“The car they drove was a 1932 Ford Cabriolet, which had a V-8 in it, that was stolen in Texas before they came to Missouri,” Knight said. “In those days, this was one of the best cars you could get.”

The film, which will be part of the BBC’s “Timewatch” history series, re-creates the period when Buck Barrow, who had just been released from prison, reunited in Joplin with his wife, Blanche, and his brother, Clyde, and his girlfriend, Bonnie Parker. The apartment was on the outskirts of town at the time, two blocks from South Main Street.

For 12 days and nights, Bonnie and Clyde, the Barrows and an accomplice by the name of William Deacon “W.D.” Jones lived without incident in the two-bedroom apartment. On April 13, their respite ended when a patrol car pulled up in front of the apartment’s garage doors. Five lawmen, tipped to the possibility that outlaws might be in the apartment, approached.

Without warning, the outlaws opened fire on the lawmen. Harry McGinnis, 53, a Joplin police detective, and John Wesley Harryman, 41, a Newton County constable, were shot. Harryman died instantly. McGinnis would die later. The others, Walter E. Grammar and George B. Kahler, both with the Missouri State Highway Patrol, and Thomas DeGraff, a Joplin detective, would survive.

The gang emerged from the garage in the 1932 V-8 Ford, but the patrol car was blocking their exit. One got into the patrol car and tried to get it to roll down the hill in front of the apartment but couldn’t. The gang then rammed the Ford into the patrol car to move it out of the way.

After that, they fled south on Main Street and eventually escaped through Spring City.

Knight said a police inquest after the shooting showed authorities managed to get off pistol 14 rounds. Armed with shotguns and possibly a machine gun, the gangsters fired more than 30. Police testified they would have had a better chance in the gunfight if they, too, had shotguns.