Legends of the Old West - PINKERTONS Ep. 5 | “Charlie Siringo: Into the Mines”

Episode Date: August 20, 2025

In the late 1880s, James McParland joins the Denver office and quickly becomes superintendent. With McParland at the helm, Charlie Siringo receives assignments involving labor unions in the West. In 1891, Siringo goes to the Idaho Panhandle with orders to infiltrate a local labor union in a case which would nearly cost him his life. Thanks to our sponsor, HelloFresh! To get started, check out our plan: HelloFresh.com/legends10fm 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. For more details, visit our website www.blackbarrelmedia.com and check out our social media pages. We’re @OldWestPodcast on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. 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

Searchlight Pictures presents The Roses, only in theaters August 29th. From the director of Meet the Parents and the writer of Poor Things comes The Roses starring Academy Award winner Olivia Coleman, Academy Award nominee Benedict Cumberbatch, Andy Samburg, Kate McKinnon, and Alison Janney. A hilarious new comedy filled with drama, excitement, and a little bit of hatred, proving that marriage isn't always a bed of roses. See The Roses, only in theaters August 29th. Get tickets now. On a cold spring morning in 1888, Sheriff Cyrus escorted a scruffy, slender man into a jail cell in Montrose, Colorado. The man was Charles Lawrence, an accused wife killer from Wyoming. Sheriff Shores found Lawrence in his county and agreed to send him.

him back to Wyoming to stand trial. Except Charles Lawrence was actually Charlie Soringo, and he was hired by Shores to investigate three men suspected of robbing a train. Those three men were now Seringo's cellmates. Since becoming a detective for the Pinkerton agency, Charlie Soringo was always playing a character. But before becoming an operative, Seringo had spent 15 years as a cowboy in his home state of Texas. His extensive time on the range gave him tracking skills and the ability to handle tough characters.

Soringo had retired from cowboy life and moved to Chicago, but no sooner had he arrived than the Haymarket affair exploded. The violence convinced Soringo he needed to become a detective. Once hired, the Pinkertons sent Soringo to Denver. For two years,

Soringo went undercover and infiltrated various gangs in order to bring lawbreakers to justice, which was why he was now undercover in a Montrose jail cell in the spring of 1888. Soringo introduced himself as Lawrence to his new cellmates,

two brothers known as Smith and their friend Ed Rhodes. Soringo regaled them with false tales of his outlaw exploits, and his cellmates believed the lies. They welcomed him as a, fellow Desperado, and for the next two weeks, the four men swapped stories of crimes they had committed in Kansas, Colorado, and Wyoming. Seringo was such a good actor, his cellmates

were willing to share some of their most intimate secrets, including the train robbery, which was the primary goal of Seringo's mission. That train robbery had occurred back in November 1887. The three robbers boarded a train outside Grand Junction, Colorado. They robbed the passengers, fled to Green River, Utah, and hid for several months. Somehow, the details aren't clear, the three robbers had been captured and wound up in Sheriff Shores' custody. But Shores needed a confession, and Charlie Sorringo had just secured it. Two weeks later, Sheriff Shores played the last card in a theatrical game. He slapped a pair of handcuffs on Seringo's wrists and told him it was time to head to Wyoming to face justice for killing his wife.

When Seringo was out of jail, he told Sheriff Shores all that he had learned from the accused train robbers. Thanks to Seringo, the Smith brothers and Ed Rhodes were sentenced to seven years in prison. Meanwhile, Seringo boarded a train back to Denver with another successful job in the books. When he returned home, he discovered that an old nemesis was no longer a problem, and he had a new boss in the Denver office. From Black Barrel Media, this is Legends of the Old West. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer, and this season we're focusing on the famous Pinkerton Detective Agency

and two of its most famous operatives, James McParland and Charlie Seringo. This is episode 5, Charlie Seringo Part 2, Into the Mines. Pinkerton Detective James McParland arrived in Denver while Charlie Seringo was chasing an escaped outlaw named Bill McCoy in Wyoming. By then, McParland was the agency's most famous operative, and he was sent to Denver to evaluate the newest office of the agency. What he found did not please. McParland witnessed the blatant corruption of Superintendent Charles Eames, which Sorringo had been dealing with for the past two years. Eames had used the agency to line his own pockets, and for some reason he didn't hide his illicit activity from James McParland, or if he did, he was bad

at it. McParland notified his boss, William Pinkerton, and Pinkerton fired everyone in the Denver office except Charlie Seringo. When Soringo returned from his undercover mission in the Montrose jail, he learned that his new boss was James McParland. McParland was given full control of the Denver office, and he immediately began shifting the focus of its cases. McParland had a history of going against labor unions because he believed they were a hotbed of terrorism.

So that would be the new priority for the Western branch of the agency, infiltrating unions. In August 1889, McParland called Syringo into his office. There, Syringo met an executive who worked for the Price and Peltier Mining Company. McParland and the mining executive explained the details of Seringo's next case. Price and Peltier mining was located in Tuscarora, Nevada. Tuscarora had become a booming silver and gold mining town over the past two decades. The Transcontinental Railroad across the Nevada Desert had been completed 20 years earlier,

and the nearest stop to Tuscarora was 40 miles south in Elko. The railroad brought floods of people west, and during the era of prosperity, mine owners got rich, and miners did not. By 1889, tensions between the two sides were ready to boil over. One evening in April, C.W. Price and George Peltier, The owners of Price and Peltier mining called it a night and retreated to their respective beds in Tuscarora. As each was on the verge of falling asleep, bombs exploded under their beds. Peltier was thrown out of his cabin, but landed on his mattress. He miraculously

didn't suffer any major injuries. Price landed on the hard ground and did sustain chronic injuries which would trouble him for the rest of his life. James McParland instructed Charlie Seringo to find the man who tried to kill Peltier and Price. Before going to Tuscarora, Soringo headed west to San Francisco and met with George Peltier, who had left the mining camp for safer environs of the big city. Peltier gave Caringo a list of possible suspects or associates of suspects. The list of suspects had been produced by a different agency, which had tried and failed to apprehend the possible bombers. With the list in hand, Charlie headed across the Sierra Nevada Mountains to the desert of Nevada. When he arrived in

Elko, he boarded a stageco for the trip up to Tuscarora. As luck would have it, he met one of the people on Peltier's list, Phil Snyder. Supposedly Snyder was friends with some of the suspects. During the ride, Seringo presented himself as Leon, a Texas gun for high. fire. And to prove his skills with a pistol, Seringo shot and killed a coyote as the stage coach bounced along the rocky road. Snyder was impressed. When they reached Tuscarora, Snyder quickly introduced Seringo to his mining friends. Word of Seringo's ability soon reached a miner named Tim Wright. Wright was near the top of the list of bombing suspects. Seringo conducted a demonstration of his marksmanship for Wright and the display seemed to win over the

minor. Wright could always use a man who was handy with a gun. Over the next few days, Seringo hung around Wright and his friends and learned more about the miners who worked for Price and Peltier. A man who was known only as Wild Bill devolved quite a bit of information. According to Wild Bill, Tim Wright was definitely one of the organizers of the assassination plot, but he also had a partner, a minor named Black Jack Griffin. Wild Bill was positive. that Tim Wright and Black Jack Griffin were the bombers. Seringo figured out his next move. He needed a confession,

and after spending time with Tim Wright, Seringo was convinced he could get the miner to talk. His plan ended up involving a journey of more than a thousand miles and a scheme to find riches in Oklahoma. People close to Tim Wright started to become suspicious of the newcomer. of the newcomer who called himself Leon, and one of the most suspicious was the other bomber, Black Jack Griffin. As Seringo and Wright became increasingly close, Griffin cast distrustful glances at Seringo. Seringo must have known that it was only a matter of time before he was called

out. He also assumed that the only way to get right to talk was if the two men were nowhere near the mines or the union. So, Seringo suggested that he and Wright search for gold in the Wichita mountains of Oklahoma. Wright readily agreed. Wright's friends tried to convince him not to go, but Wright ignored them. Seringo and Wright left Nevada sometime in late 1889 or early 1890. They took a stagecoach to Denver, and Seringo hoped he could wrangle a confession out of Wright by the time they reached the city. But Wright said nothing about the bombing. All he wanted to talk about was gold. From Denver, they hopped a train to Wichita Falls, Texas. Syringo and Wright left Wichita Falls on horseback and rode 60 miles north to the Wichita Mountains in Oklahoma.

Seringo suggested they asked permission to mine for gold on tribal lands. The mountains stretched across the reservations of the Comanche, Kiowa, Arapaho, Cheyenne, and others. Seringo and Wright were denied a permit, but they went ahead anyway. For more than a month, the two months, the two years. men searched for gold while dodging tribal police. The covert evasion of authorities brought Seringo and Wright closer together as friends. And one night, while they camped under the stars, Wright confessed to bombing Price and Peltier. Seringo didn't record the details of how he was able to get Wright to open up, but Wright gave Seringo everything. According to Wright, he and his

accomplices cut the dynamite fuses the same length and lit them at the same time. The hope was that Price and Peltier would, quote, Sprout Angel wings together. And Wright admitted to being the one who put the dynamite under Price's bed. Now that Seringo had the confession, he needed to get Wright back to Denver as soon as possible. Luckily, their time in the Wichita Mountains proved to be a bust, and they found very little gold.

So they packed up their things and rode to Denver. When they reached the city, Tim Wright was immediately arrested and thrown in, jail. C.W. Price traveled to Denver, and when he stood at the bars of Wright's jail cell, Wright broke down and made a full confession. Wright agreed to turn on his co-conspirators in exchange for his freedom. Unfortunately for the mining company in the Pinkertons, Wright's co-conspirator Black Jack Griffin had fled to South Africa and was beyond the reach of Charlie Seringo. After nine months of work and a ton of travel, the Tuscarora case.

was closed. Unfortunately for Syringo, he returned home to tragedy instead of triumph. Around the time Charlie Sorringo started the Tuscarora case at the end of 1889, his wife Mamie fell ill. She developed pleuracy, a disease in the lungs, and went back home to Springfield, Missouri. While Seringo was away, Mamie had surgery. Sadly, the operation didn't work. In the late summer of 1890, she returned to Denver to be with her husband. Mamie's health quickly deteriorated, and she died at the end of August. Syringo was left to raise a five-year-old daughter. Between the pressures of being a single parent and grieving,

Seringo spiraled. He took to the bottle and became violent and erratic. Seringo's boss, James McParland, was there for the grieving widower. McParland seemed to believe that the best thing for Seren Syringo was to get out of Denver. In the summer of 1891, a year after Mamie's death, McParlane called Seringo into his office and told him about a disturbing situation in the Idaho Panhandle. It came as no surprise to Seringo that the case involved a conflict between miners and mine owners.

But that mining case turned out to be different from the others. Gold was discovered in the Idaho panhandle around 1883 along the Cordillane River. The discovery didn't spark a gold rush on the same level as Nevada, California, or the Black Hills, but it did lure its fair share of prospectors to a region that was only lightly touched by westward migration up to that time. Soon, new arrivals carved crude towns like gem and bear out of the pine trees. And as the early mines turned into large companies, labor unions. formed. The first union formed in 1887 and caused a domino effect in the region. In 1891,

separate unions decided to join together into a single organization. They didn't name their new group. They weren't that organized, but their effort was a sign of bigger things to come. A few weeks later, the mining companies decided to join forces and create their own organization called the Mine Owners Protective Association of Cordillane. Throughout the spring of 1891, tensions between the union organization and the Owners Association simmered, and that was when the owners hired the Pinkerton Agency

to send an undercover agent into the union. In the summer of 1891, James McParlin wanted to assign Charlie Seringo. But when McParland told Sorringo about the assignment, Soringo refused. While Seringo had no problem chasing murderers, thieves, and would-be assassins, he didn't like the thought of spying on hard-working laborers. He told McParland that he actually sided with the miners in their fight against the owners.

McParland relented and sent another agent to Idaho. Unfortunately, that agent was discovered and chased out of town. So McParland went back to Seringo and asked again. Syringo accepted on one condition. If he believed the miners were in the right and the owners were in the wrong, he was allowed to call off the whole thing. In September 1891, 36-year-old Charlie Seringo left Denver and traveled north. After giving it some thought, he decided to make the town of Gem his base of operations.

Gem had a reputation for being the home of some of the toughest men in the mines, which Seringo loved. His initial plan was simple. Survey the situation, then determine if the case was worth pursuing. For two weeks, Sorringo ate, drank, and talked with the miners in the area. In those two weeks, Sorringo didn't like what he saw, and he needed to let McParland know. One evening, Seringo slipped out of Gem and walked four miles down the road to the town of Wallace to make sure his message stayed secret.

One of Seringo's letters said, quote, I find the leaders of the Cordillane unions to be, as a rule, a vicious, heartless gang of anarchists. Many of them were rocked in the cradle of anarchy at Butte City, Montana, while others were escaped outlaws and tufts from other states. Seringo was convinced the union leaders were exploiting the miners, and he was now fully committed to infiltrating the Cordelaine unions. For two weeks in September 1891, Charlie Syringo surveyed the tensions between the miners' union and the mine owners. But Seringo wasn't the only one doing some investigating.

Seringo arrived in the Idaho panhandle under the alias Charles Allison, and before long, union leaders wanted to know more about the stranger named Allison. Around September 19th, Seringo was told to visit George. Pettibone, the union's treasury secretary. Seringo was understandably concerned that his true identity might have been discovered. But when he met with Pettibone, he was surprised to learn that Pettibone wanted to offer him a job in the union. Seringo, the graceful liar, had made a good impression on Pettibone and other prominent union members during the past two weeks. Now, Pettibone wanted Soringo to become recording secretary. Syringo accepted, and when it was put to a vote, the other leaders agreed.

All of a sudden, Charlie Seringo was in charge of keeping detailed accounts of the inner workings of the labor union, details he could then pass along to James McParland. As the man who kept the minutes of the meetings, Seringo was now one of the most important men in the union. Over the next several months, Seringo continued to play. the ever-loyal Mr. Allison, taking notes of union meetings and sending them to the Pinkerton office in Denver. For the most part, things were quiet. There was still an undercurrent of tension between the miners and the owners, but nothing major happened as 1891 drew to a close. Then in early 1892, the union called for a strike. The mining companies had just reduced

miners' wages in response to a railroad transportation dispute regarding ore. The union didn't like the sudden cut in pay, and the men put down their tools. As expected, the owners called in scabs. Throughout the spring and early summer of 1892, the union quietly planned a response to the incoming scabs. At the start of July, Soringo learned that the main union and smaller unions across the region were going to coordinate some sort of act of violence. When Seringo knew more of the details, he was ready to warn, the Pinkertons in Denver, but then he abruptly learned that his own survival was at risk.

A man named Tim O'Leary had arrived from Butte, Montana, with a single mission, to find the rat who was leaking union secrets to the press. As it turned out, a newspaper that supported the mine owners was publishing highly sensitive information about union activities. The only explanation was there was a spy in the union. Within a few days, O'Leary suspected Charlie Seringo, aka Charles Allison, was the spy. O'Leary had become curious about the man with a Texas accent, so O'Leary decided to lay a trap for Syringo. One evening during a union meeting, O'Leary stood and announced that there was a traitor in their midst,

and the traitor should leave town. The purpose of O'Leary's outburst was to get the crowd riled up, and it worked. Seringo listened to O'Leary's speech and clapped along, but deep down, he suspected that O'Leary had eyes on him. During a break, O'Leary asked if he could look at Seringo's official logbook. Seringo handed it over. Ten minutes later, O'Leary and some men approached Seringo with a question. Why was there a page torn out? That page was important, because it was a page.

included details of a union plan to flood a mine full of scabs as a way to strike back against the owners. Without missing a beat, Seringo claimed that the union's president, Oliver Hughes, ordered him to remove the page. O'Leary called Soringo a liar and was ready to pounce. But Hughes said that he did, in fact, order Soringo to remove the page and destroy it because it was so incriminating. Seringo had removed the page as instructed. though of course he didn't destroy it, he sent it to the mine owners. The support from Oliver Hughes diffused the immediate situation, but O'Leary remained convinced that Soringo was a traitor.

And then, shortly after Seringo narrowly avoided one instance of discovery, he faced another. A fugitive from his recent past showed up in Idaho of all places. Shortly after the close call of the union meeting, Seringo learned from a woman at his boarding house that a man had been watching the house and Seringo himself. When the woman informed Seringo of the stranger, she said the man was outside right now.

He was across the street, and when Seringo looked outside, he couldn't believe his eyes. It was Black Jack Griffin, Tim Wright's partner from the Tuscarora Dynamite case. Griffin had allegedly fled to South Africa around the time that Seringo had organized the arrest of Tim Wright. Wherever Griffin had gone to avoid capture, he was now in Idaho,

and he was the one person in the area who could confirm that there was something suspicious about the man who called himself Charles Allison. Griffin didn't know Seringo's true identity, but he knew that Seringo had not used the name Allison in Nevada three years earlier. Seringo had called himself Leon. Griffin was suspicious of Leon then, and he was even more suspicious of Allison now. Over the next few days, Seringo kept an eye out for Blackjack Griffin. He noticed Griffin prowling around town and talking with Tim O'Leary. Before long, miners began to turn their backs on Seringo. Those who remained friendly warned Seringo that he was a marked man. Word was that Syringo would be killed at the next union meeting. Seringo's friends advised him to leave town,

but Seringo thought he might be able to salvage the mission. The next union meeting was on July 9th. Seringo went to the union hall and handed in his resignation letter, both as secretary and as a member of the union. He continued to deny that he was a traitor or a detective, but he figured it was best if he quit. Seringo hoped that put an end to the suspicion, but he couldn't have been more wrong.

Shortly after delivering his resignation letter, Soringo learned from a fellow miner that blood was going to be spilled very soon, and it was inspired by a strike that was currently happening in Pennsylvania. 2,000 miles to the east, in homestead, steel workers had just gone to battle with Carnegie Steel and Pinkerton agents. In a morning of gunfire and cannon fire, at least seven people had been killed. It was a day of total chaos in a long struggle. And the miner in Idaho told Soringo that what they were planning,

to do would make homestead look like, quote, child's play. To get things started, the union was going to murder a couple scabs at Dutch Henry's saloon. Seringo couldn't let that happen. Around 11.30 p.m., Seringo entered Dutch Henry's and watched as a group of miners fed drinks to the intended victims. Seringo sat in the corner, sipping a beer, and waiting for the moment to intervene without blowing his cover. But that moment never came. A crowd of angry miners surrounded Seringo and demanded that he leave the bar. Seringo objected and told him he would leave when he was ready. But the crowd grew to around 30 angry men.

Seringo pulled his pistol and said he would kill any man who tried to jump him. Seringo slowly made his way out of the saloon and back to his boarding house. The mob followed him home and surrounded the building. For a few moments, Soringo was convinced he was trapped. this was the end. Then he noticed that an open back window led to an alley. When he looked outside, he saw the alley was empty. With his Winchester in hand, Seringo jumped out of the window, crawled down the alley, and escaped into the night. Seringo still wanted to make sure the two scabs were okay, and he rushed to the mine to find them. When he arrived, he discovered

that the two men had been severely beaten. One was barely hanging on. Knowing that he couldn't go to a doctor in Gem, Seringo ran four miles to the town of Wallace to get help. Luckily, a doctor was willing to see the injured men. Once the doctor had been summoned, Seringo needed to warn the mine owners of the impending trouble. None of the mine owners were in town, but Seringo learned that a secretary was in Wallace. Seringo rushed over to the secretary's house and told him that war was coming to the area. The secretary thanked Syringo and advised him to flee, but Seringo refused. He had enlisted in a war and he was going to see it through to the end. The next morning, Seringo took a train back to Gem. He ran to his boarding house,

readied his Winchester in ammunition, and waited to see what kind of hell would break loose. Around 6 a.m. on July 11th, 1892, a large group of union men met outside the Frisco mill to protest the scabs. During the gathering, someone fired a shot, which sparked a chain reaction. Soon the entire area erupted in bloodshed. During the battle, George Pettibone, the man who brought Sorringo into the union, and a crew of miners filled. a train car with 750 pounds of explosives and rolled it into the Frisco mine. The train car exploded and destroyed the mine. In the melee, many of the union men wanted to bring the traitor, Charles Allison, to justice. Word quickly spread to Seringo that he was going to be lynched. Soringo's boarding

house was being watched, and he couldn't escape, but maybe he could hide. With the help of a woman named Mrs. Shipley, who had warned him about the presence of Blackjack Griffin, Seringo cut a hole in the home's floorboards and slipped under the house. Within a few minutes, there was a loud knock at the door. Mrs. Shipley answered and was confronted by Tim O'Leary in a mob of miners. They demanded to know where Seringo was because they planned on burning him alive. Mrs. Shipley bravely told O'Leary that she had no clue where he was at, and to do his worst. Hiding under the floorboards with the mob just above him, Seringo looked around for a way out. He spotted a hole which was big enough to crawl through. The hole took him to the boardwalk

outside. Seringo stayed under the boardwalk and crawled the length of three buildings before finally emerging and fleeing into the woods. Later that day, the rioters turned their retention to the nearby gem mine and threatened to bomb it. The owners of the mine decided it was more important to save the mine and the lives of the temporary workers, so they agreed to surrender it to the union men. The scabs laid down their weapons and were told to leave the area. When the dust settled, around six men had been killed, and dozens injured, but the union men had won the battle. Unfortunately for them, their victory

was short-lived. Word of the violence reached the governor of Idaho, and he quickly declared martial law. On July 14th, Syringo watched from the hills as federal soldiers and the state militia arrived in town. Over the next two days, troops regained order in Gem, Wallace, and the surrounding towns. Between 300 and 600 Union members, members were rounded up and placed in bullpins. Most were eventually released without being formally charged. But quite a few, including George Pettybone, faced charges of criminal conspiracy. When the trials began in August, Charlie Seringo testified against the union.

More than any other case thus far, Seringo had vivid and incriminating details against the defendants. In the end, 18 union leaders, including Pettibone, were convicted of criminal conspiracy and contempt of court. Pettibone was sentenced to two years in prison and sent to Detroit, but he only served about a year. The U.S. Supreme Court reversed the decisions against all the union leaders. Pettibone returned to Idaho and helped create a new organization, the Western Federation of Miners, which would become a prominent player in the ongoing Union Wars of the next 25 years.

Meanwhile, Charlie Seringo returned to Denver. He had spent a little over a year in Cordillane, and the experience left a bitter taste in his mouth. He genuinely liked the miners he had come to know, but he felt that good workers had been seduced by bad leaders. Luckily for Seringo, he wouldn't have to deceive honest miners anymore. His last major assignment would be to chase two of the most famous train robbers in American history.

Next time on Legends of the Old West, Charlie Seringo goes undercover in search of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. It becomes his longest case, and it takes him all over the West. But Butch and Sundance are slippery characters. To round out his career, Soringo has one final run-in with George Pettibone and the Western Federation of Miners. That's next week on the season finale of Pinkertons, here on Legends of the Old West. Sign up now through the link in the show notes or on our website, blackbarrelmedia.com. Memberships are just $5 per month.

This episode was researched, written, and produced by Joe Gera. Original music by Rob Villeer. I'm Chris Wimmer. Thanks for listening.