Print Archive: The Anaconda Standard 04.18.1902

KILLED BY OFFICER

CAMILLA HANKS, ALIAS CHARLES JONES. GREAT NORTHERN TRAIN ROBBER IS DEAD.

SERVED TIME IN DEER LODGE

Convicted in This State of Holding Up Northern Pacific Train Near Big Timber and Sentenced to Ten Years’ Imprisonment – Was Wanted for Murder and Other Crimes.  Fires Two Shots at Police Before He Finally Falls Under the Fire of the Officers.

Special to the Standard.

San Antonio, Texas. April 17. –

While resisting arrest at the resort of Flo Williams on Nueva street at 2:30 o’clock this morning, an unknown man was shot and killed by Police Officer Pink Taylor. He was struck by three bullets, either of which would have proven fatal.

Taylor and two other officers had gone to the place to arrest the man on suspicion and when they appeared he opened fire. He fired two shots before he fell dead under Taylor’s fire. The dead man had on a coat, in the collar of which was a manufacturer’s tag reading: “Made for Wyatt Hyatts.”

To-day the body was identified as that of Camilla Hanks, alias “Deaf Charley.” Alias O.C. Hanks, alias Charles Jones, a brother of Wyatt Hanks of De Witt county, this state, and for whom there was a reward of several thousand dollars. His criminal record, furnished by the Pinkertons is as follows:

Raised at Yorktown, Texas, fugitive from there. Charged with criminal assault; wanted in New Mexico on the charge of murder: arrested in Teton county, Mont., in 1893 and sentenced to 10 years in Deer Lodge penitentiary for holding up Northern Pacific train near Big Timber, Mont.: released on April 20 (?) 1901: wanted for robbery of Great Northern train at Wagner, Mont., July 3, 1901.

The marks on the dead man exactly tally with Pinkerton’s description of Camilla Hanks. Besides the body has been fully identified by a former sheriff of De Witt county, where the man was born, as that of the Notorious train robber called Camilla Hanks.

JONES’ MONTANA RECORD

Led in a Train Robbery and Once in Shadow of Gallows

The killing at San Antonio, Texas of the man known as Charles Jones and under various other names marks the end of one of the most desperate gangs of train robbers that ever struck Montana – the party that held up the Northern Pacific express at Graycliffe sometime in 1893 or 1894. Unlike the gang that held up the Great Northern near Malta last July this group of highway-men were not after valuable express matter, but confined themselves to the passengers and train men. The train was stopped on its eastern journey near Graycliffe one night, and everything of value that could be found was taken. The robbers after completing their work struck out on their horses across country, going in a northerly direction. The posses started out in pursuit came across their tracks at several places, but finally lost them and gave up the chase.

Sam Jackson, one of the best known deputy United States marshals Montana has ever produced, kept on the trail with bull dog tenacity, and his efforts were rewarded when it was though all hope of capture was gone and the incident was becoming forgotten. He located the gang near Shelby Junction on the Great Northern – that is he located all but one. That one had been drowned in the Yellowstone while trying to swim his horse across after the hold-up.

Having satisfied himself as to the identity of the men near the junction, Jackson secured the services of a number of Indian police and surrounded the gang in an old cabin. The highwaymen put up a strong fight from behind their shelter, and the posse fired from behind the most convenient trees. In the posse was a white man from the Indian Agency, Henry Schubert. In a spirit of recklessness or carelessness he exposed himself at the outset of the fight and was shot through the body and killed. During the excitement following this event, the robbers dug their way out under the back of the cabin and escaped.

The country in the neighborhood of Shelby was aroused, and numerous posses were organized. The men had scattered, and that made the search all the more difficult. However, one of the men was run down by a posse from Kalispell somewhere along the Great Northern track and was killed. That was Sam Shurmer, a desperate fellow who once burned and robbed a post office in Ohio and had been caught in Montana and taken back for trial. He managed to escape punishment for the Ohio crime and came back West where he joined the Jones gang. Another member of the gang was killed by a man from Kalispell whom he had known in Eastern Montana, and to whom he had applied for aid to keep him out of the hands of the posses that were scouring the country in the neighborhood of the Blackfoot reservation and along the line of the Great Northern.

The last man of the gang to come to grief was Charles Jones. Hunted on every side, and unable to secure enough to eat, he finally in desperation applied to an Irish section boss, for food. While he was eating the foreman secured the robber’s gun and compelled him to surrender. Jones was not in a position to resist, and only requested to be allowed to finish satisfying his hunger. After he had done so, he was turned over to the officers of the law who were in pursuit of him.

Jones was taken to the Helena and tried for the murder of Schubert. He was convicted of murder in the first degree. Before sentence could be passed he applied for and was granted a new  trial on the ground that the judge, in instructing the jury, had failed to tell them there was an intermediate degree between murder in the first degree and manslaughter. On the second trial Jones pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was given a 10 years sentence which he served at Deer Lodge. With good time allowance he got free a very short time before the Great Northern hold-up of last July.

So every member of the gang that held up the Northern Pacific at Greycliff has come to a violent end – one by drowning. There was one young fellow caught near Shelby Junction who had been in company with the hold-up gang during the fight at the cabin where Schubert was killed. But it was clearly proved that he had joined the gang only shortly before, and subsequent to the robbery of the train.

After being convicted of murder in the first degree at Helena, Jones told one of the people connected with the prosecution of the case that he was from Texas. The story from San Antonio makes it look as through Kincaid was only one of his many aliases.

As to whether Jones really was in the Malta hold-up last July will perhaps never be known. The possibility of its being true, however, is great. He was just the kind of man to take a hand in such an enterprise, and the time he was due to leave the penitentiary allowed of his being able to gather a number of same desperado characters as himself in time to do that job. If he was in that affair it is likely he, and not Kid Curry, was the leader.

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