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Charlie Smith (18??-1874)
- A horse thief operating in
Kansas,
Smith was captured with several other horse thieves near Caldwell,
Kansas. Hauled to jail to await trial, a lynch mob stormed the Caldwell jail on
July 29, 1874 and lynched Smith, along with two other horse thieves by the
names of William "Billy" L. Brooks and L.B. Hasbrouck.
Rattlesnake Dick - See
Richard Barter
Milton
Anthony Sharp (18??-18??) – Born in Lees Summit,
Missouri,
Sharp
moved to
California
in 1869. No more than a teenager, he earned an honest living working
in the mines around Bodie. However, when he reached his early
thirties, Sharp’s mindset changed, believing it would be much easier to
make his living robbing stages. In the late 1870’s, he began to
relieve the many coaches traveling the roads from the Sierra foothills to
Stockton and
Sacramento. After having robbed some 20 stages, Sharp was finally captured and sent to
the penitentiary in Carson City,
Nevada
in 1880. After being released in 1994, he was thought to have lived the
rest of his life as a law-abiding man.
More ...
Vicente Silva
(1845-1893) - Vicente Silva was the clandestine leader of a
vicious gang of Mexicans called
Silva's White Caps, or Forty Bandits,
or the Society of Bandits. Born in Bernalillo County, Silva
arrived in
Las Vegas,
New Mexico
in 1875. Silva ran a prosperous business by day and at
night he led the feared
outlaw gang. The White Caps, a Klan-like organization,
sought through fence-cutting, arson, and physical assault, to drive
settlers from lands that had once been common pasture.
Committing a variety of crimes, the
Mafia-like gang was one of the meanest and cruelest ever assembled in
New Mexico.
Often meeting in Silva's Imperial
Saloon
on Moreno Street, 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.
At the request of Silva, three crooked
lawmen by the
names of Jose Chavez
y Chavez, Eugenio Alarid and Julian
Trujillo lynched Patricio Maes on October 22, 1892. Several months
later Silva began to fear that his brother-in-law, Gabriel
Sandoval, was about to inform on the group for the lynching of Maes.
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Requesting help once
again from Chavez, Alarid, and Truillo, Sandoval was shot and killed in
February, 1893 and his body mysteriously disappeared.
Afterwards, Silva's wife
began to ask numerous questions about her brother’s questionable
disappearance. Silva soon decided that she too had to be killed. Afterwards, he ordered his trusty trio of crooked
lawmen to dig a grave for
his wife’s body. However, as the men dug the grave, their discussion
turned lethal, as they were dissatisfied with the paltry $10 payment and
deciding that Silva was out of control. When Silva appeared
with his wife's body, the trio robbed and murdered him, burying his body
along with his wife’s.
After Silva's death, the
gang disintegrated. Chavez, Alarid, and Truillo were eventually
arrested for the murder of Maes and sentenced to life in prison.
Sontag Brothers – Born and raised in
Mankato, Minnesota, these brothers would grow up to become train robbers
in
California.
John was born on May 27, 1861 and his brother George came along on April
10, 1864. George began a life of crime when he was just 15 years old by
stealing cigars from his employer and was sent to the state reform school
in St. Paul. After he was released he headed to Nebraska, where he went to
work as a grocery store clerk. However, when he was caught embezzling
money from his employer he was arrested again and sent to the Nebraska
State Prison. He was released in 1887.
In the meantime,
John had moved to
Los Angeles,
California
in 1878 and gone to work for the railroad, where he was badly injured in
an industrial accident. After he recovered he went to work with a farmer
by the name of Chris Evans. Harboring a deep resentment against the
railroad, John and Chris Evans began to rob trains.
When George Sontag
joined his brother in
California
in 1889, he joined them in their
outlaw
endeavors. On August 1, 1892, the trio robbed a train in Fresno, making
off with three stacks of money. Actively pursued by the Pinkertons, George
was arrested, but John and Chris managed to escape. Convicted, George was
given a life sentence at Folsom Prison.
The two other
fugitives remained at large for almost a year until they were finally
caught up with on June 11, 1893. In the ultimate shoot-out, John was so
badly injured, the posse waited until morning when more help could arrive
to move him. Taken to Fresno, John lived for another month before he died
of tetanus. Chris Evans, who had also been wounded during the capture,
survived to be convicted and sent to prison at Folsom.
After serving 15
years behind bars, George Sontag was released on March 21, 1908 and wrote
the book A
Pardoned Lifer,
which was later made into a movie in 1914. It is unknown how or when
George died.
Chris Evans
remained in prison until 1911 and upon his release was banished from
California.
He spent the rest of his life in Oregon.
William Larkin Stiles, aka: William Larkin, Billy Stiles (18?? -1908)
-
Gunfighter William Stiles allegedly killed his father when he was
just twelve years old. He gained notoriety around the turn of the century
after assisting famous
Texas Ranger
Jeff Milton. He was then hired by Willcox,
Arizona
marshal
Burton Alvord. However, the two weren't dedicated to law enforcement,
rather, they formed gang of train robbers that included George and Louis
Owns,
Three Fingered Jack" Dunlap, Bravo
Juan Yoas, and Bob Brown. After serving a stint in jail, Stiles went to
visit
Alvord and other gang members who were incarcerated at the Cochise
County courthouse. On April 7, 1900, he shot the lawman,
George Bravin,
taking off two of his toes, and released the prisoners. In January, 1908, Stiles was working in
Nevada
as a deputy sheriff and shot a man while arresting him. The victim's
12-year-old son then shot and killed Stiles.
Frank C. Stillwell (1857-1882)
- Born in the border area between
Kansas
and
Missouri,
Stillwell arrived in
Arizona in
1878 where he first worked as a miner and teamster in Mohave County.
Later, he hooked up with the
Clanton Gang and began a new career of cattle rustling. Thief or no,
Johnny Behan appointed Stillwell as a Cochise County Deputy
Sheriff in 1881. While acting in that capacity, he and a man named Pete
Spence robbed the
Tombstone-Bisbee
stage of $3,000 on September 8, 1881. Though arrested, they were
acquitted. Not satisfied with this result,
Wyatt Earp
soon rounded them up and brought them in for a second trial, but they were
again acquitted and released. After the
Gunfight at the
O.K. Corral, the
Earps suspected Stillwell, along with
Ike Clanton, as having been
the killers of
Morgan Earp on March 18, 1882. Two days after
Morgan was murdered,
Wyatt and
Warren Earp, along with
Doc Holliday,
ambushed Stilwell at the Tucson Train Station. His bullet ridden body was
found the next morning.
Isaac “Ike” Stockton
(1852-1881) - Born and raised in
Texas,
Stockton was an outlaw and leader of the Stockton Gang of robbers in
northern
New Mexico.
Making his way to Lincoln,
New Mexico in 1874, Stockton ran a saloon for a
brief time before moving north to Colfax County,
New Mexico
later that year. No doubt, he had some involvement in the infamous Colfax
County War that took place in 1875-76. He and his brother, Port, moved to
Trinidad,
Colorado briefly in 1876, but after Port killed a man in
December, they moved on to western
Colorado. There, the two posed as
cattleman, settling in the Animas Valley around 1878. Unbeknownst to area
residents, Ike was actually running a gang of robbers called the Stockton
Gang. They also became involved in a bitter feud with they were now with
the Simmons family in nearby Farmington,
New Mexico.
Sometimes referred to as the San Juan County War, the Simmons’ 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.
On August 24, 1881, one of the gang
members, Burt Wilkinson, killed Marshal Clate Ogsbury of Silverton,
Colorado and a $2,500 reward was offered for his arrest. Ever the
scoundrel, Ike 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.
William Porter “Port”
Stockton (1864-1881) – Born and raised in
Texas,
Port became an outlaw and lawman. He was the younger brother of more
well-known Ike Stockson, who led the Stockton Gang, a group of thieving
robbers in northern
New Mexico.
Allegedly he killed his first man when he was just 12 years-old. He
drifted Dodge City, Kansas briefly before following his older brother to
New Mexico
in 1874, where Ike ran a saloon in Lincoln. Port shot and killed Juan
Gonzales in October, 1876 in Cimarron,
New Mexico,
but was released with of please of self defense. Then, he and Ike moved to
Trinidad,
Colorado, where he killed another man in a saloon fight just two
months later. Arrested, Ike helped him to escape from jail. Amazingly, in
1979-80, he was serving as Marshal in Animas City,
Colorado. In June,
1879, he killed a man in Otero,
New Mexico,
but escaped once again. After getting into a dispute with a rancher in
Farmington,
New Mexico
named Alfred Graves, Port was shot by Graves on on January 10, 1881.
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