Volume 10 , Issue 31

Leather-faced Miscreant Named Belle Starr

Because Belle Starr was a female, flamboyant and frustrating to the "hanging Judge Parker" of Fort Smith, Arkansas, the press disregarded inconvenient facts, invented plenty of fictional exploits for her and made her everybody's favorite criminal.

Belle's antisocial career grew out of her consuming passion for cutthroats and robbers. Belle was born Myra Belle Shirley, a native of Missouri whose family moved to Texas. She had barely become nubile when she began to hobnob with the James brothers and bore their confederate, Cole Younger, a daughter. Then she married a horse thief named Jim Reed and bore him a son. When Reed was killed, Belle took up with a gang and moved into Indian Territory, where she met and married a handsome cherokee bandit named Sam Starr.

From their hideout on the Canadian River, about 75 miles west of Fort Smith, she acted as organizer, planner and fence for rustlers, horse thieves and bootleggers who distilled and sold whiskey to the Indians.

Her managerial skills rewarded her well, and when her friends were captured, she spent her money generously to buy their freedom. If bribery failed, Belle would try another approach. She would employ her powers of seduction to persuade a deputy to return empty-handed to Fort Smith.

Repeatedly thwarted by these tactics, Judge Parker was ready to use almost any pretext to jail her. But whenever his deputies brought her in to face a charge of bootlegging or rustling, he was obliged to free her for lack of evidence. finally, in 1882, Belle was caught in the act of stealing a neighbor's horses, and the evidence stuck for once. After a short trial, Parker sentenced Belle to two six-month terms in prison. She served nine months before being let off for good behavior, but the time she spent behind bars did nothing to dampen her ardor for criminals and the lawless life. She boasted to one reporter, "I am a friend to any brave and gallant outlaw. There are three or four jolly good fellows on the dodge now in my section, and when they come to my house they are welcome, for they are my friends."

Belle Starr's skirmishes with Judge Parker continued into 1886, the same year her Cherokee husband was fatally shot at a party. A lover she had taken got intot deep trouble with the law. The man, a desperado who flourished under the alias Blue Duck, had gotten drunk and murdered a farmer. parker sentenced him to hag, but Belle hired the best lawyers she could find and sent them to Washington, to appeal to the White House.

President Grover Cleveland commuted the sentence to life in prison. Two years later Belle finessed parker again. her son by Jim Reed was caught stealing horses, and Parker sentenced him to seven years in prison. Once more Belle dispatched her lawyers to see the President -- he found reason to oblige with a full pardon.

It was in 1889 and to Judge Parker's relief, and to the sorrow of romantic newspaper readers from coast to coast, that Belle Starr came to a bad end.

Belle was shot from ambush on a lonely road, and she was laid to rest at Younger's bend, her hideout on the Canadian River. Her murderer's identity was never proved, but it was probably her newest husband, a young Creek named Jim July.

After a quarrel with Belle, he had reportedly offered another man $200 to kill her, and on being turned down had shouted,"Hell -- I'll kill the old hag myself and spend the money for whiskey!"
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