As the second week in May 1934 began, Bonnie and Clyde were making themselves at home in Bienville Parish. They met with Henry Methvin’s brothers and other kinfolks at out-of-the-way places in the woods for picnics and frequented their houses for meals. As for their own accommodations, they were sick and tired of living in their car, so they looked for a real house. About ten miles south of Gibsland, near Henry’s parents , was a house back in the woods that belonged to a man named Otis Cole. It was locally known as the “John Cole Place” for Otis’s father, who had built it. The house had been empty for several years but was still very livable. One evening, Ivy Methvin went to see Otis Cole at the small store he ran. They talked about the abandoned house, and then Methvin left. Some people say that Bonnie and Clyde actually made arrangements to buy the place, while others say they just moved in. Whatever the truth , Bonnie and Clyde began to be seen fairly regularly around the area, Clyde posing with Henry’s father and brother Terrell as a logger.

… Henry’s older brother Terrell and his wife Emma met with them regularly at the picnics in the woods and had Bonnie and Clyde in their home for dinner once. On this occasion the outlaws admired a small bed. Terrell and Emma had two young daughters, and their grandfather had made the girls their own bed out of native wood. Bonnie and Clyde lay down on the bed and told everybody that it was the first time they had slept in months. …

There were several stories circulating about the new young couple in the old Cole House, but one the most interesting to the ladies was the story that Bonnie was pregnant. By this time, it was said to be common knowledge among the Methvin women and neighbor ladies that Bonnie was “expecting.” —From Ch. 36, Bonnie and Clyde a Twenty-First-Century Update, by James R. Knight