Ted Hinton’s Motor Lodge — From Bonnie & Clyde to Motel Heliport
by Paula Bosse
“7 miles from Downtown Dallas” — choppers welcome
by Paula Bosse
What does a man who ambushed and killed Bonnie and Clyde do once he’s retired from law enforcement? He opens a motor lodge, of course!
I was initially drawn to this image because of an unexplained lifelong fascination with Howard Johnson’s restaurants (I think I was only ever in one — the one on Mockingbird at Central, where my father introduced me to the inexplicable root beer float). But the interesting thing about this postcard is not the HoJo’s, it’s the motel next door, Hinton’s Motor Lodge, an establishment that was in business from 1955 to 1970, in Irving, very near to where Texas Stadium would be built in 1971 (Loop 12 at Hwy. 183). Why would a motor lodge be interesting? Because the owner was Ted Hinton (1904-1977), the former Dallas County Deputy Sheriff who was one of the six men who tracked down, ambushed, and killed Bonnie and Clyde in 1934. (Hinton was recruited for the posse because he would be able to identify both of them: he had known Clyde Barrow growing up, and he had apparently had a crush on Bonnie Parker in the days when she was working as a waitress and he was working for the post office.)
After killing two of the most notorious celebrity outlaws of all-time, it must have been hard to know where to turn next. He retired from the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department in 1941 and, as he was a pilot, he trained flyers for the US Army Air Corps during WWII. The fact that Hinton was a pilot MUST explain the inclusion of a “heliport” (!) in the list of motel amenities, alongside Beauty Rest mattresses, a swimming pool, and a playground for the kids.
I’m sure that, on occasion, Hinton ate next door at Howard Johnson’s. But I bet none of the other patrons had any idea that the guy sipping coffee in the next booth was one of the men who gunned down Bonnie and Clyde in a hail of gunfire that even Sam Peckinpah might have considered “a bit much.”
“Dallas” magazine, June 1954 (via Reddit)
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Sources & Notes
An interesting short video about Ted Hinton’s connections to Bonnie and Clyde in his youth is recounted here by Hinton’s son “Boots.”
And a newsreel featuring film footage of the aftermath of the ambush — and apparently shot by Hinton himself with a 16mm movie camera loaned to him by a Dallas Times Herald photographer — can be seen here.
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Copyright © 2014 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
Flashback : Dallas 
[…] of Bonnie and Clyde. Since I’ve recently written about Ted Hinton (one of the ambushers and erstwhile motor lodge operator) and Clyde Barrow (as a not-yet-completely-delinquent 17-year old), why not a brief look at the […]
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[…] “Ted Hinton’s Motor Lodge — From Bonnie & Clyde to Motel Heliport.” What does a man who ambushed and killed Bonnie & Clyde do once he’s retired from law enforcement? He opens a motor lodge, of course! […]
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Paula, it looks as if Hinton added the second building of rooms at a later date – look at the difference between the two photographs in the fence separating his property from HoJo’s. In the one, there is no rear egress from the original building parking lot and in the higher, overall view, there obviously is access to the additional building in the rear of the property.
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Had Texas Stadium not been built we might have had a Hinton COMPOUND!
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[…] of the six men who tracked down, ambushed, and killed Bonnie and Clyde in 1934 — actually owned said motor lodge, making it one of several spots that crossed paths with both “Bonnie and Clyde” the […]
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[…] of the six men who tracked down, ambushed, and killed Bonnie and Clyde in 1934 — actually owned said motor lodge, making it one of several spots that crossed paths with both “Bonnie and Clyde” the […]
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My father, Jack Walton, was a friend of Ted Hinton and most of Dallas’ law enforcement until his murder on February 19, 1960. These friends included Sheriff Bill Decker, District Attorney Henry Wade, Constable Robie Love and others. Daddy owned four barbecue restaurants, three in Dallas and one in Fort Worth. We lived on an 80 acre ranch just a bit southeast of Ted Hinton’s Motor Lodge. One Sunday afternoon in 1957 when I was six years old Daddy told my mother, brother and I to get in the car because we were going for a ride. Well, the ride turned out to be to this very Howard Johnsons to meet and have dinner with Ted Hinton. Daddy introduced us to him as, “His friend Ted.” I had no idea who he was and, of course, had never heard of Bonnie and Clyde Barrow. It was a fun afternoon for all of us and I didn’t learn until many years later who Ted and Bonnie and Clyde were. I graduated from Hillcrest High School in Dallas in 1967. I was sixteen years old and my first job was working in the civil process division of the Dallas Sheriff’s Office. Most of the deputies knew my daddy but Sheriff Decker must have told them not to talk to me about daddy and they never did. However, they were always very nice to me and I am sure they knew who I was. Life can certainly be strange sometimes. I thought we just met Ted at Howard Johnsons to have dinner and had no idea that he owned the motel next door. My daddy loved Sunday afternoon drives so none of us thought anything about this outing was unusual but it certainly turned out to be very interesting when I learned the whole “backstory.”
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Thanks for sharing this, Peggy.
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[…] Ted Hinton’s Motor Lodge — From Bonnie & Clyde to Motel Heliport: See what one of the Dallas law enforcement officials present at the ambush did in retirement […]
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