6 Famous Outlaws of the Wild West

People like to believe that Jesse James was one of those compassionate thieves who stole from the rich and gave to the poor, but there's no evidence to support the claim.

Early 'Career'

Born in 1847, James and his brother Frank came from a family of farmers that owned enslaved people in Missouri. When the Civil War revved up, the James brothers joined the Confederate Army. They were just teenagers at the time, but they immediately found themselves riding with a death squad, which traveled from farm to farm slaughtering anybody with Unionist sympathies, many of them old neighbors.

This apparently gave Jesse a taste for blood and chaos.

After the war, he carried on fighting, riding with a malignant mentor named Archie Clement who made a habit of robbing banks owned by triumphant Unionists. When Clement was ambushed and killed, Jesse carried on the tradition, thieving and murdering with abandon.

Falling Out of Favor

But eventually the old class of enslavers got the upper hand politically in the Southern states. When they did, Jesse was no longer their rebel ally, he was just a murderous thug who couldn't play by society's rules — even when society was on his side.

In 1882, the new governor of Missouri, Thomas Crittenden, arranged a secret meeting with Robert and Charles Ford, Jesse's two remaining gang members.

A short time later, while Jesse was dusting a picture in his living room, Robert shot him in the back of the head at the age of 34. It was an ignominious end to an ignoble career.

Billy the Kid started life as Henry McCarty and was later known as William H. Bonney. It's hard to believe that a person could acquire three different names in such a short time, but Billy packed a lot of living into a short life.

Teenage Rebel

He was born in 1859. As a teen, Billy the Kid flamboyantly broke the rule of law, making himself one of the most famous outlaws of the Wild West. Billy’s life ended at around 21 or 22 (his exact birth date is unconfirmed) when he was gunned down by New Mexico Sheriff Pat Garrett.

The young outlaw had been involved in a high-octane New Mexico dispute known as the Lincoln County War. During one clash, several men were killed and Billy got the blame, whether or not he actually did the killing. A posse soon captured him, but Billy was wily and managed a daring escape.

Foiled by Surprise

After holing up in Fort Sumner, the notorious outlaw was tracked down by the sheriff who got the jump on him and shot him dead in a dark room one night.

Was Belle Starr really the "Queen of Outlaws," the "female Jesse James," the "Bandit Queen," "the Petticoat Terror of the Plains"? For more than 100 years, books and movies have stoked the legend of her outlaw life.

Early Education

Myra Maybelle Shirley was born in Missouri in (or around) 1848. At the Carthage Female Academy, she mastered reading, spelling, grammar, arithmetic, deportment, Greek, Latin, Hebrew and piano. Her parents were wealthy and prominent denizens of Carthage, Missouri, where they ran a hotel.

But then the U.S. Civil War unleashed chaos.

Bad Company

In its wake, Maybelle moved to Dallas, Texas, where she wed a Confederate vet named Jim Reed, who made a career out of armed robbery. Together they had a daughter named Pearl and a son named Eddie.

The occupational hazards of Jim's work earned him an early death, and Myra — who had re-dubbed herself "Belle" — eventually found refuge in Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) where she married a man named Sam Starr.

Belle and Sam were arrested twice for horse-thieving and she served time in Detroit. Later, after Sam and a lawman killed each other in a gunfight, Belle successfully proposed to Sam's adopted brother, Jim July Starr, who was 15 years her junior.

A Rude Interruption to Retirement

Jim July was part Cherokee and together they farmed land in Oklahoma. Belle was 40 in the winter of 1889, when she was blasted off her horse by a shotgun — two days before her 41st birthday.

Whoever pulled the trigger did so again at close range to make sure she was dead. Her murderer was never caught and nobody has ever learned why she died.

Before there was Zorro, there was Murrieta. Joaquin Murrieta. Legend says that Murieta was a successful Mexican (or maybe Chilean) gold miner in 1850s California when jealous Anglos beat him, murdered his brother and assaulted and killed his wife.

Enraged, Murrieta turned to crime, becoming a Robin Hood-type vigilante who held up trains and avenged racial injustice.

A Macabre Trophy

It all came to a lurid end when California Rangers hunted him down, cut off his head and preserved it in a jar of brandy. Apparently, they felt they needed the body part to collect the $1,000 reward offered for eliminating the bandit.

Many have cast doubts on whether the head really belonged to Murrieta, but one way or another, the jar and its contents disappeared, possibly in the San Francisco earthquake of 1906.

Posthumous Popularity

This was the story popularized by Cherokee author, John Rollin Ridge in his book, "The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta [sic]." That story, in turn, ended up being one of the inspirations for the fictional character of Zorro. And in the 1998 movie "The Mask of Zorro," Murrieta has a younger brother who becomes the black-clad renegade hero of California.

Nobody has been able to confirm Ridge's version of Murrieta's backstory, but it does seem that he led a gang on a murderous crime spree in which they ruthlessly slaughtered dozens of people with no regard to their ethnic origins.

So where did the legend come from? Murrieta's nephew, a kid named Procopio, was only 12 when his uncle died. But he burnished Joaquin's story and made himself its heir as he grew up to be one of California's most infamous outlaws in his own right.

When Crawford Goldsby, better known as Cherokee Bill, was about to swing for his many crimes, these, allegedly, were his final words: "I came here to die, not to talk." That's some hard-bitten, old-school outlaw diction for you.

Who knows if it's true, but it seems plausible given the man's general preference for shooting in lieu of dialogue.

Early Childhood

He was born in 1876 at Fort Concho in Texas to Ellen Goldsby, a Cherokee woman with European and Black American ancestry, and Sergeant George Goldsby, a buffalo soldier of the famous 10th Cavalry.

George and Ellen parted ways when Crawford was just 7, and he was sent to boarding schools for Native American children, including the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania. It seems he failed to thrive in either institution.

Teen Years

Some say Cherokee Bill killed his brother-in-law when he was 14; others say he was 12. Either way, his career began in earnest when he joined the outlaws Bill and Jim Cook at the age of 18.

Then began a season of robbery and murder in Oklahoma that lasted from May through December of 1894, when he was captured.

When a violent prison break — during which he killed a guard — failed, Cherokee Bill was sentenced to die by the "Hanging Judge" Isaac Parker in April 1895. On St. Patrick's Day of the following year he uttered his famous final words.

Just look at the guy — hat cocked to one side, neatly trimmed mustache shading a smirk. He looks the very picture of a clever ne'er-do-well who enjoys pulling one over on the fools in charge.

Maybe that's why so many people are prepared to believe he didn't actually die in a hail of bullets in South America, but faked his death, changed his name and lived out his life in Spokane, Washington.

Hopeful Conjecture

That's the story detailed in a book called, "Butch Cassidy's Story: Bandit Invincible," by William T. Phillips. Some even think the book is a memoir written by Cassidy under a pseudonym.

If that were the case, it would be one of several name changes for Butch Cassidy, who started life as Robert Leroy Parker in 1866, but changed his name to Cassidy in 1889. (The name "Cassidy" was taken in honor of Mike Cassidy, a rancher and rustler who was a mentor to him.)

He was the leader of a notorious gang called The Wild Bunch who roamed through Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and South Dakota robbing banks and trains, and stealing cattle and horses.

An Unrealistic Happy Ending

When the law closed in, he fled to South America together with Harry Longabaugh (aka the Sundance Kid) and Harry's wife, Etta. There, the two men returned to the hard work of robbery and, according to reliable historians, met their end.

Like most accounts of celebrity criminals who managed to cheat death, the story of Butch Cassidy's survival is based not in fact, but wishful thinking.

We updated this article in conjunction with AI technology, then made sure it was fact-checked and edited by a HowStuffWorks editor.