Volume 10 , Issue 31

Judge Roy Parker - Hangin' Judge

Judge Roy Parker drove himself. With so many more whites to prey upon, outlaws increased in number and improved in organization throughout the so-called twin territories -- Oklahoma & Indian Territories.

In this final decade of the 19th century, crime in that region was to reach a sensational peak, then start a slow decline. More than any other event, what brought the turning point was the death of one outlaw, Bill Doolin, at the hands of Deputy U. S. Marshal heck Thomas, whom Judge Parker had brought in from Texas in 1886.

Bill Doolin was far and away the prize catch for any lawman lucky enough, and tough enough, to trap him. The region i which he operated had never known quite his like. His accuracy with a rifle and his readiness to kill were attributes many other gunfighters shared, but Doolin had something else -- a cool, shrewd head. he had no zest for the outlaw's life; he was in it not for the thrill but for the money -- a commodity that was in lamentably short supply during his days as a hardscrabbling farm boy in Arkansas. And carefully planned robberies, staged at the lowest possible risk, struck him as the way to achieve his goal.

Doolin began his career as a promising young protege of the Dalton brothers, after they had forsaken the lawman's life to pursue a more lucrative calling in crime.

To Doolin's good fortune, the Daltons failed to include him in their featherbrained scheme to stage two simultaneous bank holdups in Coffeyville, Kansas, in the course of which they got shot to pieces. Doolin did not tarry to mourn his mentos. Returning to Oklahoma Territory, he hand-picked his own gang of 10 seasoned holdup men and set up a cave hideout on the Cimarron River, not far from Guthrie. Then, between 1892 and the end of 1894, he planned and executed a series of brisk forays on banks and trains in Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma Territory.

It was from 1893 onward, deputy marshals from several jurisdictions were in full cry after Doolin and his gang. The lawmen were coordinated by the U. S. Marshal for the territory, Everett Nix. Like Judge Parker, Nix had a flair for recruiting talent. One first rate aide he enlisted was Deputy U. S. Marshal Heck Thomas.

Heck Thomas was a native Georgian when at the age of 12 served as a Confederate Army courier. After the Civil war, while working as a private detective in Texas, he pulled off the singlehanded capture of two desperadoes, and won renown among outlaws as a man to be shunned.

Thomas took the reputation with him to Judge Parker's jurisdiction, where he quickly impressed admirers with his distinctive garb -- knee-high boots, corduroy trousers and flannel shirt -- set off with two ivory-handled six shooters and a shotgun that had been mellowed by hard use and tender care.

With Heck Thomas, marshal Nix recruited two more supersleuths for the campaign against bill Doolin. The second man was also from Judge parker's roster of rugged aides: A red-haired soldier of fortune named Chris Madsen, a Dane who had fought for the Italian rebel Garibaldi and for the French foreign legion in Africa before being lured to America in 1870 by tales of gold strikes and Indian wars.

The third man Marahal Nix enlisted was Bill Tilghman, who had never worked for Judge Parker, but he had chalked up a distinguished gunfighting record as marshal of Dodge City before moving to Oklahoma Territory.

Tilghman, Thomas and Madsen, soon dubbed the "Oklahoma Guardsmen," formed a triumvirate that in itself marked a kind of milestone on the road to better law and order in the West. Teamwork improved the chances of bringing a clever criminal in. Each of the Guardsmen was assigned to a different slice of Bill Doolin's various stamping grounds, but each lawman knew what the other was doing; marshal Nix, from his headquarters in Guthrie, directed the joint effort.

In December of 1895, Tilghman tracked Doolin to a health spa at Eureka Springs, Arkansas, where the outlaw had gone to soak his rheumatic bones. Doolin was reading a newspaper in a bathhouse when Tilghman strolled in dressed as a minister. Doolin failed to recognize him, but he did recognize the six-shooter the visitor had drawn. Doolin started to reach for his own pistol, then thought better of it. Tilghman wired Nix, "I have him. Will be home tomorrow." There was no need to explain who 'him' was.

To cut a long story short, a crowd of 5,000 mobbed the Guthrie railroad station to see the famous lawman and his infamous prisoner. Tilghman signed autographs and photographers took pictures. Doolin, who looked too slight and ordinary to deserve his label, King of Oklahoma Outlaws, was given dinner at the best hotel in town, the royal, but the treat ended there. His lodgings were less regal -- Guthrie's jail. Doolin spent a flea-bitten night behind bars, consigned to await trial and certain conviction.

Doolin refused to wait for the courts in Oklahoma Territory to clear their crowded calendars. In July 1896, some six months after his capture, Doolin escaped and vanished. In the following months Heck Thomas learned from an informer that Doolin was holed up with his wife and small son in a farmhouse at Lawson, Oklahoma Territory, and that he was planning to take them out of the country, perhaps to Canada or Mexico.

Marshal Thomas sped to lawson one moonlit night with a small posse, and near the farmhouse the lawmen found what seemed to confirm the getaway rumor: a well-stocked wagon wit a team hitched to it, and a riding horse, saddled and tethered to one of the wagon's front wheels.

Thomas and his deputies took up concealed positions nearby, the door of the farm house opened and Doolin came out, carrying a Winchester and followed by his wife with their child in her arms. He helped them into the wagon and walked ahead, leading his horse in the bright moonlight.

Suddenly Thomas emerged from the bushes that had hidden him, "Drop your gun and put up your hands!"

Doolin wheeled, raised his rifle, fired -- and missed. Thomas, with his own mellow shotgun, took better aim. Doolin's suddenly lifeless body slumped to the ground.

The death of this seemingly invincible outlaw was sobering news to criminals riding the twin territories. it did not stop their robberies and murders, but it did give them food for thought. The manhunt that put bill Doolin out of business for good had demonstrated that the forces of the law were no longer scattered, but increasingly well organized and just as important more certain than ever before of local support. --
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