Old West Outlaws - D

John Daly - (1839-1864) - Arriving in Aurora, Nevada from California in the early 1860's as a hired gun, Daly soon hooked up with "Three-Fingered Jack" McDowell and the two ran an unsavory saloon and operated the Daly Gang which terrorized the Nevada gold fields between Aurora and Carson City. Using scare tactics known as "criminal vigilantism," they lynched anyone who resisted. The saloon quickly became known as a place where beatings, gunfights, mayhem, and murder were the norm. McDowell , Daly and two other men named William Buckley and Jim Masterson, bullied the town and cheated any card players that were foolish enough to frequent McDowell's saloon. However, after the gang cut a man's throat and threw him in to Aurora's dusty street, the fed up citizens formed a vigilante group and attacked McDowell's saloon on February 5, 1864. Dragging McDowell, Daly, Buckley, and Masterson from the saloon, they locked them up while they quickly constructed a gallows. A short time later, all for men were hanged outside Armory Hall in Aurora.

Isom Dart aka: Ned Huddleston (1849-1900) - Born into slavery in Arkansas in 1849 Ned helped Confederate soldiers steal food and goods during the Civil War. After he was freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, he drifted into Texas and Mexico, working as a rodeo clown. However, he soon turned to cattle rustling in Mexico, moving the herds across the boundary and selling them in Texas. Though he tried to go straight many times in his life, he never quite succeeded, always returning to rustling. Over the years he also worked as a prospector, broke broncos and rode with the Gault Gang. In 1875 he moved to northwest Colorado where he was involved in gambling and and a number of fights. However, he tried to go straight again when he bought a ranch near Brown's Hole and changed his name to Isom Dart. In 1899, during the Brown’s Park range war between the Two-Bar Ranch Cattle Company and area ranchers, he took up with Ann Bassett, a ranch owner and cattle rustler herself. Soon the Two-Bar Ranch brought in Range Detective Tom Horn to suppress the cattle rustling and threaten the smaller ranches. In July, Dart received a note specifying that he and certain ranchers must leave the area. However, Dart chose to ignore the demand and on the morning of October 3rd, Tom Horn shot him dead.

Roy Daugherty, aka: Arkansas Tom Jones (1870-1924) - Raised in a highly religious family in Missouri, his two brothers became preachers, but Roy rebelled against the atmosphere and fled from home when he was only 14 years-old. Making his way to Oklahoma , he called himself "Arkansas Tom Jones," claiming to be from there. He first took a job as a cowboy but soon joined Bill Doolin's gang and was captured after the shootout at Ingalls, Oklahoma on September 1, 1893.

Convicted of manslaughter, he was sentenced to a fifty-year prison term. Due to the efforts of this ministering brothers, he obtained a parole in 1910. He then ran a restaurant in Drumright, Oklahoma, for two years, but bored with that he drifted to Hollywood, hoping to act in Westerns. That not panning out, he returned to robbery and helped in robbing a bank in Neosho in 1917. Again, he was caught and imprisoned but released in 1921. Evidently, this man could just not be rehabilitated because he was robbed a bank once more in Ashbury, Missouri the same year he was released. He remained a wanted man for three years, but was tracked to Joplin, Missouri on August 16, 1924 and killed in a gunfight while resisting arrest.

Ollie "Big Nose George" Deetz (1850-1889) - Deetz became the marshal of Manhattan, Colorado in May, 1887. Manhattan was a gold mining camp in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in northwestern Larimer County. Like other mining camps of the time, it had a lawless element and city authorities hired Deetz to "get rid of it." He seemingly happily complied, killing three men his first night on the job and collecting a $100 bounty on each man. He continued to "rid" the town of its seedier characters, hanging some of them after planting evidence. A year later he moved northward to Wyoming, and following an alleged bank robbery, he was lynched at Rock Creek on October 5, 1889.

John Herbert Dillinger (1903-1934) - Born of a farmer in Indianapolis, Indiana on June 28, 1903, John would grow up to be one of the nation's most notorious bank robbers during the depression era. In his youth, he developed a rebellious reputation and when he was old enough, joined the U.S. Navy, but deserted after only a few months. He then turned to a life of crime, robbing a local grocer in Mooresville, Indiana in September, 1924. Arrested and convicted he spent the next nine years in prison, before being released in May, 1933. Almost immediately, he gathered up a group of men and began to rob banks across Ohio, Indiana, Minnesota and Wisconsin. This, of course, quickly put him on the FBI's most wanted list and he was relentlessly pursued. He was finally betrayed by a prostitute named Anna Sage, who lead him into a trap at Chicago's Biograph Theater. When the pair were leaving the theater, FBI agents were waiting and opened fire on the notorious bank robber, hailing him with bullets on July 22, 1934.

Cornelius "Lame Johnny" Donahue (1850-1878) - A lawman and an outlaw, Donahue attended college in Philadelphia but moved to Texas to become a cowboy. However, because of a physical he didn't fair well and turned to horse thievery. In the 1870s, Donahue left Texas and wound up in Deadwood, South Dakota, where he was hired as a deputy sheriff. Some time later, he was working in the mines and was recognized as the Texas horse thief that he was. He fled Deadwood and returned to his old lifestyle of stealing horses and added stagecoach robbery to his "job" tasks. In one robbery he was said to have taken about $3,500 in currency, $500 in diamonds, hundreds of dollars worth of jewelry, and 700 pounds of gold dust, nuggets and bullion from a special "treasure coach” called the "Monitor" belonging to the Homestake Mine. With a take like that, the law was quickly on his tale and he was soon tracked down by livestock detective, Frank Smith, who arrested him. However, as Smith was returning Donahue to Deadwood, the stagecoach was pulled over by a masked rider who took Johnny from the coach. The officials first assumed that he had been "saved" by one of his outlaw cohorts, but that was not the case. The next day, "Lame Johnny" was found hanging from a tree near Buffalo Gap. When he was buried, his headstone, which is long since missing, read:

Pilgrim Pause! You’re standing on
The molding clay of Limping John.
Tread lightly, stranger, on this sod.
For if he moves, you’re robbed, by God

Belle Starr assisted Blue Duck in his appeal to commute the sentence to life in prison. The appeal was successful and Blue Duck was sent to Menard Penitentiary at Chester, Illinois on October 16, 1886. When he developed tuberculosis and given one month to live in 1895, he was pardoned by President Cleveland on March 20th to return home to die among friends. On May 7, 1895 he died and was buried in the Dick Duck Cemetery near Catoosa, Oklahoma.

Jack Dunlap (or Dunlop), aka: Three Fingered Jack (18??- 1900) - In the 1890's, Dunlap was robbing banks and trains in Arizona before being arrested. Following his release in 1895, he joined "Black Jack" Christian's Gang, and later the Alvord-Stiles Gang, again holding up trains. On February 15, 1900, several membres of the Alvord-Stiles Gang, including Jack Dunlap, Burt Alvord, Bill Stiles, George and Louis Owens, Bravo Juan Yoas, and Bob Brown attempted to rob the Wells Fargo Express car at the Southern Pacific railroad depot in Fairbank, Arizona. However, what they didn't know was that Jeff Milton, a former Texas Ranger, was working as the express messenger that night. In the inevitable gunplay that occurred, Milton was clipped in the arm, outlaw Bravo Juan Yaos was shot, and Dunlap lay dead. The rest of the gang made their escape without ever opening the safe.

William B. Dunn (18??-1896) - Dunn and his brothers, Bee, Calvin, Dal, and George, ran a road ranch near Ingalls, Oklahoma, for travelers looking for a place to eat and rest. Sometimes, these travelers that made the mistake of stopping were robbed, killed, and never seen again. The Dunn brothers sometimes acted as bounty hunters and helped law officers track down outlaws. Dunn also owned a meat market in Pawnee, Oklahoma where he disposed of cattle he and his brothers had stolen. When Charley Pierce and George "Bitter Creek" Newcomb , members of the Doolin Gang, stopped at the Dunn Ranch to see Rose Dunn, Newcomb's teenage girlfriend, her brothers turned them in for the reward and both were killed by lawmen. Dunn also led Heck Thomas and his posse to the hiding place of Bill Doolin on August 25, 1896. When Thomas demanded Doolin's surrender, the outlaw pulled his six-gun and fired twice before a blast from Bill Dunn's shot gun cut him to pieces. The people of the county began to get angry over Dunn's tactics and on November 6, 1896 he blamed Deputy Sheriff Frank Canton for the brutal way in which Newcomb and Pierce had been killed.  Canton soon confronted Dunn and when Bill pulled his revolver, Canton put a slug in his forehead, killing him instantly.

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