Desperado Harry Tracy dead for 117 years today.

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http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2002/a ... rry-tracy/

Yes, he was as vicious as his mugshot made him look. The last old time western desperado on horse back to capture national attention, Tracy had escaped from two prisons, committed numerous robberies, and is credited with murdering eight men, one of whom was his partner in crime, David Merrill, who had escaped with him from the Oregon State Penitentiary. Missouri has Jesse James, Texas has John Wesley Hardin, New Mexico has Billy the Kid, the Rocky Mountain states have Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch. We in the Pacific Northwest have Harry Tracy as our premier old west badman.

Last edited by Kraichgauer on 06 Aug 2019, 6:32 am, edited 1 time in total.

That's what I call a mugshot. Do you have a particular interest in the guy? Or western badmen in general?

I have an interest in English highwayman Jack Shepherd, who has an interesting story... he was a little slippery guy who kept escaping every time they caught him. He was popular with the masses and when they were going to hang him there was a plot for the mob to storm the scaffold and free him... but being a mob it all got out of hand so he died anyway while they were all rioting.

(moved from News and Current as it doesn't belong there)


I also find this kind of thing interesting to know more about, will take a closer look. Thanks for sharing this!

I do have an interest in old west outlaws, as I'm a son of the western United States. I especially have an interest in Harry Tracy as I had grown up listening to my dad and other relatives talking about Harry Tracy who had died violently near where my dad had been born.
Tracy was considered something of a bogeyman in Utah and Colorado where he was active for a time, though here in Washington and in Oregon, people often had regarded him as something of a folk hero. Granted, he was the very last guy to take from the rich and give to the poor like a Robbin Hood, but plenty of people admired him for his courage and his ruthless will to be free.

He doesn't seem to have harmed others unless they were a threat to him or his freedom.

Villains often seem to capture the popular imagination... like the Kray Twins in London's East End. "They only ever harmed their own"... ie they only shot and maimed other villains. The Great Train Robbers from the East End were idolised, but they attacked the train driver and he was never the same again... and he died before his time. Not much to idolise there.

For the most part, though he did kill his partner, Dave Merrill, when he came to believe Merrill had betrayed him to the law in the first place, following their 1902 prison break.
Also, Tracy could be threatening and physically violent. When robbing a saloon keeper in Portland, because the man had put up a fight, Tracy and Merrill had shoved a bar rag into the man's mouth, and hammered it down his throat with the butts of their revolvers.

...Was one of the Great Train Robbers Ronnie Biggs?

^ Yes, and another of the 'Great Train Robbers' who for some reason captured the public's imagination was Buster Edwards.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buster_(film)

...Thank you. I knew that record by the post-Lydon " Sex Pistols " with him singing .

Biggs can be seen several times in this clip from The Great Rock And Roll Swindle, between 1:28 and 3:10.

https://youtu.be/4VhzhsA589k

what a meanie. am guessing like the "stack-o-lee" of folk song/legend, tracy, too, ended up putting satan up on a shelf and running the place himself upon arrival in hell.

Of course, Ronnie Biggs escaped to Brazil and avoided justice for years. He came back when he was dying and wanted the NHS to sort him out. What a louse!
Buster Edwards, to the best of my knowledge, served his time and ended up running a flower stall somewhere like Piccadilly Circus.