A HUGE HAUL OUT OF RONDOUT

6/12/1924 - Worried that the mob violence exploding in Chicago might be directed his way, gangster Jimmy Murray successfully moves from the bootleg brewery business to armed robbery by masterminding the largest mail-train heist in U.S. history ... a job that briefly gifts the bandits involved a cool $3,000,000 in cash, bonds, and jewelry (roughly the equivalent of $22 million in 2014).


#57

Using inside information secretly provided by postal inspector William F. Fahy, the Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific Railroad's #57 is targeted to be hit just outside the small hamlet of Rondout, Illinois, about thirty miles north of Chicago.  Plan readied, the men contract the best bandits available for the job's muscle, the Newton Gang out of Uvalde County, Texas ... the Newton brothers, Willis, Dock (Willie), Jess, and Joe, and their friend, explosives experts, Brentwood "Brent" Glasscock and Herbert Holliday.


L to R - The Newtons - Dock, Willis, Jess and Joe

Moving from stealing bales of cotton to robbing banks (they will claim to hit eighty-seven before the authorities shut down their operations) and trains (six confirmed pilferings) from Texas to Canada, by the time the group is contacted by Murray, the brothers and their friend have stolen more money than the Younger-James Gang, the Daltons, Bill Doolin, and Wild Bunch did combined ... and the thefts are all accomplished without killing anyone (most of the robberies take place at night, safe cracking or blowing open vaults in small towns lacking patrolling police).  On the 12th the gang is ready to add another train to their tally of paydays.


Glasscock

On a run to Milwaukee that has the #57 pulling eleven cars filled with mail and treasure, in Chicago, Willis and Jess sneak aboard the train disguised as part of the crew, make their way forward, and at around 10:30 in the evening, force the engineer and fireman to stop at a grade crossing where the rest of the gang is quietly waiting with an assortment of pistols, rifles, sawed-off shotguns, formaldehyde bombs, gas masks, dynamite, and nitroglycerin. Seemingly prepared for any eventuality, the men hurl gas bombs into the cars that incapacitate the guards, then help themselves to over sixty sacks of mail containing millions of dollars of loot.


Some of the looted mail sacks

The job is over in just under twenty minutes and comes off almost without a hitch ... almost.

Nervous with a gun pointed at his head, the engineer overshoots the crossing and is forced to back up and re-position the train ... in doing so, the gang is forced to move out of the way in the darkness to new spots along the line, and in resulting confusion, Glasscock mistakes Dock Newton for a guard, and shoots the bandit five times with his .45 revolver (the outlaw is hit in the jaw, the right hand, his shoulder, and twice in the side).  Dominoes tumbling, the blood left at the scene tells the authorities to be on watch for a wounded thief, knowledge that causes them to bully Chicago's underworld for information on the missing miscreants, and to escape a prison term, one shady sawbones talks.  In the raid that results, Joe Newton and his wounded brother are arrested at a "safe" house owned by Jimmy Murray, Willis Newton is arrested the next day when he stops by for a visit, the police then grab Murray, and Fahy is put in manacles when he drunkenly brags to the wrong woman about planning the robbery.  Fleeing south with the loot, Glasscock and Jess Newton are eventually captured in Texas (hiding in Mexico, Newton is tricked back over the border by an undercover Texas Ranger, the brother of Bonnie & Clyde killer, Frank Hamer) who makes a barroom bet that the former cowboy turned crook can't stay aboard a bucking bronco at the town of Del Rio's 4th of July rodeo) ... but not before a drunken Jess buries thousands of dollars of the take near San Antonio, and then forgets where the hole is.


Wounded Newton

Everyone involved eventually in custody (some sources say all the money but $100,000 is recovered, but no one knows for sure ... at least $1,247,000 is placed before a jury as evidence during the trial the robbery brings on)t), facing long hard time, the Newtons agree to testify against Murray and Fahy.  Guilty the verdict for all, mastermind Murray and his source, Fahy, are sentenced to 25 years behind bars, Joe Newton gets 1.5 years, Jesse Newton gets 3 years, Dock Newton gets 10 years, Willis Newton gets 12 years, Brent Glasscock gets 12 years, and Herbert Holliday ... all will receive early release from prison (in large part because they tell authorities where various amounts of loot from the robbery has been hidden).  


Mobster James Murray

Fahy

Gangster Murray has his sentence commuted to 12 years by President Hoover and is out and running around Chicago again by 1931 ... in time to become a fence for loot stolen by the Dillinger Gang in 1934 (he is back out of jail for that offense in 1937, the year in which he dies in Chicago, shot in the face by persons unknown), the man that recommends the Dillinger Gang hide out for awhile at the Little Bohemia Lodge of Emil Wanatka. Inspector Fahy dies in Chicago at the age of 60 in 1943, protesting on his death bed that he has been framed by the Newtons. Reformed, Glasscock is released for good behavior in 1937, moves to Arizona, and lives out his life quietly, committing no further crimes. Not reformed whatsoever, Holliday is shot and killed during a botched bank robbery after he is released from Federal prison.  Jesse and Joe Newton return to Ulvalde, Texas, after their release and lead respectable lives ... Joe becomes an owner of a small cafe and dies at the age of 88 in 1989 (at the age of 79 he appears on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and discusses his wild youth), Jesse dies in a VA hospital (he served in WWI) in 1960.  Dock Newton spends time in Leavenworth, and goes back to being a robber ... pulling his last job in 1968 in Rowena, Texas (due to his old age, charges are dropped, but he takes a beating from the local police that he never fully recovers from, dying in 1974 at the age of 83), at the age of 77.  Willis Newton, the leader of the bandit brothers, returns to Tulsa where he runs a series of gas stations and nightclubs ... and continues his involvement in crime ... in 1934 he allows Bonnie & Clyde to hide at a house he owns after the Oklahoma murder of Constable Cal Campbell, he will survive an assassination attempt by "persons unknown" while shaving one night in the bathroom of one of his clubs (the bullet shot through an open window at the nightclub goes wide), and along with his brother Joe, will help with a book and documentary about the Newton Brothers ... he dies of old age at the age of 90 in 1979.                                                                                                                    

Memorial

And the Newton Brothers and the holdup at Rondout are back in the news in 1998 when The Newton Boys is released by 20th Century Fox, starring Matthew McConaughey as Willis, Skeet Ulrich as Joe, Ethan Hawke as Jesse, Vincent D'Onofrio as Dock, and Dwight Yoakam as Glasscock.


Movie Poster

HARRY TRACY - BEAST OF THE WILD BUNCH

6/9/1902 - One of the bloodiest prison breaks in American criminal history takes place in Salem, Oregon, at the state penitentiary when former Hole-in-the-Wall Gang member, Harry Tracy, gets his hands on a Winchester rifle and starts shooting guards (and anything else that gets in his way).

Oregon State Penitentiary - 1892

Born in 1874 in Pittsville, Wisconsin, as Harry Severns, the future outlaw changes his name to Tracy to shield his family from his transgressions when he flees his Cheese State crimes, heading west. As Tracy, he is soon committing outrages in Utah and Colorado, escapades that include running around with Butch Cassidy and various members of the Wild Bunch, two successful jail breaks (Salt Lake City and Aspen), and the killing of Valentine Hoy (part of a posse seeking the killer of 15-year-old Willie Strang by a rustler named Pat Johnson, an owl-hoot rider that has joined Tracy and his partner, Dave Lant, hiding in Brown's Park, Colorado).  On the loose after escaping from Aspen, Tracy moves his criminal activities to Oregon and acquires a new partner there, David Merrill.   

Tracy - Steamboat Springs, Colorado

Hanging with a fellow escape artist (ten years earlier after fashioning a cell key out of this-and-that within reach, Merrill breaks out of a Clark County, Orgegon, jail), Tracy robs banks, saloons, trolley cars, and Portland, Oregon, city shops from 1898 to 1899 (wearing masks and overcoats during their robberies, the pair is known as both the "Macintosh Bandits" and the "False Faces"); time he also spends courting and marrying Merrill's sister, Rose.  A good bad life, it all comes apart when police arrest Merrill with loot from various jobs, and for a lesser sentence come trial time, rats out his brother-in-law. Captured (one story has him picked up when he jumps off a train trying to flee the area, another ends with a bullet creasing his head into unconsciousness while he is hiding in a butcher shop), Tracy is sentenced to 20 years in the state pen (good to their word, Merrill only gets 12).  Three years behind bars three years too much, by 1902 Tracy is ready to move on to a more pleasant location anywhere outside of the prison.

Merrill - #2134

With Merrill as support (Tracy doesn't yet know that he has been betrayed by his brother-in-law), when the break begins the men are part of a group of over 100 prisoners standing in a line for morning count before going from chapel to work in the foundry. Grabbing two rifles that have been smuggled into the facility in chalk marked box (compliments of a recently released con, Charles Monte), Tracy shoots Frank B. Ferrell in the back just as the guard completes his count. Turning to next kill the other guard on yard duty, Frank Girard, Tracy is interrupted when fellow convict, Frank Ingram, tries to stop the break by jumping on his back and trying to wrest the rifle away. But only momentarily, whipping his antagonist off his back, Tracy shoots Ingram in the belly (severely wounded, the convict will survive his good deed moment) and then goes looking for other targets and egress out of the yard. Both are quickly found!  

Tracy - #4088

Grabbing a ladder they have hidden for the occasion, the men move to a spot where they can get over the wall, firing at guards as they run behind crates and boxes stacked near the wall.  In the gunfire that ensues, Tracy knocks two guards off the wall with his accurate shooting, and kills S.R.T. Jones with a well placed round.  Up, over the wall, and out, Tracy and Merrill grab one of the wounded guards they find near the wall, Bailey Tiffany, and use him as a shield as they flee into a nearby forest; there, safe for the moment from fire from the prison walls, their captive now an impediment, Tracy guns down the captive guard.

Tracy Headlines

The grisly break and murders become national news, and instigate the largest manhunt in United States history to the time ... seeking justice or the $8,000 reward on Tracy's head, thousands of men will comb Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and California looking for the outlaws ... and it will be a hunt with more casualties before Tracy is brought to ground in August.  With the days of freedom Tracy has left he will kill his brother-in-law (finding a newspaper describing the escape and hunt for the convicts, Tracy reads about the betrayal that led to his arrest ... livid, he challenges Merrill to a classic duel of 10 counted steps, turn, and fire ... and wins their dispute when he drills his former friend in the back at EIGHT!), kidnap several individuals he meets while seeking shelter and sustenance (announcing his presence to his victims by simply saying, "I'm Tracy!"), ambush and kill Detective Charles Raymond and Deputy Sheriff Jack Williams (while wounding Deputy Sheriff L.J. Nelson and reporter Louis B. Sefrit), and win a shootout with Cornelius Rowley and Enoch Breece.  

Hostage May Baker

Cornelius Rowley

Deputy Sheriff Jack Williams

The bloodshed finally ends when Tracy is surrounded and wounded in a wheat field on the Eddy Ranch near Davenport, Washington, and unwilling to hang by the neck until dead or spend the rest of his life behind bars, puts his revolver to his right eye and pulls the trigger.

Finally Defanged

Ouch

Harry Tracy, the Beast of the Wild Bunch, is only 26 when he departs for Hell!

A WILD BUNCH BONER!

6/2/1899 - Operating without their leader (who has given his word to the governor of Wyoming never to molest the state again for an 1896 pardon from prison), Butch Cassidy, the Wild Bunch (also known as the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang or the Train Robbers Syndicate) attacks the Union Pacific Overland Flyer near Wilcox, Wyoming, at about 2:30 in the morning.

Cassidy - 1894 - Wyoming Territorial Prison

Though Cassidy is missing, the six hard cases who do participate in the robbery are a rogue's gallery of outlaws and killers ... Harvey "Kid Curry" Logan, who will kill nine lawmen before committing suicide when cornered in Colorado after a robbery in 1904 (and two others that get on his bad side), Harry "The Sundance Kid" Longabaugh, thought to be the fastest shot of the gang, cowboy turned outlaw, Ben "The Tall Texan" Kilpatrick (unable to read or write, he will order beans any time the gang is in a restaurant, figuring the western staple will be on the menu), Will "News" Carver of Texas (he will lose a quick draw contest with a Texas lawman), rustler and robber, George "Flat Nose Curry" Sutherland (after too many rustling escapades, in Utah in 1900, he will be turned into a tobacco pouch, a pair of shoes, a wallet, and other skin goodies by the posse that kills him), and Camilla "Deaf Charlie" Hanks (he will lose a gunfight with two San Antonio police officers in 1902).  It is a group that shoots first and doesn't bother to answer any questions later.

Members of The Wild Bunch - Fort Worth, Texas - 1901

Standing - Will Carver (L) and Harvey Logan (R)

Seated - Harry Longabaugh (L), Ben Kilpatrick (C), and Butch Cassidy (R)

Details planned for a perfect heist and getaway, at 2:18 on a Friday rainy night, at milepost #609, two masked men using a red lantern on the tracks, flag the locomotive into an emergency stop (the engineer believes that an upcoming bridge might be washed out). Guns out and at the ready to shoot Engineer W.R. Jones (who will be beaten on the head with a revolver by one of the outlaws for the engineer not moving fast enough) and his fireman, the outlaws have the train stop at the bridge, ignite fused dynamite they have placed on the bridge trestles, then pass over as the bridge explodes, cutting off an avenue of pursuit once the authorities find out about the robbery.  The next step is the decoupling of the train, leaving the passenger cars behind, the outlaws have the train move forward another two miles to a position where the rest of the gang is waiting to loot the train's express car.  It is there that the robbery goes somewhat wrong, compliments of the efforts of a very feisty express car employee named E. C. Woodcock.

The Tall Texan - Ben Kilpatrick

Previously robbed by members of the Wild Bunch, Woodcock has barricaded the express car and refuses to open the door when the bandits state they will blow him to hell if he doesn't open up ... and they are not bluffing.  Dynamite placed, the door is blown to splinters and the outlaws enter to find Woodcock with a broken right arm and knocked unconscious by the explosion (Logan wants to put a bullet in the messenger's brain for the delay and trouble he has caused, but is dissuaded from holing Woodcock by other gang members) ... getting the combination to the safe from express messenger out of the question, the outlaws move to their standard Plan B, which is seemingly always more dynamite.  And so it is that more dynamite gets exploded three different times to finally crack the safe ... with the last blast also destroying most of the car, blowing out its ceiling and walls.

Kaboom!

The Safe

Inside

A mistake, along with destroying the car and blowing bank notes into the night, the dynamite blast also jellies the remnants of a consignment of 50 pounds of raspberries which cover the bank notes.  Scurrying about in the darkness, the gang covers themselves in goop as they gather between $30,000 and $50,000 in cash before vacating the area, also galloping away with 19 scarf pins, 29 sets of gold-plated cuff buttons, and 4 Elgin watches. Ill gotten gains saddle-bagged, after the outlaws split up and vanish into the night, the train moves forward about 12 miles and limps into the Wyoming town of Medicine Bow, where the robbery is reported.  Telegraphs singing, within 24 hours of the robbery, over 100 possemen are in pursuit of the bandits, including a specially outfitted train that contains food, weapons, ammunition, horses, and manhunters like Deputy U.S. Marshal Joe Lefors.

Posse - Lefors is center on dark horse

Splitting up and riding to sites where they have fresh mounts waiting, Flatnose Curry, Logan, and the Sundance Kid rest awhile at Al Hudspeth's CY Ranch near Horse Ranch, Wyoming ... just long enough for Hudspeth to spot the outlaws.  Presence reported in nearby Casper, the trio of badmen is soon the quarry of a 14 man posse headed by Converse County Sheriff Joe Hazen.  Tracked into a deep ravine of huge boulders and crevices roughly 75 miles from the holdup site, a place known as Castle Creek, a gun battle ensues when Hazen and his men unexpectedly ride right into the outlaw camp.  It is a battle that doesn't last long though as most of the posse loses heart when Logan fatal plugs Hazen with a rifle bullet through his stomach (the outlaws also have the advantage of using smokeless powder).  Cut off from their horses, in the night, during a rain storm, the outlaws will swim the flooded creek and on foot, vanish, next showing up in New Mexico where prep is under way for a hit on the Colorado and Southern Railroadnear Folsom, New Mexico.

Splitting up and riding to sites where they have fresh mounts waiting, Flatnose Curry, Logan, and the Sundance Kid rest awhile at Al Hudspeth's CY Ranch near Horse Ranch, Wyoming ... just long enough for Hudspeth to spot the outlaws.  Presence reported in nearby Casper, the trio of badmen is soon the quarry of a 14 man posse headed by Converse County Sheriff Joe Hazen.  Tracked into a deep ravine of huge boulders and crevices roughly 75 miles from the holdup site, a place known as Castle Creek, a gun battle ensues when Hazen and his men unexpectedly ride right into the outlaw camp.  It is a battle that doesn't last long though as most of the posse loses heart when Logan fatal plugs Hazen with a rifle bullet through his stomach (the outlaws also have the advantage of using smokeless powder).  Cut off from their horses, in the night, during a rain storm, the outlaws will swim the flooded creek and on foot, vanish, next showing up in New Mexico where prep is under way for a hit on the Colorado and Southern Railroadnear Folsom, New Mexico.

Kid Curry Disguised as a tramp - Fort Worth

Cleaned Up With Girlfriend Della Moore

Game changer ... the robbery and killing of Hazen cause the railroad to hire the Pinkerton Detective Agency to put an end to the depredations of the Wild Bunch ... which is accomplished in a few short years.  The West becoming somewhat civilized, by 1902 every member of the gang will either be in hiding out of the country, in jail, or pushing up daises in graves scattered about the country.

Kid Curry in Death