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Frank Hamer, Legendary Texas Lawman Who Bagged Bonnie and Clyde

Khalid Elhassan December 27, 2024 12 min

Hamer - Frank Hamer — Frank Hamer. Free Range America

5. Bad Blood That Ended in a Shootout

Hamer - Gladys Johnson, who married Frank Hamer a year after she reportedly killed her husband — Gladys Johnson, who married Frank Hamer a year after she reportedly killed her husband. Find a Grave

In 1917, Frank Hamer took a break from La Matanza to marry Gladys Johnson Sims, the widow of a prosperous Snyder, Texas, man named Ed Sims. She had become a widow in dubious circumstances: in 1916, Gladys and her brother were charged with the murder of her husband. On October 1^st, 1917, Hamer, Gladys, and some relatives were at a gas station when they came across the deceased Ed Sims’ brother in law Gus McMeans, a former Texas Ranger and sheriff of Ector County. A shootout erupted between Hamer’s party and that of McMeans, and as Hamer and McMeans were clinched in a grapple, the latter was shot in the heart and killed. Hamer was wounded, but he survived and made a full recovery. When the gun smoke cleared and the cops arrived, they collected two semiautomatic pistols, three rifles, and seven revolvers from the parties.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.