1903
The Return of Kid Curry
By 1903 the good citizens of Montana were feeling relieved. Their most notorious outlaw was no longer a threat. Harvey Logan, otherwise known as Kid Curry, was sitting in a Knoxville, Tennessee jail. Soon he would be on his way to a federal penitentiary in Ohio. The judge had given him 20 years for robbing the Great Northern express car near Malta in 1901. The $40,000 in loot he got away with was mostly in unsigned Montana National Bank at Helena notes. Much of the loot was recovered when Curry and his partner Fitzpatrick were captured. Still more was found when the other robber, Camilla Hanks, was killed in Texas.
Unfortunately, Curry managed to escape on June 27, 1903. The whole country went on high alert. Where would he strike next? Maybe he would return to his old haunts in Montana’s Little Rockies. Maybe he’d head for the Hole in the Rock sanctuary used by his former partners in crime, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Nobody knew where he was, but there was lot of speculation.
A letter allegedly written by Curry from jail during his trial had arrived in Montana in late 1902. It was addressed to an old friend, Edward Hanlon. In the letter Curry promised, “I will get out of this scrape yet.” He further declared, “It won’t be so long before I’m back in Montana, and when I am, there’ll be hell to pay.” The thought of Curry settling old scores was pretty frightening to his former neighbors. Three weeks after the Great Northern robbery, someone had ambushed rancher Jim Winters in the Little Rockies. Winters had killed Curry’s brother, Johnny in a previous shootout over property ownership. Prophetically, Curry’s letter went on to say, “I’ll cut my way through hell before they take me again.”
After his escape Curry first hid out in the North Carolina Mountains with a friend and fellow outlaw, Sam Atkins. The pair were tracked by a U.S. Marshal and a Pinkerton detective to an area called Jeffrey’s Hell. The trail was lost when they were unable to recruit a posse fast enough. His attorney, the former Tennessee Congressman L. C. Houck, said he had seen Curry in Atlanta shortly after his escape. Curry was on a ship bound for parts unknown. The Jeffrey’s Hell story had the most credibility. It wouldn’t be long until Curry acquired the resources to return to the West and resume his outlaw lifestyle.
Before long rumors surfaced that Curry had returned to his old stomping grounds of the Little Rockies. Someone said they heard he had been seen in Malta. Great Northern and Pinkerton detectives headed for Montana in force. Kid Curry had to be stopped.
In mid-August two Valley County Ranchers had a squabble near Hinsdale. Bob Walsh shot his old friend, Josh Truax, over a dispute involving a team of horses. The team had allegedly been loaned to Kid Curry’s girlfriend and never returned. One of Truax’s other neighbors claimed that two years earlier the former friends had helped the Curry gang make their escape by supplying them with fresh horses. Maybe the shooting was to keep Truax from telling what he knew.
By the 22nd of August, the Fergus County Argus was speculating that Kid Curry had or would return to the Bad Lands near the Little Rockies. Nobody had forgotten that Curry was the prime suspect in the 1901 revenge killing of Jim Winters. One of those most worried would be Winters' ranching partner, Abraham Gill. (Gill would mysteriously disappear in 1907, shortly after selling the ranch to the Coburn Cattle Company.) Others wondered if his former neighbors who had spoken freely about the Kid during his incarceration would now be living in fear. The paper also reported that two detectives had been dispatched to Carlton, near Missoula, to arrest a man believed to be Curry. Though the man “answered in a measure to the description” he proved not to be Curry. They soon joined another detective in Great Falls to check out another man being harbored by an Indian family on the “Reservation.”
On the night of August 28, 1903, there was what appeared to be an attempted holdup on the Westbound Flyer near Malta. The circumstances mirrored the 1901 robbery by the Curry gang. As the train was pulling out, a detective caught two men climbing onto the coal tender. Brandishing his gun, he ordered them off the train. They slid off and disappeared into the night. A third man, seen earlier with the pair, had boarded a day coach. All were reportedly armed. A cache of dynamite was subsequently found near the railroad tracks. This sure looked like the modus operandi of Kid Curry.
A fourth gang member had tried to get off the train at Harlem, but was arrested by a stock detective and turned over to Great Northern agents in Havre. He turned out to be a local cowboy and part-time rustler named Baker. Three other potential train robbers were arrested at Malta a few days later. Great Northern officials were now denying that Kid Curry had been involved. To be on the safe side, they suspended cash shipments on the line. Meanwhile, The Butte Inter Mountain reported that, “Landusky authorities declare Curry was seen in the hills near there Saturday.”
Around Midnight on September 15, 1903, a hobo showed up at the door of James Moran’s ranch at Yantic, near Chinook. He said he had just gotten off a train from the east. Dirty and disheveled, he tried to convince Moran that he was none other than Kid Curry. He demanded the immediate use of a horse and saddle. The rancher had known Curry for years and was too afraid of him not to comply. The man departed saying he was headed north, but that was probably just a ruse to throw pursuers off. To Moran’s amazement, the horse somehow got returned the next night with a package containing some money for its hire.
Reports reached Chinook a week later that there had been two men shot near Landusky. One of them was said to be Chouteau County Deputy Sheriff Lund. Lund, however, was very much alive, having never left Fort Benton. About the same time, a sheepherder named Pessler claimed he have seen Curry up near the Canadian line. He was riding a pinto and asked for food.
Meanwhile to the south, panic was gripping the Northern Pacific Railway Line. Someone was threatening to blow up the tracks. The first letter to the N.P. demanded $25,000. To signal compliance, the railway was instructed to mount a white flag on each of its passing locomotives. James J. Hill, who controlled both the Northern Pacific and Great Northern Railroads, refused to pay the ransom. More railroad detectives and Pinkerton men poured into the state. The threats posed by the extortionist and the escaped train robber had to be met. Then the bomber struck.
A bridge over the Yellowstone near Livingston was dynamited on August 2, 1903. Someone had placed explosives on the center pier. The blast was heard a mile away in Livingston and was powerful enough to break windows there. Three trains passed over the damaged bridge that night before an engineer reported that it was out of alignment. Fortunately, there were no injuries and the damage was quickly repaired.
Two days later there was attempt to blow up a train on the tracks near Bozeman. The blast damaged the headlight, blew a hole in the roadbed and broke windows in the locomotive’s cab. The next morning a stick of “giant powder” was found in a box near the tracks. A report from Billings indicated that “the powder house of the Yegan brothers was rifled” on July 31st. The Northern Pacific Railway increased its reward to $2500 and the State of Montana chipped in another thousand.The County ponied up another $500. The search for the culprits intensified as even more railroad detectives and Pinkerton men poured into the state.
By now, detectives were asserting that Curry was no longer in Northern Montana. Rumor, once again, had Curry hanging around Deer Lodge in the western part of the state. Was he there to spring some of his pals from the state penitentiary? Or perhaps he was plotting mischief against the railroad. Who knew? He could easily have been the culprit in the extortion plot against the Northern Pacific. There were too many similarities to ignore Curry as a suspect. Curry hated railway mogul James Hill who had done everything in his power to track him down after Hill’s Great Northern train was robbed in 1901. The Great Northern Express Company had paid for the extra guards who watched over Curry as he had languished in that Tennessee jail. Like the Great Northern, the N.P. was under Hill’s control. The bomber was now demanding $50,000 or he would blow up more of the railway’s property. This number was close to the amount Curry had bagged in the 1901 holdup. Curry knew dynamite and had used it in the 1901 caper. Across Montana headlines screamed “Kid Curry” and the hunt was on.
Besides Curry, one early suspect was Sam Cohen. Slightly insane, he claimed to be the Livingston bomber. In his statement, Cohen said, “I dynamited the Northern Pacific bridge at Livingston. I had nothing to do with the blowing up of the engine at Bozeman. I found the dynamite by the side of the track and as the rails were crooked, I wanted to straighten them.” A posse rushed to Missoula to interview him. They thought perhaps the deranged man might have been used by Curry as part of the extortion plot. Then Cohen told them he had also blown up an airship high in the sky. The posse shrugged their shoulders and got back on the train to chase other leads. The man might be a lunatic, but he wasn’t their bomber. Kid Curry, perhaps the real bomber, was still at large.
On August 6th, a hobo named William Stadtz was arrested in Helena on suspicion of being one of the bombers. He was trying to sell a Winchester rifle for an Indian friend. The friend turned out to be Joseph Jarves, aka Jose Chavey. Jarves was caught a few days later. Looking through Jarvese’s campsite, police found a pillow case containing sixteen feet of fuse and thirty-one dynamite caps. Three more caps were found in the pocket of his overalls. Officers surmised that Jarves might be carrying a grudge against the railroad from having been kicked out of the yard a few weeks earlier. He even admitted passing through the area about the same time as the bombing of the moving train.
While incarcerated in Bozeman, Jarves and Stadtz tried to “burrow” their way through the jailhouse wall. Then someone sent a vile letter threatening to blow up Police Chief Travis’s house if the miscreants weren’t released. Some said the rude handwriting resembled that of the letters from the extortionist. Unable to pin the bombings on the pair, Police Judge Walker gave them 60 days in jail for vagrancy. Kid Curry remained a suspect in the plot against the N.P.
As the search for the bomber continued, N.P. officials at St. Paul kept getting threatening letters. Still they refused to cough up the demanded ransom. One letter warned that Sunday, October 2, 1903 would be the day of the next bombing. They were going to blow up more bridges or perhaps the depot in Livingston. Sunday came and passed quietly. The bombers must have been bluffing.
Finally, on October 18, 1903, detectives got their big break in the railway dynamite case. Operating on a tip, railway officers had intensified their patrolling of the tracks near Helena. Shortly after dark, an alert watchman came across a man digging under the tracks. The man jumped on a horse and fled. As soon as daylight arrived, two officers responded. They found the unique tracks of an unshod horse with a misshapen hoof and trailed it for miles. About noon, they came across a cabin. There they thwarted the escape of a well-armed man claiming to be J.A. Plummer.
Plummer turned out to be Isaac Gravelle. He had just been released from prison in July. Further investigation revealed Gravelle had confided to his friend, Myron Shanks, that it was he who had bombed and extorted the Northern Pacific Line. Gravelle said he had stolen the dynamite from powder houses in East Helena and Bozeman. He further said he was planning to blow up another bridge at Townsend if the N.P. didn’t meet his demands. Shanks was ready to testify against Gravelle. The Northern Pacific bomber had been caught. Kid Curry was no longer a suspect in the case. But where was he?
The next sighting of Kid Curry occurred in February of 1904. A clerk at the Oxford Hotel in Denver said he recognized him. A bellboy confirmed that the stranger was acting suspiciously, especially when it came to the two satchels he was carrying. By the time police were summoned the man had disappeared. The Pinkerton Agency seemed to take the story seriously.
Back in Montana there was another odd event in early 1904. Curry’s old Little Rockies flame, Julia Landusky, married Alfred C. Conner on Friday the 4th of March. By Monday Conner was reported dead by suicide. Details were sketchy. What the hell was going on? And did Kid Curry play any part in it?
According to a news report from May of 1904, Pinkerton men, operating out of Harlem, were still searching for him in the Harlem to Landusky area.
In June of 1904 Curry resurfaced in northwestern Colorado. With two accomplices, he robbed another train near Parachute, Colorado. They tried to make a getaway, but this time the posse was too fast. Curry was shot and wounded while trying to escape. Not wanting to be captured, he took his own life. Rancher Rolla Gardner was credited with the shot that wounded Curry. Huge rewards had been offered for Curry in the past, but Gardner only got $25 for his effort. He also got a new saddle and a replacement for the horse he had shot out from under him.
Even in death, Curry remained a mystery. It was hard to make positive identifications in 1904. Post mortem photos were taken and forwarded to Knoxville for identification by the lawmen who knew him from his time in jail. They agreed it was Curry. To be sure, the body was exhumed for further examination. One Doctor who saw it claimed that the corpse did not have the gunshot scar on the wrist that Curry was known to have. It was not until a month later that the Pinkerton Agency finally announced that the dead bandit was Kid Curry.
On November 1, 1904. a bank in Cody, Wyoming was robbed and the cashier killed. Local officials swore that the leader of the gang was none other than Kid Curry. The chase was on, this time featuring the old scout and showman, Buffalo Bill Cody, as a posse leader. The robbers slipped away. Maybe Curry was still out there, hiding in some lonesome canyon.
Ironically, the real Northern Pacific bomber and extortionist met a similar fate shortly after Curry’s death. On August 12, 1904, Isaac Gravelle shot Deputy Tony Korizek while escaping from the Lewis and Clark County Jail in Helena. Armed with a pistol, Gravelle hid in the alley behind Montana Governor Toole’s residence. After an initial exchange of gunfire, he ran into the basement of the Governor’s house. Wounded and cornered he shot and killed himself.
It is hard to say whether or not Kid Curry had returned to Montana in 1903. It sure seemed like he had a lot of friends in the Little Rockies. None of them were talking. As late as 1908, the Little Rockies Miner bragged about the Christian character of the community and made Curry look like a fallen saint whose only mistake was “his misguided act in holding up the Great Northern train…. Neither was he a ‘bad man’ as the term goes. His old neighbors speak of him as a man who always treated them right, paid his debts and always ready and willing to aid and assist those in need.”
Legends and outlaws tend to die hard. In 1907, William Pinkerton reversed his Agency’s assertion that Curry had been killed in 1904. He was now maintaining that Curry had, in fact, escaped to Argentina. There he rejoined Butch and Sundance as the Wild Bunch resumed their outlaw ways. Maybe it was true. Maybe Pinkerton didn’t want to pay out any more reward money. Who knows? Kid Curry sightings continued for years.
REFERENCES:
The River Press. (Fort Benton, MT.) Sep 24, 1902.
The Kalispell Bee. (Kalispell, MT.) Nov 28, 1902.
The River Press. (Fort Benton, MT.) July 15, 1903.
Fergus County Argus. (Lewistown, MT.) July 29, ‘03.
The Billings Gazette. (Billings, MT.) Aug 4, 1903.
The Billings Gazette. (Billings, MT.) Aug 7, 1903.
The Billings Gazette. (Billings, MT.) Aug 11, 1903.
The Butte Inter Mountain. (Butte, MT.) Aug 12, 1903.
The Butte Inter Mountain. (Butte, MT.) Aug 17, 1903.
The River Press. (Fort Benton, MT.) Aug 19, 1903.
The Billings Gazette. (Billings, MT.) Aug 28, 1903.
Fergus County Argus. (Lewistown, MT.) Aug 26, ‘03.
The Butte Inter Mountain. (Butte, MT.) Aug 31, 1903.
The River Press. (Fort Benton, MT.) Sep 2, 1903.
Fergus County Argus. (Lewistown, MT.) Sep 2, 1903.
Rosebud County News. (Forsyth, MT.) Sep 3, 1903.
Fergus County Argus. (Lewistown, MT.) Sep 9, 1903.
The River Press. (Fort Benton, MT.) Sep 23, 1903.
Rosebud County News. (Forsyth, MT.) Sep 24, 1903.
The Butte Inter Mountain. (Butte, MT.) Sep 28, ‘03.
The River Press. (Fort Benton, MT.) Sep 30, 1903.
Fergus County Argus. (Lewistown, MT.) Oct 31, 1903.
The Billings Gazette. (Billings, MT.) Nov 13, 1903.
The Butte Inter Mountain. (Butte, MT.) Oct 1, 1903.
The Billings Gazette. (Billings, MT.) Oct 6, 1903.
The River Press. (Fort Benton, MT.) Dec 23, 1903.
Rosebud County News. (Forsyth, MT.) Aug 18, 1903.
The Montanian. (Choteau, MT.) Feb 19, 1904.
Big Hole Breezes. (Jackson, MT.) Mar 18, 1904.
Fergus County Argus. (Lewistown, MT.) May 11, ’04.
The Billings Gazette. (Billings, MT.) Jul 12, 1904.
The Western News, *Stevensville, MT.) Aug 3, 1904.
The Billings Gazette. (Billings, MT.) Nov 8, 1904.
Fergus County Democrat. (Lewistown, MT.) Nov 15, 1904.
Crow Creek Journal. (Tosten, MT.) Aug 8, 1907.
The Little Rockies Miner, (Zortman, MT.) May 21, 1908.
True West Magazine. Kid Curry’s Last Gunfight. Bob Boze Bell. November 2, 2012.
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