Roy Daugherty

One of the most interesting notorious characters of the Old West era from the Ozarks was Roy "Arkansas Tom" Daugherty; yet he is someone that many people are not familiar with. Actually, Daughterty's criminal career merely started during the Old West era with his participation in the Doolin gang's infamous shootout at Ingalls in Oklahoma Territory in 1893. It continued well into the twentieth century until he was finally killed in a shootout with Joplin police in 1924.
Daugherty was born in Missouri but apparently spent enough time in Arkansas to acquire his colorful nickname before drifting into Oklahoma Territory and hooking up with Doolin. Daugherty was captured at Ingalls, although the rest of the gang escaped. He spent a good while in prison but was paroled in the early 1900s and was even in a movie called Passing of the Oklahoma Outlaws, in which Henry Starr also had a bit part. Daugherty, though, apparently decided that being an outlaw was more fun than playing one in the movies, because he soon resorted to bank robbery, except that now he was using motor vehicles instead of horses as his means of transportation (and escape). He robbed banks at Oronogo, Fairview, and Asbury (all in southwest Missouri) and perhaps other places as well before his encounter in west Joplin with the constabulary of that town proved to be his undoing. After he was killed, his body was taken to a Joplin undertaker, and the next day thousands of spectators filed through the mortuary, anxious to get a glimpse of a man who was one of the last links to the Wild West days of yesteryear.