William "Bill" Doolin

Bill Doolin Gone

Transcribed by: Mollie Stehno

January 16, 1896-The Oklahoma Leader-Beyond question Bill Doolin has been captured. The report is authentic. He has been taken alive, tricked, trapped in the neatest manner through a plan laid by Marshal Nix and carried out by one of the bravest deputies on the force.

He is the last of his line, the leader, the king pin, the bandit captain of Oklahoma. For eight years he has defied authorities, led raids, robbed trains, faced death in a thousand ways. His fame is national, for Oklahoma never does things half way and even her outlaws, lead. He is probably the most noted bandit in the country today and the government has spent as much for his capture as the cost of the Venezuelan commission. But the pitcher when too often to the well his companions were all killed captured, his hiding places became ambuscades, his rendezvous broken up, his friends betrayed, and the man of iron nerve, the killer, and the bad boys hero is in the clutches of the law at last.

United States Marshal Nix can well congratulate himself this morning. And the congratulations of the country are due him and brave Deputy William Tilghman. The capture of Doolin is the fifth act, the end of the chapter. There are whiskey peddlers, perjurers and timber thieves galore, but no bad man with a reputation to sustain.

When Marshal Nix assumed the duties of his office the territory was infested with outlaw bands. Some parts of Oklahoma were in absolute subjection to their demands and no part of it was secure in person or property. His two years and a half of official li8fe have left a blood trail. Bill Dalton, Tulsa Jack, Slaughter Kid, Dynamite Dick, Oklahoma Kid, Charley Pierce, Six Fingered Jack, Bill January Tiger Sam, Bill Raidler, Red Buck, Amos Pierce, Zip Wyatt, and a score of others some of whom are stars and others leading members of stock companies, all heavy villains as well as numberless others in light comedy parts-all dead in battle or captures. These men are not ordinary thugs or pugilist. They were shrewd, cunning, desperate many of them wealthily upon ill gotten gains, trained by a life of hardship, then shots, with a death record extending throughout the western frontier. Their operations ranged throughout many adjoin states with the base in the fastness of the infamous system and lack regard for law existing in the Indian Territories.

But they were gone. Life and property are safe in Oklahoma as in the spire-adorned city of New York. The bands of bold bad merry men will ride the wild wide hills no more. They were want to go to a fight as to a festival, but they have quit-most of them with their boots on period. Trains and express companies do business on central time and stop only at the place deemed on the map. While the lowly, weak eyed tender foot from the land of the rising sun can tour across hard domains without stitching traveling expense in the lining of his coat or carry his watch in his sock to save time.

There is not a man in Okalahoma today with a price on his heard. The processes have been served the law has prevailed. Outlawry died when Bill Doolin quit.