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| Roslyn as it looked in the early 1890s, when it was robbed by an outlaw gang |
It was a robbery right out of an old-time western dime novel. At about 1 p.m. on September 24, 1892, three men dressed as cowboys entered the Ben E. Snipes & Co. Bank in Roslyn. According to a report in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer published a day later, Cashier F.K. Abernathy, was busy copying some letters when one of the men walked over to his counter.
“The counter over which business is transacted is in no way protected by wire network or otherwise,” the newspaper said. “When he [Abernathy] turned to wait upon the man, [he] found himself facing a .45-caliber Colt’s revolver, with a demand to hold up his hands.”
At just that moment, a Roslyn resident, Dr. J.H. Lyons, walked into the bank, just behind the bank robber. He spotted the gun and turned to run out of the bank, but when he did he immediately encountered a second robber, who was pointing at him a pair of Colt pistols. The doctor immediately threw up his hands and froze.
A third robber entered the bank and stepped behind the counter, picking up Abernathy’s own pistol, which was lying on a shelf. He struck the cashier over the head with the revolver. Abernathy fell to the ground and when he attempted to get up, he was struck a second time and told to lay there and be quiet. The third thief then walked to the safe, which was open, and snatched up all the coins and bills from the vault, which he deposited in a canvas sack strung across his shoulders.
At about the same time, the three robbers and those inside the bank heard shots being fired outside of the building. Two additional associates of the robbers, also dressed as cowboys, had been stationed outside to hold the horses and prevent anyone from approaching the bank. Apparently, a few people had attempted to walk into the bank. but they were dissuaded by the two men, who began shooting at them.
The Post-Intelligencer said among those scampering away from the bullets was City Marshal George R. Beale, local teacher C.M. Jenkins, who was forced to hide behind a lamp post, and a Mrs. Moher, wife of a merchant who operated the business adjacent to the bank, and her small children.
Meanwhile, Assistant Bank Cashier F.A. Frazier, who was several blocks away when the robbery took place, heard the shooting and started toward the bank. He stopped for a moment in a local a store to grab a shotgun. One of the outside robbers spotted the armed Frazier and shot him in the hip. Another man, only identified in the newspaper as a black man named Conoley, also tried to help, but was shot in the leg.
The three men inside the bank exited quickly with the stolen money and all five of the robbers climbed onto their horses. They galloped down the street, firing bullets in all directions as they left town.
“Every boy and man in town who owned or could get a gun started in pursuit,” the Post-Intelligencer wrote. A posse was immediately organized and began to fan out looking for the gang members, who had raced off on a trail over the mountains that was north of the town. According to the Yakima Herald’s account of the crime, the 13-man posse actually overtook the gang two days later, surprising them in a forest 20 miles east of Roslyn. While one man was injured in a brief shoot-out, the five robbers managed to escape unscathed.
In the days after the robbery, the bank announced a $1,000 reward for the capture of the outlaws, which was matched by the Governor.
Thus began the most audacious bank robbery to ever strike the town of Roslyn. It was, according to several newspapers, “a job worthy of the James Boys,” in obvious reference to the bank and train robberies carried out in the Midwest several years earlier by the notorious Frank and Jesse James Gang.
Perhaps not coincidentally, the men who carried out the brazen daytime robbery were experienced. When their identities were finally revealed, they included the three McCarty brothers (Bill, Tom, and George) as well as Bill’s son, Fred, and a fifth man, Matt Warner (also known by several pseudonyms including Ras Lewis, Willard Christiansen, and Diamond Dick), who was Tom’s brother-in-law. While originally from Iowa, and living for a time in Utah, the McCarty clan had settled in eastern Oregon, near Baker City.
Interestingly, it was while living in Utah that Tom McCarty encountered a young man named Butch Cassidy, whom he mentored in the art of being an outlaw. It’s believed that Tom McCarty, joined by Matt Warner and Cassidy robbed a bank for more than $22,000 (worth about $772, 500 in today’s dollars) in Telluride, Colorado in June 1889.
According to historian Gary Dielman, former curator of the Baker County Library’s historic archives, Tom McCarty was a clever tactician who carefully planned his robberies. His philosophy was to always have the fastest horses available, and to arrange to switch out horses for fresher ones during their escape (usually Nellie McCarty, George’s second wife, would be waiting at a predetermined site with fresh horses).
Earlier that year, the McCarty Gang had robbed a general store in Sparta, Oregon, a train at Boulder Gorge, about 16 miles from Baker City, and a bank in Wenatchee, Washington.
The Roslyn bank heist had the potential to be the biggest score ever for the gang. In scouting out the bank, the gang had learned that the payroll for Roslyn’s coal mines was to be deposited in the bank on that date in late September. It was believed the payroll would be about $100,000 (or $3.5 million in today’s money).
Unfortunately, the gang’s intel was good—but not as good as they believed. When they arrived at the bank, they discovered the vault only contained about $5,000, far less than what they had anticipated.
According to Dielman, after the gang escaped from Roslyn, they headed to the Columbia River, roughly around what today is called Vantage. They found an old rowboat, but it had no oars, so they used old planks of wood to paddle across the river. Somehow, during what has been described as an all-night effort, they made a number of trips back and forth in order to get their horses, Nellie, and all of the members of the gang to the opposite side of the river.
At this point, the gang split up, which was their usual pattern. George, Nellie, and Fred headed north, while Warner returned to his ranch near the modern-day town of Ephrata, and Tom and Bill went south to Bill’s ranch near Baker City.
To the gang’s surprise—and delight—about a month after the robbery, Kittitas County authorities arrested three men from Pendleton, Oregon for the crime. According to a Yakima Herald story appearing on December 1, 1892, the Thiel’s detective agency hired by the bank traced three horses abandoned by the bank robbers to eastern Oregon. A handful of men were identified “as belonging to a gang recognized as being horse and cattle thieves of the most desperate character. Further investigation convinced the officers that the men who committed the robbery were Byron Bernard, Tom Kenzie (also spelled Kinzie by some papers), Cal Hale, George Zackery, and Bill Zackery.”
News accounts said Hale, Kenzie, and George Zackery were soon caught by authorities and brought to Ellensburg to stand trial. During the trial, which was covered by newspapers from throughout the country, both Abernathy and Frazier, as well as several bank customers, positively identified the three despite their not being much evidence to support the charges. Based solely on the eyewitness accounts, Hale was convicted while the other two men were acquitted by conflicted jurors. In March 1893, the prosecuting attorney filed a motion to dismiss the charges against Hale, who had secured a new trial, because of the cost involved in trying him again.
At this point, the McCarty gang must have felt they were just about in the clear. Unfortunately for them, Sara Jane Morgan, sister of Warner’s wife, Rose, did not approve of how Warner was treating her sister or involvement with robbing banks. After visiting Rose and having an argument with Warner that nearly resulted in violence, Morgan returned to her home in Utah. She decided to tell everything she knew to the Salt Lake City police department.
Arrest warrants were quickly issued for members of the gang. However, when Sheriff Porter Conde of Baker County, Oregon received the warrants, he refused to believe the McCarty’s were involved. He went to William’s ranch, where Tom was also staying, to talk over the matter with both men. Shortly after questioning William, Tom jumped the sheriff and took his gun. With his step-son, Eck McCarty holding a gun on the sheriff, the two outlaws escaped from the ranch and hid out in some nearby haystacks for the night. They would elude authorities for more than a month.
Meanwhile, Warner was arrested at a tent restaurant he operated in Central Washington. According to news accounts, the 220-pound Warner “fought like a wild animal” before being subdued by deputies. George McCarty was arrested without incident while he was mining on a creek near Sumpter, Oregon. Using an entirely different approach, he quietly protested his innocence to newspaper reporters, insisting he hadn’t been in the state of Washington in some four years. He also claimed his brothers had been in Arizona when the robbery took place. Both he and Warner were incarcerated in the Ellensburg jail. As for Fred, authorities never seemed to be able to locate him.
After spending a month on the run in Eastern Oregon, William and Tom McCarty headed to Utah, where they successfully managed to escape being arrested. It’s believed that at some point the two may have snuck into Ellensburg to help George McCarty and Warner try to escape. The two jailed men, in fact, were aided by some person or person, who smuggled a crowbar into their cell, which they used to dig a hole in the bricks large enough for them to squeeze through. This unknown party also provided them with revolvers that had been hidden under the jail’s boardwalk.
George McCarty and Warner’s escape plans, however, were quickly thwarted when they spotted immediately. The two exchanged several shots with authorities before they were both hit by buckshot and recaptured.
Despite the foiled escape attempt and other evidence, when the two men were put on trial (they were tried back-to-back in separate trials), jurors had a difficult time deciding to convict them because the main eyewitnesses had already mistakenly identified Hale, Kenzie, and the Zachery brothers as the culprits. Both trials ended with hung juries.
Authorities initially planned to retry to the two men, but on the day the trials were to begin, the charges were dismissed because most of the witnesses were not available to testify. Still facing charges related to their attempted escape, the two were surprised when the judge also dismissed those cases due to a lack of evidence. In the end, none of the members of the gang ever faced any type of justice for their crimes.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the gang returned to bank robbing in September 1893, but this time it was only Tom, Bill, and Fred, who robbed the Farmers and Merchants Bank in Delta, Colorado. On September 7, the three rode to the bank. Tom stayed outside, holding the horses and serving as look-out, while Bill and Fred went inside. After brandishing their revolvers, the two told the two bank employees to stick up their hands. One of clerks, Trew Blachly, reached for his gun and Fred fired twice, killing Blachly.
Fred stepped over the body and grabbed a sack of gold coins and some currency from an open safe before he and his brother ran out a back door. In his haste to mount his horse, Fred dropped the bag of gold coins and was too afraid of being captured to stop and pick it up.
The gunshot alerted the whole town that the bank was under siege. A number of residents grabbed their guns and ran out into the street, including Ray Simpson, who worked in his father’s hardware store across from the bank. Simpson picked up his .44-70 caliber single-shot Sharps rifle and ran to assist. He spotted the robbers fleeing down an alley, with Tom in the lead, followed by Fred and William.
Before the latter reached the intersection of the alley and one of the town’s main streets, Simpson took aim and shot him in the back of the head. William immediately fell dead from his horse. Fred slowed to look back for his father, which gave Simpson enough time to reload his rifle. He fired again, hitting Fred in the side of the head, knocking him from his horse and killing him.
Apparently anticipating where Tom would head on his way out of town, Simpson ran to Main Street, where he saw the third outlaw racing away from him. He was able to get off a couple more shots but failed to hit the fleeing Tom. A posse soon formed but was never able to find Tom.
According to historical records, the deceased William and Fred McCarty were buried in a potter’s field in Delta. It’s believed that Tom decided to forego bank robbing for the rest of his life. In 1900, he had returned to eastern Oregon, where he was hired as the Wallowa County road supervisor. In 1912, he was elected a Justice of the Peace for the Upper Imnaha District. There are no records of Tom after about 1917.
As for the two who participated in the Roslyn robbery but not the Delta disaster, George McCarty returned to mining—which he much preferred to robbing banks—in the Baker City area. His passion for prospecting ultimately made him a reasonably wealth man. He died in Halfway, Oregon in 1948.
Warner headed to Utah, where he was involved in a shooting near Vernal, during which two men died. He was convicted of manslaughter and served three years in prison. After his release, he vowed to change his life and found work as a city marshal, deputy sheriff, and Justice of the Peace in Price, Utah. In 1938, he wrote a memoir of his time as an outlaw titled, “The Last of the Bandit Riders,” and died later that year.
The Roslyn robbery had a severe impact on the financial health of the Ben Snipes Bank. Snipes, who had made a fortune raising cattle in the Yakima Valley, had expanded into the financial business in 1889 by opening his first bank in Ellensburg (it was the town’s first bank). Eager to take advantage of the booming coal mining industry there, a short time later he opened a second branch in Roslyn.
While Snipes had been a success with cattle, his luck wasn’t so good in banking. In spite of building a three-story, stone structure to house his Ellensburg bank, it was destroyed in the city’s disastrous fire of 1889 (he would rebuild it). He also suffered substantial losses as a result of the Roslyn robbery. Both banks failed during a national economic downturn known as the Panic of 1893. When he died in 1906, he reportedly was working on ways to regain his fortune.
