Category: Cops
TWO BANKS, TOO LONG, FOUR DEAD
The combination of the Winchester rifle and the Colt
Peacemaker revolver helped define this remarkable era.
Nature versus nurture. It’s a question as old as humanity. Are some people bad because they are imbued with faulty DNA, or is it that their mothers just didn’t love them enough? In the final analysis, most experts believe the end result is some toxic combination.
James Lewis Dalton and his wife, Adeline Lee Younger, had 12 children in all. Adeline was aunt to Cole and Jim Younger, the notorious outlaws who made up the famed James-Younger gang. However, by the time the Dalton kids came of age, their nefarious cousins were either in jail or dead. Of the 12, Bob, Grat, Emmett and Bill were the really bad eggs.
Grat and Bob at least started out on the straight and narrow. Grat served as a deputy marshal and used his brother Bob as a member of his posse. Along the way, they spilled a little blood but generally made the world a better place. By January 1889, Bob and Grat were both deputies serving at the whim of Marshal RL Walker in Wichita, Kansas. Bob had a side hustle working as part of the Osage Nation police force. They eventually brought on their brother Emmett to help guard prisoners.
Left to right, we see Bill Powers, Bob Dalton, Grat Dalton, and
Dick Broadwell cooling after the Coffeyville shootout.
Photo: Public Domain
This is a vintage photograph of the Condon Bank around
the time of the robbery. Photo: Public Domain
The Dark Side
In February of 1891, Bob and Emmett Dalton robbed their first train, a Southern Pacific passenger rig near Alila, Calif. They both wore masks and wielded .44-caliber Colt revolvers. Their identities were not firmly established until years later when their brother Lit admitted they had confided they had robbed the train.
There resulted a long string of bar fights, robberies, horse thefts, and assaults of various flavors. However, all the while, the specter of that first train robbery followed the boys around. During the robbery, the locomotive fireman had been shot and killed. Though it was assumed that Emmett had done the killing, reality is that the unfortunate man was inadvertently shot by the Expressman on board. Regardless, that made this a capital case and, therefore, quite serious. Grat was eventually caught but escaped before he could be shipped to San Quentin.
There were ultimately nine members of the Dalton gang. These miscreants robbed trains and banks as the opportunities allowed, shooting it out with lawmen and frequently escaping only in the nick of time. Their protracted crime spree spanned more than two years from 1890 through 1892. However, as always seems to be the case, the guys eventually got greedy. In a world driven by graft and a weird thirst for notoriety, the Dalton gang aspired to be on top. To do so, they decided they should rob two banks at one time. This turned out to be a really bad idea.
The Dalton Gang earned widespread publicity for their
merciless reign of terror. Image: Public Domain
The Setting
In scheming out this ambitious robbery, Bob Dalton claimed they would “Beat anything Jesse James ever did — rob two banks at once, in broad daylight.” Such hubris does not generally make for a long, fruitful retirement within the sorts of circles that defined the Dalton Gang. All that came to a head on 5 October, 1892, in Coffeyville, Kansas.
There were five villains in total — Bob and Emmett Dalton were tasked to take the First National Bank. Grat Dalton, Dick Broadwell and Bill Powers were to take the Condon Bank across the street. Their weapons of choice were lever-action Winchester rifles.
This part of Kansas was familiar to the Dalton boys, and many of the folks in town knew them. In fact, Emmett had originally objected to the location out of concern some of his old friends might get hurt. However, Bob lied and assured him there would be no shooting.
The men stashed their horses nearby and tried to stroll down the crowded street without being recognized.
Grat had even donned some fake whiskers to help preserve his anonymity. A local street repair worker spotted the men strolling purposefully, trying to hide their ample Winchesters and shouted, “The Daltons are robbing the bank!” At that point, everything came to pieces.
Prussian military genius Helmut Moltke once opined, “No plan survives first contact with the enemy.” However, in October of 1892, apparently, the Daltons had not read that book. Despite the alarm having been raised, these five men in two groups just barged into their respective banks and executed the plan.
Grat, Broadwell and Powers immediately got control of the Condon Bank and directed the manager to open the safe housing the gold. The quick-thinking administrator lied and claimed the safe was on a time lock and could not be opened for 10 minutes. Grat and company took the man at his word and just decided to wait. Meanwhile, outside, pretty much everybody in town had descended upon two nearby hardware stores and emptied them of weapons and ammunition. The stage was set for an epic scrap.
Across the street, Bob and Emmett were having a better time of it at the Condon Bank. They got into the safe easily enough but ran into trouble when they headed back out the front door to rendezvous with their mates. A nearby American Express agent engaged the two bank robbers with his sidearm, forcing them back into the building. The Dalton brothers then grabbed a pair of customers as hostages and headed out the back door.
Bob and Emmett left the back of the Condon Bank and ran into a local citizen named Lucius Baldwin. Baldwin had a weapon but hesitated, so Bob shot him dead with his rifle. The two robbers then made their way along an alley toward the ever-growing gunfire that was peppering the bank across the street, where their brother Grat was still waiting for the imaginary time lock to open on the safe.
Eventually, the bank manager did indeed open the safe and burdened the three bank robbers down with gold and cash. By the time they left through a side door, Powers was wounded in the arm, and the entire town was blazing away at them. The five gang members rendezvoused and then made for their horses.
Along the way, they shot and killed several townspeople. A clerk from the First National Bank named Thomas Ayres made it to a hardware store and retrieved a rifle only to have Bob Dalton shoot him in the head through a window with his Winchester from a range of 200 feet. Ayers was not killed, but he was rendered paralyzed for the rest of his days.
As the gang made their escape, they encountered Town Marshal Charles Connelly and cut him down. In response, an armed citizen named John Kloehr shot Grat Dalton through the throat.
Armed citizens firing from one of the hardware stores shot Bob Dalton through the head and chest, killing him where he stood. Bill Powers made it onto his horse only to be shot out of his saddle, where he bled out. Emmett made it onto his horse without being hit and proceeded to ride away. When he realized that his brothers were down, he turned around to help and caught a load of 12-gauge buckshot for his trouble. Dick Broadwell was hit multiple times but escaped. Authorities found his body some two miles away.
Categories
The Charlie Kirk murder
Okay, maybe my life’s been a little different. I guess not too many people have taken advanced scatology studies from bronze-age warriors — how to identify “friend or foe” by takin’ apart their poop with a twig — or had a monkey pee down their shirt collar while leaning against his tree, tryin’ to grab some Zs.
At the time, I didn’t know I was gathering writing material. I just thought I had an interesting job. Fiction can be fascinating, but for sheer maniacal madness and loose screw lunacy, nothin’ beats reality. Here are some examples.
Weird Crime
Are you sick and tired of hearing about how guns commit crimes, and all the ills of man can be traced back to firearms? Historically, guns are relative Johnny-come-latelies in the field of human homicide. And, people bein’ the crafty kill-crazed critters they are, they’re constantly inventing new ways to whack each other without the benefit of powder and slug.
A new favorite of mine comes to us from Houston, Texas. There, Tammy Jean Warner, 42, was recently charged with killing her 58-year-old husband, Michael — by giving him a sherry enema.
Yep. She hooked up two bottles of sherry to an enema tube, pumped Michael to the max, and raised his blood-alcohol level to a lethal .47 percent, killin’ him deader’n a cockroach on the kitchen floor.
She said she did it because a throat ailment left him unable to drink his favorite sherry, and she was just helpin’ him out. She mighta gotten away with it, but the police learned she had burned Michael’s will the month before.
In that document, he had left the bulk of his assets to a daughter from a previous marriage. It seems Tammy wasn’t happy with that. They took another look.
Yeah, you might think that death by alcohol poisoning may be more pleasant than takin’ two 7.62s in the boiler room and losing your attempt to set a record in the “100-Meter Low Crawl With a Sucking Chest Wound,” but dudes, somehow, the mere thought of death by enema gives me the serious willies. I’ll take the incoming, thank you.
From Across the Pond
For sheer silliness in the Great Gun Debacle, you can’t beat our English cousins. You know about the “armed police” in England, right? After disarming the law-abiding citizens and leaving only criminals armed with guns,
Great Britain soon vaulted to the number-one spot among industrialized nations in armed assaults. This made life a bit sticky for the unarmed bobbies, so the Brits recruited and trained some officers to carry guns and deal with firearm-toting bad guys.
The basic premise is that when the regular “unleaded” bobbies step in some deep kimchee, they pull back and whistle up the armed troops. This should have made things jollier in Liverpool, but the problem is, the zoo is still overseen and operated by gun-hating bureaucrats and fuzzywigged liberal judges.
Time after time, legal decisions have come down against those armed police, ruining careers, emptying their bank accounts, and sometimes jailing them with the crooks they’ve fought. Recently, some of ‘em broke under the last straw.
Let The Games Begin
Police had a tip, including name and description, of an alleged armed Irish terrorist who would be exiting a bar carrying a sawn-off shotgun. The tip later proved to be false and apparently maliciously placed, but the confrontation occurred for real.
There was the suspect, carrying a short, wrapped cylindrical object, and although details are sketchy, it appears that he failed to comply with certain instructions, like dropping the packet and putting his hands up. The officers capped him and he later expired. When the scattergun-like object turned out to be a table leg wrapped in newspaper, the games began.
When the first inquest concluded, the officers were ruled justified, based on the fact that they had acted appropriately on the information they had and the situation they encountered.
This, of course, did not sit well with the Warm-‘n-Fuzzies, who felt that since the outcome was bad, the officers must have done something bad. A second inquest resulted in their suspensions, pending charges. That ruling also paved the way for civil suits with the potential to impoverish their great-grandkiddies. The Fuzzies were tickled. The armed police were not. The message was clear.
By the following Tuesday, 120 of London’s 400 armed police had turned in their guns and firearms authorization cards. Carry guns and incur grave risk for a society that wouldn’t back them up? No, thanks. They decided that the courts and bureaucrats were far more dangerous than the armed criminals they might face.
BBC Fuzz
The same week, I reviewed a news article about the explosive growth and “effectiveness” of Britain’s most feared and hated law enforcement agency — the Telly Police.
In England, if you own a TV, it is presumed you watch the BBC, even if you hate that crap and never tune in. Nonetheless, you are legally required to buy an annual “TV license” for about $233, which goes to subsidize BBC’s “politically approved programmes.”
If caught TV-owning without a license, first-time offenders can draw fines of $1,923 or even jail time. Repeat offenders get the Zenith thrown at ‘em, and 20 illegal TV-watchers went to prison last year.
Twenty people hittin’ the joint may seem small, but keep in mind it’s all about the money. If you’re in the Big House, you can’t pay the big bucks.
The real story lies in the fact that TV fee-evasion charges now make up 12 percent of magistrate cases nationwide, 1,000 illegal TV-watchers are caught per day — 380,000 per year — and the Telly Police are now equipped with hand-held electronic devices which can detect TV viewing while TP’s drive or stroll down the street outside.
And yes, Virginia, they do get warrants for “TV searches” based on high-tech sniffery. Nothing like having your public safety priorities in order, right?
All’s peachy unless and until they run into some armed, obstinate dude who refuses to cooperate. Then the bobbies are called. And if they’re met with a gun, they can call, ummm … well, maybe not the armed police. There may not be any around. Maybe “GhostBusters” or something.
Perhaps the suspect could be threatened with the administration of a sherry enema … See what I mean? Who needs an imagination when you’ve got the news?
We’ve chronicled many times before how bad guys with knives, axes and other weapons that are less effective than firearms have come out on the wrong end of illegal encounters. But this is the first time I can remember reporting on a home invasion where the intruder carried a screwdriver.
Repeat Chicago criminal Shelby Hurd was a product of Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s early parole programs. Like many such criminals, however, Hurd decided that rather than going straight after receiving that break, he’d bust into a home and steal whatever he wanted. After all, he’d done it before and was still on the street.
That’s exactly what Hurd did on the night of August 15 in Joliet, Illinois. Late that night, the 36-year-old Hurd broke into the home. As it turns out, that would be the last crime Hurd would ever commit, since an armed homeowner ensured that Hurd didn’t leave the home alive.
According to police reports, a woman and her infant child were at home alone when Hurd, armed with a screwdriver, broke in. Hearing the home invader, the woman took her baby and retreated to the safety of an upstairs closet.
“A preliminary investigation indicates the victim and her child hid in a bedroom closet, and she armed herself after hearing someone forcibly enter the home,” Joliet Police Sgt. Dwayne English told shawlocal.com.
When Hurd, armed with the screwdriver, came upstairs where the woman and baby were hiding, the heroic mother shot the home intruder. Officers responding to a call found Hurd on the second floor of the residence, dead from a gunshot wound. A woman, still with the gun in her hand, and her infant child were found in an adjacent bedroom.
“The information we have, and the evidence found at the scene, indicates that Hurd was at the home to commit a burglary,” English said. “What his motive was beyond that and why he chose this residence is still under investigation.
“The suspect was wearing gloves and in possession of a screwdriver at the time of the incident. The suspect was not known to the victim.”
While this was apparently his first time having a run-in with an armed citizen, Hurd was no stranger to the Illinois “justice” system. According to Will County court records, Hurd was convicted of committing burglaries in 2022 in Tinley Park and in 2023 in Frankfort. And according to the Illinois Department of Corrections, he had also been convicted of burglary and identity theft in Cook County.
Hurd had just received early parole, getting him out of jail and back on the streets, only six months before the break-in. Had Hurd killed the residents rather than being killed by them, there’s little doubt Gov. Pritzker and other anti-gun Democrats would have blamed something other than the criminal for his actions.