The Lee Brothers

These were three brothers: James, Tom and Pink Lee who came from a large family. Their parents were Robert Culpepper Lee and Amanda Giles Lee. The three brothers settled in Cooke County, Texas. They were accused of stealing cattle. One of them, Jim Lee, was reportedly married to a Choctaw woman and was able to establish a ranch in the Delaware Bend area of Indian Territory where the Red River makes a loop to the south.

On May 1, 1885, a United States Deputy Marshal named Jim Guy set out with a posse to arrest Jim and Pink Lee and others wanted for cattle theft and other charges in North Texas and Indian Territory. Marshal Guy rounded up a posse that included Andy and Jim Roff whose Oklahoma ranch had been victimized by rustlers. The posse of twelve assembled at a store about ten miles from the Lee ranch. At about daybreak, part of the group approached the rear of the ranch house and were noticed by the occupants. A brother in law of the Lees named Ed Steen (sometimes incorrectly named Stein in newspaper accounts) asked Guy and the others what they wanted. Guy identified himself and said he wanted to talk to Jim and Pink Lee and that he had a warrant for another man named Dallas Humby who was wanted in connection with the murder of Humby’s wife. Steen reportedly told the posse to come around to the front. The posse complied but when they reached the front of the ranch house, shots poured out from the house. By the time the shooting stopped, Guy and the two Roff brothers had been killed or mortally wounded.

Word spread of the killings and an angry mob came out to the Lee property and burned down all the buildings. The Lee brothers and others had fled. In addition to the Lees and Steen, the occupants at the time of the shooting were believed to have included Tom Cole, Humby, Jim Coleman and brothers named Dyer who were accused of killing a sheriff in Lamar County, Texas. They appear to have all left the area after the Guy and Roff killings. The Dyer brothers were soon apprehended by a mob and lynched. Steen and Tom Lee also left the immediate area and Jim and Pink appear to have hid out nearby in Texas. The ultimate fate of Cole, Humby and Coleman is unknown, though in one newspaper article, Humby was said to have been apprehended by Marshal Heck Thomas at some point.

A reward amounting to $7,000 was issued for the arrest of Jim and Pink Lee. Heck Thomas, just before he became a United States Marshal, and Jim Taylor came on the Lee brothers case and successfully tracked them to a hay field on the John Washington ranch near the current location of Lake Texoma, still in the general area of the Delaware Bend. Thomas, Taylor and a small posse are said to have surrounded Jim and Pink Lee who chose to shoot it out with the posse rather than to surrender. On September 5, 1885 the pair were killed while the posse members all survived.

Tom Lee and Ed Steen had fled to Denison, Texas where they were identified and surrendered to authorities. They were both tried and acquitted in Arkansas. Steen was the husband of a Lee sister named Mary Amanda. After Steen’s trial, he returned to Denison where he lived peaceably for the rest of his life before passing away in 1907. His obituary referred to him as having been a prominent cattle and business man prior to whatever involvement he may have had in the Lee brothers matters. He was tried and “very narrowly escaped the gallows,” the article said. In the Arkansas trial, Steen had been defended by an attorney named A. B. Person whose defense greatly factored into Steen’s acquittal. The article referred to Steen as having been loyal to his family, likely a reference to his testimony in the earlier murder trial. Steen was fifty-five years old when he died. He was buried in a local Denison cemetery.

Thomas Henry Lee died in 1925 at the age of sixty-four in Grayson County, Texas. He was twice married. Tom Lee was acquitted of the initial murder charges in the deaths of Marshal Guy and the Roffs, as was Ed Steen but appears to have served some time in jail on another unrelated matter for larceny. Less is known about his later life than of Steen’s. Tom Lee is buried in a cemetery in Colbert, Oklahoma just across the Red River from Denison.

Heck Thomas was born in Georgia in 1850. His full name was Henry Andrew Thomas. Heck became a police officer at the age of seventeen in Georgia. He married and moved to Galveston when he was about twenty-five after which he went to work possibly as a contractor for the Houston and Texas Central Railroad. The line had been bothered by a number of train robberies. Heck was first engaged as an express agent for the Texas Express Company, essentially working as a railroad guard. One of the early stories involving Heck was when he was acting as a security officer guarding cash on a train run in 1878, when a Texas and Pacific train was held up by the Sam Bass gang near Mesquite in southern Dallas County. Thomas had hidden the real stash of funds wrapped and buried under the ashes of an unused stove on the express car. Thomas was wounded in the robbery but the gang only got away with a small amount of cash. He received a promotion and remained with the railroad for a time.

Before becoming a United States Marshal, he also was employed as a detective out of Fort Worth. After the Lee brothers shootout, he was hired as a Deputy United States marshal, working out of Fort Smith, Arkansas under Judge Isaac Parker. Thomas experienced considerable success apprehending criminals in Indian Territory. Over his long career, he was involved in the apprehension, capture and arrest of outlaws such as the Sam Bass, Dalton, Bert Casey and Doolin gangs. He, Chris Madsen and Bill Tilghman became known as the “Three Guardsmen” while they were all Deputy United States Marshals, and acquired a strong reputation for restoring order to Indian Territory.

Thomas eventually retired from the Marshal service to become Chief of Police in Lawton, Oklahoma. He served there from 1902 to 1909 when he suffered a heart attack. He died of Bright’s Disease three years later and was buried in Lawton. His obituary was published in the Atlanta Constitution, Atlanta, Georgia on September 1, 1912. It recounted his long career, adding that he had been wounded many times in the line of duty and ending with the statement that “he never took a life he could have saved.”

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