PROUD TO BE A KILLER
There is an old tale that claims a piece of petrified wood leans against a blackjack tree in the Giddings Cemetery marking the burial site of a gunslinger who finally repented. William “Bill” Longley, dead by the hangman’s noose soon after his 27th birthday, was one of Giddings’ most famous citizens. Longley grew up like […]
TALES ABOUT JOHN WESLEY HARDIN
The handsome and gentlemanly John Wesley Hardin, son of a Methodist preacher, was named after the founder of the Methodist Church. Perhaps his proper upbringing caused “Wes” to view himself as a pillar of society who claimed he never killed a man who didn’t need killing. The number of dead differ, as do the stories […]
Brothers, Big Time Robbers
The Newton family had eleven kids, four of whom would become some of history’s most successful bank and train robbers. As sharecroppers the family moved around, scratching out a living in the cotton fields of Texas. The boys’ mother read outlaw stories to her sons with such success that Willis, the eventual leader of the […]
Bonnie Parker, Dead at Twenty-three
She was an honor student and loved poetry, but she dropped out of school, married Roy Thornton before her sixteenth birthday and had “Roy and Bonnie” tattooed on her right knee to celebrate the union. After a stormy two years, Thornton went to prison; Bonnie never divorced him and died five years later, still wearing […]
The Newton Boys
The Newton family had eleven kids, four of whom would become history’s most successful bank and train robbers. As sharecroppers the family moved around, scratching out a living in the cotton fields of Texas. The boys’ mother Janetta Pecos Anderson Newton regaled the boys with outlaw stories with such success that Willis, the eventual leader […]