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Willis Newton’s First Bank Robbery – 1916

In 1916, vast portions of rural Texas and Oklahoma were still very much like the wild days of the Old West.. Sam Bass had been shot to death in a bank robbery in Round Rock, Texas, 38 years earlier. Jesse James had only 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 murdered by Bolivian police in 1908. Frank James had died the previous year (1915), and he spent his last days giving 25-cent tours of the James . ‘ Farm in Missouri. The Dalton brothers were gone except for 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, then moved to California, where he became a true western real estate agent, storyteller, author and actor. He died in 1937 at the age of 66.

Little did Willis know at the time of the bank robbery that he would rob more banks and trains in his lifetime than all of his predecessors combined. He and his siblings still hold the record for the most money stolen from train robberies in US history. According to Willis, he “he was just trying to learn the ropes” in the Boswell heist.

It was in Durant, Oklahoma, that Willis encountered a gang of bank robbers. One of them asked him if he wanted to participate in a daytime banking job. “Hell yeah,” Willis told them and was introduced to two men he would work with on the Boswell robbery.

In his last interview in 1979, he described his first bank robbery.

“One was a tall, skinny boy named Charlie Rankins and the other guy, I can’t remember his name, but he had scars on his face, probably from smallpox or something. They had horses and we planned the Boswell Bank work; it was about 15 or 20 miles on this side of Hugo.

“The bank was the last building in town when you left, nothing but brush after that. There were some trees there where you could tie up horses. Well, that’s what we did; one day we went to Boswell and tied up the horse at the bank. Nobody knew me there so I went in and acted like I was getting change. Charlie and the other guy walked in while I was talking to the teller. pat because we were robbing the bank.

“While I stayed with the front, Charlie and the other guy ran behind and started looting the money. Charlie took all the money out of the safe and the other guy cleaned out the cash registers. It came to $10,000. We told everyone let them stay or we’ll blow their fucking heads off.Then, as big as you want, we untethered our horses and trotted slowly into the undergrowth.No one came off the bank when we looked back.

“We crossed the South Boggy River and followed the river to the outskirts of Hugo, where we divided the money. I gave them my horse and saddle and said, ‘You guys go ahead, I’m going to go to Hugo tonight and catch a train out of here. I figured they weren’t looking for anyone to catch a train, they were looking for three men on horseback. I knew there was a passenger train leaving there sometime after 10 o’clock, so I stood outside on the undergrowth until dark.

“They took all the hard money (silver) and gave me green money (cash) for mine, so I put it around my waist and folded some in my pocket. When I put my coat on you couldn’t tell I had it in my pockets or whatever. Just before 10 o’clock, I went in there and bought a ticket to Ardmore, fancy as you like. It was clear after I got to Ardmore.”

About a month after the Boswell robbery, Charlie Ranking was arrested when they found a number of silver dollars on rolls of paper with the bank’s name on it. When Willis found out that his friend was in jail, he devised a plan to break into jail and see if he needed help. He knew a man in Hugo who had been a prison snitch. Visiting the man, he bragged that there seemed to be several easy benches in the area that “needed to be torn down.”

The man immediately went to the police and reported his conversation with Willis.

“When I went down to the station that night to catch a train, the law was in my favor. They caught me and put me in jail, which was just what I wanted. So I talked to Charlie and I said, ‘Do you want me to help you? ? I can come in and kick you out if you want.”

“No, hell,” he said. “I don’t think they have much on me, not enough to put me in the pen. They’re setting my bail at three weeks.”

“They kept me in jail for three or four days and just wouldn’t let me go. They could keep you in jail as long as they want, in those days. Finally, I had to go find a lawyer and pay them $250 to get out of jail I later found out that Charlie was sent to McAlester Penitentiary for 25 years, I never saw him again.

“My share of the robbery was around $4,000, but I didn’t have it with me when I got back to Hugo. I had come to San Antonio and put six or seven hundred in the bank and give the lawyers a check at the San Antonio bank. to get me out. Well, about two months after that, I went to San Antonio to withdraw the rest of my money and they had the law waiting for me. I had written a check to get my money and this teller says, ‘Okay, wait here a minute. ‘ He took it and went back there and I saw him talking to somebody and I knew they were going to arrest me, so I just left and went down to Uvalde and gave a lawyer a check for all my money, and he went there the next day. and I got it. I never knew why they wanted to arrest me, but that’s what they were planning to do. They arrested you for nothing in those days. They would do what they wanted with 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 can get yourself in trouble. If you’re going to do something like that, you better do it.” . She always told them, ‘come on guys,’ and I took the initiative and we never stopped for anything. The bank robbery in Winters, Texas, with Frank, the old bank robber, was my first night job. We never got but $3500 in Liberty bonds out of there though, and they killed that old man by the car. So I never got any of that. He had the bonds in his back pocket, the one who was killed.”

Willis’ version of his first bank robbery references a botched nighttime robbery in Winters, Texas, where he and three others broke into the bank at midnight. Frank, a friend of his, had been told that Winters Bank had a vault that could be blown up with nitroglycerin. His source was a Bankers Association detective named Boyd, who wanted a share of the loot. It turned out that after they blew off the vault door, the money was kept in a round safe that they couldn’t open. After ransacking the vault, they eventually walked away with $3,500 in Liberty bonds.

Back in Abilene, a third man named Al was driving an early model Hudson when the car got stuck in the sand and burned the clutch near Buffalo Gap, Texas. They abandoned the car and hid in the hills until the next night when they walked towards Buffalo Gap. Just as they were approaching the city, a car full of law enforcement officers passed them on the highway. As the car stopped and turned around, Willis and his friend Slim Edgarton ran into the brush while Frank and Al held their ground shooting at the law enforcement officers in the car. After a flurry of gunfire, Al was struck in the chest and fell. Frank then went off in a different direction into the brush. It was the man named Al who was wearing the restraints when the gang shot and killed him.

Willis managed to escape, but was later caught with his friend Red, near Sweetwater. They were imprisoned in Ballinger with Slim Edgarton, who had been captured earlier. After bribing the sheriff’s wife, the trio managed to break out of jail in the middle of the night and escape.

Repeating a pattern he would use throughout his career, Willis returned to San Antonio after the Boswell job, then headed to the family home in Uvalde. In 1916 he was still “learning the ropes” of the outlaw life while, with the exception of his brothers Jess and “Doc”, the rest of the family was engaged in honest labor, working as ranch hands or hard sharecroppers, known in the West. Texas as “cyclone farmers.”

Willis and some of his brothers would later form the Newton Gang which robbed more than 80 banks in Texas, the Midwest and Canada in the early 1920s.

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