Legends of the Old West - OUTLAWS Ep. 6 | “Bill Longley”

Episode Date: May 27, 2026

In the 1870s, Bill Longley adds his name to the list of infamous outlaws of the Old West. He roams his home state of Texas, adopting different names and robbing and killing. In the summer of 1876, while on the run after a murder in Uvalde County, Longley lands in a small-town love triangle which leads to his downfall. 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

A man using the name William Black was installed in what would certainly have been a tiny jail in the tiny town of Cooper, Texas, on June 6, 1876. Cooper was and still is, the county seat of Delta County, northeast of Dallas, on the road from Dallas to Paris, Texas. In 1876, the county was only six years old, and it would have been much like it is today, either farmland or wilderness. Cooper's population was probably not. more than 300 people, so its jail was probably pretty small.

William Black sat in jail for six days. With nothing to do during the long days and nights of his incarceration, William could only brood about his situation. The more he brooded, the more he knew who to blame. Reverend William Lay. Without wanting to or intending to, William Black had landed in a classic plot of countless plays and novels, and movies and TV shows when those came around many years in the future.

It was like something from Shakespeare or Western novels, which would start to become popular in the 1940s with the classic setup, A Stranger Came to Town. The stranger calling himself William Black, which wasn't his name, who said he was from Missouri, which was also a lie, had been riding past a farm in Delta County when he spotted a girl. He was instantly smitten, and he decided to stay. a while. When William Black stopped to meet the girl, he unknowingly created a small-town love

triangle, which created a small-town feud between two families, which led to murder. The girl was Rachel Jack. Her father, Thomas, owned a farm outside of the village of Ben Franklin in Delta County. When William rode by in mid-February, 1876, he claimed his horse was lame, and he stayed at the farm for a few days. He got to know Rachel, and he'd decided to stay in the community to pursue a relationship. Her father, Thomas, recommended a nearby farm for work. William signed on as a sharecropper with William Lay, a farmer and local preacher who lived one mile down the road from Rachel and Thomas. And that was how the trouble started. William Black quickly discovered that a young man named Mark Foster was already

courting Rachel. Mark Foster was related to Reverend Lay, who was essentially William's boss. Rachel's father was not wild about Mark Foster, but Reverend Lay wanted Mark to be with Rachel. So the battle lines were drawn. Thomas Jack and William Black were on one side. Reverend Lay and Mark Foster were on the other, and Rachel was caught in the middle. The man calling himself William Black claimed later that he started to receive threatening notes, which he believed were from Reverend Lay. For the course of three months, tension between the two sides built to a head.

At the beginning of June 1876, William Black forced a confrontation with Mark Foster. William horse-whipped and pistol-whipped Foster. Reverend Lay filed charges against William Black. On June 6, both William Black and Thomas Jack were taken to the Delta County Jail in the town of Cooper. Six long days passed as William Black sat in jail and thought about his his situation. Three months ago, he had been simply riding through Delta County when he spotted a girl. He took up honest work for the first time in a long time, and he seriously considered settling

down. And now here he was, sitting in jail. The charge against him wasn't that big of a deal. It was actually false imprisonment for some reason, rather than something like assault. But the real problem was, the longer he sat in jail, the greater the risk that his true identity would be revealed. The man using the name William Black was only in Delta County in the northeast corner of Texas because he had killed a man down in Uvalde County in southwest Texas. In fact, he was wanted for robbery and murder all over the state. With that in mind, he had been sitting in jail for six days, and he did not intend to stay there for a seventh. Details of how he did it remain a mystery, but in the dark early morning hours of June 12th, William Black burned a hole in the door of his cell

and escaped the Delta County Jail. He walked or rode about eight miles to the farm of Reverend Lay. William found a shotgun on the Reverend's farm and sat down to wait until dawn. It had been six days since he had been thrown in jail, and by the seventh day, Reverend Lay would rest. 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 gun fighters. This is episode six, Bill Longley, the gunmen. There was a narrow gap between the two earliest generations of outlaws of the Old West.

The first generation were those who were old enough to serve in the Civil War, whether it was at the beginning or the end of the war. That generation featured Frank James and Cole Younger, and then Frank's younger brother Jesse, who was old enough to run. ride with Quantrill's Raiders in the final year of fighting. The next generation was too young to serve, but old enough to understand what was happening. They were nine or ten years old when the war started, and 14 or 15 when it ended. That was the generation of would-be outlaws like Sam Bass, John Wesley Hardin, and Bill Longley. Jesse James was only four years older than Sam Bass and Bill Longley,

but those four years made a lot of difference. When the war ended in 1865, Bill Longley was 13 years old, and he was 14 by the end of the year. He was born in Austin County, Texas, but he grew up in Washington County, between Houston and Austin. Washington County was the cradle of the Texas Revolution, and Bill's father, Campbell Longley, fought in the revolution. Afterward, Campbell Longley and his wife, Sarah, settled on a farm in Austin County before moving to Washington County, two years after their sixth child, Bill, was born. On the family farm in Washington County after the Civil War, Bill Longley became what would be called today a disaffected youth. Bill Longley was 13 years old when the Civil War ended,

and up to that time, he seemed to have been a pretty good kid. He was a good hand on the farm. He went to school and learned to read and write, and he went to church with his family. But over the next two years, Bill and many things around him changed. The era after the Civil War was known as Reconstruction, when the United States tried to put itself back together after four years of widespread destruction and carnage. And unfortunately, President Andrew Johnson, who took over after Abraham Lincoln was assassinated,

was wholly unfit to handle a challenge of that magnitude. Reconstruction was a mess, to put it mildly. In the broadest of terms, the government divided the South into military districts with military governors. Union soldiers became policemen in many places like Texas. And Texas was the first stop for new regiments of black soldiers who would soon be called Buffalo soldiers. Freed slaves moved across the landscape looking for places to settle. Confederate soldiers returned home and told bitter stories to young people like Bill Longley. Many Texans, like young Bill Longley, resented the new paradigm. Longley quit school when he was 15. He stopped helping on the farm, and he started practicing with a pistol as often as possible. Longley and other disaffected young men harassed black travelers and settlers and stole their goods when possible. The crowd of entitled and resentful teenagers were never punished, which emboldened them to go further. At the end of his life, Bill Longley described.

those pivotal early years like this. My first step was disobedience. Next, whiskey drinking. Next, carrying pistols. Next, gambling. And then, murder. In mid-December, 1868, 17-year-old Bill Longley was roaming around

with a like-minded group of young men when they came across three former slaves who were riding to Austin County to visit relatives for Christmas. The Texan teenagers liked the horse of one of the three former slaves, Green Evans, and Longley proposed a swap. Green Evans naturally said no, and the young men decided to take the animal by force. Green Evans spurred his horse and galloped away. Bill Longley and the other young men

opened fire with their pistols and killed Green Evans. The two men who were with Evans raced away while the young men approached the dead man on the ground. Longley and the others searched Green Evans' pockets and took everything worth taking. Bill Longley had quickly graduated from low-level crimes to murder. He wasn't afraid of local lawmen who seemed to show no interest in the killing, but he was afraid of the army. Longley said later, I got started when I was just a fool boy, led off by older heads, and taught to believe that it was right to kill sassy negroes and then resist military law. At that moment, after his first murder, Longley decided discretion was the better part of valor.

Rather than openly resist the soldiers who would probably come to arrest him, he fled Austin County and began eight years of roving and robbing and killing. Hey y'all, it's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair. Ever order furniture online and wonder what if? Like, what if it doesn't hold up? That sofa was four days old. You should have ordered from Wayfair. With Wayfair, there's no what if. Just style you love and quality you can trust. Visit Wayfair.ca. Wayfair, every style, every home.

love to talk about Bill Longley. Like John Wesley Harden, Longley wrote the story of his life before it was all over. And like Harden, most of Longley's version of his life can't be trusted. Longley boasted about all kinds of things which probably didn't happen or were much more tame than he made them out to be. The first one was what happened to him after he fled Austin County in the wake of the Green Evans killing. Longley said he drifted northeast to Arkansas where he and his friend Tom Johnson were caught by a vigilante mob in the spring of 1869. That would have been three or four months after the Evans murder. The mob thought the two men were part of the gang led by vicious outlaw Cullen Baker. The mob strung up Bill Longley and Tom Johnson from a tree, but then immediately

rode away without waiting for the two men to die. Longley claimed that Johnson's brother hurried along, shot the ropes, and freed the two victims just before they strangled. Then, Longley said he became Cullen Baker's top lieutenant. It's possible that some parts of the story are true, but the last part definitely isn't. Bill Longley could not have been Cullen Baker's lieutenant in the spring of 1869 because Cullen Baker was killed in Texas in January 1869. Baker was long dead and buried by the time Longley claimed to be his lieutenant. More than likely, Bill Longley stayed in the corridor between Houston and Austin,

at least for a little while longer. Longley and his brother-in-law apparently killed a black man named Paul Bryce in Bastrop County and stole Bryce's horses. After that, the army placed $1,000 bounties on their heads, and Bill Longley fled the state. Longley headed up to Wyoming Territory and then over to Dakota Territory,

where he eventually made the curious choice to join Company B of the second cavalry regiment. After two weeks of Army life, he deserted. but he was caught and sentenced to two years of hard labor. Six months into his sentence, the army sent him back to his regiment, where he finished another year and a half of his five-year enlistment. Then he deserted again. He left sometime in June 1872 and vanished from the historical record for nine months.

Longly resurfaced in his home state of Texas in February 1873, where it's been said he killed a black man in Brown County. In July, he was caught by Mason County Sheriff J.J. Finley after he allegedly fell in with a gang of horse thieves. Sheriff Finley took Longley to Austin to claim the $1,000 bounty on his head. The sheriff was disappointed to learn that the state of Texas would not pay a bounty which was offered by the military. Sheriff Finley released his prisoner, possibly after he received payment from one of Longley's relatives. With his freedom, Longley continued to wander. for the next 18 months.

At Christmas time in 1874, he went home to visit his parents. By that time, home was a farm in Bell County between Austin and Waco. After the festivities, Bill, who was 23, took his 15-year-old brother,

Jim, on a road trip back to the old homestead, which was now in the new Lee County instead of Washington County. The brothers visited their uncle and heard an awful story. Uncle Caleb Longley said his son had been killed by a young man named Wilson Anderson, who was an old friend

of Bill's. Uncle Caleb urged Bill and Jim to avenge the crime, though the word crime might be a harsh description. The story was that Caleb Jr. and Wilson Anderson were outriding and drinking. In Caleb Jr.'s probably drunken state, he smacked his head against a low-hanging tree branch. Somehow the injury proved fatal. Caleb was convinced that Wilson Anderson had smashed Caleb Jr.'s head with the tree branch for some unknown reason. The truth was impossible to know, but Bill Longley balked at killing his old friend either way. Then Uncle Caleb added that Wilson Anderson was a horse thief who deserved to die. Bill reluctantly agreed to do the deed, and he and Jim headed for Wilson Anderson's

farm. On March 31st, 1875, Bill and Jim rode up to the farm, where they found Wilson plowing his field. Bill shot his old friend twice with a shotgun, and then Bill and Jim high-tailed it north to Indian territory to hide from the law. The outrage over the cold-blooded murder of Wilson Anderson was immediate and fierce. Warrants went out for the arrest of Bill and Jim, which meant Bill Longley was now wanted by everyone. Military authorities wanted him for the murders of free black men,

and now Texas authorities wanted him for the murder of Wilson Anderson, Jim Longley was 15 years old and he was in over his head. Jim persuaded his older brother to return to Texas so Jim could turn himself in. After all, Jim hadn't killed anyone. A good defense lawyer could use multiple arguments to get him out of trouble. They turned around nearly as soon as they arrived in Indian territory. They returned to Texas, where Jim turned himself in, went to trial for murder, and was acquitted. Jim was off the hook, but Bill was not.

In the summer of 1875, Bill Longley visited his family in Bell County and then rode north to McClellan County, the home of the city of Waco. He used the name Jim Patterson while he worked on a farm for a couple months before the predictable pattern continued. On November 13, 1875, Bill Longley was hunting foxes with a man named George Thomas and possibly a few other people. Bill was drunk, and George probably was too. During the hunt, they got into an argument.

The argument turned into a fist fight, and the fist fight led to a shooting. Bill Longley shot and killed George Thomas, and Longley was on the run again. Longley ran to Uvalde County in southwest Texas. Uvaldi County is straight west of San Antonio in the southern portion of what is called the Texas Hill Country. Its rolling limestone hills are covered with cedar and mesquite. Rivers cut canyons through the hills, and Bill Longley settled near the canyon created by the Dry Frio River in the weeks following the George Thomas murder. Longley probably arrived in the second half of December 1875, and he adopted the name Jim Webb. But a simple name change wasn't

enough to throw off suspicion. Again, many of the details of Longley's brief time in Uvaldi County come from Longley, so full accuracy should not be expected. But Longley's, Longley believed that a man in the Dryfrio Canyon country, William Schroyer, who was known as Liu, suspected that the newcomer, Jim Webb, was really the wanted killer, Bill Longley. Longley thought Schroier was going to turn him in to claim the reward money. But Schroier also had a bad reputation in the area, and Longley used it to turn the tables. Longley convinced the sheriff of Uvaldi County to make him a deputy so he could serve a warrant which was apparently out for the arrest of Lou Schroyer.

With his new badge, Bill Longley deputized a young man named William Haynes to help him catch Schroier. On January 10, 1876, Longley and Haynes rode out to Schroier's place, but kept their mission secret. They told Schroier they had killed a cow, and they asked if he wanted to share in some of the meat. Schroier was hesitant, but he agreed. While they rode, Longley pulled his pistol and tried to arrest Schroier. Shroier kicked his horse and took off at a gallop. Longley opened fire and hit Schroier in the shoulder. Shroier drew his gun and fired back at Longley as they raced toward a

grove of trees in the distance. During the chase, one of Schroier's bullets hit Deputy Haines in the leg, and Haines's horse sprinted away from the shootout. Longley's horse and Schroier's horse suffered injuries, which left both men on foot. Schroier, with his shoulder bleeding, made it to the trees and crawled into some brush. Longley followed the blood trail but kept a safe distance. Schroier, injured and probably running low on ammunition, shouted that he wanted to talk. Longley told Schroier to drop his gun, which Schroier did. But as Longley approached, Schroier pulled out another pistol and Longley shot him dead. Longley had ended the threat of capture by Lou Schroier, but he had done it in a way which ensured he had to go on the run again.

He found another horse and fled Uvaldi County. He rode in a diagonal line from the southwest corner of the state to the northeast corner, from Uvaldi County to Delta County, where he happened to ride past the farm of Thomas Jack and spotted Thomas' daughter, Rachel. After about a month on the road, Bill Longley trotted into Delta County northeast of Dallas and about 30 miles from the Red River. Near the village of Ben Franklin, he rode past the farm of Thomas Jack, and saw Thomas' daughter Rachel.

Longley made up a story on the spot. He said his name was William Black. He was from Missouri, and his horse had just gone lame. He asked to stay at the farm while he tended to the situation. Thomas Jack agreed, and Bill Longley spent a few days with Thomas and his daughter. During that time, Longley developed a crush on Rachel Jack, despite the fact that he was 25 years old and she was 15 or 16. And despite the fact that he was wanted for at least four murders and a score of robberies,

he decided he wanted to settle in Delta County and pursue a relationship with Rachel, if her father approved. Longley could have been right to think that he could hide in Delta County. He was more than 150 miles from the place where he had killed George Thomas. He was more than 200 miles from his earliest murders, and he was 350 miles from Evaldi County where he had killed Lou Schroier a month earlier. In Delta County, he was just a drifting farm hand from Missouri who was looking for work. Thomas Jack recommended the farm of Reverend William Lay one mile up the road, and the man known as William Black became a sharecropper for Reverend Lay.

Longly pursued a relationship with Rachel, but he quickly discovered that he had a rival for her affection. Reverend Lay's nephew by marriage, Mark Foster, was also interested in Rachel. And so, a small-town love-triangle family feud story moved into its inevitable true-crime phase. Over the course of three months, Bill Longley apparently convinced Thomas Jack that he, Longley, was the better option for Rachel. It appears as though Thomas Jack wasn't wild about Mark Foster anyway, so Thomas might not have needed much convincing. But with Thomas Jack and the newcomer William Black on one side, and Reverend Lay and his wife, nephew Mark Foster on the other. Tension between the rivals ramped up every day.

At the beginning of June 1876, Bill Longley whipped Mark Foster with a riding court and a pistol. On June 6th, Delta County lawmen arrested both Bill Longley and Thomas Jack and threw them in the county jail in the town of Cooper. Longley sat in jail for six days and focused his anger on Reverend Lay, whom he blamed for his arrest.

Sometime in the early earliest hours of the morning of June 12th, Bill Longley found a way to burn a hole in his cell door. He escaped the jail in Cooper and walked or stole a horse to ride the eight miles to the farm of Reverend Lay. Longley found a shotgun and hunkered down to wait. At dawn, Reverend Lay went out to milk his cow. Bill Longley blasted the Reverend with the shotgun in a cold-blooded murder similar to that of Wilson Anderson. With the score settled, Bill Longley left his burgeoning romance with Rachel Jack behind and lit out from Delta County. He became a ghost for the next year. There were reports of him two counties away in Grayson County, and reports of him back down in his home territory outside of Austin in Milam County and Lee County.

Regardless of where he went, it's a safe bet that he would have heard about the numerous county sheriffs and Texas Rangers who were chasing him. Whether or not the lawman knew all the details, a man-matching Longley's description was wanted for murder in Lee County, Austin County, McLennan County, Uvaldi County, and Delta County, at the very least. Bill Longley wisely decided it was time to leave Texas, but he made the somewhat strange decision to just barely leave Texas. At some point in the spring of 1877, a little less than a year after he killed Reverend lay, he turned up in De Soto Parish, Louisiana, only eight miles over the border between Texas and

Louisiana. De Soto Parish is south of Shreveport, Louisiana, and straight east of the Texas town of Carthage. Incidentally, it's also straight east of the unincorporated community of Deadwood, Texas. When Bill Longley showed up in DeSoto Parish, he called himself William Jackson. Longley found work on the farm of W.T. Gamble, and he established a good reputation. as a capable and hardworking farm hand. During that time, he also developed a friendship with the local constable, June Courtney. Longley, under the alias Bill Jackson,

assisted Constable Courtney in making arrests. But then one day in late April or early May of 1877, Courtney noticed a circular, which would be more commonly known as a wanted poster, which described a fugitive who matched the appearance of his friend Bill Jackson. Constable Courtney contacted the sheriff in Nacadocious, Texas, right over the border from DeSoto Parish, and asked about the wanted man.

The sheriff forwarded the request for more information to Lee County, the location of Bill Longley's first murders. The response from Lee County was, Longley is today the worst man in Texas. You will have to take the advantage of him. He will fight and is a good shot. With Longley's identity confirmed, Nacadocious County Sheriff Milton Mast and his deputy Bill Burroughs rode across the border

and teamed up with Constable June Courtney to arrest the so-called worst man in Texas. As it turned out, it was pretty easy. The three lawmen went out to the farm where Longley worked. The Texans stayed in the farmhouse while Courtney called Longley in from the field. Courtney said he needed help making an arrest. Longley followed Courtney into the house, unarmed, where he was confronted by sheriff masked and deputy burrows. Suddenly, everyone had guns in their hands except the outlaw. On June 6, 1877, exactly one year after Longley had been thrown in the Delta County Jail,

Mast and Burroughs arrested Longley without incident. They took him to Giddings, Texas, in Lee County, where he would stand trial for the murder of Wilson Anderson. While Longley sat in jail, fellow Texas killer John Wesley Hardin was arrested in Florida and extradited to Texas, and that was when Bill Longley started to write long letters to the Giddings Tribune newspaper. Longley felt he was in competition with Hardin for the title of the most notorious outlaw in Texas, and he boasted of all kinds of nefarious exploits, including the claim that he killed 32 men. On September 4th, after two months in jail, Bill Longley went to trial in Giddings for first-degree murder. It lasted one day, and the jury returned a guilty verdict after

just one hour of deliberation. Then the long wait began while Longley appealed the verdict. Six months later, in March 1878, the appeals court upheld the verdict. Six months after that, a judge sentenced Bill Longley to death by hanging. At about 2.30 in the afternoon on October 11th, 1878, Longley stood on the gallows with a hood over his head and a noose around his neck. Lee County Sheriff Jim Brown released the trap door beneath Longley's feet. The door snapped open, Bill Longley dropped through it, and that was when everyone learned the rope was too long. It took 11 minutes for Longley to strangle to death. Bill Longley was buried in an anonymous grave in the Gidding Cemetery, and it would have remained anonymous forever, if not for the 123 years of controversy which followed.

Nine years after the execution, a story circulated in Texas newspapers which claimed the hanging was a hoax. It was born out of complicated family lore and no one really believed it, but the possibility remained in the minds of many over the years. 110 years later, in 1988, a man in Louisiana wrote a short book in which he claimed his very successful grandfather was Bill Longley. The author said the execution was faked. Longley moved to Iberia Parish and founded a successful timber business. Spiratically over the next 10 years, forensic anthropologists used a variety of techniques to try to locate the anonymous grave of Bill Longley. In July of 1998, they found it. They exhumed

a set of skeletal remains and sent them to the Smithsonian Institute in Washington. Technicians performed DNA analysis and other tests, and they concluded in 2001, that the bones were, in fact, those of Bill Longley. The old outlaw was sent back to Texas and reburied in the Giddings City Cemetery, where he remains to this day. Next time on Legends of the Old West, it's an American frontier story, arguably the first American frontier story. Here in 2026, as the nation celebrates its 250th anniversary,

we'll go back to the American Revolutionary War for the stories of six battles. They happened in pairs, and those three pairs were the three turning points of the war. If any one of them had not gone in favor of the Americans, it's likely the colonies would not have won their freedom. Six battles, three turning points, three episodes. That's next time 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 notes or on our website. site, blackbarrelmedia.com.

This series was researched by Mandy Wimmer and written by me, Chris Wimmer. Original music by Rob Villeer. Thanks for listening.