Old West Lifestyle & Stories

McCarty Crime Family

The McCartys were from Utah, and for a while, brothers Tom, Bill & George ran with the Wild Bunch. When Tom McCarty got married, he not only gained a wife, he also gained a member of the gang, brother-in-law Matt Warner.

In 1892, they robbed a bank in Roslyn, Washington.  During the robbery, the locals assembled outside the bank.  As the McCartys exited the bank, the crowd stood there with their guns and did nothing.  The McCartys opened fire, shooting two men.  While the crowd stood there stunned, the McCartys rode away.
 
But the crowd wasn’t always paralyzed into inaction. On September 7, 1893, brothers Tom and Bill decided to rob a bank in Delta, Colorado. Brother-in-law Matt Warner was in jail, so they brought along nephew Fred McCarty.
 
While the uncles were inside gathering the money, the nephew was holding the horses. In the middle of the robbery, nephew Fred ran inside with the news that a crowd was gathering. Using the same tactic as before, the McCartys came out of the bank with guns a-blazing. What they hadn’t counted on was a hardware merchant by the name of Ray Simpson. Simpson grabbed a repeating rifle from the shelf, and ran into the street. As the three robbers passed him at full gallop, Simpson dropped Uncle Bill with a shot to the head. When nephew Fred turned to help his uncle, Simpson also killed him.
 
Tom McCarty was able to escape. And he wisely abandoned the outlaw trail to become a Montana sheepherder… But, always a man easy to anger, four years later, he got into his last argument. The man he was arguing with shot him dead. And that was the end of the McCartys.

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