The Train Robbery Blamed on the Bisbee Killers

On November 24, 1883, a Southern Pacific train was derailed and robbed near Gage Station, New Mexico. Weeks later, Arizona newspapers named two suspects in the Bisbee murders as participants. A Wells Fargo investigator disputed that connection.

Late on the afternoon of November 24, eastbound Southern Pacific train No. 19 approached Gage Station in southwestern New Mexico. About five miles east of the station, it ran onto a damaged stretch of track. The engine and several cars left the rails. Armed men boarded the wrecked train. Engineer Webster was shot and killed, and the robbers took money and packages from the express car.

A detailed account in the Arizona Weekly Star said the robbers confronted conductor Vail and a passenger but obtained no money from them. It said they left the other passengers and trainmen alone. Earlier dispatches had been less certain: one report said passengers were held up but acknowledged that the claim had not been confirmed. A surviving Wells Fargo telegram reported approximately $830 taken from its messenger. The newspaper accounts therefore need to be read in the order they appeared, with the early uncertainty retained.

The Star’s account described the track bolts as removed and the rails spread. It said the engine, mail, baggage, and express cars, along with the forward trucks of a sleeping car, left the track. The robbers fired at express messenger Hodgekins but, according to that report, did not hit him. A rear brakeman escaped through the grass and made his way back to Gage to notify railroad and express officials. These particulars came through a railroad official in Tucson shortly after the attack; they remain a contemporary account rather than testimony taken at the scene.

The search moves toward Arizona

The robbers fled after the holdup. Reports placed Sheriff Tucker of Deming, a posse, and soldiers from Fort Bayard on their trail. Authorities at Tombstone and Fort Huachuca were notified. With the railroad and express company offering rewards, the search soon reached across the territorial line into southeastern Arizona.

The same report said the passengers and baggage were transferred from the disabled train and reached Deming that night. It described Webster as a resident of Tucson with a wife and two children. Railroad officials believed the gunmen fired on him because he might try to reverse or slow the engine when he saw the opened rails. The report presented that as their theory of the shooting, not as an account of the robbers’ intent.

A November 26 report printed in the Arizona Weekly Citizen said railroad officials had offered $2,000 for each robber captured and proposed $10,000 for the whole party. It suggested the men might be headed toward the San Bernardino Mountains. The report also named John Price, known as “Johnnie Over the Fence,” as a supposed leader. These were early claims made while officers were searching. The clipping supplies no arrest or evidence establishing Price’s participation.

Other reports directed attention toward Galeyville. A dispatch dated December 12 said five men had arrived there after the Gage robbery, asked a miner for provisions, and camped about a mile from town. According to the account, a soldier offered to help them claim a reward if they followed him, but they declined. The report described them as suspected robbers. Their behavior may have raised questions for those pursuing the gang, but it did not identify the men who derailed the train.

The Galeyville report also said a party under Deputy Marshal C. B. Sanders had come from Deming to question the men. The dispatch illustrates the problem officers faced: movement between New Mexico and Arizona, a camp near a mining town, and unwillingness to join a posse could prompt suspicion, but none of those observations independently identified a man from the train.

The Bisbee accusation

On December 8, five robbers struck a store in Bisbee, Arizona Territory, and five people were killed. The search for the Bisbee men unfolded while officers were still pursuing leads in the Gage case. Reports of riders moving through southeastern Arizona gave newspapers reason to ask whether the crimes were connected.

The suspicion hardened into an accusation after officers captured O. W. “Red” Sample and James “Tex” Howard near Clifton. A dispatch dated December 17, printed by the Arizona Weekly Citizen, called them principals in both the Gage and Bisbee robberies. It added that people who knew of the supposed connection had been afraid to speak before the men were captured. The article offered its conclusion with more confidence than the information it described could support.

A longer account headed “The Robbers’ Trail” followed the Bisbee suspects from the Clifton area toward San Simon. It offered reported sightings, conversations, horses, camps, and a route through the region. Such details were useful to officers trying to follow men on horseback, but the account joined two investigations before it had shown that the same men committed both crimes. Its heading even paired “Gage and Bisbee Train Robbers,” though the Bisbee robbery had taken place at a store.

The account reproduced statements attributed to the suspects and to people who said they encountered them. It discussed where the men spent Thanksgiving, their departure from Clifton, and what witnesses recalled seeing around San Simon. The details gave readers a route they could follow on a map, but the article still depended on recollections gathered after the Bisbee murders. It did not produce a witness who placed Sample or Howard at the disabled train.

The timing made the theory plausible enough to investigate. The Gage train was robbed on November 24; the murders in Bisbee followed on December 8. But the capture of men accused in Bisbee could not by itself establish where they had been two weeks earlier.

Hume challenges the connection

Wells Fargo had a direct interest in finding the men who robbed its express car. After the company received word of the wreck, its chief security officer, J. B. Hume, went to investigate. In a statement printed by the Arizona Weekly Citizen on December 29, Hume said the Bisbee robbers “did not participate in the Gage robbery.”

Hume gave reasons for his conclusion. His statement traced the Bisbee party’s reported movements during the days around November 24. He placed them in Clifton on Thanksgiving, November 22, when a court appearance drew a crowd. He then described their journey toward San Simon, including meetings and conversations on November 24 and 25. In his assessment, that chronology separated them from the men who attacked the train.

According to the account Hume supplied, the group left Clifton after the Thanksgiving gathering and reached the San Simon area when the Gage robbery was taking place farther east. The report drew on the recollections of people who had seen the men at the station and in the surrounding country. Hume also distinguished what he considered reliable from earlier published claims, including a disagreement over the date on which the party appeared in Clifton. That kind of date correction mattered: the accusation depended on fitting the same riders into two separate events.

The statement was an investigator’s reconstruction, based on the information he had gathered. It was more specific than the earlier suggestions that the Gage robbers were moving toward Arizona, and it directly answered the charge made after Sample and Howard were captured. It also illustrates how a reported direction of flight had been turned into an identification in the newspapers.

Hume’s statement appeared after a December 17 dispatch had already identified Sample and Howard as participants in both crimes. Readers who saw only the arrest report would have received a different account from those who read his later correction. The sequence shows why the publication date of each clipping matters as much as its headline.

Two crimes and two investigations

The surviving reports show the accusation taking shape. The first accounts described the wreck and a pursuit. Later ones supplied possible names and sightings in Arizona. Once Sample and Howard were captured for Bisbee, a dispatch declared them involved in both crimes. Hume publicly rejected that claim before the year ended.

The reports also differ on smaller points. Early notices disagreed about the number of robbers and whether passengers had been held up. A reward announcement was followed by broader speculation about the men’s route and identities. Those shifts are part of the record of the search; they should not be smoothed into a single eyewitness narrative.

Sample and Howard remained central figures in the Bisbee case. The evidence printed in these clippings did not establish that they were the Gage train robbers. As investigators pursued a different group, the question of who derailed and robbed the train became a separate story—one that would lead to other arrests and further violence.

Sources and research notes

“Raided by Rustlers,” Arizona Weekly Star, late November 1883, supplied clipping. Contemporary account of the wreck, Engineer Webster’s death, and the treatment of passengers. Confirm the exact issue date and page from the full newspaper image.

Arizona Weekly Citizen, December 1, 1883, page 1, supplied clippings on the Gage robbery, rewards, and early pursuit.

Arizona Weekly Citizen, December 22, 1883, page 1, supplied dispatch concerning the capture of Sample and Howard and their alleged connection to Gage.

Arizona Weekly Citizen, December 29, 1883, page 4, “The Train Robbers,” supplied clipping containing J. B. Hume’s statement. Verify the full page citation against the issue image before publication.

Wells Fargo Corporate Archives, “Secret Codes That Kept Transactions Safe,” discussion and image of the November 25, 1883, Gage robbery telegram: https://history.wf.com/how-wells-fargo-used-secret-codes-to-do-business/