Bill Doolin's Southwest City Bank Robbery

When I wrote about the Daltons' fiasco at Coffeyville last time, I remarked that Bill Doolin has been mentioned as possibly having been the gang's supposed "sixth rider." What is known for sure is that Doolin soon organized the remnants of the Dalton gang into the Wild Bunch (not to be confused with Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch) and almost reenacted the Dalton disaster when he and the gang held up a bank in Southwest City, Missouri, in May of 1894, a year and a half after the Coffeyville caper. The townspeople of Southwest City opened fire on the outlaws the same way the citizens of Coffeyville had done with the Daltons. The outlaws returned fire, and over a hundred bullets whirred through the air on Main Street in a gun battle that one observer described as akin to war times. The outcome, though, was very different from what happened at Coffeyville. When the shooting stopped, one townsperson lay mortally wounded and a couple of other had lesser injuries, while the robbers had run the gauntlet of the citizens' guns and escaped with about $3,500 in cash and only minor wounds. Bill Doolin was finally captured about a year and a half after the Southwest City robbery. He escaped about six months later but was tracked down and killed by a U. S. deputy marshal only a month or two after his escape.