KANSAS CITY, Mo. (Reuters) – Two guns believed seized from gangsters Bonnie and Clyde in 1933 after a deadly Missouri shootout with police sold for a combined $210,000 at an auction yesterday in Kansas City to an unnamed online bidder.
The bidder paid $130,000 for a .45-caliber Thompson submachine gun, commonly called a “Tommy gun.” The same bidder paid $80,000 for an 1897 12-gauge Winchester shotgun.
“We’re happy,” said auctioneer Robert Mayo, owner of Mayo Auction & Realty, which held the auction attended by more than 100 people. As for the bid prices, Mayo said, “Nothing ever surprises me.”
The guns were seized after a police shootout with Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow in Joplin, Missouri, on April 13, 1933. Police raided an apartment where the couple was hiding out. Bonnie and Clyde escaped, but two officers died in the shootout.
A police officer later gave the weapons to Mark Lairmore, a Tulsa police officer, and they remained in the Lairmore family, according to a Mayo account of the guns’ history.
A great-grandson of Lairmore, also named Mark Lairmore, said the family no longer saw a need for the guns, which had been in a police museum in Springfield, Missouri, from 1973 until late last year.
