The Great Gold Robbery took place on the night of 15 May 1855, when three London firms each sent a box of gold bars and coins from London Bridge station for Paris via the South Eastern Railway. A total of 200 lb (91 kg) weight of gold, worth around £12,000 (equal to £1,011,341 in present day terms) was stolen en route to Folkestone, from where the gold was to be shipped across the English Channel to Boulogne.

History
The robbery

On the night of 15 May 1855, three boxes containing gold belonging to Abell and Co., Spielmann, and Bult were delivered by a firm of carriers to the South Eastern Railway at London Bridge station where they were put aboard the guard's van.

The boxes were sealed and bound with iron bars and were placed in safes secured by Chubb locks. The duplicate keys to the safes were held by confidential servants of the railway company in London and Folkestone, and also by the captains of the South Eastern railway's boats.

When the boxes were taken out of the safes at Boulogne and weighed, it was discovered that one weighed 40 lb (18 kg) less than it should have, while the other two each weighed a little more. Despite this discrepancy, the boxes were transferred to a train for Paris. Upon arrival in Paris they were weighed again and when they were opened, it was discovered that lead shot had been substituted for the gold. It was clear that the robbery had not taken place between Paris and Boulogne due to the weights corresponding.

Inquiries were made as soon as the news of the robbery came from Paris to discover where the robbery had been carried out. Initial press reports stated that "it is supposed that so well-planned a scheme could not have been executed in the rapid passage by railway from London to Folkstone." However, after an investigation it was concluded that it could not have taken place at Folkestone or aboard the cross-Channel boat, or prior to the arrival of the boxes at London Bridge station, and therefore must have taken place aboard the train.

Four police forces in Britain and France made extensive inquiries for months and arrested hundreds of suspects for questioning but found nothing. Afterwards many of those who had handled the boxes reported small discrepancies like holes and broken seals. The main suspects were railway staff members at Folkestone. The South Eastern Railway offered a sizeable reward and named its own investigator but received only false information. The official British theory was that the robbery had taken place on the continent, while the French police claimed it had happened in England because of the discrepancy in the boxes' weights at Boulogne.

Suspect arrested

In August 1855 Edward Agar, a professional criminal and associate of crooked barrister James Townsend Saward, was arrested for passing a false cheque; in fact, he had been set up by a rival. Agar was sentenced for penal transportation to Australia for life, and meanwhile sent to Pentonville prison. From prison Agar wrote to Fanny Kay, mother of his illegitimate child, and mentioned that William Pierce, a former railway employee, was supposed to have paid her £7,000 (equal to £589,949 today). Pierce, in fact, had given her no money.

Kay grew suspicious and in the summer of 1856 visited the governor of Newgate prison. The governor contacted Mr Rees, the investigator for the railway company, and took her to see him. When Kay told Rees about the money, he went to see Agar who, at the time, was in a prison hulk at Portland. When Agar heard what had happened, he decided to tell Rees what had happened and eventually described the robbery at length.

Agar's testimony

Agar had met Pierce years earlier when Pierce had worked as a ticket printer for the railway company. When Agar returned to England after some time in Australia and America, he met Pierce again and they discussed the possibility of stealing some of the gold frequently shipped between London and Paris on the South Eastern railway. Pierce appears to have been the originator of the plan, and suggested that he could get hold of impressions of the keys to the safes which protected the gold. He was assisted by his associate, railway guard James Burgess.

Pierce and Agar travelled to Folkestone to watch the delivery of the luggage, and make their plans, and attracted the suspicion of the police and the railway authorities with their observation of the booking clerks and the luggage porters. They separated, Pierce returning to London, and Agar remaining behind, where he managed to discover where the key to the bullion safe was kept, though he despaired of ever managing to get hold of it.

Pierce decided to recruit one William George Tester, who was a clerk in the railway superintendent's office. In July or August Pierce discovered that the safe locks were to be returned to Chubb for alterations and Agar was informed that Tester would briefly have the new keys in his possession after this was done. The new safe had two locks, with two different keys, Chubb at first sending only one key to each safe. Tester took these keys to Agar, who made an impression of them in wax.

The difficulty now was to get an impression of the safe's second key. In October 1851 Agar arranged to have a box of bullion worth £200 (equal to £19,749 today) sent on the train to Folkestone, where he would collect it under an assumed name. Agar watched as the safe was opened by a clerk using a key taken from a cupboard. He and Pierce then met in Folkestone where Pierce took advantage of the absence of the booking clerks from the office to simply walk in, and take the safe key from the cupboard – which had been left with its key in the lock – and hand it to Agar, who made a wax impression, then returned it to where he had found it.

Having made duplicate keys from the impressions, Agar travelled down to Folkestone several times in the guard's van with Burgess, to test the keys and adjust them until they fitted the safe's locks.

The conspirators decided not to steal any bullion until a good haul could be made. In the meantime they prepared for their robbery by obtaining lead shot equal in weight to the gold which was to be stolen, so as to delay discovery of the theft, preparing 200 lb (91 kg) of shot equal to what £12,000 of gold would weigh. They divided the shot for easier handling, placing some in carpet bags and some in courier bags, which could be carried on their person and hidden by a cloak.

Finally, on 15 May 1855, Tester met Agar at the station, and told him it was "all right" and Agar and Pierce drove to the station dressed as gentlemen, and bought first-class tickets for Folkestone. They gave their carpet bags of lead shot to a porter, who in turn gave them to the guard, Burgess, who put them in his van. Agar boarded the guard's van with Burgess, while Pierce got into a first-class carriage.

As soon as the train began to move, Agar opened the safe and found the three bullion boxes. He removed the iron bands from one of the boxes using a mallet and chisel, took out the gold bars and substituted lead shot, then replaced the bands and replaced the box's wax seal with a wax taper and an ordinary seal.

It had been arranged beforehand that when the train halted at Redhill Tester should relieve Agar and Pierce of a share of the gold and at that station a bar of gold was placed in a black bag which Tester had brought. In the confusion of the train stopping and starting off again, Pierce got into the van with Agar and Burgess, and when it had set off again they opened up a second box. The third and final box contained small bars of Californian gold. Pierce and Agar could not take all of this, but took a large portion of it, substituting lead shot as before.

When the train arrived at Folkestone the boxes of "gold" were unloaded, and Burgess, Pierce, and Tester carried on to Dover on the train. At Dover they took their carpet bags from the guard's van and proceeded to the Dover Castle Inn, where they ordered refreshments before returning to London by train.

In the following weeks, Agar and Pierce melted down the gold and sold some of it. Burgess received £700 (equal to £58,995 today) and others £600 (equal to £50,567 today). When Agar was arrested, Pierce buried some of the gold in the pantry under the front steps of his house.

Arrests, convictions and sentencing

Fanny Kay was taken to lodge in the house of police inspector Thorton for safekeeping. Further investigation corroborated Agar's story. Rees recovered gold worth £2,000 (equal to £168,557 today). Some railway employees Agar had dealt with recognised him.

William Pierce, Jeremy Forsyth, and James Burgess were arrested in London in November 1856. William Tester, who had left to work as a general manager for Swedish Railways, was arrested when he visited relatives in England.

The trial at the Old Bailey began on 10 January 1857. The main witnesses were Agar and Kay. On 12 January Burgess and Tester were sentenced to penal transportation for 14 years. Pierce received two years for larceny with periodical solitary confinement.

An account of the trial was published soon afterwards, with illustrations by Percy Cruikshank (eldest son of Isaac Robert Cruikshank).

Legacy

One hundred years on from 1855, Michael Robbins wrote a detailed feature about this incident called The Great South-Eastern Bullion Robbery in The Railway Magazine May 1955 issue.

Michael Crichton's novel The Great Train Robbery and subsequent feature film presents a highly fictionalised version of the event, portraying Pierce (played by Sean Connery), as a gentleman master criminal who eventually escapes. The true story of the robbery can be found in the book by David C. Hanrahan: The First Great Train Robbery.

The robbery also featured as one theme in the Victorian mystery novel entltled "Kept", written by D.J. Taylor; however in this novel the mastermind behind the crime evaded capture with much of the proceeds.

One of the strongboxes and a sack of the lead shot can be seen on display at the National Railway Museum.
 

The Union Pacific Big Springs Robbery of 1877 was a legendary robbery of $60,000 in newly-minted $20 gold pieces being shipped from the San Francisco Mint to a bank in the East. Coverage of the sensational heist in the contemporary press made famous Sam Bass and his gang of "Black Hills Bandits." The event remains the biggest single robbery in the history of the Union Pacific Railroad.

History
The Robbery

On September 18, 1877, Sam Bass, Joel Collins, Jack Davis, Tom Nixon, Bill Heffridge, and Jim Berry, robbed a Union Pacific train (express train No. 4) out of San Francisco at a water station in present-day Big Springs, Nebraska, resulting in no fatalities. Under the cover of night, The Black Hills Bandits, as they were referred to, made off with “$60,000 in newly minted twenty-dollar gold pieces from the express car and $1,300 plus four gold watches from the passengers” (Clayton). Boarding the train at 10:48 on a Tuesday night, the bandits found $450 in the way safe, used for storing passenger’s valuables.

After interrogating an attendant as to why the main safe would not open, one of the bandits pistol-whipped the man. While the accomplices did not believe the lock was on a timer, making it impossible to open the safe before the train reached its destination, Bass realized the attendant was not lying (“Sam Bass and His Train”) and called off his rowdy comrade.

As the gang was walking toward the door—all but empty handed and ready to flee the scene of the crime—something caught the eye of one: three wooden boxes stacked by the main safe (“Sam Bass and His Train”). Opening the boxes, the gang discovered “$20 gold pieces headed from the San Francisco Mint to an Eastern bank”, them its $60,000 contents(“City of Round Rock”). Each member of the Black Hills Bandits made off with his share of the earnings, split six ways, accounting for the “first and greatest robbery of a Union Pacific train” and placing our character Bass in the midst of a crucial turning point in his life (McEntire 195).

However, there was one capture — John Barnhart, station-master (McEntire 195). Though he made it out alive, others among the gang were not so lucky. Eight days after the robbery, Collins and Heffridge were killed by Sheriff Bardsley and a group of “ten United States Soldiers” ( McEntire 195). Berry, having been wounded at the hand of the law, died a short distance from his home in Mexico, Missouri. Two thousand, eight hundred and forty dollars was recovered from his person (McEntire 195). Assumedly, Nixon escaped home to Canada, while Bass and Davis drove south-bound with their money and their lives, the former hidden under the seat of their escape buggy (“City of Round Rock”).

Legacy

Bass’s robbery of the Union Pacific marks his succession to fame. Before this job, the fatherless outlaw had worked as “farmer, teamster, gambler, cowboy, saloon owner, [and later as a] miner” (O’Neal 35) in order to support himself. However, his continual losses on the race track and in the saloons led Bass to robbery. After a brief stint of trying to operate a freight line “in the black”, Bass turned to stagecoaches. But, not turning a profit, Bass rounded up a gang for the Big Springs Robbery.

Following his Big Springs heist, Bass spent money prolifically, gaining him the title of the “Robin Hood”. He paid handsomely for services rendered: “payments of twenty dollars for a dozen eggs or a pan of warm biscuits were reported from many directions” (“The Sam Bass Legend” 116). Later owing to his success is the ballad written about the man, in which the following lines appear:

    "On their way back to Texas they robbed the U.P. train,
    And then split up in couples and started out again;
    Joe Collins and his partner were overtaken soon,
    With all their hard-earned money they had to meet their doom."

Only after the Union Pacific job did the law — in the form of freelancers hoping to cash in on a reward — come after the gang (“City of Round Rock”). And even after the robbery, with all of that money in his possession, Bass returned to crime a mere four months later.

As expressed on the City of Round Rock’s website, “Many people have believed that there was no way that he could have spent the money.” People began to think that in his stagecoach-robbing years and up until his robbery of the Union Pacific, Bass robbed for profit. However, post- Union-Pacific, “since it is hard to imagine that Sam could have used up all of his gold before he started train robbing again, it lends credence to the story that Sam robbed for sport more than for profit” (“City of Round Rock”).With the robbery of the Union Pacific, Bass transformed into a bona fide outlaw, from for-profit to for-pleasure robbery.
 

Aztec Land and Cattle Company, Limited ("Aztec") is a land company with a historic presence in Arizona. It was formed in 1884 and incorporated in early 1885 as a cattle ranching operation that purchased 1,000,000 acres in northern Arizona from the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad. It then imported approximately 32,000 head of cattle from Texas and commenced ranching operations in Arizona. Because Aztec's brand was the Hashknife, a saddler's knife used on early day ranches, the company was known more famously as The Hashknife Outfit. The company has been in continuous existence since 1884.

History
Foundation

Aztec was incorporated in New York, New York in 1884 by a group of investors led by Edward Kinsley, a wool merchant and member of the State Board of Railroad Commissioners of Massachusetts, and Henry Warren, a former lieutenant in the Union army with some, albeit limited, ranching experience. The investors were hoping to take advantage of the recent drop in cattle prices. In the early 1880s, drought had become a serious problem to ranchers in Texas. To recoup their investment, many of these ranchers left their cattle herds intact during the dry times with the intention of selling off the cattle when the market was better, which resulted in overgrazing. By 1885, the beef industry had collapsed because thousands of cattle in west Texas, held off the market for better prices, were either dead or starving on barren plains. Separately, the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad was having financial difficulties and sold 1,000,000 acres of Arizona grassland to Aztec at $0.50 per acre. Aztec then entered a joint venture with the Continental Cattle Company of Texas and began exporting droughted-out cattle from Continental’s Texas range to Arizona via rail and traditional cattle drives. The original Aztec headquarters was located across the Little Colorado River from Saint Joseph, Arizona (now Joseph City), but was moved to Holbrook, Arizona shortly afterward.

In addition to the cattle, Aztec acquired one of Continental's brands, the Hashknife, because the cattle it imported from Texas were already branded with it. In these new and unsettled Western ranches, it was especially important for cattle to be branded to prove ownership and minimize theft, which was common and at times rampant. The Hashknife brand was registered in Arizona, as it was in Texas, and placed, after 1895, on the left rib of cattle and left shoulder of horses. For both cattle and horses, the blade faced up. Some of the original Hashknife cowboys also came west to work the new ranch in Arizona, among them, according to Aztec’s records, a cowboy known only as “Baconrind Bill”.

Sheep Wars and Future Leaders

Several of Aztec’s early employees were Texas cowboys whose abilities made them legends among their fellow ranchers during their years in Arizona. Some were involved in Arizona’s Pleasant Valley War in the late 1880s and early 1890s, a decade-long feud between cattlemen and sheep herders over rangeland and resources that took place, in part, on Aztec land. A few were killed in that war, but a number went on to become local, state, and national leaders of some repute. Among these, the son of Aztec’s earliest ranch superintendent, William Hood Simpson, became the commander of the 9th Army in Europe during the worst fighting of World War II. Another former employee, and son of an Aztec stockholder, Henry M. Atkinson, later founded Georgia Power in Atlanta in 1902, which is now a subsidiary of the Southern Company, an electrical utility in the southeast U.S.

Present
Change of Strategy

Aztec continued ranching until about 1905, when after years of drought, harsh winters and low cattle prices, the company sold its cattle. Robert H. Carlock, a long-time principal in Aztec and author of Aztec’s most comprehensive history, summarized both Aztec’s initial business strategy and the cause of its troubles:
 
“  Cattle were supposed to generate the cash flow that would be paid to the stockholders as dividends. The land would be there…to secure the loans and expenses until the cattle could carry it. But the cattle never made it.  ”

After selling its cattle, Aztec embarked on a program of leasing its grazing land to local cattle ranchers—a program that continues to this day. Many of the company’s current grazing lessees are direct descendants of its original lessees. 

As of 2017, Aztec and its affiliates own approximately 240,000 acres in Navajo County, Arizona and 320,000 acres of mineral rights (some without surface ownership) in Navajo and Coconino Counties. It is the second largest private landowner in Arizona and holds one of the few remaining large-scale tracts of rural private land available for development in the state. As Robert H. Carlock observed, “Aztec’s land has changed little in the past century. When traveling between Winslow and Flagstaff on I-40, if one looks south some forty or fifty miles, the thin blue line of the [Mogollon] Rim, still the southern boundary of Aztec’s vast acreage, can be seen.” 

Aztec, with a partner, also owns the Apache Railway, a Class III short-line railroad running for 55 miles off the BNSF Railway’s transcontinental mainline near Holbrook, Arizona. The Apache Railway serves much of Aztec’s land, providing access to both national and international markets, and has operated continuously since its incorporation in 1917.
 

In the 1890s, Burt Alvord and his partner in crime, Billy Stiles, were serving as deputy sheriffs in Willcox. Law enforcement paid little, though, so they began robbing trains belonging to the Southern Pacific Railroad. For a while they managed to be successful and went undetected by their fellow lawmen.[

According to James H. McClintock, train robbery was popular in Arizona at the time, which was exemplified by the passing of a statute in 1889 that made it punishable by death. However, the law was never enforced and several train robberies occurred between 1889 and 1899. One of the most daring, according to McClintock, was the Cochise Train Robbery. On September 9, 1899, Alvord's gang robbed a train as it was stopped at the town of Cochise. There they forced the staff off at gunpoint and then blew up the safe with dynamite. After taking several thousand dollars in gold coins and bills, the gang rode into the Chiricahua Mountains, unsuccessfully pursued by a posse under Sheriff Scott White and George Scarborough.

Like at Fairbank, the Cochise robbery took place in public as well, although it was nearly midnight and there was no gunfight. According to the Historical Atlas of the Outlaw West, by Richard M. Patterson: "Most Western train robberies occurred on a lonely stretch of track, usually far enough outside the nearest town to give the robbers plenty of time to raid the express car or the passenger coaches and disappear over the nearest ridge." Alvord and Stiles must have thought it was easier to rob a train in town than in the middle of nowhere so they came up with a plan to hold up a Wells Fargo express car as it was stopped in front of the train station in Fairbank. The express car, Alvord hoped, would be carrying the United States Army's payroll for the soldiers stationed at Fort Huachuca. Also, the crowd of people that was sure to be gathered at the station would provide the bandits with human shields.

The train was traveling from Nogales to Benson, but it had to stop at the little town of Fairbank, located a few miles west of Tombstone, to offload some cargo. Alvord and Stiles knew that Jeff Milton was working for Southern Pacific as an express messenger so they made arrangements to have five men rob the train on a night that he was not supposed to be working. In the mean time, Alvord and Stiles would maintain their guise as honorable deputies.

Robbery

The night chosen for the robbery was February 15, 1900, and the five bandits were Bob Brown, or Burns, "Bravo Juan" Tom Yoas, the brothers George and Louis Owens, and "Three Fingered Jack" Dunlop. When they arrived in town, the bandits dismounted and blended in with the crowd, pretending to be drunken cowboys.

At this point there are some conflicting accounts, although there are only slight variations. According to Bill O'Neal's Encyclopedia of Western Gunfighters, as the train approached Fairbank Jeff Milton was standing at the open door of the express car when the bandits opened fire on him from the station and wounded him. However, according to Robert M. Patterson, the train came to a full stop before the bandits made their approach and one of them shouted "Hands up!" to Milton before the shooting started.

According to Patterson's version, at first Milton thought that the call to surrender was a joke, but, when the bandits called out a second time and shot off his hat, he quickly reassessed the situation. Milton was substituting for a friend at the time of the robbery and otherwise would not have been on the train. He had left his revolver on his desk inside the car, but his sawed-off shotgun was next to the door and within reach. Milton hesitated though because using his shotgun would put innocent bystanders at risk. So when the bandits decided to open fire again one of their first shots struck Milton in the left shoulder. Milton then fell to the floor badly wounded, but he managed to grab his shotgun just in time to use it on Dunlop, who was trying to enter the car. Eleven pellets struck Dunlop somewhere in his body and a final pellet hit Yoas in the upper leg or behind.

After the initial exchange, Brown and the Owens brothers began firing volleys into the express car while Yoas ran away to mount his horse. In response to the fire, Milton crawled over to the metal door of the car and slammed it shut just as another volley came in. He then applied a makeshift tourniquet, hid the key to the safe behind some luggage, and fell unconscious.

Because of his final acts, when the bandits boarded the train they thought Milton was dead and they could not find the key. Without the key or dynamite, there was no way to open the safe so the wounded Dunlop was loaded onto his horse and the bandits rode out of town. According to James H. McClintock, the bandits got away with only seventeen Mexican pesos.

Aftermath

The bandits headed for the Dragoon Mountains, but, at a point six miles from Tombstone, Dunlop had to be left behind with a bottle of whiskey to ease his pain. Possemen under the command of Sheriff Scott White found Dunlop on the next morning and a few days later they captured Brown and the Owens brothers while they were traversing a pass in the Dragoons. Dunlop later died in a Tombstone hospital, but not before revealing that Alvord and a local cattleman named William Downing had been involved in organizing the Cochise robbery. He was one of the last criminals to be buried in the Boothill Graveyard.

Initially the police thought Dunlop's claim that Alvord was somehow involved in the robbery must have been false, being that he was one of the "noisiest and most active pursuers." Later on, however, Billy Stiles surrendered and made a full confession. Stiles said that it was he and a man named Matt Burts who held up the train at Cochise, but it was Alvord and William Downing who planned the robbery and provided the dynamite for the safe. Stiles said he received only $480 for his participation in the robbery and it was believed that he confessed because of his dissatisfaction with his share. According to McClintock, the police treated Stiles as little more than a witness so he was not placed in jail and was allowed a certain amount of liberty. This would later prove to be a mistake.

When Alvord was arrested he was put in the Tombstone jail with Downing, Burns, and Yoas, who was captured in Cananea. He wasn't in jail for very long though because on April 7, 1900, Stiles broke in, shot Deputy Marshal George Bravin in the foot, and freed Alvord and Yoas. Downing refused to leave his cell and Burts was outside with a deputy sheriff at the time so the other three men took all the weapons they could find and then fled into the desert on stolen horses, leaving Downing and Burts in custody.

The bandits are next found at the home of Alvord's wife, a cattle ranch near Wilcox, where they announced that they intended to rob a few more trains. Meanwhile, the local police and territorial officials were busy authorizing various amounts of reward money for the capture of the bandits. There was also support from the private sector as well; William Cornell Greene, the owner of the large copper mine at Cananea, offered $10,000 for the capture of Alvord or Stiles.

The reward money made no difference though. Stiles remained on the run until he surrendered in 1902. He briefly served in the Arizona Rangers under Captain Burton C. Mossman before going to Mexico and rejoining Alvord, who was still at large. Finally, the Arizona Rangers entered Mexico and managed to wound both Alvord and Stiles during a shootout near the village of Naco in February 1904. Alvord was captured as result, but Stiles got away. He was eventually killed in Nevada while serving as a lawman under the name William Larkin.

Because he was popular among the authorities, Alvord was charged for "interferring with United States mails", instead of train robbery, which would have meant death. Alvord was put in the Yuma Territorial Prison and he remained there until 1906. When he was released, Alvord went to Central America and was last seen in 1910 while working on the Panama Canal. William Downing received similar treatment. Because he was a prominent cattleman, as well as a former member of the Bass Gang, Downing was not charged with train robbery either, but on another charge he served seven years in Yuma. Not long after his release, the Arizona Ranger Billy Speed shot and killed him.

Jeff Milton received much praise for foiling the Fairbank robbery. Although his arm was crippled, Milton continued serving as a lawman. He died in Tombstone in 1947.

In 1961, the Fairbank train station was moved to nearby Tombstone and restored. It now serves as the city library and is open to the general public.
 

Background

Ben Kilpatrick, known as the "Tall Texan", was originally a member of Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch, but he was caught after the 1901 Great Northern Robbery in Montana and sent to the federal prison in Atlanta, Georgia. Upon his release, exactly ten years after the Great Northern Robbery, Ben went straight back to a life of crime.

Old West historians have often written Ben Kilpatrick off as being entirely unable to commit a robbery without the help of Butch Cassidy or Kid Curry, but after his release from prison, a man named Ole Hobek and he executed a series of "spectacular" bank and train robberies within a short time. The robberies did not yield much gain, though, which necessitated further robberies.

Little is known about Hobek's life prior to his release from prison, where he is believed to have met Ben. However, anticipating Ben's release, he made an appearance in West Texas in the spring of 1911. Claiming to be a detective, he shared a hack with two men from San Angelo who were taking a trip to Sheffield. Once there, Hobek disappeared without paying his share of the bill. Investigators later determined that he contacted someone in Christoval, where some of Ben's relatives lived. Hobek was next seen in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was working for the L.B. Price Mercantile Company from July 1911 until February 5, 1912.

The robbery

At about 12:05 am, March 13, 1912, Kilpatrick and Hobek boarded Southern Pacific's Train #9 in Dryden and rode it west towards Sanderson. Once they were out of town, the two robbers put on masks and made their way to the front of the train to take the engineer, D. E. Grosh, two of his crewmen, and the express messenger hostage. The robbers then ordered the engineer to stop the train at the first iron bridge west of Baxter's Curve, which was located roughly midway between Dryden and Sanderson and was where they had left their horses.

While Kilpatrick was holding the engineer at gunpoint, Hobek went to the express car with the express messenger, David A. Trousdale, and the two crewmen, to disconnect the following cars and commence the actual robbery. Along the way, Trousdale managed to arm himself with an ice mallet that was used for a shipment of frozen oysters. He concealed it upon his person until an opportune moment. A few minutes later, as Hobek was looking down to pick up a package, Trousdale struck him in the head with the mallet and killed him.

Trousdale then armed himself with Hobek's rifle and gave pistols to the two crewmen. They then turned out the lights and went to the back of the car to wait for Kilpatrick to show himself. According to Trousdale, they waited over an hour before he became impatient and decided to make his way to the express car. When he appeared in the window of the express car, Kilpatrick called out the name "Frank" a few times, but was then shot in the head by Trousdale without ever seeing him.
 
Aftermath

With the robbery thwarted, the engineer restarted the engine, reconnected with the other half of the train, and then drove to Sanderson, where the sheriff of Terrell County was informed. The sheriff, David L. Anderson, who was notable for having been a member of Billy the Kid's gang, later captured a third accomplice in the robbery attempt; an 11-year-old boy who was recruited to hold the horses at Baxter's Curve. Interestingly, the bandits' horses were found to have been shod backwards, presumably so that when they made their escape their tracks would appear to be going the opposite way.

The train arrived in Sanderson about 5:00 am. The bodies of Kilpatrick and Hobek were immediately removed from the train and propped up in front of the depot for their now-famous photograph. After the photograph was taken, the bodies were wrapped in sheets and placed together in a large wooden coffin. Kilpatrick and Hobek were originally buried in an unmarked plot at the Cedar Grove Cemetery, but their grave has since been discovered and is now a popular tourist attraction.

David Trousdale was regarded as a hero, and as a reward, he was presented with $1,000 and an engraved gold watch from Wells Fargo & Company. He also received another $1,000 from the federal government, $500 from the Southern Pacific Railroad, and a gold watch fob inlaid with a diamond inside the star of Texas from grateful passengers. The engraving on the watch said "In recognition of the courage and fidelity displayed in an attempted train robbery near Dryden, Texas, March 13, 1912, Wells Fargo and Co." The fob said "Presented by passengers, west-bound Sunset Express, for bravery displayed March 13, 1912, near Dryden, Texas."

Although the Baxter's Curve Train Robbery is sometimes considered to be the last train robbery in Texas history, the Newton Gang robbed a Southern Pacific train near Uvalde in 1914.
 
David A. Trousdale's account

The following was reported by David A. Trousdale to the police in Sanderson: