TRYING TO SPRING MATT WARNER

8/13/1896 - Trying to give up his outlaw ways so his wife (suffering from cancer that will cost her her leg) and young daughter don't leave him, former bandit Matt Warner (real name of Willard Erastus Christianson) makes the mistake of accepting a $100 job packing out equipment from a silver mine owned by a prospecting friend and miner, E.B. Coleman.  They are accompanied to the site by another friend, gambler Bill Wall (the trio has been drinking together in Vernal, Utah's Overholt Saloon).  Arriving at the mine, the true purpose of the job becomes apparent when the trio of men are accosted by claim-jumpers in the form of Ike and Dick Stauton.  Leather slapped immediately, when the gunsmoke from the encounter clears the mine is once more Coleman's and two claim-jumpers are dead on the ground (along with Warner's horse).  Local law enforcement doesn't see the killings as justified homicides though, and all three men are soon arrested and placed in an Ogden, Utah jail to await trial on charges of murder.

Warner

Strapped for cash due to his change to legal activities and paying the doctor bills for his wife, Warner frets to his jail visiting best friend that he can't afford the legal representation he needs to beat the charges ... but the friend tells him not to worry, he has a plan and he'll take care of everything.  The friend is a fellow Mormon gone bad named Robert Leroy Parker that has been staying at Warner's ranch since being released from prison in Wyoming, where he has been spending time behind bars for rustling horses ... time during which he stops going by the name of Parker, and morphs into one of the wildest denizens of the Wild West, the soon-to-be leader of the Hole In The Wall Gang, Butch Cassidy.

Butch's Wyoming Mugshot

Butch's plan is to provide Warner with the best lawyer money can buy in the region, the formidable barrister, Douglas A. Preston (a future state senator and attorney general).  Not a pro bono case, the assets needed to cover Preston's high fees will be paid by Cassidy ... major bucks, but no sweat, Butch will just do what he does best and rob a bank to get the money Warner needs to pay Preston.

Preston 

The bank chosen resides in Montpelier, Idaho ... a small town of a few hundred souls in Bear Lake County, a mountain valley in the southwestern part of the state only a few miles away from the Utah and Wyoming borders.  First known as Clover Creek by travelers on the Oregon Trail, then as Belmont, in 1864 when Mormons pour into the area, the town is rechristened Montpelier by Brigham Young, honoring the capital of the state the religious leader is born in, Vermont.  Farming the chief occupation of the region, the town is connected to the outside world by the Oregon Short Line Railroad ... and has little in the way of a law enforcement presence ... a site ripe for the picking.  

Turn-of-the-Century Montpelier

More than a one-man job, for the robbery Cassidy recruits a buddy from his days of punching cows in Brown's Hole (a rugged region on the border of Colorado and Utah), William Ellsworth "Elzy" Lay, and a cowboy neighbor from his Circleville days named Bob Meeks ... Meeks is assigned to watch the horses during the heist, Lay will hit the teller cages and vault, and Cassidy will trouble shoot the job, doing whatever is necessary as the robbery develops. 

Lay

Riding into town on Thursday, 8/13/1896, the trio first visit the local general store to get a feel for the mood of the community, then pleased that everything seems peaceful, they ride down and hitch their horses to the post outside the bank.  It is about 3:00 in the afternoon when the group dismounts and attacks the bank ... Meeks remains with the horses, Lay tells the five people in the bank to put their hands in the air and line up facing the wall (three bank employees and two town councilmen), and Cassidy stands in the doorway of the bank guiding Lay's activities and watching for trouble. Angered when one of the tellers tells him he has no cash, Lay whacks the man on the head with his revolver ... an act that causes the man to suddenly discover the money the bandit is looking for, and that draws a quick reprimand from Cassidy about using excessive violence.  Sack stuffed with currency in minutes, Lay dumps a stack of coins stacked on a desk into the loot, grabs a Winchester rifle off a peg on the wall, and exits the establishment as Cassidy tells everyone to wait ten minutes before leaving the bank or they could face dire consequences on the street outside.  Satisfied that the gang is ready to go, Cassidy steps out of the doorway, mounts his horse, and at a saunter that says nothing is wrong, leads the men out of town ... town limits reached, the men then break into a gallop for the Wyoming border, 15 miles away.  Montpelier Pass reached (7,610 feet above sea level, the break in the mountains is now known as Salt River Pass), the bandits tired mounts are swapped for a set of fresh horses left at the pass ... a method of escape Cassidy will use over and over again to escape posses as a member of The Wild Bunch.  It is early evening before Bear Lake County Sheriff Jeff Davis can put a posse together and leave town after the outlaws ... men that return to town quickly when it is realized that they have no chance of catching the robbers.  The success needed to support Warner against the murder charges he is facing, the gang leaves Idaho with somewhere between $5,000 and $16,500 in loot.

Building That Once Housed

The Bank

Historical Marker

The success of the robbery doesn't fully roll over to the trial however ... while Warner is found not guilty of murder, a jury, unhappy with his outlaw past, does find him guilty of involuntary manslaughter (Wall will receive the same verdict and sentence, while Coleman is somehow acquitted of all charges) and sentences him to five years at the state pen.  Warner is released in 1900 (his wife dies of the cancer that took her leg while he is serving his sentence), settles in Carbon County, Utah, remarries, has three additional children with his new wife, and eventually is elected a justice of the peace, serves as a night guard and detective in the Utah town of Price, and runs a small bootlegging operation during Prohibition before he dies peacefully in his sleep in 1938 at the age of seventy-four.

Warner After Prison

And the gang that robbed the bank for Warner all have interesting lives afterward too!  Arrested in 1897, Meeks is found guilty of the Montpelier job and sentenced to thirty-five years in the Idaho State Penitentiary in Boise.  On Christmas Eve in 1901, he tries to escape and is shot in the leg by a guard ... a wound grievous enough that the limb has to be amputated.  Not happy missing a piece of himself, two years later, he climbs a prison wall, yells "Hurrah for Hell!" and jumps. Surprisingly not badly injured, Meeks is transferred to a state insane asylum and remains there until 1912, when he then vanishes from any historical records following his release.

Idaho State Penitentiary

Lay goes on to partner with Butch (the duo will next hit the payroll of the Pleasant Valley Coal Company in Castle Gate, Utah on 4/21/1897) and other Wild Bunch members in a series of robberies and shootouts until being captured while buying supplies for the gang in Carlsbad, New Mexico in 1899.  Found guilty of robbery and murder (Sheriff Ed Farr of Huerfano County in Colorado, Dona Ana County Deputy Kent Kearney, and Colfax County Deputy Henry Love, all by Harvey "Kid Curry" Logan following a Wild Bunch train robbery near Folsom, New Mexico), Lay is sentenced to life behind bars (Cassidy explores giving the governor a parole bribe, but the politician is not interested at all), but after keeping his nose clean for over seven years, he is made a prison trustee assigned to the warden ... an assignment which eventually springs him from the prison when he successfully talks a group of inmates into releasing the hostages they've taken while trying to escape ... the warden's wife and daughter!  Out in 1906, Lay establishes a small ranch just north of the Colorado border, near the town of Baggs, Wyoming. There he finds love when he meets and marries a local rancher's daughter, Mary Calverta (the couple will remain married for the rest of their lives and have a son and a daughter).  Moving to California, Lay will transform himself into a mining and oil geologist, and will supervise the building of the Colorado River Aqueduct system called the All American Canal through Riverside and the Imperial Valley.  He dies on 11/10/1934 at the age of sixty-six, and is buried at the Forest Lawn in Glendale, California.

Prisoner Lay

And Butch of course goes on to become a Western legend as the leader of the group of outlaws known as the Wild Bunch ... depending on your point of view, either being gunned down with the Sundance Kid in San Vincente, Bolivia in 1908, or returning to America and living out his life in hiding under an assumed name.  Either way, though outlaw, when he was your friend it was all the way ... as shown in his efforts to free Warner.

Leader of the Wild Bunch

Fort Worth, Texas - 1900

8/13/1896 ... and the bank of Montpelier, Idaho receives a visit from the one-and-only Butch Cassidy! 

BURN BABY, BURN!

It would seem little has changed ... and yet, so much has ... maybe its just that knotheads will always be knotheads!

Los Angeles, California - August, 1965

A bomb ready to explode, racial tensions that have been building for years in Los Angeles, California explode during a traffic stop that quickly moves from routine to a riot!

Watts Burns

On a sweltering August evening that has temperatures approaching 100 degrees, riding his motorcycle near the south boundary of the city of Los Angeles, 31-year-old white California Highway Patrolman Lee W. Minikus is informed by a passing black motorist that a car is driving recklessly through the neighborhood.  Reacting quickly, Minikus chases down the car and pulls it over at 116th Street and Avalon, in a predominately black community.  Inside, the vehicle is occupied by its driver, drunken (he fails the field sobriety test he is given by Minikus) 21-year-old Marquette Frye, and his 22-year-old brother, Ronald.  It is 7:00 in the evening.   

Sticks of Dynamite

Marquette Frye, Rena Price, and Ronald Frye

After failing the field sobriety test, Minikus informs Marquette that he is under arrest for drunk driving, calls his motorcycle partner to arrange for a car to take Frye to jail and a tow truck to remove the car ... while letting Ronald know that he will not be allowed to drive the car home after his brother's arrest.  And so Ronald decides to walk the two blocks or so to his nearby home and see if his mother, Rena Price, can have the car turned over to her (and it is her car, a 1955 Buick that her son was using).  Arrest car, tow truck, Price and her son, and another motorcycle officer all arrive at roughly the same time, around 7:15 in the evening ... and as a crowd of on-lookers interested in what is going on on their streets swells from 25 people to a mob of 300.  And then Rena Price sets off what will come to be known as the Watts Riots!

Life Magazine

Berating her son about his driving under the influence, the peaceful and cooperative Marquette (egged on by the crowd) reacts to his mother's presence by pushing her away, screaming he will have to be killed to go to jail, and trying to escape into the growing crowd on the street ... actions that cause Minikus and his partner to react, which in turn causes Ronald to get involved in trying to free his brother, and Ronald becoming involved gets Price to lose her cool and she attacks the arresting officers, jumping on the back of one and trying to tear his shirt off as Marquette is hit in the head with a night stick. Screaming, yelling, lots of pushing and punches eventually thrown, all three family members are eventually arrested and removed from the scene, but the damage has been done ... a shotgun is pulled on the mob, calls are made for more officers to come to the area, a woman is arrested for spitting on the cops, another for inciting the crowd to riot, and by the time the police withdraw from the scene at 7:30 to stones being thrown at their vehicles, a false rumor spreads through the crowd (now around a 1,000 people) that the cops have beaten up a pregnant black woman!

A Typical Scene

In the 144 hours of mayhem that ensues from the Wednesday night traffic stop, white drivers passing through the area are pulled from their cars and beaten, businesses are looted, buildings are burned to the ground, and the hatred of many of the residents of the area (a 46-square mile region) for the Los Angeles Police Department is put on display for the whole world to see ... rocks, fists, Molotov cocktails, knives and guns will all make appearances before peace is restored to the community on August 17th (it will take 3,900 National Guard troops, 934 Los Angeles police officers, 718 members of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, and over 500 firemen) ... and American culture will have a new catch phrase to ponder ... "BURN BABY, BURN!"

Up Against The Wall

Turn Left Or Get Shot!

L.A. On Fire

Martial Law

By the numbers, the civil disturbances known as the Watts Riot will result in 34 deaths (one is a fireman, one is a deputy sheriff, one is a Long Beach police officer, and the others are civilian residents of the area), 1,032 reported injuries (90 police officers, 136 firemen, 10 members of the National Guard, 23 government officials, and 773 civilians), and 3.438 adults being arrested (over 31,000 are estimated to have participated in the disturbances) for a variety of charges (71% are for burglary and theft).  Beyond the human toll of the rioting, the madness will cause property damages totaling over $40 million ... striking places where Christmas can be found in August (most of the rampage is released against liquor stores, furniture stores, food markets, clothing stores, department stores, and pawn shops), almost 1,000 buildings will be destroyed or damaged (service stations, automobile dealers, libraries, schools, churches, and homes are for the most part spared).  And its all broadcast live on local Southern California television!

National Guard Directing Traffic Out Of The Area

Headlines!

Lots of Looters!

Main Street

Fifty years ago today ... 8/11/1965 ... and based on the madness and hate still infecting this country, will it also be happening fifty years from now ... hard to say, but at the present I'm not optimistic at all!

Watts

Madness!

ROUND ROCK DEATH

7/21/1878 - Hoping to repeat the early career success of taking $60,000 in gold coins (worth a cool $1,428,571,43 based on 2015 inflation) from a Union Pacific train bound for San Francisco outside the town of Big Springs, Nebraska, the Sam Bass outlaw gang descends on Round Rock, Texas to rob the county bank there ... unaware that one of the gang members has betrayed the bandits' plans to the Texas Rangers! 

Young Sam

Dealt life blows early (his mother, Elizabeth, dies giving birth to her 10th child when Sam is 10, his father, Dan, takes ill and dies three years later, and his Uncle David uses Sam on his farm as a day laborer), at 18 Bass runs away from Indiana and starts roaming the West ... gaining experience as a mill hand on the Mississippi, handling freight for Sheriff William "Dad" Egan in Denton, Texas, cow punching on various ranches, and racing a horse he owns called The Denton Mare.  When funds run low though in the summer of 1876, he begins robbing stage coaches out of Deadwood, South Dakota with a cowboy buddy named Joel Collins. 

Train Robbery

When hitting heavily armed Black Hills coaches proves less lucrative, and much more dangerous than anticipated (in one robbery, the driver, Johnny Slaughter, is killed and the coach runs back to Deadwood ... for a ZERO net for the outlaws, on another run they come away with only $11), Bass and the collection of hard cases he leads (Jack Davis, Jim Berry, Collins, Bill Heffridge, Tom Nixon, Robert McKimie) move up to trains, and then banks,  By 1878, the gang has robbed five trains, another stage coach, and escaped a gun battle with Rangers and local lawmen near Salt Creek, Texas ... and top the list of desperadoes the Rangers want to shut down.  The bank at Round Rock is thought to be the tonic for the gang's misadventures ... an easy score from a town of barely 1,000 people with a very small law enforcement presence.  They could not be more wrong!     

Sam Bass & John E. Gardner (BACK, L-R), Joe & Joel Collins (FRONT, L-R)

Trapped into giving information on the gang when his ailing father is refused medical treatment and threatened with arrest for harboring members of the Bass Gang (and for leniency come trial time), new recruit (Collins and Heffridge are dead in a shootout with soldiers out of Fort Hays, Kansas, Berry is killed in Mexico, and Nixon and Davis vanish after a robbery and are never seen again) Jim Murphy betrays his comrades and gets detailed information to the Texas Ranger Major John B. Jones on the gang's plans for Round Rock ... and the town is soon secretly full of lawmen waiting for Bass and companions to appear.

Judas Jim Murphy

And appear they do ... establishing a camp site in the woods outside of town, the gang (Bass, Seaborn Barnes, Frank Jackson, and Jim Murphy) prepares their weapons and scouts the bank twice.  Ready, on Saturday, in the heat of a blistering hot afternoon, the men mount up and ride into town.  But before hitting the bank, Bass, Barnes, and Jackson decide to visit Koppel's general store (next to the bank) for some tobacco, while Murphy heads to the livery for some grub for his horse, although he is actually making himself scarce to avoid getting caught in the crossfire of what he knows is coming.  Noticing armed men entering the store, but not recognizing them as members of the Bass Gang, Deputy Sheriffs Ellis Grimes and Morris Moore decide to question the strangers ... a big mistake!

Sam Bass

While Moore stands by the door of the store, Grimes walks up to the men as they haggle with clerk Simon Juda over the cost of tobacco, "I believe you have a pistol," the lawman tells the outlaws.  As one, the gunmen admit they do, turn, and begin blasting away with their weapons.   Hit point blank in the chest by multiple rounds, Grimes never gets his pistol out of his holster, staggers backwards, and drops dead in the store's doorway (afterwards, many will question why the lawmen approached the men, guns in their holsters, when the Rangers' plan was to have the two deputy sheriffs only observe and notify of the arrival of any strangers ... many believe the mistake comes from not wanting to split any reward money with any other officers).  Moore however is able to pull and shoot, wounding Bass in the hand and side as the outlaws fly out of the store for their horses in the alley ... and he in turn is shot through the lungs (he will survive his injuries).  Grimes leaves behind a wife and three children.

Reward Poster

And of course, the sound of gunfire draws other lawmen and armed citizens to the outlaws ... along with lawmen firing from various positions on the street, Albert Highsmith blazes away at the badmen from the back of his livery stable, while F.L. Jordan shoots at the outlaws from a nearby saloon.  Too much lead to avoid, Bass is hit by a bullet that tears through his kidney and exits his body near his navel and Barnes is killed by a slug from Ranger Dick Ware that hits the outlaw in the head as he is mounting ... only Jackson is missed in the deluge of lead that sweeps the streets.  Helped by Jackson, Bass and his buddy make it out of town and back to camp ... but the outlaw leader's wounds are mortal and he orders Jackson to flee without him.  

Major John B. Jones of the Texas Rangers

Eventually found sitting under a tree, Bass is hauled back to Round Rock in a wagon and placed on a cot in August Gloeber's tin shop (the local hotel has refused to provide space for the wounded outlaw). "The world is bobbing around," are the bandit's last words before slipping into unconsciousness and then death.  Bass is 27-years-old when he dies on his birthday! 

Round Rock Grave Site

THE DALTONS AT ADAIR

7/15/1892 - Seeking funds to use to escape American law enforcement by relocating south to Mexico, the Dalton Gang (a rogue's gallery of pistoleros and thieves consisting of 23-year-old Bob, 31-year-old Grat, and 21-year-old Emmett Dalton, 34-year-old Bill Doolin, 26-year-old George "Bittercreek" Newcomb <so named for continually singing a popular cowboy ditty, "I'm a wild wolf from Bitter Creek and it's my night to howl!">, 26-year-old Charley Pierce (Newcomb's best friend), Dick Broadwell of Hutchinson, Kansas, and former Bar X Bar Ranch cowboy Bill Powers) rob a northbound Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad train at the town of Adair, Oklahoma (in the northeastern part of the state, not far from Oklahoma's borders with Kansas, Missouri, and Arkansas).

Robert Rennick "Bob" Dalton

Planned while hiding out after their Red Rock robbery of a Santa Fe Railroad train at the Dunn Farm near Ingalls, Oklahoma (the place where the Dunn Brothers will betray and kill their former friends, Bittercreek Newcomb and Charley Pierce over a money dispute, and the affections of the Dunn's sister, Rose), lawmen learn of the raid and plan to ambush the gang by loading the train with a dozen gunmen interested in the rewards for various members of the band.

Grat Dalton

Totally confident in their abilities, the gang arrives at Adair at around 9:00 in the evening and immediately goes to business by holding up the local railroad agent and ransacking the station for cash and valuables, then calmly selecting comfortable seats around the station, cradling their Winchester rifles, await the 9:42 coming of passenger train #2. 

Doolin

Jumping into action when the train pulls into the station, Emmett and Grat Dalton swing themselves into the engine cab and cover its occupants, Powers, Broadwell, and Bob Dalton position themselves on the train platform in front of the door to express car, and Doolin, Bittercreek, and Pierce set up to persuade anyone in the passenger cars from interfering in the robbery ... which does indeed happen moments later!

Emmett Dalton

Realizing the train is being robbed, Marshal Sid Johnson of Muskogee (a former friend of Bob Dalton's when they served as peace officers for Judge Parker in Fort Smith, Arkansas), Indian Police Chief Charley LeFlore, and railroad detective J.J. Kinnet grab their rifles, jump off the train, take firing positions behind a coal shed, and open up on the gang. Unfortunately for the cause of law and order, the other ten men in the posse decide that risking life and limb against the gang of desperadoes is a fool's game when confronted by the actual outlaws, and hide in the darkened train, firing only occasionally at the shadows on the train platform.  And maybe wisely so, for the outlaws start immediately blasting away at the coal shed and soon silence the trio of lawmen there ... Kinnet takes a slug in his right shoulder, Johnson suffers a painful flesh wound, and LeFlore has the stock of his weapon hit and is put out of action by his hands being filled with splinters.

Covering the Engineer!

Opposition quieted for the moment, the outlaws break into the express car and find the agent inside, a man named Williams, reluctant to open the train's safe, claiming he doesn't know the combination.  A lie, as if he knows Hollywood will one day make movies about the gunslingers of the Old West, Bob Dalton convinces the man to open the safe by drawing his pistol and snapping off a shot at the agent's head that comes within less than a inch of being brain dead fatal.  Presto, the safe is opened and the gang rides out of town $40,000 richer than they were earlier in the evening (but not enough for Mexico, causing Bob Dalton to decide one more robbery is necessary ... a job that will best Jesse James and show the town he grew up in that he can't be looked down at any more ... the gang will take the two banks of Coffeyville, Kansas at the same time).

Bob Dalton

Gang gone, robbery complete in less than 15 minutes, the unfortunate evening is however not over for the town of Adair.  Playing cards at the local drugstore, 65 yards away from the railroad station, Dr. W. L. Goff and Dr. T.S. Youngblood are both hit by stray bullets from the short fight between the outlaws and the trio of fighting lawmen ... Youngblood is hit in the right foot (a wound that will cause part of the foot to have to be amputated), while Goff is struck in the thigh, a bullet that severs the physician's femoral artery and causes him to bleed to death before help can arrive.

Bittercreek Newcomb

A clean getaway from Adair, but not from reaping what they have all sown leading outlaw lives ... Bob Dalton, Grat Dalton, Dick Broadwell, and Dick Powers will all perish in a Coffeyville alley, Emmett Dalton will be wounded 23 times at Coffeyville and receive a life sentence for his actions there (he will serve 14 years before being pardoned), Bittercreek and Pierce perish at the hand's of the reward seeking Dunn Brothers, and Doolin will be riddled by buckshot when he refuses to surrender as he is about to leave for Mexico with his wife and child from his in-law's farm outside of Lawson, Oklahoma.

Powers, Bob Dalton, Grat Dalton, and Broadwell - October, 1892

Wounded Emmett - October, 1892

Newcomb & Pierce - May, 1895

Doolin - August, 1896

7/15/1892 - just another violent day in the Indian Territory!