Bøger af R D Morgan

Oklahoma is a state rich in lawmen and outlaw history, truly the last bastion of the "Old West." The state has a tradition of banditry dating back to the time of the Indian Territory. The following account presents a collection of rare photographs, biographical sketches, and true stories offered in chronological order dealing with the epic battle between the forces of law and order and wrongdoers taking place in a geographic area encompassing the modern state of Oklahoma. This narrative, which represents nearly ten years of research, is presented in two-part form within a single volume. Part I covers the period of 1875-1919, chronicling events taken from the Indian and Oklahoma Territories to statehood and beyond, while Part II covers the period 1920-1941. This work does not represent an attempt to tell a complete history of lawmen and outlaws in Oklahoma. It is merely offered as a series of prime examples of the genre.

The Irish O'Malley Gang represented the final installment of America's great 1930s depression-era "Super Gangs" following in the footsteps of both the John Dillinger and "Ma" Barker/Karpis Gangs. The final version of the outlaw band was the result of the merging of two separate and unique criminal enterprises, one deriving from a rural environment, the second urban in nature. Their story involved a small cadre of hard-nosed underworld hoodlums joined by an army of thrill-starved gangster molls and criminal associates, which eventually evolved into a loosely-knit organization. It's members drifted across the Midwest committing a national headline grabbing kidnapping and several brutal murders as well as looting a dozen banks. Law enforcement dubbed the lawless band the most highly disciplined and efficient of the day. Their bank raids were well-planned and conducted in precise clockwork fashion. Not until the final months of the group's existence did investigators, including J. Edger Hoover's vaunted G-Men, connect the dots and conclude a single group initially dubbed "The Midwest Bank Robbers" was behind the epidemic of bank heists. On realizing this fact, Hoover's boys began tracking the group like the hound and the hare. But, track them they did and with deadly efficiency.

In the months prior to America's involvement in the First World War there came charging out of the West an organized band of cutthroats dubbed the Poe-Hart Gang. This notorious group of outlaws cut a swath of robbery, murder, and wholesale theft not seen on the frontier since the arrival of the infamous Dalton Brothers. This is the story of that lawless band of renegades and how they made the transition from horse to automobile.

This book chronicles the true adventures of a loose-knit confederation of daring bank bandits originating from the infamous Cookson Hills of Eastern Oklahoma who terrorized the Arkansas-Oklahoma borderlands for more than a half decade following the close of the First World War. The original leader of the group was Henry Starr, the Cherokee bandit, who claimed to have robbed more banks than any man. Upon his death, a middle-age storekeeper along with an audacious young war hero named Ed Lockhart took over the helm.In a time when most Americans were captivated by the "Teapot Dome" scandal, the death of President Harding, and the gridiron adventures of Notre Dame's "Four Horsemen," folks living in the Ozark Mountains watched with fear and fascination as the outlaw band committed their bold depravations. Although the gang's take rarely amounted to over $2,000, it must be remembered the average yearly income for a family of five in 1922 amounted to $2,100. A gallon of gas cost eleven-cents and a loaf of bread fetched only nine pennies.The outlaw horde eventually met their match when they collided with such notable lawmen as Mont Grady, the Choctaw Indian manhunter with nerves of steel, and Cherokee County Deputies Jay Fellows and Jerry Powell, who rode horseback forty-eight hours in blizzard conditions without the benefit of food or rest in a dogged pursuit of the lawbreakers. Although members of the bandit gang received a great deal of notoriety from their illicit adventures, it was these officers and the ordinary citizens of towns such as Eureka Springs, Arkansas and Stroud, Oklahoma who took up arms and fought the outlaws to a standstill, who proved to be the real heroes of the story.This account, which takes place in the "Roaring '20s," is meant to serve as a prelude to the author's first book, The Bad Boys of the Cookson Hills, which chronicled the activities of another band of outlaws who launched a prolific series of attacks on nearly two-dozen banks in Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Arkansas during the 1930s depression era. This second "Cookson Hills" Gang was headquartered in the same geographic area as the earlier version noted in this narrative and some of the characters involved with the original outfit were active members of the latter group.

Wilbur Underhill-the "Tri-State Terror"-is the Boogeyman of Depression-era outlaws in more ways than one. For nearly a decade in the turbulent period of the 1920s and 30s, he was one of the most infamous and feared criminals in the Southwest. Convicted of one of his murders in Oklahoma he was sentenced to life and escaped, killing a cop and receiving another life term in Kansas, and then escaped again, leading ten others in a mass breakout. In the last months of his life, he rose to national notoriety as a prolific bank robber and suspect in the infamous Kansas City Massacre and became the first criminal ever shot down by agents of that fledgling agency which would soon become the FBI.

The story contained in these pages is a detailed description of a vicious crime and the eighteen-month long manhunt to track down the criminals involved. It details the history and crimes of a loose-knit gang of bold outlaws originally known as the Cookson Hills Gang, then the Ford Bradshaw Gang and finally the Underhill-Bradshaw Gang whose members blazed a path of robbery and murder through Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and Arkansas in 1932-34. It also chronicles the efforts and sacrifices of a handful of brave lawmen that tracked them down.