outlaws and crimes – Page 6 – Texas History Notebook

1894 Longview Bank Robbery by the Bill Dalton Gang

According to a Washington, D. C. Evening Star newspaper account on May 24, 1894, a bank robbery had occurred in Longview, Texas the day before, involving suspected members of the Dalton Gang. When read today, the account could easily be the story line from a Hollywood western.

Murder Victims of the Barrow Gang – Private Citizens

Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker are believed to have first met around January of 1930 in Dallas where they both were living. At the time, Clyde was 21 and Bonnie was 19. Clyde was arrested a few weeks later in the latter part of February for the burglary of the Motor Mark Garage in Denton. In early March of 1930, while he was awaiting trial for that burglary, Clyde was transferred to McLennan County in connection with burglary and automobile theft charges there. Barrow was indicted along with William Turner by the McLennan County grand jury for these charges. Clyde pleaded guilty to a number of them, including the theft of an automobile belonging to W. W. Cameron, a Waco lumber dealer. It’s unclear if Barrow had also been sentenced by then, but newspaper accounts say that Turner had been sentenced and was awaiting transfer to the Huntsville prison at the time that Bonnie smuggled a gun into the McLennan County jail. Turner, Barrow and another prisoner named Abernathy were able to escape with the aid of Bonnie Parker and the smuggled gun. Bonnie remained in Waco as the three escapees left Texas, but the trio were captured in Ohio and returned to the state less than two weeks later. Barrow was held a few months before being sent to the Eastham Prison Farm to begin serving a fourteen year sentence. He was paroled in February, 1932 after which he and initially his brother Buck and a number of different associates over time would operate as the Barrow Gang for a little more than two years until he and Bonnie Parker were killed in the ambush is Louisiana in May, 1934.

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John Henry Selman

The El Paso Herald Post carried an article on November 1, 1973 telling of two pistols formerly belonging to outlaw John Wesley Hardin that would be on display in the lobby of the State National Bank for about two weeks. One of the guns was a nickel plated Smith & Wesson D. A. Frontier pistol that Hardin was carrying when he died. The second was a Colt “Thunderer” .41 caliber pistol. The latter was engraved with pearl grips. This gun was taken from Hardin a few days earlier by Deputy Sheriff W. J. Ten Eyck after Hardin allegedly pulled the weapon and brandished it to take money he had lost in a crap game at the Gem Saloon, also called the Acme Saloon in other accounts. The article continued to relate that Hardin had moved to El Paso in 1895 and set up a legal practice after studying the law while in prison and passing the Texas bar. Hardin had reportedly killed as many as forty men, but was himself killed by John Henry Selman, a local constable.

Ben Kilpatrick and the Fort Worth Five

(Image credit: Smithsonian Institute)

This famous photograph, sometimes called the “Fort Worth Five,” was taken in 1900 an the Schwartz Studio in old downtown Fort Worth. Pictured are the following: left to right, front row: Harry A. Longabaugh (aka the Sundance Kid), Ben Kilpatrick (aka the Tall Texan), Robert Leroy Parker (aka Butch Cassidy); standing: Will Carver and Harvey Logan (aka Kid Curry). The photo is said to have helped authorities later to identify each of them and within twelve years, they would all be dead. Carver was killed in a shootout in Sonora, Texas the following year. Logan was killed in a shootout with a posse in Parachute, Colorado in 1904. He may have taken his own life rather than submit to being captured. Longabaugh and Parker are believed to have been killed in a shootout in Bolivia in 1908. Kilpatrick died in 1912.

H. S. Lebman

If you were to do an internet search any day for “Lebman saddles for sale,” you would probably find a number of saddles that are available to be used as working saddles, held as collector’s items or as family keepsakes. They were made in a San Antonio saddle shop a few blocks from the San Antonio River on Flores Street. The former location is now a restaurant, but for many years, it was a busy store for leather goods.