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The Notorious Men of the Wild West

Khalid Elhassan December 4, 2019 32 min

29. Robbing a Court

Frank Reno and his gang demonstrated their utter contempt for the law in 1867, when they attacked and robbed a county courthouse in Missouri. This time, the gang did not get away Scot free: Frank’s brother John was eventually tried and convicted for that crime and received a 25-year sentence behind bars. A vigilante group was formed to hunt down Frank and the rest of the gang, so in early 1868, they fled to Iowa.

There, they put their mark on their new stomping grounds by attacking and robbing two-county treasuries on successive days. The gang was eventually arrested, but they managed to break out of jail, and escape to Indiana, where they resumed robbing trains. One such robbery netted them $96,000, a significant chunk of money in those days, and made the Reno Gang famous in the US and around the world.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.