Eugene Bunch, Train Robber.
Eugene Bunch, also known as Captain J.F. Gerard, was a school teacher turned train robber. Bunch remained a gentleman throughout the four years he robbed trains.
Born in Mississippi, Bunch was well-educated and enlisted in the Civil War in Louisiana in May 1861. He served in Company E of the Third Louisiana Cavalry. After the war ended, he married a girl from a neighboring parish. He worked as a school teacher in Louisiana when the couple moved to Gainesville, Texas, where he edited a local newspaper. Allegedly, he also became heavily involved in gambling, and perhaps, for this reason, he turned to train robbery.
Along with a few other bandits, the group robbed trains in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi from 1888 to 1892. Upon arriving on the train, Bunch always spoke softly to the express car messengers, telling them that if they did not open their safes, he would “blow their brains out.” Before robbing the train’s passengers, he always politely introduced himself as Captain J.F. Gerard. To train passengers, he tipped his hat to the ladies and didn’t take their handbags. Though he was just as gentlemanly to the men, he did, however, take their wallets.
Over four years, Bunch robbed six trains, making off with more than $30,000. But for Bunch, like many others, it wasn’t to last. After his largest robbery in 1892, when he took about $20,000 from a train near New Orleans, Pinkerton agents pursued him relentlessly. Before long, they tracked him to a swamp in Louisiana and, on August 21, 1892, shot and killed him and his cohorts. He is buried in Franklinton, Louisiana.
©Kathy Alexander/Legends of America, updated September 2026.
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