Bonnie and Clyde's guns go to anonymous bidder
TWO guns used by gangsters Bonnie and Clyde when they were killed in a hail of gunfire sold at a New Hampshire auction for $504,000 (£311,000).
The guns were two of 134 artefacts that sold for a total of $1.1m at the auction in Nashua.
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shooter: A Colt .45 SAA revolver that belonged to Robert LeRoy Parker, better known as Butch Cassidy, bank thief, train robber, and leader of the Wild Bunch Gang. It sold at auction in Southern California to an anonymous bidder for $175,000.
About two-thirds of the auctioned items were from Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, but some also came from other notorious criminals, including Al Capone, Pretty Boy Floyd and John Dillinger.
Parker's .38-calibre Detective Special that she had taped to her thigh when she was killed in 1934 drew the highest bid and sold for $264,000 (£163,000), said Bobby Livingston, vice-president of RR Auction in Amherst, New Hampshire.
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Barrow's 1911 Colt .45-calibre automatic sold for $240,000 (£148,000) to the same bidder, who did not want to be named.
Mr Livingston said: "When rare items like that come up for sale you expect this kind of enthusiasm.
"There was some serious bidding going on."
Many of the auction items came from the estate of the late collector Robert Davis, of Waco, Texas, with the remainder coming from various other collections.
Most came from famous gangsters and outlaws, but some were linked to law enforcement officials including Elliot Ness, who led team of federal agents known as The Untouchables which went after Capone's gang, and Texas Ranger Frank Hamer, who led a posse that tracked down and killed Bonnie and Clyde in an ambush in Louisiana.
Barrow's pocket watch sold for $36,000 (£22,200) and a 1921 Morgan silver dollar found in his pocket after he was killed sold for $32,000 (£19,750).
Meanwhile a .45-calibre gun once owned by outlaw Butch Cassidy was sold at auction in Southern California for $175,000 (£108,000).
A spokesman for the private seller said the Colt Single Action Army revolver went to an anonymous online bidder.
The gun is accompanied by a black leather shoulder holster and two binders filled with documentation verifying the revolver's authenticity.
Cassidy, the infamous Old West robber, bought the revolver in a hardware store in Vernal, Utah, in 1896 and turned it over to state authorities in early 1900 in an unsuccessful attempt to gain amnesty.
Known as the "Amnesty Colt", it is the most documented of Cassidy's guns.
The outlaw was immortalised in the 1969 film Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid and played by Paul Newman.
The sale was held by California Auctioneers of Ventura.
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