Bonnie & Clyde: The Bank Robbers Who Lived Fast and Died Young (FPD CASE VAULT)

Celebrated in American folklore and film as depression-era kids gone wrong, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were really ruthless killers who cut a bloody swath through the Midwest robbing banks.

When the dangerous duo first met in 1930, 19-year-old Bonnie was married to another killer, who was serving time.

Clyde, 20, was a small-time Texas thief. He got sent away for some petty crimes shortly after they paired up.

Paroled in February 1932, Clyde hooked up with Bonnie, stole a car and drove off into America's imagination.

Soon they were linked to killing two cops in Joplin, Mo.; executing a man in Hillsboro, Texas; rubbing out a sheriff in Stringtown, Okla., and blowing away several more people.

In March 1933, Clyde's brother Buck and his wife Blanche joined them. They were eventually cornered in a Joplin garage. Clyde was wounded and two more officers killed. But the outlaws got away. Buck was fatally wounded fighting lawmen four months later. Blanche was captured, but Bonnie and Clyde escaped.

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The pair killed three more cops before they were snuffed out by a posse near Ruston, La., on May 23, 1934, in a scene immortalized in the 1967 flick "Bonnie and Clyde."

She died at age 23. He was 25.