12 Notorious Wild West Outlaws

Khalid Elhassan - September 9, 2017

The United States relentlessly pushed its frontier westward during the 19th century in pursuit of Manifest Destiny, steadily populating vast swathes with a relentless stream of new arrivals who upped stakes and abandoned their homes in pursuit of dreams of greener pastures and a fresh start in the American West. Unsettled frontiers tend to attract a disproportionate number of single young men, eager for adventure and new horizons, rowdy, rambunctious, restless, and in the absence of the social restraints typically imposed by families and neighbors in more established communities, frequently lawless.

Such was the case in the Old West, where many years often elapsed between the settlement of new communities, and their settling down into the rut and norms of established civil society. In such a fluid and volatile environment, it took decades to establish effective law and order and finally tame the Wild West. In the meantime, the region saw a boom in banditry as violent criminals, many of whom frequently transitioned from outlaws to lawmen and back again, crossing and recrossing that line multiple times during their lifetimes, gave in to the temptation of easy riches in a region abounding with readily portable wealth, be it cash, gold, cattle or horses.

Stagecoaches became a primary target for outlaws before the arrival of the railroad, because they frequently transported valuables and payrolls in their strongboxes, and required relatively little effort to rob aside from the robber’s audacity. More importantly, they could be halted in isolated locales, giving the robbers time to flee before law enforcement arrived and attempted to track down the culprits. The arrival of the railroads added another lucrative target, albeit a more labor-intensive one, requiring teamwork from a sizeable outlaw gang to subdue an entire train in order to rob its hold and passengers. And throughout, banks were a standby target of choice.

Following are 12 notorious outlaws who operated in the heyday of the Wild West.

Black Bart

Charles Earl Boles, AKA Black Bart (1829 – after 1888) was born in England, before his family emigrated to New York in 1831. In 1849, he joined the California Gold Rush and spent a few years prospecting before trekking back east and settling in Illinois. During the Civil War, he enlisted in an Illinois regiment and proved a good soldier, getting promoted to Company First Sergeant within a year, and was brevetted as a lieutenant before his discharge in 1865.

After the war, Boles returned to prospecting for gold, but in 1871, had a run in with Wells Fargo agents that left him vowing vengeance. He proceeded to exact his revenge by changing his name to Black Bart, after a character from a dime novel, and taking up a career as a highwayman, specializing in robbing Wells Fargo stagecoaches in northern California and southern Oregon.

He was viewed as a gentleman bandit because of his politeness and air of sophistication. He robbed on foot, wielding a double-barreled shotgun and clad in a linen duster and bowler hat, his face concealed by a flour sack with eyeholes cut into it. Halting the stagecoach, he would cover the driver with his shotgun while politely ordering him to throw down the strongbox. That done, he would order the driver to move on, then recover the strongbox and abscond. He never fired his weapon, and sometimes left behind handwritten poems, which further enhanced his notoriety and gained him the nickname “Black Bart the Poet“.

Black Bart’s highwayman career came to an end in 1883 when a robbery went bad and he was shot in the hand. Fleeing, he dropped some personal items, including a handkerchief with a laundry mark. Wells Fargo detectives then canvassed San Francisco laundromats until they found the right one, and from it learned the identity of the handkerchief’s owner. Under interrogation, Black Bart eventually confessed to robbing Wells Fargo stagecoaches, but only before 1879, on the mistaken assumption that the statute of limitations had run out on robberies committed before that year.

The company pressed charges only for the last robbery, and he was convicted and sentenced to 6 years but was released after only four in 1888 for good behavior. In poor health, Black Bart did not return to his family, but he did write his wife that he was depressed and wanted to get away from everybody. His last known whereabouts are a hotel in Visalia, CA, from which he vanished a month after regaining his freedom.

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Sam Bass

Sam Bass (1851 – 1878) tried his hand at a succession of legal professions, and worked as a farmer, miner, cowboy, teamster, and saloon owner, but he was a degenerate gambler, and his persistent losses in gambling dens and the race track eventually led him to try his hand at robbery. He first gained fame as a member of the “Black Hills Bandits“, a gang that staged the biggest train robbery in the history of the Union Pacific Railroad in 1878 near Big Springs, Nevada, netting $60,000 in newly minted $20 gold coins from the express car, plus $1300 and gold watches from passengers.

After the Big Springs heist, Bass began spending lavishly, and when some of his Black Hills Bandits partners were tracked down and killed by law enforcement, he formed his own gang in Texas, which robbed four trains and two stagecoaches near Dallas in 1878, but netted little and triggered a manhunt led by Texas Rangers. Bass eluded capture until one of his gang was pressured into turning informant, and told the Rangers of Bass’ plan to rob a bank in Round Rock, Texas. The Rangers reached the small town on June 19, 1878, the same day as Bass.

While casing the bank, Bass attracted the attention of local law enforcement. When asked by a deputy sheriff if he had a gun, Bass replied “yes”, and shot him dead. A firefight erupted, and the noise attracted the recently arrived Texas Rangers, who joined the shootout. It ended with a dead outlaw, and a mortally wounded Bass jumping on his horse and fleeing town.

The following day, he was tracked down and found beneath a tree, bleeding from a gruesome wound caused by a bullet that had entered his back above the right hip bone, and shredded his right kidney before leaving a gaping exit wound. He was taken back to Round Rock, but died the following day, June 21, on his 27th birthday.

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Frank Reno

Frank Reno (1837 – 1868) was raised in Jackson County, Indiana, by strictly religious parents who saw to it that their children observed all the strictures, attended church regularly, and spent all day Sunday reading the Bible. It backfired with Frank and his younger brother, John, who rebelled and turned bad early on. By their early teens, the brothers were notorious delinquents, drinking, brawling, cheating travelers in crooked card games, and were suspected by the community of horse theft and of committing a series of arsons around the county. To escape a backlash, their father was forced to flee, taking Frank and John and two other sons, to live in Missouri for a few years.

They returned to Indiana in 1860, but they had not been forgotten. To escape angry neighbors, Frank and John enlisted when the Civil War broke out, and became serial bounty jumpers, joining a regiment to collect enlistment bonuses, which steadily grew as the war progressed, deserting at the earliest opportunity, enlisting in another regiment elsewhere with fake names to collect more enlistment bonuses, and repeating the cycle.

Frank returned home in 1864, and with his brother John formed the Reno Gang, and was joined by horse thieves, safecrackers, counterfeiters, gamblers and other ne’er do wells, and began robbing Post Offices and stores in southern Indiana. Frank and two gang members were arrested but released on bail. One agreed to testify against Frank, but was murdered before the trial, and Frank was acquitted.

After the acquittal, Frank and his gang grew more violent, effectively took over the small town of Rockford Indiana, whose Rader House hotel became their headquarters, and started robbing and murdering unwary travelers who checked in. They soon expanded their reach and ambition and began robbing trains and banks and raiding communities throughout the Midwest. After his first train robbery in 1866 – history’s first peacetime train robbery – a passenger identified Frank’s brother, John, and two other gang members, who were arrested. The witness was shot dead soon thereafter, at which point the other passengers refused to testify and the charges were dropped.

In 1867, Frank and his crew demonstrated their disdain for the law by attacking and robbing a county courthouse in Missouri – a crime for which his brother, John, was eventually convicted and sentenced to 25 years imprisonment. A vigilante group formed to hunt down Frank’s gang, so in early 1868 they fled to Iowa, where they attacked and robbed two-county treasuries on successive days. They were arrested, but broke out of jail and escaped to Indiana, where they resumed train robberies, one of which netted them $96,000, a princely sum that gained the Reno Gang worldwide fame.

Pinkerton Agency detectives learned of Frank’s plans to rob another train, so staged an ambush, and soon as the gang boarded the train on July 9, 1868, opened fire. Most of the gang escaped, but a captured member identified two others, who were arrested the following day. The train taking them to jail in Seymour, Indiana, was stopped by masked vigilantes, who lynched the three prisoners. Another three gang members were captured soon thereafter, and the train taking them to the Seymour jail was again stopped by masked vigilantes, who hung the prisoners from the same tree.

Frank fled to Canada, but was captured in Ontario and extradited to the US, where he was held with three other Reno Gang members in the Floyd County, Indiana, jail. On the night of December 11, 1868, scores of masked vigilantes marched on the jail and forced the jailer to surrender the keys. Frank Reno was then dragged from his cell in the early hours and lynched, followed soon thereafter by the remaining gang members.

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Jesse James

Jesse James (1847 – 1882) was born and raised in a part of Missouri that had strong Southern sympathies, and when the Civil War broke out, he joined pro-Confederacy guerrillas led by men such as “Bloody Bill” Anderson and William Quantrill, who committed sundry atrocities during the conflict in which Jesse and his elder brother Frank took part. Jesse was twice wounded during the war, the second occurring at war’s end when he was shot in the chest by Union cavalry as he tried to surrender.

After recovering from his wound, Jesse and his brother Frank joined a gang led by one of their former guerrilla commanders, and in 1866 robbed a bank in Liberty, Missouri, during which robbery an innocent bystander was killed. A few months later, they killed a jailer while freeing imprisoned fellow gang members. In 1867, the gang killed the mayor of Richmond, Missouri, along with two others, during a bank robbery.

In 1868, Jesse and Frank teamed up with Cole Younger to rob a bank in Kentucky, and with him formed what became the James-Younger Gang. In 1869, Jesse gained notoriety when he murdered a cashier during the course of a robbery, after mistaking him for the man who had killed his former guerrilla commander, “Bloody Bill’ Anderson. The gang then went on a spree, robbing stagecoaches, trains, banks, and county fairs, from Iowa to Texas, and from West Virginia to Kansas.

During that period, Jesse allied with the editor and founder of the Kansas City Time, which opposed Missouri’s Republican governor, and began portraying Jesse as a Robin Hood figure driven by ideals and not just greed and bloodthirstiness. There is no evidence that the gang ever shared its loot with any outside their immediate personal circle, but the portrayal fell on receptive ears, particularly in the pro-Southern parts of Missouri.

The Pinkerton Agency was hired to go after the James-Younger Gang, but when two of its agents were killed, the agency’s founder, Allan Pinkerton, turned it into a vendetta. During a raid on the James household soon thereafter, a bomb was thrown that killed one of Jesse’s brothers and severed his mother’s arm.

In 1876, the gang attempted to rob a bank in Northfield, Minnesota, but it ended catastrophically when armed townspeople resisted. After a shootout and pursuit, only Jesse and his brother Frank escaped, with the rest of the gang killed or captured. The brothers then went to ground in Tennessee, where Frank settled down to an honest living, but Jesse returned to crime, forming a new gang in 1879.

In 1881, the brothers left Tennessee for safety reasons, and soon thereafter Frank moved to Virginia. For protection, Jesse asked his sweetheart’s brothers, Charley and Robert Ford, to move in with him. It was a bad choice, as Robert Ford had been negotiating with Missouri’s governor to betray Jesse. In 1882, while Jesse was dusting a picture hanging on a wall, Robert Ford shot him in the back of the head.

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Johnny Ringo

John “Johnny” Ringo (1850 – 1882) was born in Indiana, and his family moved to Missouri in 1858, and thence to California. He is known to history as an associate of the Cochise County Cowboys, an outlaw group in Tombstone, Arizona, and of the corrupt Tombstone Sheriff’s office. He is best known for his hostility to and adverse run ins with lawman Wyatt Earp and his associates, which eventually spelled Ringo’s doom.

In the 1870s a young Ringo moved to Texas, and by 1875 had joined a gang and participated in its depredations during a period of lawlessness and revenge killings between factions of German settlers and natural-born Americans in Mason County, Texas, that became known as the “Mason County War“. Arrested, Ringo escaped from jail and fled to Arizona.

In 1878, Ringo offered whiskey to a man seated next to him in a bar, but when the man declined, Ringo shot off his ear. Soon thereafter, he arrived in Tombstone, where he joined the Cochise County Cowboys and began an antagonistic relationship with Wyatt Earp and his associates. The Earps suspected Ringo’s involvement in an 1881 ambush that left Virgil Earp crippled, and in the murder of Morgan Earp on March 18, 1882.

Soon thereafter, Wyatt Earp, a deputy US Marshall, formed a federal posse to hunt down those deemed responsible for shooting his brothers. Ringo was deputized by Tombstone’s corrupt Sheriff in an attempt to shield him from the Earps by making him a lawman. Within weeks, many of Ringo’s friends had been killed or fled the area, and Although he denied any involvement in the shootings of Virgil and Morgan Earp, Ringo deemed it advisable to leave Tombstone until things calmed down.

In April, the Earps had left Tombstone, and by June, Ringo had returned. A month later, his body was discovered beneath a tree with a bullet hole in the head. The death was ruled a suicide, but many suspected that Wyatt Earp had surreptitiously returned to exact vengeance – a theory confirmed years later by Wyatt’s widow, who wrote in her memoirs that her husband had killed Johnny Ringo.

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Clay Allison

Clay Allison (1841 – 1887) was born and raised in Tennessee, and fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War. After the war, he moved west and quickly gained a reputation as a dangerous man and lethal gunslinger. He first garnered attention in 1870, when he led a mob that broke into a New Mexico jail, seized a deranged man suspected in the murder of a number of people, including his own daughter, and lynched him.

His fame grew in 1874, when a notorious gunman tried to kill him while the two were dining together in a saloon, but Allison drew faster and shot him dead. His reputation was further enhanced during a range war in New Mexico between established settlers and new titleholders who accused the settlers of squatting, known as the “Colfax County War“. Allison sided with the settlers, and took part in the lynching of a pro-landowner gunslinger.

The lynched man’s family vowed revenge, but when an uncle of the victim cornered Allison, the latter proved quicker on the draw and shot him dead. Allison was arrested for murder, but charges were dropped after an inquiry determined that he had acted in self-defense.

In 1876, Allison’s refusal to surrender his pistols to a constable in Las Animas, Colorado, who informed him that it was illegal to carry guns within the town limits, led to a gunfight that left the constable dead. Allison was charged with manslaughter, but charges were dropped because the constable had fired first. Surprisingly, for a man so violent, he died in a routine accident in 1887 when he fell off a wagon, and its wheel rolled over him and broke his neck.

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John King Fisher

Born and raised in Texas, John King Fisher (1853 – 1884) turned bad at an early age. Aged 15, he was sentenced to two years imprisonment for horse theft but won early release because of his youth. Soon thereafter, he joined bandits who raided across the border into Mexico, and adopted adopting a flamboyant persona, dressing in flashy clothes, such as a black Mexican jacket embroidered with gold, a red sash, a wide sombrero, and sporting silver-plated and ivory-handled pistols.

He styled himself a gunslinger, and proved himself one when a dispute over sharing the loot triggered a shootout during which a teenage Fisher killed three fellow bandits. After the gunsmoke dissipated, Fisher took over as gang leader, and over subsequent months, defended his leadership claim by killing seven more bandits.

In 1872, he bought a ranch on the Mexican border and used it as a base of operations for cattle rustling raids into Mexico. The Texas Rangers eventually raided the ranch and arrested Fisher, but released him upon his promise to cease raiding. He then tried his hand at legitimate cattle ranching, but ranch operations were frequently impeded by his violent temper.

In 1878, he escalated an argument with two Mexican cowboys by crushing the head of one with an iron rod, and shooting the other dead when he tried to draw his pistol. He then shot dead two other Mexicans who had been sitting on a fence and simply watching. Nothing came of it, nor did anything come of other instances when Fisher was arrested for violent acts and attempted murders, only to be released when witnesses refused to come forward or disappeared.

Although a notorious troublemaker, Fisher was liked in the community, and by the 1880s had transitioned from bandit to lawman, serving briefly as acting sheriff of Uvalde County in 1883, during which service he tracked down a stagecoach robbing duo, shooting one dead and bringing in the other. The following year, Fisher went to see a play with a friend in San Antonio, but was killed when a quarrel between his friend and the theater owner ended with Fisher and friend ambushed in their theater box and cut down in a hail of bullets.

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Frank Stillwell

Born in Iowa, Frank Stillwell (1856 – 1882) ended up in Arizona in 1877, where he had his first recorded run in with the law: a new cook served him tea instead of coffee, and Stillwell shot him dead. In 1879, he staked a claim and worked a mine in Mojave, Arizona, when he got into a dispute with a fellow miner over claim-jumping. Stillwell settled the dispute by grabbing a rock and smashing in his rival’s face until he was dead. He was arrested for murder, but charges were dropped for lack of evidence.

He was hired as a Cochise County sheriff’s deputy in 1881, but was fired soon thereafter for “accounting irregularities”. A few months later, he robbed a stagecoach near Tombstone, Arizona, and was tracked down and arrested by lawmen Wyatt and Virgil Earp. Charges were dropped however for insufficient evidence, and after Stillwell produced alibi witnesses. The Earps, in their capacity as US Marshals, then charged Stillwell with the federal crime of interference with a mail carrier, which created a perception that Stillwell was being persecuted, and led soon thereafter to the assassination of Wyatt’s brother, Morgan Earp.

Witnesses reported seeing Stillwell fleeing from the scene, and a Coroner’s jury listed Stillwell among the suspects in the assassination. Wyatt Earp then formed a posse and went after the suspects in the murder of his brother Morgan and the earlier shooting of his other brother, Virgil. Two days after Morgan’s assassination, Wyatt Earp received information that Stillwell planned to murder his brother Virgil in Tucson when the train carrying him and Morgan’s coffin to California stopped there. Wyatt formed an escort to accompany Virgil, and on March 20, 1882, spotted Stillwell and two associates waiting in ambush near Tucson’s train station. Stillwell and his friends ran for their lives when they spotted Wyatt, but Stillwell stumbled. By the time he got back on his feet, Wyatt Earp was upon him.

“I ran straight for Stilwell,” he later recounted. “It was he who killed my brother. What a coward he was. He couldn’t shoot when I came near him. He stood there helpless and trembling for his life. As I rushed upon him he put out his hands and clutched at my shotgun. I let go both barrels, and he tumbled down dead and mangled at my feet.”

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Charlie Bowdre

Charles Bowdre (1848 – 1880) was born in Georgia and moved with his family to Mississippi as a child. He left the family farm to become a wanderer, and by 1874 had arrived in Lincoln County, New Mexico. Over the following years, he joined posses that chased cattle rustlers, and lynched those captured. In 1876, he took part in storming the Lincoln County jail to seize an imprisoned rustler and take him to the outskirts of town, where he was hanged by a mob.

In 1878 Lincoln County erupted into violent civil strife between competing factions of cattle interests and merchants, which became known as the “Lincoln County War“. Bowdre sided with the faction that included William H. Bonney, AKA Billy the Kid, and rode with him as a member of the “Regulators” – a gathering of small ranch owners and cowboys commissioned as a posse by a local justice of the peace, who set out to avenge the murder of one of their faction’s leaders.

Armed with warrants for the apprehension of accused murderers and factional opponents, Bowdre assisted the Regulators in tracking down and killing a number of men for “resisting arrest”. However, the territorial governor decreed that the justice of the peace who had commissioned the Regulators had been illegally appointed, and thus lacked the authority to issue the warrants enforced by the Regulators – transforming them overnight from a legal posse to outlaws.

Bowdre wound up on the losing side of the conflict, and the Regulators, now led by Billy the Kid, became a cattle thieving gang, appropriately renamed the “Rustlers”. In 1880, Bowdre joined the Rustlers in a failed attempt to assassinate lawman Pat Garrett. A gunfight ensued, and Bowdre and the surviving Rustlers fled to an isolated stone house hideout. Unbeknownst to them, they were tracked by a posse, which surrounded the hideout during the night. The following dawn, Bowdre emerged from the house to feed the horses, and was immediately shot multiple times and fell back into the house, mortally wounded. Urged by Billy the Kid to “take a few of them with you when you die“, Bowdre staggered to his feet to charge out the door, where he was met by another hail of gunfire and instantly killed.

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Butch Cassidy

Born in Utah to British immigrants who had arrived in Utah as Mormon pioneers, Robert Leroy Parker (1866 – 1908), AKA Butch Cassidy, left home as a teen to work on a dairy farm. He was mentored by a cattle rustler named Mike Cassidy, whose surname he adopted, and a subsequent job as a butcher earned him the nickname “Butch”.

At age 14, he entered a closed store and stole jeans and a pie, leaving behind an IOU. He was tried, but acquitted. By age 18, Cassidy was working with horse thieves, delivering stolen animals to buyers. With three associates, Cassidy robbed his first bank, in Telluride, Colorado, in 1889, then fled to a remote Utah hideout known as Robbers Roost.

The following year, he bought a ranch in Wyoming, near a notorious bandit hideout known as Hole in the Wall. In 1894, he was arrested and convicted of horse stealing and extortion. Sentenced to two years, he was released and pardoned after a year and a half by Wyoming’s governor. Within months, Cassidy formed the “Wild Bunch” gang and robbed an Idaho bank. Soon thereafter, he recruited Harry Alonzo Longabaugh, AKA The Sundance Kid.

In 1897, Cassidy robbed a coal company’s payroll of $7000. In June 1899, the Wild Bunch robbed a Union Pacific passenger train in Wyoming, which led to a massive manhunt, during which a Sheriff was killed in a shootout. A month later, Cassidy directed a train robbery in New Mexico, which entailed a shootout in which a Sheriff and another lawman were killed.

Cassidy tried to negotiate an amnesty plea with Wyoming’s governor that would have entailed the Union Pacific Railroad dropping criminal charges. He torpedoed his chances by robbing another Union Pacific in 1900, while the negotiations were ongoing and in breach of a promise he made the governor. Pressure mounted as posses tracked down and killed or arrested Wild Bunch members and associates, one by one. In May 1900, Wild Bunch members rode into Moab, Utah, and killed the Sheriff and a deputy as payback for the earlier killing of two gang members.

In September, 1900, Cassidy robbed a Nevada bank of $33,000, and in July, 1901, Wild Bunch members robbed a train in Montana, netting $60,000. Under mounting pressure, however, the gang broke up, and Cassidy and Longabaugh fled to New York City in 1901, and from there sailed to Argentina, where they purchased and settled in a 15,000-acre ranch.

In February, 1905, Cassidy and Longabaugh robbed a bank in southern Argentina. Tipped off that a warrant had been issued for their arrest, the duo sold their ranch in May, 1905, and fled to Chile. They returned to Argentina later that year and robbed a bank, then fled back to Chile. In 1906, they moved to Bolivia, and worked as guards for a mining company.

In November, 1908, Cassidy and Longabaugh robbed a mining company’s payroll in southern Bolivia, then fled to a small town where they lodged in a boarding house. They aroused the proprietor’s suspicions, and he notified a nearby Bolivian army unit. On the evening of November 6, 1908, the boarding house was surrounded. When soldiers approached, the duo opened fire, and in the ensuing firefight, were shot multiple times. Grievously wounded, Cassidy shot Longabaugh dead to put him out of his misery, before turning his pistol on himself.

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William “Brazen Bill” Brazelton

William “Brazen Bill” Brazelton’s (died 1878) was born in San Francisco, orphaned at an early age, and grew up as a street urchin. In 1876, he arrived in Prescott, Arizona, and claiming that he would stage a show in which he would eat a wagon wheel, conned people into paying in advance to attend. He then left town to bring the rest of the show’s crew and stagehands, and never returned.

A year later, he graduated from grifting to armed robbery, and held up his first stagecoach in September 1877. Wearing a mask, Brazelton forced the driver to get down and secure the lead horses by the bit. He then ordered a passenger to throw down the express box, break it open with an axe, and hand him the contents. Over the following year, Brazelton committed at least another 8 stagecoach robberies in Arizona and New Mexico.

In the aftermath of his last robbery, on August 15, 1878, Brazelton’s horse threw a shoe, leaving a distinct print that allowed pursuers to follow the track to a horse corral. The proprietor was arrested, and offered to deliver the robber, disclosing that Brazelton intended to commit another robbery that night, and that a meeting had been prearranged for earlier that evening to deliver him supplies. The posse left as if riding back home, then doubled back to the meeting site to wait in ambush.

Brazelton arrived cautiously, and as he began to collect the supplies, something aroused his suspicion. Before he could react, the night was lit by a shotgun blast, followed by flashes from a fusillade of pistol shots. He shouted “you son of a bitch!” as he fell, then lay groaning “I die brave, my God! I’ll pray ’til I die!” On his body were discovered his trademark mask and some loot from previous robberies. His corpse was taken to Tucson, and displayed while tied upright to chair in front of the courthouse until burial the following day.

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Rufus Buck

Born in the Indian Territory in today’s Oklahoma to a Creek Indian father and an African American mother, Rufus Buck (1877 – 1896) formed a multi-ethnic gang of teenagers – all Indians, African Americans, or mixed race. A zealot with nebulous ideas of triggering a Native American uprising, Buck led his gang on a depraved rampage of robbery, rape, and murder, that terrorized white settlers, Indians, and African Americans alike.

Buck’s gang started stockpiling weapons in Okmulgee, Oklahoma, and on July 28, 1895, began their rampage by shooting and killing a deputy US Marshal. On the way back, they raped a middle-aged widow. They then robbed a man of his horse, and killed him when he resisted. A few days later, they robbed a salesman, stripped him naked, and offered him a chance to escape. When he unexpectedly succeeded in escaping, they killed his assistant in frustration. They then raped and murdered two women and a 14-year-old girl. On August 4th, they raped a woman in front of her husband, whom they held at bay with rifles. At least two of their rape victims died of their injuries.

Posses of Indian Police and white settlers were formed to apprehend the gang, but while the posses combed the countryside, Buck and his gang brazenly rode into Okmulgee and robbed three stores. Whenever they encountered somebody riding a horse they liked, they offered to trade, and shot the rider if he declined. On the outskirts of Eufala, they came across a black child, and just to see him twitch as he expired, shot him dead.

On August 10, 1895, US Marshals came across the gang in a hideout near Muskogee. After a furious firefight, they were forced to surrender when they ran out of ammunition. Taken into Muskogee, the gang barely escaped lynching by a Creek mob, which dispersed only after a tribal chief pleaded with them, and the US Marshals vowed to shoot the first man who tried to seize their prisoners. Taken to Fort Smith for trial, the gang was found guilty of rape, murder, and robbery, and sentenced to death by “hanging judge” Isaac Parker. After appeals were exhausted, Rufus Buck and his gang were hanged on July 1, 1896.