Legends of the Old West - OUTLAWS Ep. 4 | “The Reno Gang”

Episode Date: May 13, 2026

Frank and John Reno become troublemakers at a young age in Jackson County, Indiana. After the Civil War, they form one of the earliest outlaw gangs of the Old West era. They rob post offices, stores, banks, and trains. The Pinkerton Detective Agency locates and arrests the outlaws, but the gang continually evades justice … until the Jackson County Vigilance Committee vows to deliver frontier justice. Thanks to our sponsor, Quince! Use this link for Free Shipping and 365-day returns: Quince.com/lotow Join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join Apple users join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes, bingeable seasons and bonus episodes. Click the Black Barrel+ banner on Apple to get started with a 3-day free trial. On YouTube, subscribe to LEGENDS+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: hit “Join” on the Legends YouTube homepage. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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By the early 1850s, two of the Reno brothers were notorious troublemakers in Jackson County, Indiana. There were five brothers and a sister in the family. The two oldest were Frank and John, and they were only in their early teenage years in the early 1850s, but they had a rebellious streak a mile wide. They were still living on the family farm near Rockford, Indiana, though that wouldn't last much longer.

They worked the farm, attended school when possible, and especially in the minds of the older boys, suffered through Sundays. Wilkinson and Julia Ann Reno were hardworking parents, very strict and deeply religious. They were Methodists who dedicated Sunday to worship. Their sons said later that the kids were required to stay inside all day and study Bible verses. For energetic kids who were used to being outside, Sundays were a misery of prayers and admonitions about sin. As the kids grew up, the two oldest children,

boys, Frank and John, started to rebel. In 1851, when Frank was 14 and John was 13, a suspicious pattern of fires began in the town of Rockford. For the next seven years, homes and businesses burned to the ground with some regularity. The fires did serious damage to Rockford, and most fingers pointed at the local troublemakers, Frank and John Reno. Some fires were thought to be attacks on enemies, while others were thought to be part of a larger plan to buy the land after the buildings burned and the owners moved away. Whatever the reason and whoever the culprit, folks in Rockford couldn't bring a court case against the Reno Boys, and the fires went unsolved. Then a similar pattern developed with horses and robberies. Horses started to vanish

from their stables. Some turned up miles away. Others were never seen again. Money and goods started to vanish from local stores in the middle of the night. Like the fires, suspicion fell on the Reno brothers. But like the fires, the brothers were never caught in the act. Then in 1858, three years before the nation fractured, the Reno family fractured. Wilkinson and Julia Ann separated. Wilkinson moved to the nearby town of Seymour, and Julia Ann stayed on the farm with the younger children. Frank was 21 by that time, and John was 20.

But their younger siblings, Simian, Clinton, William, and Laura were between 15 and 7 years old. The split certainly would not have improved a tenuous situation, with all of the criminal suspicion that swirled around the older boys. Three years later, the Civil War started. Frank Reno and his friend Frank Sparks signed on with the Jackson County volunteers, who were part of the Union Army troops from Indiana. John Reno briefly enlisted, but he deserted in short order. Frank Reno apparently mustered out in August of 1861 when the war was in its back-building phase after its first major battle, called Bull Run in the North and Manassas in the South. After the two

ill-prepared and inexperienced armies mauled each other, the battle proved to both sides that the war would be longer and bloodier than they initially envisioned. They retreated to their corners, like boxers after the first round, and spent months recruiting, training, and equipping their armies. And the recruiting effort led Frank and John Reno to their next scheme. When the union instituted a draft for soldiers, it added an out clause. A wealthy man could hire someone to fight in his place. Frank and John offered themselves as replacements. They accepted payment, enlisted in the army, and then deserted as soon as possible. Then they repeated the process using different names.

The swindle became widespread, and it was known as bounty jumping. During the second half of the war, Frank and John became proficient bounty jumpers, and they met other young men who were doing the same thing. They became friends with deserters, contraband traders, counterfeiters, and disaffected soldiers. In those circles, they found associates who shared their disregard for the the law and their willingness to use violence. By the second half of 1864, Simeon and William Reno had joined their older brothers in the beginnings of what would soon become the Reno gang. The gang set up headquarters in Jackson County. At first, in burned out, were abandoned

buildings near Rockford, and then at a hotel in Seymour called the Raider House. From there, they launched a three-year campaign of robbery and violence, which led them to become some of the earliest targets of the Pinkerton detective agency. From Black Barrel Media, this is Legends of the Old West. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer, and this season we're telling the stories of six outlaws. They're horse thieves, bank robbers, train robbers, and gunfighters. This is episode four, the Reno Gang, Frontier Justice. The Raider House in Seymour had a saloon on the main level and hotel rooms up above.

The Reno gang ran most of its operation from a table. in the corner of the saloon. With the Civil War still raging, the gangs set to thieving. They ran gambling operations, stole money and belongings from the hotel rooms of unlucky travelers, and robbed local businesses.

Toward the end of 1864, the real escalation started. They broke into safes in county treasury offices, and then they expanded to post offices and general stores. The first widely noted post office and store robbery happened in December 1864 in Jonesville, Indiana. Frank Reno, along with Grant Wilson and Sam Dixon, robbed the post office and Gilbert's store. The robbery was successful, but the getaway was not. They were arrested soon after the heist, and they posted Bond and were released until their trial

a couple months later in early 1865. As the trial date neared, Grant Wilson agreed to testify against Frank Reno in exchange for leniency. But then Wilson was shot four times outside his house by unknown parties. His 17-year-old son found his body the next morning. Without Wilson's testimony, Frank Reno went free, and the gang continued its spree. Gang members robbed post offices in Dudleytown and Seymour, and then came the crime that sparked serious outrage and set the gang on its course toward a vigilante finale. In February of 1865, three members of the Reno gang broke into the isolated farmhouse of a union soldier with the apparent intent to steal money. The Reno brothers weren't noted as being part of

the trio, so the crime was likely committed by other members of the gang. But the three men barged into the house and found the soldier's wife. Her children were upstairs sleeping, and the men demanded money. The terrified woman handed them two dollars and said it was all she had. The robbers didn't believe her. They tied a rope around her neck, dragged her to a tree in the front lawn, and threatened to kill her. They tightened the rope multiple times and demanded more money. Each time they loosened it, the woman gasped for air and continued to say she only had $2. Eventually they left her slumped next to the tree and rode away with her $2. When the story made it to the Jackson County newspapers, people were outraged. The first decision was

Discussions of vigilante justice circulated through the county, though the citizens didn't act on them yet. Two months later, four years of life-changing and world-changing warfare started to end. On April 9, 1865, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Union General Ulysses S. Grant. That was the ceremonial end of the American Civil War, but it took time for the news of Lee's surrender to travel. Way out west in the deepest corner of South Texas, a small Confederate army under the command of John S. Ford, better known as Rip Ford, won the final battle of the Civil War at a

cactus-strewn field called Palmeto Ranch on May 13th. As of May 13, 1865, the Civil War was officially over. Eight days earlier, another historic, though slightly less prominent, event happened. It was one that almost certainly inspired the Reno Gap. On May 5, 1865, 10 to 20 masked men pried loose a rail from the tracks of the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad outside of North Bend, Ohio. When the next train rolled down the tracks, it hit the broken section and derailed. The engine, the Adams Express car, and the baggage car crashed onto their sides, but the four passenger cars remained standing. The robbers hurried onto the passenger cars and robbed the travelers.

Then they turned their attention to the three safes in the Adams Express car. They initially used an axe to try to break open the doors of the safes, but that failed. When they turned to gunpowder to do the job, they succeeded. They blew the doors off the safes and stole U.S. Treasury bonds, money, and other valuables. They disappeared from the crash site and into the pages of history books. Their identities were never discovered, but a year and a half later and seven years, 70 miles to the west, the Reno gang took the train robbery idea to the next level. The North Bend train robbery started the series of outlaw firsts of the Old West era.

The Old West era is generally regarded as the years between the end of the Civil War and the turn of the century, so 1865 to 1900, though it's sometimes stretched to 1910. The North Bend train robbery was, for all intents and purposes, the first train robbery of the Old West era. Simultaneously, it was the first train robbery in which the robbers used explosives to blow open a safe. The following year, 1866, there would be two more outlaw firsts, one by the most famous outlaw gang of the era, and the other by an outlaw gang which would be all but forgotten. By 1866, some people in Jackson County were almost begging for an immediate and extreme solution to the problem of the Reno gang. Robberies and general lawlessness in Jackson County had grown so bad that the editor of the Seymour Times newspaper stated the solution plainly. Nothing but Lynch law will save the reputation of this place and its citizens.

In January 1866, someone murdered a guest at the Raider House in Seymour. the headquarters of the gang. The guest's headless body was found floating in the nearby river. The post office in the small town of Cortland was robbed that month, and there was another murder in February. All three crimes were assumed to be the work of the gang even if there was no conclusive proof. In mid-February, there was the most famous outlaw first of the Old West.

On February 13th, a group of men robbed the Clay County Savings Association in Liberty, Missouri. As they rode away from the bank with approximately $60,000 in cash and bonds, one of them shot a young man who shouted the alarm to the town. The first daylight bank robbery of the Old West has always been credited to the James Younger gang, and the murder has always been credited to Jesse James. Eight months later, and 500 miles to the east, three men boarded the Ohio and Mississippi train at the station in Seymour, Indiana.

They looked like all the other passengers, as the children were. train left the station at about 6.30 p.m. on October 6th. The three men and their associates who waited a few miles down the line had done their research. They had heard railroad men gossip in saloons about large shipments of money going east. They knew the eastbound evening train from Seymour would have an express car. Inside would be one express messenger, a guard, and probably two safes. The messenger would have the key to the smaller of the two seats. The messenger would have the key to the smaller of the two safes, but he would not have the key to the larger of the two. Most importantly, the three men and their friends knew the amount of time it would take for the train to reach a

lonely stretch of countryside outside of town. Shortly after the train rolled out of Seymour Station, John Reno, Simeon Reno, and Frank Sparks rose from their seats and walked to the express car. They covered their faces with masks, drew their pistols, and barged into the car. They took the key from the express messenger Elam Miller at gunpoint and opened the smaller of the two safes. They grabbed three canvas sacks, which held a total of $10,000 in gold coins. They rolled the larger safe, which was on wheels, to the door of the express car. One of the robbers pulled the bell rope to signal to the engineer that the train needed to stop. The brakes squealed and the train started to slow down. When it had decreased to a manageable speed, the robbers shoved the safe out of the

and then jumped out themselves. Frank Reno, William Reno, and some of the other gang members were waiting with the horses, and they converged on the train robbers and the safe. The gang attacked the locked safe with tools, but they couldn't open it. They were forced to abandon it so they could escape. The crew who robbed the North Bend, Ohio train were the first outlaws of the Old West era to derail a train in order to rob it. That tactic would be used many times over. The Reno gang were the first outlaws to stage a train robbery from the inside. By 1866, the Adams Express Messenger Company, which was responsible for shipping and protecting money and other valuables, had a solid relationship with the Pinkerton Detective Agency.

Alan Pinkerton founded the agency in Chicago in 1850, and once or maybe twice before the Civil War, the Adams Company hired the Pinkerton Agency to investigate robberies. But now, in May of 1865 and October of 1866, separate gangs had robbed the Adams Express car on the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad. Immediately after the robbery on the night of October 6th, the Pinkerton Agency was on the case. Alan Pinkerton sent two detectives to the town of Seymour. A passenger on the train named George Kinney had come forward and said he could identify two of the three robbers who had posed as normal travel. With his information and the support of the Pinkertons, local officers arrested all three,

John Reno, Simeon Reno, and Frank Sparks within a couple days of the robbery. The bandits posted bail on October 11th and were released from jail. Shortly thereafter, George Kinney was shot and killed. The killer or killers were never identified, but it didn't take much imagination to guess who was probably involved. Once again, members of the Reno gang evaded the law. But in that era, the law and justice were increasingly viewed as two different things. Lynch law, otherwise known as Frontier Justice or Vigilante Justice,

came to Jackson County, Indiana in March of 1867. The terrible crime which pushed the people of Jackson County over the edge happened in December 1866, two months after the big train robbery. Three men were initially accused, though it seemed to be the work of just two. It doesn't seem like they were part of the Reno gang, and if they were, they would have been on the fringe. Either way, the crime, and then the response from Jackson County, foreshadowed the fate of the Reno gang when its time came. On December 29, assailants broke into the home of Marion Cutler,

a woman who lived alone outside of a village in the western part of Jackson County. The assailants robbed, raped, and murdered her. Three men were originally indicted for the crime, but one of the three confessed and said he only had one accomplice, not two. The two men, John Brooks and John Talley, were thrown in jail in Browns Town. The brutal crime, plus the continued lawlessness of the Reno gang, pushed the citizens of Jackson County to take matters into their own hands. On the night of March 30, 1867,

250 to 300 men rode into Brownstown in two long columns as if they were a military unit. They stopped in front of the jail, smashed the door with sledgehammers, and dragged Brooks and Talley outside. The vigilantes hanged the criminals from a tree on the courthouse lawn. With the rise of the Jackson County Vigilance Committee, members of the Reno gang decided they should commit their next crime outside of Jackson County. On November 17, 1867, John Reno and Thomas Elliott traveled 500 miles west and robbed the Davies County Courthouse in Gallatin, Missouri. They broke into the building at night, cracked the safe, and stole more than $23,000 in cash and bonds. Despite the overnight job and the distance from home, John Reno was reportedly recognized as one of the robbers. Law enforcement stepped up its pursuit.

In early December, about three weeks after the robbery, John Reno was arrested. There are conflicting reports, but the most likely is probably the version which says he was surrounded at the Seymour Indiana train station by six Pinkerton agents and the Sheriff of Davies County, Missouri. Six weeks later, on January 18, 1868, in the town of Gallatin in Davies County, John Reno pleaded guilty to the robbery. He was sentenced to 25 years of hard-greens. labor at the Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City. John Reno was considered the brains of the Reno gang, and he was the first to fall.

His older brother, Frank, and his younger brothers, Simeon and William, continued with the rest of the gang members, but their days were numbered. In an ironic twist, John Reno, in prison in Missouri, turned out to be the lucky one. Reese's knows a thing or two about great combinations. Chocolate and peanut butter, obviously, but there's a lot of. There's more than one way to Reese's. From indulgent Reese's big cups with caramel to crunchy Reese's pieces and Reese's miniatures, there's a delicious Reese's for every mood.

It's the same combo you love, just with more ways to enjoy it. So whether you're snacking, sharing, or just treating yourself, nothing else is Reese's. Frank Reno may have sensed that his time was running out because he went on a tear after John was arrested. Throughout February in March of 1868, Frank and various gang members robbed four county treasury offices and four homes in Iowa. The estimated total of stolen money was $50,000. Pinkerton detectives traced some of the money to Council Bluffs, Iowa on the western side of the state. They soon focused their search on an outlaw named Michael Rogers. At the end of March, the Pinkerton's raided Rogers' house and found Frank Reno and two associates

inside, plus $14,000 in stolen cash. The agents arrested all four men and threw them in jail. A short time later, maybe as little as one night, Frank and the others somehow knocked a hole in the wall of their cell and escaped. That was the night of April 1st, 1868, and they reportedly wrote a taunting note in chalk on the cell wall above the hole they had created. The note read, April Fool. The gang members had good reason to feel like they were riding high, especially after their next train robbery, proved to be their most successful. On May 22, 1868, about 17 miles south of their home base of Seymour, Indiana, 12 men looted the Adams Express car when the train had stopped at a refueling station.

They badly beat the express messenger who tried to protect the valuables on board, and the man was lucky to survive. The gang made off with $96,000 in cash and government bonds, which would be worth more than $3 million today. With that score, half the gang decided it was time to lay low. The half who didn't paid the price. Frank Reno and four gang members traveled north to hide in Windsor, Canada, directly across the Detroit River from Detroit, Michigan.

Simeon Reno and William Reno headed north as well, but only as far as Indianapolis, where they like to gamble. The six gang members who stayed in Southern Indiana tried to commit their final train robbery on July 10, 1868, less than two months after the big score. They stayed on familiar ground, Jackson County,

and planned to hit a familiar target, the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad. This time, one of the gang members recruited the train's engineer to be part of the heist. As instructed, the engineer made an unscheduled stop in Brownstown, the place where the Jackson County Vigilance Committee had lynched two murderers a year earlier. The engineer hopped off the train and a gang member took his place. The gang member drove the train out of town to the robbery spot, and then it all went wrong. Five gang members

stormed the express car, but they were surprised by a group of Pinkerton agents. The engineer whom the gang had recruited as its inside man told railroad officials about the heist. and the Pinkertons laid a trap. Now, a close quarter's gun battle erupted on the train. All five gang members were wounded, but they managed to jump off the train and rendezvous with the sixth man who was holding the horses. Five of the six escaped,

but one man was too badly wounded and he was captured. The next day, two of the five remaining bandits were captured. That made three of the six robbers under arrest, and the three robbers were placed on a train to Brown's station, town to go to jail. But a mob of Jackson County vigilantes stopped the train, took the bandits, and hanged them from a nearby tree. Three of the six robbers were dead, and the day after they were killed, Walman found the other three. The Pinkertons were necessarily worried about losing the second group of three to the lynch mob. Vigilantes were clearly watching the trains, so the Pinkertons

put the recently captured men in a wagon in the town of Seymour and intended to be. to drive them 10 miles down the road to Brownstown. The attempted secrecy didn't work. A vigilante mob stopped the wagon at a crossroads two miles outside of Seymour. It was the same spot where the first three bandits had been hanged two weeks earlier. The mob took the last three bandits and hanged them from the same tree. For good reason, that spot became known as Hangman's Crossing, and it still is. For those who don't live in the area, go to a website.

like Google Maps and search for Hangman's Crossing, Indiana. It's right there, about two miles outside of the town of Seymour. On July 27, 1868, two days after the second group of bandits died at Hangman's Crossing, Pinkertons arrested William and Simeon Reno in an Indianapolis hideout. Authorities were obviously worried about vigilante action, so they sent the outlaws to jail in New Albany, Indiana, 55 miles south of Jackson County on the Ohio Realt. river, directly across from Louisville, Kentucky. There, the brothers would await trial, which prosecutors thought would happen fairly quickly after recent developments.

The Pinkertons located three of the five remaining members of the Reno gang who had participated in the big train robbery back in May. Frank Reno, Charlie Anderson, and Albert Perkins were still hiding in Windsor, Canada. But then it took two months of negotiation for Canadian officials to agree to allow the arrest and extradition of the outlaws to the U.S. In October, Alan Pinkerton himself traveled to Windsor to make the arrests. By that time, Albert Perkins had skipped town. Alan Pinkerton took Frank Reno and Charlie Anderson down to New Albany to stand trial.

The outlaws were installed in separate cells of the same cell block as William Reno and Simeon Reno. With the four bandits now in jail, the legal process could move forward. They waited six weeks for trial until a trial no longer became necessary. About a hundred Jackson County vigilantes stepped off the train in New Albany at 3 o'clock in the morning on December 12, 1868. They marched to the jail, overpowered the man at the door, and rushed into the facility. The mob quickly captured the sheriff, the sheriff's wife, and two county commissioners who were in the building. The sheriff believed the vigilantes would not travel to the larger community of New Albany with its sturdy new jail, but he was wrong.

The vigilantes found the keys to the cells. One by one, they dragged each outlaw out of his cell. The vigilantes hanged Frank Reno, 31 years old, and William Reno, 20 years old, from an iron bar in the stairwell that led up to the second floor of the jail. When the mob went for Simeon Reno, 26 years old, he fought with a fury until the mob overwhelmed. him. Charlie Anderson was the last, and by daybreak, all four outlaws swung from ropes in the New Albany jail and the vigilantes were on a train back to Jackson County. The vigilantes were never identified, and that was the last major action of the Jackson County Vigilance Committee. In total, the Jackson County vigilantes lynched 12 men, the two men who murdered Marion Cutler

and ten members of the Reno gang. By the nature of the action, It's hard to find accurate numbers, but 12 killings by one vigilante group would make that group one of the most notorious and prolific in American history. The bodies of Frank, Simeon, and William were turned over to Laura Reno, the youngest of the Reno children, and Frank's wife, Sarah. The three brothers were buried in the cemetery in Seymour, Indiana. Ten years later, in February 1878, John Reno was released from prison, which made him the last surviving outlaw brother of the four, by virtue of the fact that he was the first caught and

went to prison before the Jackson County Vigilance Committee got started. By that time, the actions of he and his brothers had mostly faded from memory. By the time John Reno walked out of prison in 1878, Frank and Jesse James were in hiding after the disastrous Northfield raid. The Lincoln County War was starting in New Mexico Territory, and Wyatt Earp and Batmastersson were well-known. known lawmen in Dodge City who would meet Clay Allison later in the year. Train robbery was common all over the West. It was still headline news, but it wasn't a novelty like it was in 1866 when the Reno gang robbed its first train, and in 1865 when the first train was robbed in the Old West era. Next time on Legends of the Old West, from one of the

first train robberies of the Old West to one of the last. In February of 1900, one year before Butch and Sundance robbed their final train. Lawmen turned outlaw, Bert Alvord, led a raid on a train in Fairbank, Arizona. Neither Bert nor his gang would ever be as famous as Butch and Sundance or the Wild Bunch, but they would follow some of the same paths. That story is next week on Legends of the Old West. To binge all the episodes of a new season, and to listen to every episode of the podcast with no commercials, subscribe in Apple Podcasts, or sign up through the link in the show or on our website, blackbarrelmedia.com. This series was researched by Mandy Wimmer and written by me, Chris Wimmer.

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