Handwritten Manuscripts Related to Bonnie and Clyde, Jesse James and Buffalo Bill to Auction

Artifacts from America's outlaw history go under the hammer at RR Auction this week.

The Old West, Outlaws, Lawmen, and Gangsters sale closing on May 22 features a handwritten letter from Clyde Barrow to his brother, scrawled on the back of a photograph of one of the gang's Gulf Coast hideouts. In the note, Barrow jokes about their seaside hideout and includes a tie as payment for his brother's black hat. 

"Bonnie and Clyde weren't just outlaws—they were icons of the Great Depression era, and the public was obsessed with their every move. Items like Bonnie's purse pistol or Clyde's candid letter to his brother give us a raw, unfiltered view of life on the run," said Bobby Livingston, Executive Vice President at RR Auction.

Also up for auction is a collection of Jesse James related letters including:

• a Robert Ford autograph letter in which Ford (who betrayed and killed Jesse James) pawns his belongings, including his shotgun
• a series of Western Union telegrams and letters between Police Commissioner H. H. Craig, Sheriff James Timberlake, and Missouri Governor Thomas T. Crittenden chronicling the pursuit of Jesse James, and detailed notes on capturing Jesse and Frank James
• an autograph note signed on the hotel bill of the widowed Mrs. Jesse James, dated two days after Jesse's death
• Crittenden's letter discussing the public's "sentimentality" over Jesse's death

Other lots feature William F. 'Buffalo Bill' Cody, among them four signed admission tickets for Buffalo Bill's Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders of the World , a handwritten two page letter to a Mrs Winter on Buffalo Bill's Wild West letterhead dated September 26, 1902 ("I am sorry that I will not have the pleasure of seeing your husband but will be delighted to meet you…in traveling as we do, we have to travel light), and a postcard of a Western cowboy painting Chicken Pulling, signed "W. F. Cody, 'Buffalo Bill'".