Imagine waking up one morning, taking a photo of five friends, then initiating a national manhunt for some of the most infamous outlaws of the West.
You read that right — that’s what happened to Fort Worth photographer John Swartz on November 21, 1900.
But let’s scoot back a bit.
On September 19, 1900, Robert LeRoy Parker and Harry Alonzo Longabaugh — aka “Butch Cassidy” and the “Sundance Kid” — with their friend Will Carver robbed the First National Bank in Winnemucca, Nevada. With over $32,000 in gold coins, they hopped the Fort Worth & Denver City Railway.
Once in Cowtown, the trio met up with their buddies Harvey “Kid Curry” Logan and Ben “the Tall Texan” Kilpatrick — other members of the notorious “Wild Bunch” gang — to lie low for a couple of months.
Holed up at Maddox Flats boarding house, the buddies relaxed in the anonymity of Hell’s Half Acre — so much so that Will Carver even tied the knot with prostitute Callie May Hunt.
One day, the outlaws donned their best clothes (perhaps sipped a few too many spirits) and headed to Swartz’s gallery at 705 1/2 Main Street above Sheehan’s saloon to pose for what would become the “Fort Worth Five” photo.
Later, Fort Worth police detective Charles R. Scott spotted the “bad luck photo” displayed in Swartz’s studio, while escorting perpetrators to have their mugshots taken.
After discovering “the birds had already flown the coop,” Scott wired Denver’s Pinkerton National Detective Agency, launching a years-long national investigation that eventually led to the apprehension or death of each outlaw.
Moral of the story? Don’t sit for a portrait if you’ve robbed a bank.
