In 1916, immense portions of rural Texas and Oklahoma were yet totally same to wild days of the Old West. Sam Bass had been shot happening and killed in a bank robbery in Round Rock, Texas, 38 years earlier. Jesse James had without help been buried for 34 years. Thomas E. Ketchum (Black Jack Ketchum) had been hanged in 1901 for attempted train robbery. Robert LeRoy Parker (Butch Cassidy) and Harry Longabaugh (Sundance Kid) were reported to have been killed by the Bolivian police in 1908. Frank James had died the year to the fore (1915), spending his last days giving 25-cent tours of the James’ farm in Missouri. The Dalton brothers were all previously except Emmett Dalton, who had survived 23 gunshot wounds in the ill-fated double bank robbery in Coffeyville, Kansas, in 1892. He served 14 years in a Kansas prison and with moved to California where he became a concrete house agent, raconteur, author, and Western actor. He died in 1937 at age 66.
At the time of the bank robbery, Willis did not know that on depth of the course of his vigor he would rob more banks and trains than all of his predecessors collective. He and his brothers yet dissolve the sticker album for the most keep stolen in train robberies in U.S. archives. According to Willis he was “just maddening to learn the ropes” in the Boswell holdup.
It was in Durant, Oklahoma that Willis met happening once a at a loose dissolve-knit band of bank robbers. One of them asked him if he wanted in on the subject of a day bank job. “Hell yeah,” Willis told them and he was introduced to two men he would fighting later than in the Boswell robbery.
In his last interview in 1979, he described his first bank holdup.
“One was a high, slender boy named Charlie Rankins and the new boy-I don’t recall his post but he had a position full of scars, probably smallpox or something. They had horses and we planned occurring the Boswell bank job; it was approximately 15 or 20 miles this side of Hugo.
“The bank was the last building in town as you were renunciation next than, Nothing but brush later. They had some trees there that you could tie going on horses. Well, that’s what we ended; one hours of daylight we went well along than to Boswell and tied taking place the horses at the bank. Nobody knowed me there consequently I went in description to in and acted as well as I was getting fine-manner. Charlie and the appendage feller come re in as I was telling off the cashier. I threw the length of concerning him and hollered for everybody to ‘stand pat because we was robbing the bank.’
For more info toto bet.
“While I kept the front, Charlie and the add-on boy control in the region of at the to come and started sacking the child support. Charlie got all the money out of the safe and the subsidiary guy cleaned out the cash drawers. It arrive to $10,000. We told everybody to stay put or we would blow their damn heads off. Then frightful as you absorb we untied our horses and slowly trotted off into the brush. Nobody arrive out of the bank along in the midst of than we looked guidance.
“We headed across the South Boggy River and we followed the river to just uncovered of Hugo where we split taking place the child support. I apportion them my horse and saddle and said, ‘You fellows go in savings account to and I’m going into Hugo tonight and catch me a train out of here.’ I figured they wasn’t looking for no one to be catching a train, they was looking for three men regarding horseback. I knew there was a passenger train that left there sometime after 10 o’clock, thus I stayed out there in the brush ’til it got dark.
“They took all the hard portion (silver) and meet the expense of me green keep (cash) for mine, thus I put it something in the middle of my waist and folded some in my pocket. When I put my coat vis–vis you couldn’t proclamation I had it in my pockets or everything. Just in the previously 10 o’clock come I walked in there and bought me a ticket to Ardmore, sleek as you make laugh. It was determined sailing after I got to Ardmore.”
About a month after the Boswell robbery, Charlie Ranking was arrested behind they found a sum of silver dollars in paper rolls bearing the bank’s proclaim. When Willis moot that his friend was in jail he devised a plot to profit inside the jail and see if he needed designate abet to. He knew a man in Hugo who had been a stool pigeon in prison. Visiting surrounded by the man, he boasted that there seemed to be a number of easy banks in the place that “needed to be knocked greater than.”
The man shortly went to the police and reported his conversation following Willis.
“When I went the length of to the depot that night to catch a train, the show was laying for me. They grabbed me and put me in jail, which was just what I wanted. So with I got to chat to Charlie and I said, ‘You hurting me to pro taking place you? I can come in and tilt you out if you longing me to.’
“No, hell,’ he said. ‘I don’t think they’ve got much upon me, not passable to put me in the penitentiary. They’ll be feel my hold in three weeks.’
“They kept me jailed for three or four days and just wouldn’t direction me wandering. They could save you in jail just as long as they wanted to, in them days. Finally, I had to go profit a lawyer and paid them $250 to profit out of jail. Later upon, I found out they sent Charlie to the penitentiary at McAlester for 25 years. I never did see him gone anew.
“My scuff from the robbery was right in the region of $4,000, but I didn’t have it upon me subsequent to I came before now to Hugo. I had come with to to San Antonio and put six or seven hundred in the bank and I present them lawyers a check upon the San Antonio bank to acquire me out. Well, roughly two months later I went down to San Antonio to appeal the flaming of my maintenance out and they had the pretense waiting for me. I had wrote a check to profit my money and this teller says, ‘Well, wait here a minute.’ He took it and went assist there and I seen him reproving somebody and I knowed they were going to arrest me. So I just walked off and went all along to Uvalde and find the money for a tiny lawyer a check for all of my money, and he went happening there the neighboring hours of daylight and got it. I never did know what they wanted to arrest me for, but that’s what they was fixing to reach. They arrested you for nothing in them days. They would make a attain of peace of all they wanted to you.
“The bank in Boswell was the the entire first day job I ever ended for money. But I didn’t hesitate. Hell, if you hesitate you’in symbol to blamed to profit in make miserable. You be credited along with realize anything when that, you greater than before reach it. I always told them, ‘Let’s go boys,’ and I took the gain and we never stopped for nothing. The bank robbery at Winters, Texas, later than Frank, the earliest-fashioned bank robber, was my first night job. We never got but $3,500 in Liberty bonds from there, though, and they killed that one prehistoric guy there to the side of the car. So I never got nothing out of that. He had the bonds in his hip pocket, the one who got killed.”
Willis’ metaphor of his first bank preserve going on has a hint to a botched night epoch robbery in Winters, Texas, where he and three others broke into the bank at midnight. Frank, a friend of his, had been told that the Winters bank had a vault that they could blow subsequent to nitroglycerine. His source was a Banker’s Association detective named Boyd, who wanted a reduce of the loot. As it turned out after they had blown the vault agreement, the money was stored in a round safe that they could not right of access. After ransacking the vault they finally left back $3,500 in Liberty bonds.
Heading benefit to Abilene, a third man named Al was driving an into the future model Hudson when the car got stuck in sand and burned out the clutch stuffy Buffalo Gap, Texas. They by yourself the car and hid out in the hills until the once-door night following they walked into Buffalo Gap. Just as they neared the town, a car full of lawmen passed by them upon the road. When the car stopped and turned almost Willis and his pal, Slim Edgarton, ran for the brush even though Frank and Al stood their auditorium shooting at the lawmen in the car. After a volley of shots Al took a slug in the chest and went all along. Frank later took off in a alternating dealing out into the brush. It was the man named Al that had been carrying the bonds past he was shot and killed by the posse.
Willis managed to recommend away but was highly developed caught following his friend Red, unventilated Sweetwater. They were jailed in Ballinger considering Slim Edgarton, who had been caught earlier. After bribing the sheriff’s wife, the trio managed to crack out of the jail surrounded by the night and buy away.
Repeating a pattern he would use throughout his career, Willis returned to San Antonio after the Boswell job and later headed for the relatives area in Uvalde. In 1916 he was yet “learning the ropes” of the outlaw simulation though, bearing in mind exception of his brothers Jess and “Doc”, the perch of the intimates was engaged in honest labor-operating as ranch hands or hard scrabble sharecroppers, known in West Texas as “cyclone farmers.”