Henry Starr is no doubt one of
the most interesting characters who ever came out of the Old West. During
his 32 years in crime, he claimed he had robbed more banks than both the
James-Younger Gang and the Doolin-Dalton Gang put together. However, in
all of his life as a criminal he only killed one man, a U.S. Deputy Marshall
who was about to arrest him. He started robbing banks on horseback in 1893
and ended up robbing his last in a car in 1921. He was the first bank robber
to use an automobile in a bank robbery. A total of 21 bank is what he is
alleged to have robbed. If he did pull all of those robberies, he would
have made off with nearly $60000.00.
Henry Starr was born near Fort
Gibson, I.T. on Dec. 2, 1973 to Tom Starr and Mary (Scott) Starr. His uncle
was the notorious Sam Starr who was married to Belle Starr, the "outlaw
queen". He was 1/4 Cherokee. His father died at an early age and his
mother remarried a man named C. N. Walker. Henry hated his new stepfather
and this caused a lot of hard feeling and was the driving force of Henry
leaving home at an early age.
Henry was working on ranches
near Nowata, I.T. when he had his first run-in with the law. He was driving
a wagon to town one day when two deputy marshals caught him with whiskey
and arrested him for "introducing spirits into territory." He
went to court and plead guilty to the offense, although he always maintained
that he was innocent because he had borrowed the wagon and didn't know
the whiskey was in it. He was only 16 years old.
Henry found himself back at Nowata,
working as a cowboy, when his next brush with the law came. He was arrested
for horse theft, another charge he denied, and was thrown in jail at Fort
Smith, Ark. His cousin paid his bail, and Henry was out. The problem was
he wasn't going back. He jumped bail.
The path was clear to Henry now,
and there was no turning back. He joined up with Ed Newcome and Jesse Jackson
and went on a tear robbing stores and railroad depots. However, the law
was after him now.
U.S. Deputy Marshals Henry C.
Dickey and Floyd Wilson were hot on the trail of Henry near Nowata, when
the event that would nearly cost Henry his life, twice, happened. In a
shoot-out with the marshal, Henry killed him. He was now wanted for murder.
With the law on his trail, Henry's
Gang became more bolder, as they started robbing banks. On March 28, 1893
they robbed their first bank in Caney, Ks. Then they robbed the bank in
Bentonville, Ark. But it was heating up for them in the territory, so Henry
and Kid Wilson made tracks for California. They were captured in Colorado
Spring, Co., and returned to Fort Smith to stand trail.
Henry stood trail for the murder
of Floyd Wilson in the court of Judge Isaac Parker. Although he maintained
it was self-defense, because he didn't know that Floyd Wilson was a marshal
with a warrant for his arrest, he was found guilty and sentence to hang.
His attorney appealed his case to the U.S. Supreme Court which overturn
Parker's decision and granted Henry a new trail. The second trail ended
with the same results, Henry was guilty and he was sentence to hang. His
attorney once again appealed and won him a new trail. At the third trial
Henry plead guilty to manslaughter, and was sentenced to 25 years in the
penitentiary.
It was during his stay in jail
at Fort Smith, awaiting trial, that one of his most amazing deeds was accomplished.
Fellow prisoner, attempted a prison
break with a gun smuggled him by a trustee. There was a gun battle between
Bill and the prison guards, in which one of the guards had been killed.
However, the guards were unable to disarm Bill and it was stand-off. Henry
was a friend of Bill's and offered to disarm him if the guards would in
turn promise not to kill Bill. The promise was made and Henry entered the
cell where Bill was at, and retrieved the weapon.
It was this incident that would
secure Henry his freedom. When Henry, with help from his family and the
Cherokee Tribal Government, applied for a pardon in 1903, President T.
Roosevelt admired the man for his courage in the Cherokee Bill incident
so much, that he reduced his sentence and Henry was released from prison
in 1905.
After his release from prison,
Henry returned to Tulsa, I.T. and worked in his mother's restaurant. It
was here he met and married his first wife, Miss Ollie Griffin, shortly
after his son, whom he named Theodore Roosevelt Starr, was born. Henry
manage to behave himself until 1908, when Oklahoma became a state. Under
the fear of being extradited to Arkansas, he took to the brush of the Osage
hills, and fell in with his old partners.
On March 13, 1908, Henry and
his gang crossed the Kansas border and robbed the bank at Tyro, Ks. With
the law hot on his tracks again, they fled Oklahoma heading west. Their
next job was the bank in Amity, Co. From there Henry fled to Arizona, where
he was captured by the law and returned to Colorado to stand trial.
November of 1909, Henry plead
guilty to robbing the Amity, Co. bank and was sentenced to 7 - 25 years
in the Canon City Prison. It was during his stay at Canon City that Henry
not only work as a trustee, he study law in the prison library, and wrote
his autobiography, Thrilling Events, Life
of Henry Starr. On September 24, 1913
he was paroled by the governor and free again.
In the autumn of 1914, the first
in the worst series of bank robberies in the Southwest occurred in Oklahoma.
Between Sept. 14, 1914 and Jan. 13, 1915 a total of 14 banks were robbed.
At first officials were at a lost to figure out who was committing the
crimes. Then one of the victims was able to identify a picture of the bandits.
Henry Starr was back to his old tricks. A $1000 reward was offered the
governor of the state, for Henry. The reward was payable "Dead or
Alive".
It was during this time Henry
pulled one of his slickest moves, while the law was searching all over
the brush of the Osage hills and other known hideouts for him, Henry was
living in the heart of Tulsa, at 1534 East Second Street, just two blocks
from the Tulsa county sheriff and four blocks from the mayor of Tulsa.
Then on March 27, 1915 Henry
and six other men rode into the town of Stroud, OK. and proceeded to rob
both banks in the community. Word of the holdup spread throughout the town
and the citizens quickly took up arms against the bandits. Henry and another
bandit named Lewis Estes were wounded and captured in the gun battle. The
rest of the gang had escaped with $5815, thus pulling off a double daylight
bank robbery.
Once again Henry found himself
in jail, on August 2, 1915 Henry entered a plea of guilty in the Stroud
robbery, and was sentenced to 25 years in the Oklahoma State Penitentiary
at McAlester, Ok. On March 15, 1919 he was paroled and released from prison.
Upon his release from prison,
Henry returned to Tulsa, and with the urging of friends entered the motion
picture industry. Henry produced and starred in the silent movie A
Debtor to the Law, which was a movie about
the double bank robbery in Stroud, Ok. The movie was an immediate success.
For his part Henry was alleged to have netted $15,000. He went on to star
in a couple of other movies, and was offer from Hollywood to do a movie
out there. He turned it down from fear that if he went to Hollywood the
authorities in Arkansas would try to extradite him for his part in the
Bentonville robbery. It was during his time in the movies that Henry met
and married his second wife, Hulda Starr from Salisaw, OK. They were married
on February 22, 1920 and moved to Claremore, OK.
On Friday morning, February 18,
1921, Henry and three companions in a high-powered touring car drove into
Harrison, Ark. They entered the People's State Bank and robbed it of $6000.
During the robbery, Henry was shot in the back by the former president
of the bank, and his partners fled leaving him to face the music alone.
He was carried to the jail where doctors removed the bullet. However, on
Tuesday morning, February 22, 1921, Henry died from the wound. His wife
Hulda, his mother, and his 17-year-old son were at his side.
Henry had died as he had lived
in a violent manner, but true to the code of the outlaws, he never revealed
a single partner in any crime. He never shot anyone in the commission of
a crime, and served his time in jail like a man. He had succeeded where
others had failed by robbing two banks at once, and by robbing more banks
than any others.
A little proud of his record,
he boasted to doctors at Harrison the day before he died: " I've robbed
more banks than any man in America."
