Bonnie and Clyde are killed in a Louisiana ambush

Just after dawn on May 23, 1934, a six-man posse crouched in the brush along a country road near Sailes, Louisiana. They were waiting for Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, the young robbers whose photographs and stolen cars had made them national celebrities — and, by some counts, killers of as many as nine lawmen and several civilians.

The trap had been laid by Frank Hamer, a former Texas Ranger hired specifically to hunt the pair. When their stolen Ford slowed near a parked truck, the officers opened fire. By the time the shooting stopped, the car had absorbed roughly 167 rounds of bullets and buckshot, and both occupants were dead.

They had run for two years; the ambush lasted seconds.

The couple were in their early twenties. Their violent end did little to dim the legend — if anything, the gore and the getaway car, later toured as a grim attraction, only sharpened it.