Annie Rogers and the Bank Dick

Annie Rogers - Page 2

Annie split her time between her mother's Ft. Worth home and Fannie Porter's house of ill repute in San Antonio. She then left for Mena, Arkansas where she remained until September 1901. Fannie Porter got word to her that Nevils had come back to San Antonio and wanted Annie to take another trip. Annie responded to the message with a telegram: "Will wait till parties come." Nevils shortly thereafter came to Arkansas to get her.

According to the Kindred article, their first stop was Shreveport, Louisiana where they remained for nearly a week, playing cards and patronizing saloons. Nevils had plenty of money and gave Annie a bunch of $10 bills before they left Shreveport for Jackson, Mississippi where they did "nothing but having a good time."

They took the day coach to Memphis, Tennessee and let the good times continue to roll. Annie guessed they spent around $400 having fun and she especially enjoyed Nevils buying expensive dresses and hats for her. By the time they left Memphis for Nashville on October 10th where they headed straight for Linck's Hotel, Annie had Bank of Montana notes for about $400. She must have been a very good companion, because Nevils gave her at least another hundred. Perhaps Annie was Mae West's inspiration when she said "When I'm good I'm very, very good, but when I'm bad, I'm better."

As Annie's story unfolded, she admitted spending most of her time at the Lincke Hotel in their room, while Nevils preferred hanging around saloons until the wee hours. Then, Annie said, she began to have misgivings. The more money Nevils gave her, the more suspicious she got. She was also afraid he might take the money back and dump her. A shrewd move by Annie was that she changed the money he had given her into larger bills so they could be more easily hidden from him, and repaired to the Fourth National Bank to accomplish this, where she was arrested.

At the completion of this second statement, cops ran to the Linck and found that Nevils, registered under the name R.J. Whalen, had escaped due to the length of time it took Annie to tell her (false) story. She had given him enough time to make his escape. He had checked out the day before taking the train to Birmingham, Alabama, thence on to Mobile, where the cops lost his trail.

An incarcerated Annie Rogers might have been daydreaming of her boring days back on Lewis Walker's farm. Even that dull life would be better than a dreary jail. On April 21, 1902, she appeared before Judge W.M. Hart asking for a bail reduction. Her former employer, Madame Fannie Porter, who well deserved her kind-though-soiled reputation, offered to put up the money.

As reported in Kindred's article, Annie was dressed in a black suit and hat. "Wearing a black glove on one hand and carrying a white handkerchief in the other, she took a seat beside her attorney, Richard West." Attorney General Robert Vaughn prosecuted, his first witness express messenger C.H. Smith who had been brought from Montana to describe the train robbery and link Annie to one of the robbers. He described the robbery ($40,000 in unsigned bank notes on July 3, 1901) near Wagner, Montana, and identified a man in a torn photograph shown him by General Vaughn as one of the train robbers. So ended the first day of Annie's bail hearing.

Next morning, a smiling and laughing Annie with the dancing eyes sat in court carrying on a "lively conversation" with a deputy sheriff. She quit laughing as soon as she saw Pinkerton dick Lowell Spence take the stand. General Vaughn showed him the same photograph identified the day before by messenger Smith, and Spence also identified the man as the train robber, one Harvey Logan, member of the Wild Bunch, also called "Kid Curry," and said he was in the Knoxville, Tennessee, jail. (Note: After he got into a saloon brawl in Pueblo, Harvey and his brothers headed for Hole in the Wall, Wyoming, where they met up with George Curry. Having been known as the "Kid" in Texas, Harvey took George's last name and began to go by "Kid Curry.") Logan had been arrested December 1901 on a charge of felonious assault against policemen. He had over $9,000 of the stolen Bank of Montana bills on him at the time.

Interestingly, in this damning photograph of Logan, having been identified twice by witnesses, a hand could be seen resting on his left shoulder. In a dramatic moment worthy of Perry Mason himself, General Vaughn whipped out the other half of the picture. The hand was attached to the arm of the defendant, Annie Rogers. Uh Oh. The courtroom sizzled with excitement as observers whispered behind their hands. Then Annie took the stand.

Harvey Logan was better known as "Kid Curry" when he

was riding with the Wild Bunch.

This image available for photographic prints HERE!

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