Executed
1734–1739 · United Kingdom
Dick Turpin
No night ride to York, no Black Bess: the real Dick Turpin was an Essex gang robber and killer, hanged at York in 1739 for stealing horses.
Kind of crime
Robbery
Train, bank and stagecoach robberies from the age of the outlaw.
15 cases14 solved0 unsolved1734–1934
Executed
Executed
1849 · United Kingdom
Frederick and Maria Manning
In 1849 a Swiss lady's maid and her husband buried their dinner guest under the kitchen floor, then each tried to cheat the other of his fortune.
Convicted
1855–1857 · United Kingdom
Great Gold Robbery of 1855
In May 1855 four men emptied the bullion safes on the London-to-Folkestone night train and refilled them with lead shot. Nobody noticed until Paris.
Convicted
1875–1888 · Northern California and southern Oregon
Black Bart
A polite robber in a flour-sack mask held up Wells Fargo stagecoaches for eight years. A laundry mark on a dropped handkerchief led detectives to his door.
Executed
1876–1879 · United Kingdom
Charles Peace
A limping Sheffield burglar shot two men, let an innocent one take the blame, and lived as a respectable gentleman in Peckham until a Blackheath break-in.
Killed before trial
1876–1882 · Missouri
Jesse James
Northfield's townspeople broke the James-Younger gang in seven minutes in 1876. Six years later a new recruit shot Jesse James in his own parlour.
Killed before trial
1877–1878 · Texas
Sam Bass
Sam Bass took $60,000 in new gold coins from a Union Pacific train in 1877. A year later an informer led him into a Ranger trap at Round Rock, Texas.
Executed
1878–1880 · Australia
Ned Kelly
Three police dead at Stringybark Creek, two bank raids and a last stand in plough-iron armour: how the Kelly outbreak ended on a Melbourne gallows.
Killed before trial
1889–1908 · Bolivia
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
From Telluride to the Wild Bunch, Patagonia and a mule with the wrong brand: the trail that ended at San Vicente, Bolivia, in November 1908.
Killed before trial
1892–1907 · Kansas
Dalton Gang at Coffeyville
On 5 October 1892 the Dalton gang tried to rob two Kansas banks at once in a town that knew their faces. In about ten minutes eight people were dead.
Convicted
1906–1908 · Germany
Captain of Köpenick
In 1906 an unemployed shoemaker in a second-hand captain's uniform commandeered a squad of soldiers, arrested a mayor and walked off with the town's cash.
Disputed verdict
1920–1927 · Massachusetts
Sacco and Vanzetti
Two Italian anarchists executed in 1927 for a Braintree payroll robbery and double murder. Their guilt is still argued; their unfair trial is not.
Convicted
1924 · Illinois
Rondout train robbery
June 1924: the Newton brothers stop a mail train north of Chicago and take some $2 million, America's biggest train robbery. A postal inspector planned it.
Killed before trial
1932–1934 · Louisiana
Bonnie and Clyde
Two years, at least nine dead lawmen and a posse waiting in the Louisiana pines: the real Barrow gang, from Eastham prison farm to the ambush at Gibsland.
Killed before trial
1933–1934 · Chicago
John Dillinger
Out of prison in May 1933, dead by July 1934: Midwest bank raids, a jailbreak with a gun that may have been wood, and a summer night at the Biograph.