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Red Sash Gang, aka: Major Wolcott's "Regulators", (1887-1892) - One of the most feared band of outlaws in the Powder River area of Wyoming
, these men were called the Red Sash Gang because of an article of clothing they wore for identification. The gang most often preyed on the the many homesteaders of the area, frequently leaving dead bodies in their wake. One of their most heinous crimes were the murders of Nathan Champion and Nick Rae on April 8, 1892. Though the victims barricaded themselves in a ranch house on the KC Ranch, Major Frank Wolcott, the leader of the gang, led his men on a vicious attack of the pair, leaving both of them dead. This act was the final instigator of the all-out Johnson County War between the cattlemen and the homesteaders in Wyoming
, where the Red Sash Gang took part in some of the bloodiest fighting of the range war. The violence of the "war" was so bad that even Frank Canton, who was also a leader of the "Regulators" and a hardened gunfighter couldn't take it. Ultimately, the U.S. Army had to be brought in to arbitrate the Johnson County War and the Red Sash Gang faded into history.
 Reno Gang (1864-1868) - During the years after the
Civil War, much of the nation suffered a period of unemployment and lawlessness, spawning a number of notorious desperadoes and outlaw gangs.
It was during this time that the Reno Gang from Indiana began to terrorize the Midwest. Four of the five sons belonging to the Reno family would join up, before the war was even over, to murder, steal, and terrorize Indiana, Iowa, and Missouri. Comprised of Frank, John, Simeon, Clinton and William
Reno , they also recruited a number of other miscreants that they had met during the war.
Ruthless, they burned their own town in order to gain the property, then holed up in a hotel in Seymour, Indiana, where guests were left penniless. They then went on to rob retailers, county treasuries, and banks before they committed the first train robbery in American history at Seymour, Indiana.
On the night of October 6, 1866, John and Simeon Reno, along with a man named Frank Sparks, boarded the east-bound Ohio & Mississippi train at the Seymour depot. Once on board, the three masked men made their way to the express car, held a gun on the messenger and stole some $12,000. Afterwards, they pulled the bell rope to signal the engineer to stop the train and jumped off into the darkness when the train slowed. The first recorded peace-time train robbery had occurred in just a matter of minutes.
Their activities continued until virtually every member of the gang had been lynched by the Southern Indiana
Vigilance Committee
in 1868.
Reynolds Gang (1863-1864) - A
group of confederate sympathizers that rampaged the South Park,
Colorado area
with the intention of raising money for the Confederate government.
Rufus Buck Gang (1895) – Led by Rufus Buck, this Creek Indian gang also included Sam Sampson, Maoma July, and brothers, Lewis and Lucky Davis. All of them had been apprehended on minor offenses and served time in the Fort Smith jail before going on their criminal spree in the summer of 1895. With the desire to become known as the most famous outlaws in the Wild West, Buck allegedly boasted that “his outfit would make a record that would sweep all the other gangs of the territory into insignificance." Beginning with stockpiling a small cache of weapons in Okmulgee, Oklahoma , their spree began on July 30, 1895 when they robbed a town grocery store. When U.S. Deputy Marshal Garrett, one of the few black marshals in Indian Territory
, responded to the call, the bandits shot him down. On their way from that
murder, they abducted and raped a woman named Mrs. Wilson.
For the next two weeks they began to holdup a number of stores and ranches in Indian Territory , preying on white and Indian settlers indiscriminately. In one incident an elderly salesman named Callahan, who the gang had just robbed, was offered a chance to escape if he could outrun the gang. When the old man was successful, the brutal teens killed his assistant in frustration. They killed a man named Gus Chambers when he resisted the gang’s theft of horses. They then robbed a stockman, taking his clothing and boots and fired at him as he fled naked. Two days later the gang raped Rosetta Hansen while they held her husband at bay with Winchesters.
They were finally caught up with outside Muskogee, Oklahoma by a combined force of U.S. Deputy Marshals and the Creek Lighthorse police, led by Marshal S. Morton Rutherford on August 10th. The ensuing
gunfight between the lawmen and the outlaws lasted almost a full day, before the teens finally surrendered. Though the Creek wanted to hold the gang for trial, the U.S. marshals prevailed and the outlaws were taken to Fort Smith, Arkansas to face “Hanging” Judge Isaac Parker.
When they were brought to court later in the year they were convicted of rape and murder and sentenced to die by Parker. However, the initial verdict was appealed and the execution delayed. However, in the end, their appeal failed and Parker was given the opportunity to re-sentence them to death. The execution of the five members of the Rufus Buck Gang on July 1, 1896 was the second to last execution to occur at Fort Smith. The Buck Gang were the only men to die on the gallows in Fort Smith for rape.
Selman's Scouts (1878) -
Led by outlaw/lawman
John Selman, who had recently escaped
Fort Griffin,
Texas, Selman pulled together a number of rough characters to form the “Scouts.”
Unlike the other gangs that operated in the area at the time, such as the
Jesse Evans Gang, John
Kinney Gang and the
Seven Rivers Warriors,
Selman’s Scouts had no pretext of fighting for a cause, such as the Lincoln
County War. They only wanted to take advantage of the current already lawless
state of the county. For two months, during September and October, the gang
members terrorized the county by rustling cattle and horses, killing innocent
men and boys, pillaging businesses and homes, and raping women. Though posses of
Lincoln County citizens pursued the gang, the violence continued until Governor
Lew Wallace issued a proclamation threatening martial law if the lawlessness did
not stop. Selman soon fled back to Texas to find new trouble for himself and the
reign of terror ended.
Seven Rivers Warriors - (1870's) - Made
up mostly of small-time ranchers from the Seven Rivers area of southeastern
Lincoln County,
New Mexico,
this gang of rustlers began their life of crime out of their frustration with
the cattle barons, specifically
John Chisum. The warriors felt that
Chisum's
more than 100,000 head of cattle, ate up most of the grazing land in the area.
In retaliation, several small-ranchers grouped together, forming the
Seven Rivers Warriors and began to steal
Chisum's livestock. When
Chisum supported the Tunstall/McSween faction against
that of
Dolan and Murphy in the
Lincoln County War,
the "Warriors" quickly joined up with
Dolan-Murphy to oppose
Chisum's friends.
Several of the gangs' members were killed in the
Lincoln County War
and afterwards they began to turn against each other. Shortly afterwards, the
gang dissolved.
Silva's
White Caps, aka: Forty Bandits, Society of Bandits (late 1880's-1893) -
Led by Vicente Silva, a businessman in
Las Vegas,
New Mexico,
the White Caps were a mafia-like organization, who sought through fence-cutting,
arson, and physical assault, to drive settlers from lands that had once been
common pasture. The gang held the area in a virtual stranglehold until October,
1892, when they decided to hang fellow gang member Pat Maes for an infraction.
Several months later, in February, 1893,
Silva feared that his brother-in-law
was going to inform on the gang for the lynching of Maes, he ordered him killed
as well. Soon, however, Silva's wife became suspicious and he ordered three
crooked
lawmen by the
names of Jose Chavez
y Chavez, Eugenio Alarid and Julian
Trujillo to kill her as well. Though they carried out the order, the three
decided to kill
Silva as well and buried him in the
same grave, thus ending the reign of
Silva's White Caps. Chavez, Alarid and
Trujillo were eventually arrested for the murder of Maes and sentenced to life in prison.
Soapy
Smith Gang (1879-1898) - Led by Jefferson Randolph "Soapy" Smith, the gang
operated in Denver and Creede,
Colorado
before moving on to Skagway, Alaska, running a number of con games against
unsuspecting citizens.
Stockton Gang
(1878-1881) – Led by
Isaac (Ike) Stockton, the gang also included his brother,
Port;
his next-in-command, Harg Eskridge; Dyson Eskridge, and Bert Wilkerson. Robbing
and rustling cattle in northern
New Mexico, while escaping back over the line
into the Durango,
Colorado
area, their efforts soon spawned an all out feud, sometimes referred to as the
San Juan County War, with the Simmons family in Farmington,
New Mexico. The
Simmons family accused the Stocktons of stealing their cattle and selling the
beef to army posts. The “war” erupted into full scale shoot-outs and lynchings
in 1880. In fact, the Stockton’s “business” was so profitable; they flaunted
themselves, even opening a butcher shop in Durango. In the meantime almost two
dozen ranchers in the Farmington area had begun to side with the Simmons,
guarding their property night and day against the cattle rustlers.
Meanwhile, the gang was posing as prosperous
cattlemen in the Durango area, where the people of that city stood behind them,
partly because
Port
Stockton was serving as the town marshal, and partly because they believed
the men were what they said they were.
On April 16, 1880, a man was lynched in
Durango and the very next day, while the body was still dangling from a tree by
the railroad tracks, the town was besieged by a band of 25-50 armed men calling
themselves the Farmington Vigilante Committee. In no time, rifle shots were
ringing throughout the dirt streets while its citizens hid from the violence.
Afterwards, Durango no longer believed in their “prosperous cattlemen” and soon
drove the gang out of town.
On January 10, 1881,
Port
Stockton was killed by a rancher in Farmington named Alfred Graves. The rest
of the gang next headed to Silverton,
Colorado,
where on August 24, 1881, one of the gang members, Burt Wilkinson, killed
Marshal Clate Ogsbury. When a $2,500 reward was offered for his arrest,
scoundrel leader, Ike
Stockton, turned in his own gang member in order to secure the reward money.
Nineteen year-old Wilkinson was arrested and lynched on September 4th.
But, local law certainly didn’t see
Stockton as any kind of
hero. They soon dug up a
New Mexico warrant for Ike for the murder of a man named Aaron Barker in
1881. When Silverton Deputy Sheriff Jim Sullivan went to arrest,
Ike, the scoundrel
resisted and the deputy shot him in the leg. The outlaw died after having his
leg amputated on September 27, 1881. Later, it was said that Deputy Sullivan
claimed to hate a traitor more than a murderer.
Vasquez Gang (1860s-1875) - Led by
Tiburcio Vasquez, the gang committed armed
robbery and rustled horses and cattle up and down central and southern
California for years. Excusing their actions by saying they were simply
“punishing” the whites for discrimination against those of Mexican and Spanish
decent, the gang never took advantage of Hispanics, leading to their being
sometimes being viewed as "folk heroes." Though members of the gang changed
throughout the years, some included Abdon Leiva, who would
wind up giving State's evidence against
Vasquez; Tomas
Redondo, alias Procopio or Red-Handed Dick; the blood-thirsty villain Juan Soto;
and
Vasquez's chief lieutenant Clodovio Chavez. Though
wanted men, pursuit of the outlaws increased dramatically after they robbed a
store Tres Pinos,
California, taking some
$200 in gold, and leaving behind three innocent bystanders in 1873. A reward of
$1,000 was placed on Tiburcio Vasquez,
that over time, increased to $15,000, sending lawmen from Fresno, Tulare, San
Joaquin, Santa Clara and Monterey counties scrambling after the elusive leader.
Vasquez was finally caught in May, 1874,
tried and hanged in March of the following year. Vasquez's loyal lieutenant,
Clodovio Chavez, fled to Arizona, where he was killed by lawmen in November, 1875 near Yuma, Arizona. Juan Soto was killed in a
gunfight with Alameda County Sheriff, Harry Morse.
Bill Whitley or
Brack Cornett Gang (1887-1888) - Comprised of about 12 outlaws, the gang
was led by Texas desperadoes
Bill Whitley
and Brack Cornett,
robbing
Texas banks
and trains in the late 1880's. In June of 1887, the gang robbed a train near
Flatonio,
Texas, making
off with about $600 in money and $1000 worth of jewelry from passengers. The
Wells Fargo Company quickly offered a $1,000 reward for the capture of the
outlaws and their conviction and the State of
Texas upped
the ante an additional $500. Though heavily pursued, the outlaws fled. The next
year, the gang robbed a bank at Cisco,
Texas, making
off with some $25,000. Several days later they robbed the International-Great
Northern Railroad, escaping with $20,000. Later that year, they planned to rob a
a Southern Pacific train out of Harwood,
Texas, on
September 22nd. However, their plans were foisted when U.S. Marshal John Rankin
somehow found out about the scheme. On the day of the planned robbery, Rankin,
along with Deputy U.S. Marshal, Duval West, and several
Texas Rangers
hid on board the train. Just three miles outside of Harwood, the gang
predictably stopped the train but were effectively driven off by the lawmen.
Though pursued, the would-be robbers were able to escape. Pursued more than ever
by numerous posses, the gang were finally run to ground by
U.S. Deputy Marshals
just a few days later on September 25, 1888 in Floresville,
Texas. When
the law caught up with them, the inevitable gunfight occurred, in which
Bill Whitley
was killed and another gang member taken prisoner. Brack Cornett was able to
escape and fled to
Arizona.
However, one
Texas Ranger,
Alfred Allee,
doggedly pursued Cornett to Frio,
Arizona.,
where he caught up with him. Gunplay erupted once again and when the smoke
cleared, Cornett was dead. |
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