Bonnie Parker sat stroking a white rabbit beside a car parked north of the Dallas city limits, on an unpaved stretch of road overlooking Texas State Highway 114. The rabbit was a gift for her mother. Clyde was stretched out across the back seat, trying to take a nap. Henry Methvin was pacing. After an extended visit with Methvin’s family in Louisiana, they had picked up the ulcer plagued Joe Palmer in Joplin and sent Palmer into Dallas to alert their families to their arrival.    At about three-thirty, Bonnie glanced up and saw a trio of motorcycle policemen passing north on the highway below them. They were state troopers. As Bonnie watch, two of the men, spotting the Ford parked alone on the hillside, slowed, then turned around, heading toward the entrance to the dirt road where Bonnie and Clyde waited.     According to the version of events Clyde told his family, Bonnie walked back to the car and roused him. He stepped out with a sawed-off shotgun. Methvin was already standing by the car, cradling a Browning automatic rifle. As Clyde told the story, he said to Methvin, “Let’s take ‘em.” Clyde claimed he meant to take the officers hostage, just as he had a half-dozen times before.    Methvin misunderstood. The two patrolmen, E.B. Wheeler, twenty-six, and a twenty-two-year-old rookie named H.D. Murphy, who was on his first day of duty, were just coasting up to the parked Ford, their sidearms still holstered, when Methvin  raised his rifle and fired a burst of bullets directly into Wheeler’s chest, killing him. Murphy stopped his motorcycle and began o grab for a sawed-off shotgun. When Clyde saw him go for the gun, he fired three shots, killing Murphy as well. A passing motorist watched as the three then leaped into the Ford and drove off.   The Dallas County sheriff, Smoot Schmid, immediately announced that Clyde had done the killing. “He’s not a man,” Schmid said. “He’s an animal.”