Train Robbers
Arizona The Youngest State
McClintock, 1913, page 475

March 21, 1889 an Atlantic and Pacific train was stopped at the 
Canon Diablo station by four robbers who, after searching the 
contents of the express strong box fled northward.  The scene 
of the robbery was in Yavapai County and so the trail was taken 
by Sheriff William O. O'Neill, with three deputies.  The posse, 
after a chase of 300 miles, consuming two weeks, finally sighted 
their men in Southeastern Utah, forty miles east of Canonville.  
Then came a pitched battle in which over fifty shots were fired, 
though the only effect was the wounding of one of the robber's 
horses.  The fugitives, leaving their horses behind, plunged 
into the mountains on foot, soon to be run down by the posse.  
The capture included William D. Sitrin, "Long John" Halford, 
John J. Smith and D.M. Haverick.  Upon them was found about 
one thousand dollars.  A rather amusing incident was the 
attempt of citizens of Canonville to arrest the desperadoes 
but the attempt failed, for the large citizen's posse was 
held up by the robbers and made to stack arms and retreat.  
The return to Arizona was made around by Salt Lake.  On the 
homeward journey Smith escaped through a car window.

Another train robbery, September 30, 1894, occurred near Maricopa 
where a through express was boarded by Frank Armer, a Tonto 
Basin cowboy, only 20 years old, who climbed over the coal of 
the engine tender and at the muzzle of a pistol stopped the 
train where a confederate Rodgers was in waiting.  Little booty 
was secured.  The two men, before this, had ridden in circles 
around the desert in order to throw pursuers off of their track, 
but Indians, taking  broad radius, soon picked up the trail.  
Rodgers was caught far down the Gila, and Armer was taken at 
the home of a friend, near Phoenix, after a battle with Sheriff 
Murphy and officers in which he was wounded.  At Yuma 
Penitentiary, under a thirty year sentence, he made three 
attempts to escape.  He dug a tunnel that was discovered 
when it had nearly connected his cell with the world beyond 
the great wall.  A second time, when he broke for freedom 
from a rock gang, he had to lie down under a stream of bullets 
from a Gatling gun on the wall.  A third time he secreted 
himself while at outside work and eluded the guards, but 
was run down in the Gila River bottom by Indian trailers.  
Finally, prostrated by consumption, he was released, barely 
in time to die at home in the arms of his mother.  Rodgers, 
sentenced to a forty-year term, served only eleven, then 
being discharged for exemplary conduct.

Grant Wheeler and Joe George on January 30, 1895 held up a 
Southern Pacific train near Wilcox and robbed the through 
safe of $1500 in paper money.  The safe was broken open by 
dynamite upon the explosive piled sacks of Mexican dollars, 
of which in the car they were about $8,000.  The result was 
satisfactory, the safe not only being cracked open but the 
express car nearly wrecked as well, the silver pieces acting 
upon it like shrapnel, sowing the desert around with bent and 
twisted Mexican money which also was found deeply embedded in 
telegraph poles and in the larger timbers of the car.  Sections 
of the telegraph poles and of the car, stuck full of silver 
dollars, like plums in a pie, were valued souvenirs for years 
thereafter in railroad and express offices along the coast.  
Yet only $600 was lost from the silver shipment.  The robbers 
escaped into the hills.  They returned for more on February 
26 when they stopped a train at Stein's Pass but made the 
mistake of disconnecting the mail car instead of the express 
car, so got no booty.  The trail was taken up by W.M. 
Breakenridge, then in charge of the peace of the Southern 
Pacific line in southern Arizona, who trailed Wheeler into 
Colorado and ran him down near Mancos April 25.  The next 
morning the outlaw surrounded and appreciating the 
hopelessness of his position after a brief exchange of 
shots with the pursuing posse, committed suicide.



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