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Lawmen and Outlaws, Past and Present

simon1

simon1

Self Ignored by Vista
Anyone have any Lawmen, or Outlaws (SpongeBob SquarePants comes to mind) that they are interested in? Anything from the Old West to the '20s, '30s, and '40s era of the Gangsters and G-Men to the '50s, '60s of Vegas to the '70s of the last part of the Mafia reign (unless the "Mob" has went more underground these days), to the current Most Wanted and the men that pursue them, along with the guns and equipment they used/use. One handgun that is not popularly portrayed in cinema is the Merwin, Hulbert and Company double action revolver of the 19th century.

Merwin, Hulbert & Co.: Most Practical Double
Colt’s and S&W may have had the corner on double-action revolver sales in the late 19th century, but no company built a better or easier-to-use double-action revolver in the 1880s than Merwin, Hulbert & Co. The quality of machining of its guns was so precise that, when opened and closed for loading and unloading, a vacuum was actually formed, which caused the guns to draw themselves part-way closed.
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Text excerpt courtesy of the American Rifleman.

https://www.americanrifleman.org/articles/2010/8/30/double-action-revolvers-the-old-west/

I guess a good place to start would be with Deputy U.S. Marshal Heck Thomas.

He was a courier as a preteen in the Civil War (shades of Indiana Jones in WWI) and then went on to a Law Enforcement career, most notably as one of the Three Guardsmen.

https://www.nps.gov/fosm/learn/historyculture/heck-thomas.htm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGMQ6iC77MA

As for the Tulsa channel's statement that Thomas was the inspiration for True Grit's Rooster Cogburn, while partially true, apparently Cogburn was a mix of Deputy Marshals of that era.

http://www.exploresouthernhistory.com/roostercogburn.html

As a file and forget thingy...Heck Thomas' gun belt.

http://leatherworker.net/forum/topic/14809-heck-thomas-gun-belt/

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auk1124

auk1124

Sid Hatfield. Mess with his town, end up in the cemetery. Gunned down on his way to court during the mining wars.

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langod

langod

I'm partial to some of the Rum Runners on the east coast during prohibition. Probably because various branches of my family have been involved in smuggling and gun running going back to before the Revolutionary War. My family is from NY and NJ and have been there for generations. (I can actually trace my family back to companions of Peter Minuit who bought Manhattan from the Indians in 1626.)
No one has ever said for sure, but there are rumors that that a few family members were still keeping up the family tradition during Prohibition.

William McCoy is someone I've only read about, he wasn't a relative, although I imagine if the family rumors are true, that some relatives probably met or worked with him. Perhaps the most famous of the Prohibition Rum Runners, He started as a well-renowned boat builder, but as the economy crashed, he went into rum running to maintain income. He eventually invented the practice of anchoring his ships outside of the 3 mile limit, where smaller boats would meet him and smuggle the liquor to the mainland. This took most of the "risk" out of his practice, as he didn't actually bring liquor inside the US. Due to his success -- he was making around $300K per run -- the Government decided to catch him no matter what -- even if outside of the territorial limits. He was finally caught, plead guilty only saying in his defense, "I was providing whisky -- good whisky at that -- to paying customers outside of the 3 mile limit." He only served 9 months in jail in NJ.
He then went (back) into boat building to clientele up and down the east coast.

Fun Fact: He sold his liquor under the label "The Real McCoy" and that became a mark of quality for good quality, un-diluted spirits, with people on the mainland asking for "The Real McCoy" to ensure they were getting their money's worth. However, contrary to urban legend, he did not originate the phrase, only borrowed it.


Handsome guy, too.
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simon1

simon1

Self Ignored by Vista
McCoy looks like quite a character there Jim. Looked him up and looks like he was the victim of an illegal arrest.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_McCoy_(bootlegger)

Ashley seems like one of those people who could easily have been as famous as Dillinger and others, but didn't have much publicity about him.

Rex Brinlee, Albert McDonald, Tom Lester Pugh, Cleo Epps...all well known figures in the Tulsa area when I was growing up. McDonald was allegedly involved in the murder of Sheriff Buford Pusser's wife. It seems to be unknown exactly what kind of guns were used though.

https://statecrimebureau.wordpress.com/tag/dixie-mafia/

http://tnvalleytalks.hoop.la/topic/machine-gun-from-creek-linked-to-buford-pusser

Pusser was known to have carried several different handguns at different times: an S&W Mod. 58 in .41 mag., a Mod. 19 in .357, and sometimes a Python.

http://smith-wessonforum.com/s-w-revolvers-1961-1980/131125-bufford-pussers-41-magnum.html

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Acmemfg

Acmemfg

He was carrying the Python at the time he crashed the Corvette and was killed. Saw it when it was on display up near Pigeon Forge many years ago.
 
simon1

simon1

Self Ignored by Vista
Acmemfg said:
He was carrying the Python at the time he crashed the Corvette and was killed. Saw it when it was on display up near Pigeon Forge many years ago.
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Cool! The original Walking Tall movie, the one with Joe Don Baker, was on not too long ago. I hadn't seen that one in years. I'm not real familiar with the factual history of Sheriff Pusser, but I'm sure there was quite a bit of "literary license" taken in the film. The closest I've been to Tennessee is Georgia.
 
simon1

simon1

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Ooops, I forgot to put something up about Rex Brinlee...he's not mentioned in the article about Mrs. Pusser's murder. I remember this bombing where he got the wrong target. I guess he said "Oooops." If I remember correctly when he was located after one of his prison escapes he was hiding in a hole in the woods and was covered from head to toe in chigger bites. :biggrin1:

He was friends with Albert McDonald...and him, Pugh, and McDonald had something to do with an attempted car bombing of a Tulsa Judge but I can't find an article on it right now...you connect the dots.

http://www.historicalcrimedetective.com/msm-rex-brinlee-jr/
 
simon1

simon1

Self Ignored by Vista
Oh my...I was going to put up a post about Steve Hedrick-Bounty Hunter, who is in the Beaumont, Texas area. While looking for a newspaper article I had seen about him a few years ago I couldn't find it (it had a picture of him standing on the courthouse steps) and saw on the search results that on a Fugitive Recovery forum it said "RIP Steve Hedrick." I tried to get on the forum to see what was going on, but I guess my account has been deactivated since I haven't been on there for so long. You have to be vetted...license current, be active on the forum, etc...before you can use the board. There is a lot of sensitive information exchanged there. I know Steve...I helped him on some cases.

And for what some people are thinking...No...Dog the Bounty Hunter is not looked upon very well in the professional fugitive recovery circles. He breaks the law, more than once, went to Mexico illegally and "kidnapped" someone, when there are other legal ways to get someone back from Mexico. I won't go into that right now.

Steve contacted me a few years ago to try and find a skip that was supposed to be "somewhere" in Dallas. After some records checks (and a wait while the Dallas P.D. sent the public information request to the State Attorney General for an opinion on what to release) I found that the skip had a disturbance with significant other (and apparently there was no check for warrants on the call) and the police report had...the address.

After locating the residence, and watching it for awhile, I went by the South Oak Cliff sub-station in Dallas and the shift Sergeant sent a two man unit with me to do a knock-and-talk. The house wasn't but about a mile-and-a-half from the sub-station. For those not familiar with Dallas...South Oak Cliff is about the worst place in town.

I covered the back of the house while the two D.P.D. Officers knocked on the front door. I heard the Officers talking to someone, and after about a minute or so, with no one jumping out the back window, I walked up to the door...it was the skip's kids. They said the skip had "Went to the store, be back in a little while."

The Officers and I walked back to the cars and they said they'd keep an eye on the place, they didn't know about the warrant. I watched the house for awhile and nothing, nada. Yeah, I know very well...cell phone call. But for as long as I set up on the house they would have had to come back to get their things if they had just went to the store, or had someone bring stuff to them. Nothing...no one came or went.

Steve called me a couple of days later and said that he received information that the skip had ran to Arkansas the day before I was in Dallas. Never heard if he got them or not. Steve did send me a check for my time and expenses though.

I'm gonna have to find out what happened to Steve.
 
simon1

simon1

Self Ignored by Vista
Oh, and there is the time a recovery agent out of Dallas and I went to The Woodlands, a suburb of Houston, to find someone.

Dave and I located the house where, from our intel., was the last address of the bail jumper. We parked down the street among the other cars in the neighborhood, blending in the best we could. With the tinted windows on the car, and we had parked with a dark background behind us, the silhouette of us sitting in the car was not very visible. We waited, watching the house, until after dark. There was no activity around the residence, and no lights came on at dusk.

After full dark, doing a security pat of the Smith and Wesson .357 under my coat, I grabbed a flashlight and told Dave I was going to see what I could see. I walked up to the house like I was just a regular person and knocked on the door. Nothing. Looking around I saw that I was not drawing any attention from the neighbors, so I walked around the side of the house and noticed that the blinds on all of the windows were open. I did a quick shine of the soft blue light of the covert flashlight, shielded by my hand, through the windows. There was no furniture in the house…it appeared to be vacant.

Then I heard a “clank” from down the street, about where our car was parked. I softly walked to the front corner of the house and did a “quick peek” around the edge of the house and….
 
simon1

simon1

Self Ignored by Vista
Prof. Moriarty said:
And.....??? I am on the edge of my seat here Mike
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It was a guy working in his front yard. We asked him about the guy that lived in the house and he said "Oh, he got killed in a car wreck a couple of weeks ago...about three blocks from here."

We went to the P.D. and got a copy of the wreck report, then the next day obtained a copy of the death certificate so the bondsman could give it to the court in Dallas so it would nullify the bond. :biggrin1:
 
simon1

simon1

Self Ignored by Vista
coonskinner said:
My old granddad spent the night in a barn with Pretty Boy Floyd one night when he was tramping through southern Oklahoma.
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That's interesting. Do you have any info. on Charles Arthur? My Grandma (Dad's Mom) had the maiden last name of Floyd. Granddad and Grandma always lived on a farm not too far from Pryor, OK in Mayes County. My uncle has a third generation ranch outside of Inola, Rogers County, but he's getting along in years now and my cousin pretty much runs it.
 
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