Pioneers
The Reno Boys and the Sport of Train Robbery
You read a lot about the James boys, veterans of countless bad movies, potboilers, and tales of greater or lesser accuracy . . . mostly lesser. Even some of the good writing about the James gang attributes to them the beginning of the fine art of train robbery, presumably because of their several robberies of the iron horse when the gang was at its short-lived zenith.
Not so. That dubious distinction belongs to a much-less-well-known outlaw band called the Reno brothers, who don’t get the dubious credit they deserve.
The Renos had their heyday, if that’s the word, just after the close of the Civil War. They came from a family of farmers living near Seymour, Indiana, but by the autumn of 1865, John, Simeon, Bill, and Frank Reno had decided that a career in crime was for them. Whether they were moved by some notion of romance and high adventure, simple avarice, or just an allergy to work is unclear.
Whatever motivated the brothers, they started with a bang, but with the career criminal’s usual intellectual density, they also started very close to home. For openers, in early 1866, they robbed the treasury of Clinton County. That got Frank arrested, but he was later acquitted, freeing him up to join his siblings in what is almost surely the first American train robbery.
Simeon, John, and a confederate slugged the guard on an Ohio and Mississippi train just after it left the depot at—of all places—Seymour, and down the line a few miles they shoved two safes from the express car. The rest of the boys were waiting and lustily attacked the safes. One they cracked, winning fifteen thousand dollars; the one they couldn’t contained about twice as much. Still, it was a good beginning, back when a dollar was a dollar, and it whetted the brothers’ appetite for more adventures.
But now they had to cope with the Pinkerton Agency, which had contracted with the express company owning the safes and responsible for their contents. Pinkerton agents drifted into Seymour and tried to establish friendly relations with the Reno boys. They were apparently suspects from the beginning, probably because of Frank’s recent criminal history.
All unaware, the brothers continued their newfound career, hitting yet another county treasury, this time in Gallatin, Missouri; that got them another twenty-two thousand dollars, and the stealing business began to look better and better. Then they hit a major snag: The Pinkerton men, reluctant to start a gun battle in Seymour, hit upon a simple, foolproof arrest plan. Running a special train into Seymour, they managed to inveigle John Reno out onto the platform, and there they simply snatched him, without the slightest pretence of due process of law, or even a by-your-leave.
The train immediately carried the kidnappers and their prey away; the rest of the brothers chased the train after they learned of John Reno’s misfortune, but they couldn’t catch up with the iron horse, presumably faster than ordinary horseflesh. John was quickly convicted and shipped off to the state pen. If that sounds impossible in this day of complex criminal litigation and constitutional protections, it probably is, particularly since the whole business started with a kidnapping of the defendant. Back then, however, it worked.
Frank Reno now ascended to the purple, as the saying went, in his brother’s place, and under his command the gang went on a series of successful operations, including the robbery of still another county treasury, this time in Magnolia, Iowa. The take there was about fourteen thousand dollars, but the gang left tracks this time. For in Council Bluffs, Iowa, the Pinkertons found that a citizen named Rogers, described as an “upstanding resident,” in fact had been a criminal and often went to a saloon run by a onetime counterfeiter. And so when Frank Reno was spotted entering Rogers’ house, a police raid followed, sweeping up Frank, Rogers, and two counterfeiters.
All four accordingly went off to jail in Council Bluffs, but this time they managed to escape; it being the first of April, they wrote a large “April Fool” on the wall of the place before they departed.
So Frank, Simeon, and Bill were together once more, and they planned a truly spectacular strike. It was to be a train again, this time on the Ohio and Mississippi Valley line just a few miles away from Seymour, and it would be spectacular by any measure.
For this job the Reno boys had brought along lots of help, a couple of dozen hard cases. Although the brothers again shortsightedly staged the holdup just thirteen miles from Seymour, they came away with a take worth almost one hundred thousand dollars in money and other valuables.
The Pinkertons of course pursued, and within just four days they managed to collar three of the desperadoes. But at this point fate intervened in the form of a local vigilante group, which overpowered the Pinkerton men in charge of the three and promptly hanged their charges. There wasn’t much due process of law involved this time either, but at least the three wouldn’t rob anybody ever again.
Bill and Simeon Reno were luckier. Arrested in July in Indiana, they languished in jail awaiting trial, while the Pinkertons followed Frank and two lesser lights into Canada. They arrested them there, or somehow got them arrested, and began the long, involved process of extradition. Twice while they waited, other criminals unsuccessfully tried to murder agency founder William Pinkerton.
But finally in early October, the glacial legal process ground to completion, and the gang members were moved south to New Albany, Indiana, where they held a sort of reunion with Simeon and Bill. If it was a happy occasion, the good cheer didn’t last, for a vigilante band again entered the jail and applied their own idea of due process.
They lynched them all.