. And so did everybody else in the newsroom.

On the front page of the Dallas Sentinel, immediately under the banner was a picture of Bonnie Parker's slack-jawed countenance, rivulets of blood still fresh upon her face.

However, it wasn't the Dallas Sentinel's "Grewsome Evidence of Fate's Verdict for Killers" that drew our attention. After the misspelled word in the headline, it was Bonnie Parker's fully exposed breast.

In the newspaper! In 1934! On the front page!

Our imaginations were quite literally, staggered. Nudity, on the front page.

And it wasn't just in the Dallas paper either; another newspaper in Mr. Nichols' envelope, the Bienville Democrat ran it too. It was on the inside of the newspaper, part of a six-page spread.

Dallas, I might have believed, but North Louisiana? I mean, where did these people think they were, England?

It was interesting too, that while the Sentinel had made some attempt to downplay the breast by lightening the photo and cropping out part of the ... um ... colored portion of the breast ... the Bienville Democrat ran it in all its uncensored glory.

In fact, the breast could have easily been cropped out of the photo, while still maintaining the "integrity" of photo — the display of Bonnie Parker's gory wounds — while at the same time, protecting the sensibility of the public and a little of Mrs. Parker's dignity.

It was a deliberate affront, no doubt about it.

As for the rest of Bonnie and Clyde's (and Mr. Nichols') story, Clyde Barrow was actually born in Telico, near Dallas, which is where he was raised.

Some people probably did cheer them on, for the fact that they robbed banks, which weren't very popular during The Depression. Murder and mayhem was just their way of "stickin' it to The Man."

They did camp out frequently in rural areas. My aunt says that they once camped out in our family cemetery in Rusk County while my grandfather, who owned a garage, worked on their car. Whether that's true, I don't know.

And whether Clyde Barrow still has family living in the vicinity of Nacogdoches, I couldn't say.

But I can say this, Bonnie and Clyde might have been reckless and ruthless, but judging from The Dallas Sentinel and the Bienville Democrat, the newspaper editors in 1934 were right there with them.

Karla DeLuca is editor and publisher of The Daily Sentinel. Her e-mail address is kdeluca@coxnews.com.