Red Crown Tavern: The Night Lawmen Cornered Bonnie and Clyde
Near Kansas City, Missouri
In the summer of nineteen thirty-three, this spot near Platte City was the site of one of the most dramatic confrontations of the gangster era. Emmett Breen had built the Red Crown Tavern and Tourist Cabins here in nineteen thirty-one, a modest roadside stop just west of town. On July nineteenth, nineteen thirty-three, Platte County Sheriff Holt Coffey assembled a coalition of lawmen from the Platte County Sheriff's Office, the Missouri Highway Patrol, and the Jackson County Sheriff's Office and closed in on the cabins.
Inside were Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. The outlaws shot their way out in a fierce gun battle and escaped, though members of the gang were wounded. They would not escape justice for long.
Less than a year later, in Louisiana, a different ambush ended the Barrow gang for good.
