(NewsNation) — Relatives of the notorious crime duo Bonnie and Clyde are pushing for the lovers to be reunited 90 years after their crime spree and deaths.
The couple was gunned down by law enforcement in 1934, and Bonnie’s mother allegedly refused to allow her daughter to be buried next to her lover and partner in crime, even though that’s what Bonnie requested.
Her mom allegedly said Clyde had her in life, but he cannot have her in death.
Now, Bonnie’s surviving niece, Rhea Leen Linder, and Clyde’s surviving nephew are trying to relocate Bonnie’s grave to a vacant spot next to Clyde’s, which has been waiting for hers. They say it was the couple’s wish to be buried side by side.
Currently, however, they are buried about nine miles apart in separate cemeteries. The cemetery where Bonnie is buried told Linder that moving the grave is strictly a legal matter and will have to be taken to court.
“It was their wish,” Linder told “NewsNation Now” about why she’s working to move her aunt’s grave. “My grandmother was not thinking 90 years later of how popular, historically, they are.”
Linder said she is working on getting Bonnie moved, but the owner of the cemetery has been resisting.
“She brings a lot of traffic there,” Linder said. “He uses her in his advertisements and all, and he just flat doesn’t want to move her. So he’s just really done some tacky things to keep us from it.”
Tourists visit the graves, the criminals having become the subject of pop culture that romanticizes their crime spree. Linder says the love they had for each other was strong.
“It’s so strong, for her to make the decision that she was willing to die with Clyde and stay with him as long as they were going to have,” Linder said.
While there has been pushback from the cemetery, Linder believes the effort to reunite the criminal duo will succeed and hopes to have the lovers reunited in death by spring.