Red Crown Tourist Court - Aftermath

Aftermath

The gang's flight from the Red Crown was a slow, grim affair, a wounded car filled with wounded fugitives. It ended in Iowa, at rural Dexfield Park, a recently abandoned amusement park outside Dexter, some 170 miles due north of the tourist court. For days, local citizens were running across bloody clothes and bandages carelessly jettisoned by the gang and on July 24, 1933, the Barrows found themselves under fire once again, surrounded by local lawmen and approximately one hundred spectators. Parker, Jones and Clyde Barrow all sustained significant injuries but escaped on foot. Buck was shot again and died five days later at Kings Daughters Hospital in Perry, Iowa of pneumonia after surgery. Blanche was captured and taken first to Adel, Iowa, and then on to Des Moines.

Coffey brought Blanche back to Platte City where she was held in the jail and questioned by law officers and FBI agents. Her selection of wardrobe was still under discussion upon her return, The Platte County Landmark asserting that she "gives evidence of careful rearing, being refined in speech and manner.... Properly attired and groomed she would be attractive...." Though she had not fired a weapon during the Platte City gunfight, she was charged with "assault with intent to kill" Sheriff Coffey. She pled guilty and was sentenced to 10 years in the Missouri State Penitentiary for Women. Her sentence was commuted in 1939 and she was released. She died in 1988.

The Red Crown Tavern had been a popular attraction to locals "because the food was so good," and the place became even more popular after the shootout. The Landmark's unusual take on the carnage was:

"The bandit battle was a great celebration for the Red Crown and came upon its second anniversary, being just two years ago that day the tavern opened for business. The cabins, with their bullet marks and shot-up interiors have been visited by thousands."

In 1945, the Red Crown complex was purchased by former sheriff Coffey himself, who operated it successfully until 1950. "It was a honky tonk place," recalls George Ann Coffey, a cousin. "The women would get all dressed up and wear pretty dresses and white gloves. The men would drink beer; the women would not!"

After his turn in the hospitality business, Coffey went on to be elected a presiding judge of Platte County in 1956; today, that office is referred to as county commissioner. He died in 1964 at age 72, during his first elected term.

In 1957, an accident knocked down the forecourt awning and damaged the gasoline pumps, then ten years later a fire started in the kitchen and destroyed most of the Tavern. What was left standing at the site was stripped and carried off by souvenir hounds. Fueled by the renewed interest in the Barrows from the 1967 movie, merchants in Weston actually sold bricks from the building for $1 apiece on the street during the late 1960s. "ut it was the alterations to the road junction which sounded the death knell," writes On The Trail of Bonnie and Clyde editor Winston Ramsey. "New access roads from the interstate into Kansas City airport removed the last vestiges of both the Red Crown and Slim's Castle across the road."

Final demolition of the buildings occurred in 1968, but as recently as 2003, After The Battle Books investigator Marty Black was able to find chunks of brickwork deep in the thatch on the site, though "there is really no way of determining to which building they belonged."

Although numerous inquiries have been made to erect a memorial or provide some sort of museum at the site, no attempt or formal request to the Platte County Commission has ever been made.

The area was annexed by the city of Kansas City in 1967 when Kansas City International Airport became the city's main airport.

In 1999 Farmland Industries built its headquarters slightly northeast of the Red Crown site, in a spot that would have been back behind both the Tavern and the Tourist Court cabins; currently that building is occupied by WireCo WorldGroup.