In 1916, large parts of rural Texas and Oklahoma still looked a lot like the wild days of the Old West.. Sam Bass was shot and killed in a bank robbery in Round Rock, Texas, 38 years ago. Jesse James has only been buried for 34 years. Thomas E. Ketchum (Black Jack Ketchum) was hanged in 1901 for attempted train robbery. Robert Leroy Parker (Butch Cassidy) and Harry Longapo (Sundance Kid) were reported to have been murdered by the Bolivian police in 1908. Frank James had died the previous year (1915), spending his last days giving James 25 cents a ride. A farm in Missouri. All of the Dalton brothers are gone except for Emmett Dalton, who survived 23 gunshot wounds in a double bank robbery in Coffeyville, Kansas, in 1892. A Western real estate agent, storyteller, author, and actor. He died in 1937 at the age of 66.
At the time of the bank robbery, Willis did not know that in the course of his life he would rob more banks and trains than all his predecessors combined. He and his brothers still hold the record for the most money stolen in train robberies in US history. According to Willis, he was “just trying to learn the ropes” at Boswell Holdup.
Willis met in Durant, Oklahoma with a loose gang of bank robbers. Someone asked him if he wanted to work in a bank during the day. “Hell yes,” Willis told them and was introduced to two men he would work with on the Boswell heist.
In his last interview in 1979, he described his first idle bank.
One of them was a tall and skinny boy named Charlie Rankins and the other guy – I don’t remember his name but his face is full of scars, maybe smallpox or something. They had horses and we planned a Boswell Bank job; It was about 15 or 20 miles this side of Hugo.
“The bank was the last building in town as you left, and there was nothing but brush after that. They had some trees there where you could tie the horses. Well, that’s what we did; one day we went to Boswell and tied the horses to the bank. It wasn’t Nobody knows me there, so I went in and acted like I was changing. Charlie and the other bit maker came in while I was talking to the cashier. I threw him and started yelling at everyone ‘Stand up pat because we were a bank robbery.’
“While I was staying in front, Charlie and the other guy ran after them and started throwing the money. Charlie took all the money out of the safe and the other guy cleaned the cash drawers. It came to $10,000. We told everyone to stay put or we blew their damn heads off. Then we untied our horses. As big as you wish and we trotted slowly to the brush.No one came out of the bank when we looked back.
‘We headed across the South Boggy River and followed the river just outside Hugo where we split the money. I gave them my horse and saddle and said, ‘You guys and I’m going to Hugo tonight and I catch a train from here.’ I thought they weren’t looking for anyone to catch a train, they were looking for three Men on Horseback I knew there was a commuter train that left there sometime after ten in the morning, so I stayed there in the brush until dark.
“They took all the hard money (silver) and gave me green (money) for me, so I put it around my waist and folded some into my pocket. When I put on my coat, I couldn’t tell I was carrying it in my pockets or something. Just before ten o’clock came, I walked into the there and bought me a ticket to Ardmore, as you wish. It was clear sailing after my arrival in Ardmore.”
About a month after the Boswell robbery, Charlie Ranking was arrested when they found a quantity of silver dollars in paper rolls bearing the name of the bank. When Willis learns that his friend is in prison, he devises a plan to get into prison and see if he needs help. He knew a man in Hugo who was pigeon poo in prison. While visiting with the man, he bragged that there seemed to be a number of easy banks in the area that “need to be knocked out.”
The man immediately went to the police and reported his conversation with Willis.
“When I went down to the warehouse that night to catch a train, the law was in place for me. They caught me and put me in jail, which was exactly what I wanted. Then I spoke to Charlie and said, ‘Do you want me to help you?’” I can come and take you out if you want me to.”
He said, “No, hell. I don’t think they have too much on me, not enough to put me in jail. They’ll tie my knot in three weeks.”
“They kept me in jail for three or four days and they never lost me. They could keep me in jail for as long as they wanted to, in a matter of days. Finally, I had to hire a lawyer and pay them $250 to get out of jail. Later, I found out that they sent Charlie to jail. On Mac Alister for 25 years, never seeing him again.
“My share of the robbery was about $4,000, but I didn’t get it when I got back to Hugo. I went down to San Antonio and put six or seven hundred in the bank and gave the lawyers a check in the San Antonio bank to get me out. Well, about two months after that I went to San Antonio to pull The rest of my money and the law was waiting for me. I had written a check to get my money and this narrator says, “Okay, wait here a minute.” He took it and went back there and I saw him talking to someone and I knew they were going to arrest me. So I just went out and went down to Ovaldi and gave a lawyer a check for All my money, and he went there the next day and I got it. I never knew what they wanted to arrest me for, but that’s what they were trying to do. They arrested you for nothing in their days, and they would do anything they wanted to you.
“The bank in Boswell was the first day job I ever did for money. But I didn’t hesitate. Hell, if you hesitate you’ll get into trouble. You have to do anything like that, you better do it. I always told them, ‘Let’s go guys And I took the lead and we never stopped for nothing. The bank robbery in Winters, Texas, with Frank, the old bank robber, was my first night job. We only ever got $3,500 in Liberty bonds from there, and they killed that big boy there. Next to the car. So I didn’t get any of that. He had the bond in his hip pocket, the one who got killed.”
Willis’ version of his first bank refers to a botched nighttime robbery in Winters, Texas, in which he and three others broke into the bank in the middle of the night. Frank, a friend of his, is told that Winters Bank has a vault that he can inflate with nitroglycerin. His source was a bankers association investigator named Boyd, who wanted to get pieces of the loot. As it turned out after they blew out the vault door, the money was stored in a circular safe that they were unable to open. After looting the vault they finally left with $3,500 in Liberty bonds.
Back in Abilene, a third man named Al was driving an early model of the Hudson when the car got stuck in the sand and burned the clutch near Buffalo Gap, Texas. They left the car and hid in the hills until the next night when they walked the Buffalo Gap. As soon as they approached the city, a car full of lawmen passed on the road. When the car stopped and Willis and his friend, Slim Edgarton, ran towards the brush while Frank and Al stood on the ground shooting the lawmen in the car. After a barrage of shots, Al Sabeeka took him in the chest and went down. Then Frank took off in a different direction within the brush. It was a man named Al who was holding the bonds when he was shot and killed.
Willis manages to escape but is later captured with his friend Reed near Sweetwater. They were imprisoned at Ballinger with Slim Edgarton, who had been captured earlier. After bribing Sharif’s wife, the trio managed to escape from prison in the middle of the night and escape.
Repeating a pattern he would use throughout his career, Willis returned to San Antonio after Boswell’s job and then headed to the family place in Ovaldi. In 1916, he was still “learning” the lawless life while, with the exception of his two brothers Jess and “Doc”, the rest of the family were engaged in honest work as farm hands or scribble farmers, known in the West. Texas as “hurricane growers”.
Later, Willis and some brothers went on to form the Newton gang that robbed more than 80 banks in Texas, the Midwest, and Canada during the early 1920s.