It was tough for Mormons growing up in the wild, wild west! Butch Cassidy & the Wild Bunch played a role in the murder of Frank LeSueur & Gus Gibbons. Historian Stephen LeSueur details more about the outlaws of Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico. Check out our conversation…
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Gospel Tangents
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Butch Cassidy & Other Outlaws
It was tough for Mormons growing up in the wild, wild west! Butch Cassidy & the Wild Bunch played a role in the murder of Frank LeSueur & Gus Gibbons. Historian Stephen LeSueur details more about the outlaws of Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico. Check out our conversation…
Interview
GT 00:41 So Frank LeSueur, was he Mormon when he came out here to Arizona? Was he from Mormon pioneer heritage?
Steve 00:49 Oh, yeah, absolutely. I’ll back up and talk about a little bit about the family. The Gibbons family were–Bill Gibbons was Gus’ father. And Bill was one of many sons of Andrew Smith Gibbons, who was an early explorer and missionary to the Native Americans. Bill Gibbons, Gus’ father, was also a missionary, as well. But they moved around a lot and then [they were] called in 1880, to settle in St. John’s.
GT 01:32 So, called by Brigham Young, probably?
Steve 01:33 Well, no, because he was dead by that point.
GT 01:35 Okay.
Steve 01:36 And I don’t know, specifically, whether it was the prophet, himself, or other Mormon leaders. Anyway, they were called to settle there. And Gus was born in 1874. So, he was just five or six years old when…
GT 01:50 Gus Gibbons?
Steve 01:50 Yeah, Gus Gibbons.
Steve 01:53 And so Gus, he was just a young boy. But this was a stalwart Mormon family, and in fact, his father, Bill Gibbons, was called to be a counselor in the bishopric that was newly formed in 1880. The bishop was David K. Udall of the Udall family. If you’re familiar with Stewart Udall, he was Secretary of Interior, and Mo Udall, who was the representative from Arizona for many years, they are grandsons of David Udall, who was the first bishop there, and Bill Gibbons was…
GT 02:31 [Stewart & Mo Udall were] good Democrats, I’ll add.
Steve 02:32 Yeah, if there is such a thing as a good Democrat. {both chuckling}
Steve 02:36 And so, Bill Gibbons was a stalwart in both the Church and his community. And, then the LeSueur family, who came from Idaho. There were two LeSueur brothers and two sisters living in Idaho. And they had another sister who was living in Mesa, and she said, “Oh, why don’t you come down here?” This was 1878 or ‘79 or so. “We have a good community here.” So, they came down to Mesa, the four families. They were all married, and some of them had kids. They came to Mesa. By the time they got there, this sister had died, though she still had a family. So, they stayed in Mesa for about a year. It was too hot for them. So, they decided to move, and they were moving east. And it’s a little uncertain exactly where they were heading. But they, at some point, they got called to settle in St. John’s, and so they were there in early 1880, as well.
So, four LeSueur families, including John Taylor LeSueur and his wife, Geneva. John Taylor [LeSueur] was known as JT. JT and his wife, Geneva, they settled in St. John’s. Their first home was a home, a dirt home [that] they dug out of the side of the hill. It was two rooms [that] they shared with two families. Anyway, Frank LeSueur was born in 1880, shortly after they arrived. So, these two men who are in the book, Gus Gibbons, he was six when the Mormons first settled there, and Frank was just born at that time.
GT 04:17 Okay.
Steve 04:18 And so that was 20 years–they’re living there in St. John’s, and it was kind of a desolate, out-of-the way place then and it was still kind of that same place in the year 1900. They were still plagued by outlaws and rustlers. It was the Apache County Sheriff–Apache County is about 11,000 square miles, which is the size of the state of Maryland.
GT 04:49 Oh, wow.
Steve 04:51 Maryland’s 12,000 square miles, I think. So, about the same size. The sheriff was responsible for law and order. Now he had deputies in some of the towns, and constables. But it was difficult, in a place like that. There were many places to hide. In any case, one other thing about the town in the year 1900, they didn’t have running water, yet. That wouldn’t be until 1911. So, what they did have is there was a spring about four miles away. And so, they had a water wagon that probably started in about the mid-1880s. A big metal container would come into town three times a week, and you could buy fresh water. Because remember, the water from the Little Colorado River really wasn’t good for drinking.
GT 05:40 Very brown.
Steve 05:41 Yeah.
GT 05:42 Very muddy water.
Steve 05:43 Yeah, and so you could buy a three-gallon bucket of water for five cents. And so it would come three days a week, though, [for] some people, that five cents was a little exorbitant and they would just drive out and go get their own [water] at the spring. (Rick chuckling)
GT 06:00 Well, three gallons, yeah. That wouldn’t last you that long, three gallons.
Steve 06:08 Yeah, that was enough for your drinking, I guess. For washing clothes, they typically would get water and then they’d let it settle. And then just take out the top water after the silt and dirt had settled. When it rained, they would put out…
GT 06:29 But it’s the desert, it never rains.
Steve 06:30 Yeah. [They would put out] pans and buckets and everything to catch the rain. Yeah, it didn’t rain very often. And when it did rain, it often caused floods and the like.
Steve 06:42 But, in any case, back to these people. We’re talking about the year 1900 when this occurs. And I’ll get back to Gus and Frank, but I’ll mention what were the outlaws doing in St. John’s? Prior to coming to St. Johns, Butch Cassidy and his gang were actually were operating in the town of Alma, New Mexico, which is, I think, about 100-110 miles away on a ranch. It was the WS ranch. They were working there as cowhands, and, in fact, Butch Cassidy was a trail boss. And they were very highly valued cow hands. Their foreman, a man by the name of Captain William French wrote a reminiscence about his time in New Mexico, including when these gang members were there, though he didn’t know they were gang members at the time, because Butch Cassidy operated under the name Jim Lowe. But, anyway, they were highly praised because, among other things, Captain French said that when they showed up, all of the petty rustling of their cattle stopped. Nobody fooled with the cattle that these men were taking care of.
Anyway, what they would do at this point, they used the WS Ranch as a base of operations, to plan robberies and execute them. Maybe three or four men would go out after they planned a robbery and rob a train, take the money, come back and then lay low for a while. They were just cowhands and then maybe a few months later, they would plan another one and some other group of them would go out and rob a train somewhere else and come back. And they did this for a little over a year, it appears. But then a Pinkerton agent from the Pinkerton Detective Agency was tracking stolen banknotes and he traced them to Alma, New Mexico, which is where they were passing them around among other places.
GT 08:44 Now when you say banknotes is this like an IOU or is this like currency?
Steve 08:51 Yeah, currency. They traced the currency to there. So, the Wild Bunch gang knew that their cover was going to be blown and they needed to leave town. This was early 1900 when this occurred. Sometime in mid-March, five of the outlaws left and they started making their way north up through Arizona. We don’t know for sure where they were going, but it appears that they were maybe going to one of their hideouts, like Robber’s Roost in Utah or Hole in the Wall in Wyoming. And then Butch Cassidy and another fellow left a few days later. First, Butch stole a pack of horses from a neighboring ranch and then took off north and they were hurrying to catch up with the other outlaws. In any case, before Butch caught up with the others, the five outlaws, when they were on their way to St. John’s where they would subsequently buy supplies, but on their way there, they got hungry, stopped and just killed a cow that wasn’t theirs and butchered it and ate it and went on their way. But they were spotted by a mailman who was driving past and so he reported what he saw to the sheriff.
The owner of the cow was outraged. The sheriff immediately organized a posse to go capture these men. They didn’t know who they were, of course, but just five men killing a cow, that was rustling. And even though it was just one beef, this was cattle country, and you didn’t allow anything like that to get started. And they were already having trouble. It was always a problem. So, the sheriff, Apache County Sheriff, Edward Beeler, was his name, organized a posse to go after them. And that’s the posse that Frank LeSueur and Gus Gibbons joined. And Gus, at that time…
GT 11:09 So, they were friends, Gus and Frank were friends?
Steve 11:14 I don’t know how close of friends they were. Because they were…
GT 11:16 They, at least, had a working relationship.
Steve 11:20 Oh, yeah. Gus, was 26.
GT 11:22 Okay.
Steve 11:22 And Frank was 19. So, there was a big difference in age. However, it was a small town, their fathers worked together, all the families knew each other. They knew each other very well. It wasn’t like they were best friends. But they knew each other and other people in the posse, they were all acquainted with each other.
GT 11:48 Right.
Steve 11:51 So, in any case, they were summoned to join this posse. And at that time, Gus, he was 26. He was married. He was married to Priscilla Smith, who went by Pearl, at least she was known by Pearl in the Gibbons family. She was a daughter of Jesse N. Smith, who was the stake president of the eastern Arizona stake. They had been married in 1897, in September. And a month later, Gus went on a mission to Great Britain. He was gone for two years. So, he’s married for a month, gone for two years. And he’d only been back four months when he was summoned to this posse. He and Pearl were still very much like newlyweds and still enjoying life getting to know each other and figuring out all the possibilities. Frank was 19 years old at the time, and he had been kind of wild in his youth but straightened up. He’d gone to the Brigham Young Academy for a couple of years.
GT 12:55 Up in Provo?
Steve 12:56 In Provo, yeah. And that was pretty common among St. John’s youth who attended the St. John’s Stake Academy. So, [it was] a Church-run academy that went through the first two years of high school. And then they would go to Brigham Young Academy.
GT 13:17 BYA!
Steve 13:17 Yeah, Brigham Young Academy and finish their last two years. And Frank had done that. And in February of 1900, he received a mission call for a foreign mission, which he accepted, but he was home.
GT 13:33 Foreign mission meaning…
Steve 13:37 Good question, [it was] unspecified. It hadn’t been specified yet. He accepted.
GT 13:43 But it was still going to be in the United States, probably.
Steve 13:46 No, it would have been a real foreign mission.
GT 13:51 Because I know at that time, especially in the 1920s, they talked about Boston as being foreign, or New York as foreign. So, that’s what I thought you meant.
Steve 14:00 Yeah. Frank ‘s older brother, James, was in Great Britain on a mission.. And so he’s waiting for his brother to get back [before he left]. They were very close. And so they wanted to visit for a little while, before Frank was gone for two years. So he accepted the mission call but asked to delay a little bit.
GT 14:21 So it wasn’t a three year mission or anything they were still doing two?
Steve 14:25 Yeah, at least the missions that I saw, like Gus was gone for about two years.
GT 14:30 I mean, just for context, I’ll tell you this. My grandfather, from Idaho, got married, served a six-month mission, I want to say in 1910, so it’s not too far away.
Steve 14:43 No.
GT 14:43 But, it was just six months and it was in California, and then he came home. So, I was surprised when you were saying it was a two-year mission, but maybe they did that when they were foreign.
Steve 14:53 Yeah. So, in any case, Frank was in charge of the family’s sheep business. JT, his father, had an extensive herd of sheep. And his father said [that] he was planning to turn over the sheep business to his son, Frank, when he got back. That’s what Frank was doing—managing the family sheep business—when he was summoned to join the posse.
As I said, there were about 14 to 16 posse men going out at different times to track the outlaws. But at the end of the day, Frank and Gus were the only ones on the trail.
And we do know, of the outlaws, one of the things that historians were interested in was who were the outlaws that killed him? And so, I did my own investigation, as well, though, I’ll have to say I was standing on the shoulders of those other historians of using their research. And a lot of research went into it of, well, who could it have been? And also, who wasn’t there? Because there was lots of speculation. Anyway, I feel pretty confident, as best we can know of who the five were.
Most of them are not names that would be well-known to people outside of historians who are interested in outlaws. One was a man by the name of Tom Capehart, who was well-known in the area. He was very well-known bronco buster, known for that. And so, he was readily identified by people when he passed through the area. Another man was known by the name Todd Carver. His real name was Thomas C. Hilliard. But he was, also, this Todd Carver guy, was also well-known, because he worked as a cowboy in the area. And another thing is, he was missing the forefinger on his right hand, an easily identifiable mark. And so, Todd Carver was one. Then there were two others, Ben Kilpatrick and Will Carver. And they had both previously been members of another outlaw gang. And when that gang broke up, they joined up with the Wild Bunch people.
GT 15:04 And so let me make sure, Gus Gibbons is part of the Wild Bunch?
Steve 17:19 No, no, Gus Gibbons is one of the people who got murdered.
GT 17:27 Who got murdered. Okay.
Steve 17:28 Yeah.
GT 17:29 Okay.
Steve 17:29 It’s the Murders of Frank LeSueur and Gus Gibbons.
GT 17:33 Okay, so they’re the good guys.
Steve 17:34 They’re the good guys.. They were murdered by the Wild Bunch.
GT 17:39 Okay.
Steve 17:39 Yeah. And so, Gus was with the posse, looking for him. In any case..
GT 17:44 So, basically, they’d get a posse together, a bunch of just local residents. “Hey, we’ve got to go catch these outlaws. I’m going to deputize you and we’ll be part of the posse. We’re going to go look for the bad guys.”
Steve 17:55 Exactly. That’s exactly it. It was the law in New Mexico and Arizona, as well, that essentially, if the sheriff called you to join, you were obligated, or you would have to pay a fine. And it was because they couldn’t afford to have a police force around. But sometimes they would need one, and they’re large areas. So, this is how they dealt with it. In any case, I suspect that these men joined the posse, not because they didn’t want to be fined, but because this was cattle country, sheep country. And some of the men who joined either had cattle or sheep. And so, it was sort of like, well…
GT 18:33 It is in our interest to get the bad guys.
Steve 18:45 Yes, exactly. And so, back to Ben Kilpatrick and Will Carver, they had previously been part of another outlaw gang, and Will Carver, when he traveled north with them through St. John’s, he used an alias of G.W. Franks. And that had been an alias he had used in the previous outlaw gang, so, historians are able to know that okay, that’s him.
GT 18:55 Does it make it hard when people are using all these aliases to track down who’s really who?
Steve 19:07 Absolutely. And that was part of the problem. And part of the challenge to historians is figuring out who was who. And that was the problem that detectives, the Pinkerton agents and others had of figuring out who they had.
GT 19:37 Who is GW Franks?
Steve 19:38 Yeah, exactly. And regarding the fifth member passing through {of the gang}, we have less evidence for him than we do with the others, but I’m pretty confident that it’s Harvey Logan, who is also known as Kid Curry, and he was the fifth member of the gang traveling through St. John’s. The thing about this timeframe for them was while they had been in Alma, they had pulled off some successful robberies. But also, they’d had some gang members killed. They’d had some gang members jailed. And one of them was Harvey Logan’s cousin. He was jailed and then sentenced to prison. And just a few weeks before they headed north, Harvey Logan’s brother, Lonnie Logan was tracked down and killed. And so, they were not in a very good mood. They had just been outed from their base of operations. They’d had some people killed and jailed. And then Harvey Logan, who was probably the biggest killer among them just had his brother killed. So they probably were not sympathetic to being chased this time {Rick chuckling}. Now we do know that Butch Cassidy was not one of these five.
GT 21:12 Okay.
Steve 21:12 And the reason why is…
GT 21:14 Which is just too bad for the story, right?
Steve 21:15 Yeah. (Chuckling) We could still call it Butch Cassidy’s gang. Because, in essence, he’s sort of the triggering person for all of this. Anyway, we know he wasn’t one of the five. He does come into the story, because, as I told you, he was trying to catch up to them. And so, when he finally was traveling through St. John’s with another fellow, and by this point, he had, I think, six extra horses that they had, from the ones they’d stolen. The sheriff…
GT 21:48 And this is like stealing your car for us?
Steve 21:50 Yes, yes.
GT 21:50 The horse was the car.
Steve 21:52 Yes, exactly. And they stole a lot of them. Anyway, the sheriff, Ed Beeler, after he got back from chasing the outlaws, he sees Butch Cassidy, a fellow by the name of Jim Lowe, he says, who’s coming through town. And he surmised, correctly, as it turned out, he looks like he’s connected with these five guys I’ve been chasing. So, he arrests Jim Lowe.
GT 22:16 Which is Butch Cassidy.
Steve 22:17 Butch Cassidy and this other fellow, Red Weaver, was his name, [the sheriff] puts them in jail, until they can kind of sort things out. Butch Cassidy says, “Hi. My name is Jim Lowe. And I’m a good guy. If you will just telegraph to Alma, New Mexico and talk to William French, who’s my boss there, he’ll tell you I’m a good guy.” And he also said, “This guy Red Weaver, I don’t know (him.) He is just a guy I picked up on the trail. I don’t know who he is.” Now, Red Weaver, I’ll call him an associate of The Wild Bunch. He held horses and did things like that, but they never thought he had enough courage or good sense, they didn’t actually take him out to rob stuff.
GT 23:08 He was a horse launderer. (Chuckling)
Steve 23:09 Yeah. And so, William French, talking about Weaver later said that he was just told, “Do your job.” He got paid well to keep his mouth shut. He was told to keep his mouth shut if he didn’t want to hear unpleasantly from the rest of the gang. So, he probably went along with the story, so Butch wouldn’t get found out. A telegram was sent to Alma. Later, after the boys are murdered, and there’s another chase for the outlaws, the sheriff’s gone, but a telegram comes back from this William French, who by that point, he knew that Jim Lowe was Butch Cassidy because the Pinkerton agent had come and talked to him when he was tracking those stolen banknotes. He showed him some photographs and says, “Do you know any of these men?”
Steve 24:06 And William French said, “Oh, yeah, that’s Jim Lowe”.
Steve 24:11 And the Pinkerton agent said, “No, that’s Butch Cassidy, one of the most notorious outlaws.”
Steve 24:20 So then when Jim Lowe, who was away, came back, William French said, “Well, there was a Pinkerton agent here. And he said [that] you’re Butch Cassidy.” And French said Cassidy just smiled at him, didn’t say anything, he just smiled.
Steve 24:36 And then Butch said, “I think I’m going to be on my way”. {Rick laughing}
Steve 24:40 So, William French knows Jim Lowe is Butch Cassidy. He gets a telegram saying–we don’t know exactly what was in it. French, writing years later, said that it just said, “Do you know this person?” And so, he said, “Well, I thought about it. And so I just decided to send back. ‘Yes, I do.'” And so, whatever he said, [it] essentially vouched for Jim Lowe/Butch Cassidy and so Cassidy was released.
Steve 25:15 And meanwhile, they kept the other fellow, Red Weaver, in jail and then he was sent back. A deputy from New Mexico, Socorro, came back, and he [Weaver] was arrested for horse stealing, as was Jim Lowe. Rather, he wasn’t arrested, but he was indicted for horse stealing when he got back Red Weaver was and also Jim Lowe was indicted, as well. So they knew they were in it together. I did read the court records of this and Red Weaver’s defense was going to be that Jim Lowe told him, that he, Jim Lowe, had purchased these horses. So he, Red Weaver, had no idea that they had been stolen. “My friend Jim Lowe told me he purchased them.” Of course, by that point, Jim Lowe was long gone. He knew he wasn’t sticking around.
GT 26:08 So he left to his friend out hang and dry.
Steve 26:13 Yeah, he hung him out to dry. But that was Red Weaver’s job, and he got paid well for it.
GT 26:20 He got paid well for being stood up.
Steve 26:21 And William French, talking about Red Weaver after this said that when he got out of jail, Weaver strutted around like some border hero because he’d been in jail and all of this and that. In any case, that’s how we know that Butch Cassidy was not among the five, because he took off after that.
{End of Part 2}
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