Dane Huckelbridge: Queen of All Mayhem

We hear a lot about gunslingers and outlaws in the American West, and those stories are mostly about men. But there were female outlaws, too—like Belle Starr, probably the most famous of them all. Her murder was a mystery. But her life was extraordinary. Author Dane Huckelbridge tells me about Belle and his book: Queen of All Mayhem. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
She was a trailblazer for better or worse, a criminal trailblazer,
but what she did was exceptional. Like I mean, nobody
else was doing this.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor
in Austin, Texas. I'm also the co host of the
podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right, and throughout my career,
research for my many audio and book projects has taken
me around the world. On Wicked Words, I sit down
with the people I've met along the way, amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers,

(00:48):
and podcasters who have investigated and reported on notorious true
crime cases. This is about the choices writers make, both
good and bad, and it's a deep dive into the
unpublished details behind their stories. We hear a lot about
gunslingers and outlaws in the American West, and those stories

(01:08):
are mostly about men, but there were female outlaws too,
like Bell Starr, probably the most famous of them all.
Her murder was a mystery, but her life was extraordinary.
Author Dane Hucklebridge tells me about Bell and his book
Queen of All Mayhem. I have to confess, you know,

(01:30):
I've never read a lot of Westerns, and now I
have several friends who have come out with books Brian
Burrow with the Gunslinger Book, I've had. I feel like
there's a slew of friends of mine who have come
out with these Western books, and so I have not
read yet one that's centered on a woman. And Bell
seems like the woman of all women in the eighteen hundreds,

(01:50):
in the you know, American Frontier.

Speaker 2 (01:52):
Here, I would definitely say so. I mean, that's what
makes her stories so compelling. And I think ultimately when
you take a step back and look at her life,
that was I think, in a way with Letter toward
a life of crime because she was growing up in
the West, the frontier, you know, kind of the edge
of the South in the eighteen hundreds, and you know,
understandably she felt very constrained by sort of the norms

(02:15):
of the time, even the laws at the time. She
could not achieve the kind of liberty and independence I
think as a woman at that time in the wild
West through legal means, even the law was kind of prohibitive.
And I think that's what that was part of the allure,
part of what broader towards being an outlaw and a gangster.
Is she could play by her own rules. And I
think that's what makes her such a such an interesting

(02:37):
and such a compelling character, because at many times in
fiction and nonfiction, you know, these great American American personalities,
you know, there's something that sort of draws them towards
this unusual life. And I think when you talk about
criminal figures, you know, mafia boss's, drug lords, organized criminals, whatever, thiefs, outlaws,
whatever you want to say, that oftentimes there is there

(02:59):
is sort of a draw. In her case, I think
that was it. You know, she she very easy, and
she didn't come from a from necessarily like a poor,
underprivileged family, uneducated family like she She came from a
pretty respectable family. She was she was educated. You know,
she very easily could have slipped into the role of
kind of a Southern bell and kept house and hosted
parties and just been kind of kind of a decorative

(03:21):
a decorative object. And she she wanted none of that.
You know, she wanted to chase her own destiny, carb
her own path, and that's in part what let her
towards this really wild when when you get the whole
really wild outlaw life and also just even more directly,
I just think she loved it. Like I think she
was a bit of an adrenaline junkie. When you look
at how she lived her life and the type of
crime she committed and the people she was attracted to,

(03:44):
I mean, she her whole life is just basically running
with bad characters, and most of them, including herself, almost
everyone involved. I mean, the amount of violence is unreal.
And for a long time I thought the wild West,
maybe it was like a little bit exaggerated. Maybe it
wasn't quite as much as you know, the spaghetti westerns
or you know, classic cowboy movies led me to believe.

(04:05):
But it was tremendously violent. And the proof is kind
of the pudding. Almost almost every man in her life
ended up dying in a gunfight. I don't think she
would have had it any other way. That kind of
the outlaw life was her path to liberty, individuals and freedom,
all the things that were kind of denied to her
at that time.

Speaker 1 (04:24):
What I love about this kind of nonfiction is the
excitement that you can draw because you have all of
these great sources, and you know, you say, Belle felt
the adrenaline. I think that you can feel that through
your book, but also I think it does deliver important messages.
I'm a history geek, so I want to jump into
kind of chronologically where we put Bell and where we

(04:45):
put the United States. But also what I loved is
is I really want to explore the role of women
and how would you be independent in this time period.
You could be an outlaw because of where she is,
but the cities, you know, we're I wrote a book
that was set on the East Coast in the mid
eighteen hundreds, and the women were independent by becoming factory workers,

(05:08):
so you know. But I also know it gets so
much more rugged and rough the further west you go.
So if you can place us wherever, you want to
start with Bell's life so we understand her, if you
can also place us and where we are in the
United States in that time.

Speaker 2 (05:21):
Period, definitely. Bell Starr was born in eighteen forty eight,
which was, as I talk about in the book, a
pretty tumultuous time in American history. There are huge waves
of immigration from the Irish Potato famine and from a
lot of the political instability and what would become Germany.
All the German states. It was a time of upheavals

(05:42):
for Native Americans when there was you know, there was
displacement of people from the east to the west. It
was a time of mounting stresses reverding slavery between the
north and the South, which over the next couple of
decades would eventually culminate the Civil War. It was a
very tumultuous time. She was born in Carthage, Missouri, which

(06:03):
is in southwestern Missouri on the kind of the very
edge of the Ozarks, in an area that was that
was inhabited mostly not exclusively, but mostly by transplanted Southerners,
and her family were transplanted Southerners. But interestingly, we're we're
sort of Appalachians of German extraction on her father's side,
and her real like the real name when her ancestor

(06:24):
came from came from Germany was was Shala or Shalla
something like that, and it got anglicized to Shirley, which
I thought was funny, because you know, this is an
important ethnic group in the history of Appalachia. But you
often hear about the Scots Irish, and you know, I
think a lot of people think of bell Stars as
coming from this this kind of bout log cabins and
whiskey stills and hooton and holler and in fiddles and

(06:46):
away she did. But her family's origins are actually in
h in Pennsylvania and what's today is Amish country. I
mean they were. They were essentially Pennsylvania Dutch on her
father's side, on her mother's side, and her father ended
up going west, and it did this this classick pattern
you see of western expansion, where they started in Pennsylvania,
then went kind of to western Virginia, then bounced to Kentucky,

(07:09):
then went to southern Indiana, and then ended up in
the edge of the Ozarks in Carthage, Missouri. And her father,
he was a bit of a social climber. I guess
you could say he came from kind of farm folk
and you know, picked up slowly became more Appalachian as
they spent time and you know, moving western through Appalachian
the edge of the Ozarks. But I think he was
a social climber, and he really was ambitious. And he

(07:32):
started out as a farmer and then as stock farmer,
and he ended up moving into town and building a
little bit of a business, a small I mean, it's
a small town, but a small business empire opening the
Shirley Hotel, which in Carthage was sort of a landmark hotel,
and it was it was interestingly like but for that
time and place, a fairly fancy hotel. You know. It
wasn't some rustic country tavern with you know, raw you know,

(07:56):
raw pine benches whatever. I think. It was like a
regarded as a fairly nice hotel. And it was Carthage
was a county seat, so you'd have you know, important
people in the region passing through and things like that.
Trials were held there and he had a couple of
divorces prior to that, and then he ended up marrying
Myra Maybell Shirley, which is Bell's real name. Her you know,

(08:16):
original name, a woman named Eliza Elizabeth who was who
herself was a little bit of a southern bell from
Kentucky and was none to have you know, her social
graces and whatnot. And Bell herself again, Myra Maybell Shirley
was her was her original name. She initially grew up
on that first farm there, that stock farm, you know,
a bit of a country girl, and she was very

(08:37):
close to her older brother Bud, and he would take
her out riding and taught her how to shoot and
things like that. So she started out her childhood as
a country girl and then ended up moving into town
when her father started this hotel and he, you know,
he started to become quite prosperous and he became something
of a pillar of the community. And that was her
first introduction, I would say, to kind of a little

(09:00):
bit of the glamour of town life. And running this hotel,
you know, she started to get exposed to kind of
important people passing through, people who are a little more
stylishly dressed, and you know, traveling performers, gamblers, things like that.
And I think she you have this mixture of a
frontier girl who likes guns, likes riding horses, is very
good at both, but then also starts to get a
taste for a little bit of the glamour of, you know,

(09:23):
of city life, and starts to, I think, get a
little bit curious about what lies beyond that. And that's
sort of the very beginnings of belsh really, And she
ends up going to the Carthage Female Academy, at least
we're pretty sure she did, which was a private school
for girls there. So and she apparently was you know,
received received a proper education. You know, some people can
say she may have learned it. It was rumored avery

(09:44):
that she learned French and ancient Greek and Hebrew and
things like that, and along with music too, which would
also become a lifelong passion of hers, particularly the piano.
So that's that's where you start to see her forming.
But I think she was very frustrated from early on
about the rules that were expected of women and being
a girl. And I you know, in this society where

(10:04):
even these private schools were kind of like charm schools,
I guess you could say.

Speaker 1 (10:08):
Preparing them to be married essentially, right.

Speaker 2 (10:11):
Essentially, yes, exactly, And I think some of this frustration
builds whatever and a really big turning point in the
history of her family, which they became. You know, sh
had some brothers, the family grew. They were came from
this prosperous family running this hotel restaurant in town. Her
father also started like buying up some stables and other businesses.
Was the Civil War and Missouri was a very violence

(10:35):
would erupt because there'd been this tension for a long time.
Because her region was predominantly settled by Southerners, many of
whom came from, you know, parts of Appalachia and the
upland south and back east. But there was a northern
contingent too. There were quite a few you know, we
call them Yankees at the time who also who also
settled there. And what made Missouri kind of unique is

(10:58):
when violence sets started to to spring up. They a
lot of the local people around Carthage rallied to the
Southern cause, but they were put down fairly quickly by
the North. And for the rest of there was a
brief Southern occupation, then the North came in, then you
occupied it. So for most of the Civil War they
were occupied by the North, which created this huge gorilla insurgency.

(11:18):
And this would have been Bell was a young teenage girl.
All this was happening, and most of the local boys
who were Southern sympathizers became Confederate girls. They became bushwhackers
and they were out, you know, living in the woods,
doing attacks on kind of on militias and Union forces
things like that were occupying the region. And this is
one of the sort of beginning of the Bell Star legend.

(11:40):
And to talk about this in the book is that
she did actually serve as something of a spy. She
passed on information and intel and things like this to
her brother who was who was a bushwhacker, a gorilla
in the area, like out in the camped out in
the woods, leading you know, ambushes, and yeah, there's some
there's some good stories. And again it's always hard to
separate the fact of the fiction. But you start to

(12:01):
see when you have different accounts that overlap, you said, say, oh,
there's probably some truth there. And she definitely had some
hair raising encounters. And it was also interesting because for
the first time in her life, I think she experienced
a distinct advantage because it was very dangerous for young
men to get involved, to be traveling around whatever. I mean,
they would just you know, militias would just kill them.
And because she was a young woman, a teenage girl,

(12:24):
she was kind of viewed as harmless, so she could
like go behind enemy lines things like that. And I
think this was her first taste. Yeah, as I said,
she was something of an adrenaline junkie. I think this
was her first taste of that rush. I think racing
on her horse behind enemy lines to go pass on
information to her brother in the woods, and it would
also turn out to be if the stories there's an

(12:45):
eyewitness account of this, it seems true. Her first sort
of brush with at least the threat of violence, her
brother ended up dying towards the end of the war,
was killed by militiamen, and she was so enraged, and
again she's a teenage girl. She actually went into town
with her mother there to collect the body and brought
two pistols with her and kind of openly challenged, you know,
whoever had killed her brother to a to a gun duel.

(13:08):
Essentially nobody rose to the John I think probably probably
because nobody wanted to was looking to get in a
gunfight with a teenage girl, but also possibly because, if
assuming her reputation was correct, she already at this point
was known to be good with horses and guns. But anyway,
that's that's sort of where where the beginning of Bell
Star is not just the daughter of a Southern bell

(13:29):
living on the edge of the the edge of the Ozarks,
kind of close to the frontier, where she starts to
transition into this really adventurous I guess you could say
law breaking, violent or first case of violence too violent
character and towards the very end of the war and this,
this this guerrilla ward turned out to be catastrophic for Missouri.
It was incredibly violent. People were giving their homes burned,

(13:49):
families were getting slaughtered. I mean, there was really a
time of incredible violence, sectarian violence between Northern sympathizers and
Southern sympathizers, and either town was in ruins and they
ended up the family, the Shirley family ended up leaving
and going to Texas. And there was a huge migration
of people from Missouri to Texas, specifically the area around Dallas,
and they restart a little frontier farm. Things were not

(14:11):
good for them like they've been. I mean, her father's
business had kind of been ruined by all this. They're
essentially starting from scratch. But one thing that's interested that happened,
and this is really the dawn of what we think
of as the wild West era, because you you have
suddenly you're in Texas the sort of you know, wild
us you could say wild frontier to a certain extent,
And you had all these young men from Missouri, from

(14:33):
other places too, but especially Missouri who had served as
Confederate guerrillas during the war, who got very good at
like you know, holding up stage co union stage coaches
and union trains, doing stickups, doing kind of you know,
horseback style, fighting with revolvers, all these things that they'd
done as gorillas, and suddenly they all to leave Missouri

(14:53):
because a lot of them were wanted for crimes after
the war. They weren't uniform confederates, they weren't granted any
sort of clemency. And you know, you see this a
lot in situations where where there's a war and you
have sort of a conquered people and no provision is
made for all these kind of gun handy young men
who are accustomed to violence and have no way to
make a living after that. And that's in a way

(15:14):
a lot of not all of the Wild West kind
of culture and violence and things we associated with it,
but a big chunk, especially when tech just started because
of this, and these outlaws who Bell Starr would in
some cases Mary and be very close to that's where
they started, you know, the Jesse James, Frank James, the
Younger brothers, Cole Younger, these were all close friends of hers.

(15:36):
She would end up marrying Jim Reid, who was also
one of these confederates.

Speaker 1 (15:43):
Are these people do you think that these young men,
the Gorillas that you're talking about, as well as Bell Starr,
are they shaped by the Civil War in the way
that I think of a couple killers who if separated,
I'm not sure they would have committed the crimes that
they committed. So does the Civil War trigger something within
these young men and like Bell Star, that was always

(16:06):
there and they would have ended up doing you know,
terrible things or whatever, becoming these rebels, whether the Civil
War had started or not.

Speaker 2 (16:14):
Sure. Well, I think to that point A big part
of it probably was was trauma too. I mean, there
was a it was extremely traumatic experience where everyone involved,
regardless of what site on, just being witnessed to that
kind of violence, that kind of you know, slaughter, particularly
what was happening in Missouri, which was really murderous and awful.
I think they were traumatized to an extent, and it's

(16:36):
you know, you see this sometimes, you know after wars
and that it's hard to go back to normal life,
you know, it's it's difficult to make that adjustment. And
I think a lot of them were shaped and affected
by this, traumatized by it, and so I think it
was hard for them to go I mean the whole
you know, the drinking, the gambling, the kind of not
living in the moment, whatever, you know. I mean, I
think you see that a lot. You know. It's almost

(16:57):
like a like a Hummingway story or something like that,
where sort of this traumatic experience for war, that that
that that damages can damage you in a way and
and change the way, you know, change the way you
make it difficult to go back to ordinary life, and
changes the way you engage with society. And then on
top of that, there was the fact that they were
there were very limited economic opportunities for them because that

(17:19):
the economy in Missouri was destroyed. I mean, it was
just burned out. It took years to recover, and and
a lot of them were wanted criminals in Missouri, so
they had to leave. So suddenly they're on this Texas
frontier and there are many of them already had a
distaste for the federal government left over from the Civil War,
so sort of like the authority is very loose, it's

(17:39):
easy to get away with committing crimes. It's a place
where you know, just kind of their worst instincts could
could be unleashed. And they already had the skills. Like
you said, they had everything they needed to become to
stick up banks and to hold up trains and stagecoaches.
All this stuff was there and and yeah, and that's
and that's kind of where I started. And the good
examples that James Younger, you know, the Frank and Jesse

(18:02):
James and Cole Junger and his brothers, and Bell Starr
was very close to them. When like I was saying,
her first husband, Jim Reid, was part of that clique,
and that that was her real introduction to this outlaw
life was through her husband, Jim Reid. And you know,
they didn't go straight after the war. They kept you know,
like I said, they kind of slipped into the into
the world of crime. But one thing I would add,
and this is also really important to her story, there's

(18:24):
one other faction that's critical, that's critical biography, and that's
there were several, you know, at the time what was
called Indian Territory which is today Oklahoma, tribal governments and
they were split. They almost had their own kind of
civil war where some some factions of tribal government supported
the north and some the south. But at the time,
the major faction in the Cherokee government and self brother

(18:46):
as well supported the Confederacy in part because there were
many of the powerful families in the Cherokee government were
slave owning families, and that forged this very unlikely alliance
between Confederate Bushwhacker guerrillas in Missouri and then Cherokee troops
who would go up to volunteer and fight alongside them,
and this this coalition, this sort of partnership. And one

(19:10):
thing they would do is the Bushwhackers in the winter,
when all the leaves fell off the trees and it
was hard to hide, nothing to eat, they would go
hide and again what was called Indian territory at the time,
and hide out in the Cherokee Nation. And they developed
this interesting relationship where do something, you know, commit a
crime or you know, some sort of crime, then go
into hiding in the Cherokee Nation, which was kind of
beyond the touch of federal authorities to an extent. And

(19:33):
this continued after the war. Only now guys like Jim Reid,
Cole Younger, Jesse James, they're just robbing banks, robbing stage coaches,
and then they're still friends with these powerful, you know,
powerful individuals who they'd fought alongside in the Civil War
in the Indian Territory, and they would go and hide
out with them and pay them tribute. And also if

(19:54):
they stole horses or a rustled cattle, they would go
unload them in, you know, in the Cherokee Nation to
these family and this very interesting sort of organized crime
type relationship ended up forming. It would end up taking
the form beyond those other things of whiskey smuggling. And
this is something that Jim Reid and some of these
other guys got into. It was Bell Star's husband. And

(20:16):
this is so critical because they Bell Star started going
with her husband into the Cherokee Nation and she met
a family, a very powerful family there called the Stars.
And Tom Starr was this kind of legend, you know,
I guess you could kind of call him a mafia
don of sorts. But he thought there was a political
component too. He was sort of important in the political
history of the Cherokee Nation, but also there was definitely

(20:38):
some criminal elements. He was just sort of a I
get he was a war lord, you could say that
he was. He'd been a warlord there and was engaged
in certain facets of organized crime. And that was her
introduction to that family. And then eventually her husband Jim Reid,
who was a bit of a near do well and
I mean we could talk all day about these sorts

(20:58):
of crimes. And Jim Reid, he he got too big
for his breeches, did some big robberies that got too
much heat, and he ended up about a bounty hunter
ended up killing it. And after that and Bell Starr
at this point, she wasn't known as Bell Stars as
Belle Reid. Their relationship, Bertie wasn't doing great because she
was sort of playing second fiddle and he was blowing
all the money and that they made on these you know,

(21:21):
these heists. He was blowing it all in gambling and
brothels and bars and who knows what else. And yeah,
and she at once her husband was killed. She ended
up in the Cherokee Nation and she married into one
of these to the Star family, which is sort of
this powerful, powerful local family. And she married the son
of Tom Starr, who is Sam Starr.

Speaker 1 (21:41):
I've often been curious about what is the boundary when
do we go from Carthage or a city that is
a city and crossover into the American frontier where, you know,
like I read about the Bloody Benders in Kansas, where
it's literally like a desert worth of sand and dust
and an outpost in the middle. Is there a boundary

(22:03):
at this point after the Civil War or is it
all fairly well developed at this point.

Speaker 2 (22:08):
I would say when you look at American history, the
concept of the frontier had always was a moving line.
It was never really set an exact thing. And in
the early colonial period or sort of the edge of
the apple Achians, and after the Revolutionary War, people pushed
past the apple Achians, and when you're talking about European
colonists settlers, and there was almost always violence because obviously

(22:30):
these conflicts of conflicts of civilizations, of cultures, and also
just the sort of lawlessness provoked outlaw violence too, and
so it was always moving westward. And at the Civil
you know, at the time of the Civil War. It
was surely after that that's when I would say that
period we think of as the Wild West, that's when
it really kicked off. It was really from the end

(22:51):
of the Civil War eighteen eighteen sixty five until eighteen
eighty five eighteen ninety like around that. So it honestly
like it didn't last that long that's just funny when
you think about it was only a few decades and
it would have been you know, again not a hard
fast line. But when she moved to Dallas, Texas, that
was pretty close. I would say to you know, where

(23:12):
it would start to get dangerous if you went too
far outside of town. And she grew up right on
the edge of the frontier, and even that would change
quickly because what would happen is at first you'd have
this frontier outpost, but then the railroad would eventually come in.
And as soon as the railroad come in, then you know,
it would start to look like a regular city. You know,
it lost that kind of a little bit of that
frontier character. And I think the big railroad in Dallas,

(23:34):
but I remember correctly, was was early eighteen seventies, so there
was this period I think she went she moved there
eighteen sixty four, sixty five, right around there, I think
the summer of maybe sixty four, and so she got
you know, she lived there for five six years and
it was still a pretty wild place and she you know,
she lived in Sign right outside of Dallas, but it
was just a short horse ride away, and that was

(23:56):
you know, at this point, she's a teenage like an
older teenage girl. Well, she's getting exposed, you know. I
think she's starting to want to exert her in, you know,
her independence, see the world a little bit, to do
her own thing. And she's and I think she truly
is enraptured by this wild West culture that's springing up.
You know, this this world that maybe she got a
little bit of a peka at Carthage because that was

(24:18):
that was sort of a little bit on the edge
of the frontier. But this is you know, actual like
cowboy hats and you know, people shooting their pistols in
the air, and buffalo hunters and where you know, the
like violent conflicts between Native Americans and European Americans that
were a real thing just a short ride outside of town.
It was it was very dangerous for either part, I mean,

(24:39):
regardless of regardless side of it was a very could
be a very dangerous place, and she just embraced it.
I think she embraced that lifestyle. She fell in love
and when you look at her persona, when she really
embraced the part. And this really happened at the point
when she after the death of her first husband, when
she remarried and moved to the Cherokee Nation and married
into this sort of I guess you could say Cherokee

(25:01):
mafia family almost, but they're they're powerful, politically connected and
criminal family that she started. She had this incredible way
of dressing her. You know, she wore this long black dress,
a big collaborate plumed hat with a side pin of
big silver pistols, you know, in her gun belt. And
she always rode side saddle, which was kind of I

(25:22):
think in a way, a little bit her nod to
kind of, you know, her her genteel kind of Southern
bell upbringing because it was extended time, very lady like
to ride side saddle. But yeah, she paired that with
this incredible potential for violence, you know, the sort of mixture.
I mean, there's like a lot of great gangsters and
outlaws of great style that's part of the lifestyle, and

(25:42):
she she had incredible style, and she she really embraced it,
and she wasn't shy about calling attention to her like
she embraced when she kind of especially in the Cherokee Nation,
when she started to rise the ranks and actually becomes
something of a gang leader herself. She really embraced it,
and I think that's started to really cause problems because
she was attracting too much attention. You know. You get

(26:04):
the sense that the you know, Tom Starr, her father
in law, and this kind of family. You know, they've
been doing nicely doing, you know, having their own criminal
enterprises under the radar, whiskey smuggling, fencing horses, while also
doing legitimate ranching things like that on the side. And
she was I think bringing a little bit too much attention,
too much heat to the to the family and to herself.

(26:26):
And in the end she did actually get arrested for
horse theft. She got charged with horse theft alongside her
husband and ended up going to prison for it.

Speaker 1 (26:35):
Let's go back to her role, because I think that
it deserves clarity. I remember talking to Brian Burrow about
his book and the women seemed few and far between, right,
So she's unique as far as somebody who would be
an outlaw. What would have been the normal trajectory of
her life, both as you know, a woman who you

(26:57):
know at this school was expected to marry some nice
but also as I had mentioned to you, one of
my books is said in the eighteen thirties and you
have these so called factory girls who are who have
a lot of independence. Was that available to women in
the American frontier during that time period.

Speaker 2 (27:15):
My hunches, it would have been fairly difficult. Particularly It's
also just a question of some of it's legal and
some of its cultural. And I think it's just there
wasn't a very big cultural space where she could have
done what she wanted to do. You know. I think
even had she moved to a city and you know,
worked in a factories and like that, I think her
family would have really frowned upon it. You know, they

(27:36):
came from this kind of agrarian rural tradition a little bit,
you know, the kind of classic Southern bell type stuff
where you know, the idea of I think the idea
of her as a woman who did receive education, and
you know, they tried to think of themselves as coming
from like a good family, being a factory worker and
kind of walking around alone and doing tho some thing.
I think it would have probably been frowned upon. And

(27:58):
just legally it was hard to do things like get
business loans or voting and legs, becoming a leader of
a community, and I do think that's something she inherited
from her father. She did have this ambition. She wanted
to be a leader of sorts and control things and
build things, you know. And I think, again, as I
was saying, the lure of the criminal lifestyle, she could

(28:18):
play by her own rules. One of the things I
love to talk about is at the end of the day,
even though she became this wild criminal at all sorts
of you know, did time in prison, witnessed all these gunfights,
pulled guns on people, things like that, what she really
ended up doing when she became this gang leader, had
this outlaw ranch. She was known as Younger's Bend in
the Cherokee Nation, is she hosted outlaws. You know, they

(28:39):
would use her place as a hideout and pay her tribute.
So she was in the hospitality industry, and she was
big on horses. She was a big horse theft tho
was one of her big businesses was stealing horses and
fencing them. So she dealt in horse flesh. And those
are the two things her father did. You know, he
ran a hotel and he was a stock farmer. So
really she just kind of carried in the family tradition.
But legally you know, I don't think. I don't think

(29:02):
she could have really well, definitely culturally, possibly it would
have been very hard for her to kind of run
her own stock farm and run her own hotel or
even possibly inherit the hotel. Had that been possible in Carthage,
I guess they would have had to restart in Texas.
But that's what I mean, Like, it would have been
impossible for her to get the kind of like loans
necessary to build a hotel. It'd have been difficult to
get their respect to the community, like the other ranchers

(29:24):
and stock farmers and things like that, to be seen
as like a legitimate business partner. But that's the great irony.
She ended up doing exactly just the family business, exactly
what her father did, but as an outlaw and not
as a law abiding citizen.

Speaker 1 (29:36):
I interviewed an author who wrote a book about a
woman named Queenie who became a female I don't know
gangsters the right word, but definitely the head of her
own criminal enterprise, a black woman in New York during
the early nineteen hundreds, and just so it was a
benefit in a detriment for her to be a woman.
At the same time, you know, a benefit because they

(29:58):
maybe weren't as physically threatened by her, but of course
the detriment of being focused on by the police. I
am curious. I tuckled a little bit when you said,
you know that her family, because they were upstanding in Missouri,
how they would have maybe frowned upon her being a
factory girl. How is her dad a legitimate businessman? What

(30:18):
is their reaction to all of this? Or did they
happen to die before she starts this criminal you know,
outlaw life.

Speaker 2 (30:26):
Her father did pass away before I think she became
a full blown criminal, but her mother was still alive.
And I you know, honestly, I don't know exactly. I
haven't read many accounts of how they reacted. But it
is worth saying though that the damage from the Civil
War it kind of affected It affected her whole family once.
She had one brother who died in the war. She

(30:47):
had another brother who also in Texas on the frontier,
got mixed up with a bad crowd and I believe
as a teenager like stole a horse and got shot
stealing a horse. And then she had another brother who
I'm this I'm not sure if he got killed or
or not, but I know he was getting into trouble
for kind of like always the same thing, running around
with hoodlums, stealing horses, and ended up having to leave.

(31:07):
You know, they kind of shipped him off somewhere else
because he was just getting in too much trouble and
it was getting too dangerous for him. In Texas, there
was this this moment where her family, you know, the damage.
I just think you say, the damage from the Civil
War is a transitions and again it was they decided
to be Confederate sympathizers in choose the losing side, so
it was there, you know, it was their choice. But yeah,

(31:29):
you do see how the experience and trauma and economic
destruction of the war transformed them from kind of pillars
of the community and business leaders and law abiding citizens
into kind of a family of renegades and outlaws to
an extent. And I think this was again, like I
was saying, this was a pretty common story. I think
I think this happened a lot, and it did give
birth to a lot of the general outlawry of the

(31:52):
Frontier is physically that part of the frontier.

Speaker 1 (31:55):
You said that her relationship with Jim Reid before he
died was kind of falling apart. What was her relationship
with Sam Starr, Like, did you get any sense about that?
The good couple?

Speaker 2 (32:05):
From what I understand, they actually had a very loving,
surprisingly loving relationship. This also goes along with her living
her own life as she on. As I understand, they
also both had had lovers and whatnot on the side
and whatever. But I do think as a couple they
really did care about each other. I think they were
quite close and in the end they you know, Sam,

(32:26):
they could say they fought for each other and Sam
kind of well, they didn't die for each other. She
didn't die, but he sort of died. I guess you
could even say defending her honor to extend. And again,
as I mentioned, almost every man in her life died
in a gun fight of some sort. Her husband, Sam Starr,
the son of Tom Starr, this legendary Cherokee figure. They
had been arrested by Cherokee lawman by the name of

(32:48):
Frank West. And it's interesting because I think they were
distant related, some kind of cousins something like that, and
everyone's very close down there, you know, everyone kind of
knew each other. And I think for that he was
seen as a very personal betrayal that this sort of
kind of member of the extended family arrested them and
put them behind bars. Bell Star and Sam Starr both

(33:10):
and so there was a lot of bad blood between
between Frank West and his brother John West. And also
his brother John West testified him against in the horse
theft case that they got charged for prior. So there's
a lot of bad blood between this part of the
Star family and the West, this family of lawmen. So
it's kind of like, don't you think of those stories,
those classic stories from like Boston or something where you

(33:30):
have like two brothers, like one becomes a bank robber
and the other becomes a policeman, you know you kind
of it was sort of like that, like there was
one side that that became lawman of the family and
the other that became criminals, and there was a lot
of bad blood between them, but they were kind of
trying to stay clear of each other after the trial,
after he'd done, you know, gotten out of prison whatever.
And then at a Christmas party at this point, Bell

(33:52):
Bell has had two children with her first husband, Jim Reid,
who passed away, so she was there with her two
children with her new husband, Sam Starr. They went to
a local Christmas party in Indian Territory and it just
so happened that Frank West was showed up at the party.
And according to legend, I'm not sure how true this is,
but the legend is that Bell Star there's a band playing,
you know, and Bell Starr was actually playing piano, and

(34:16):
she saw Frank West come in. It was almost, you know,
kind of this moment attention was where the music stopped
and was like, oh, this isn't good. And one thing
I should add in addition to this this bad blood
against the Wests, Frank West had also killed Bell Starr's
prize horse. She had this horse she loved called Venus,
and at one point Sam Starr was riding Venus and
he was actually fleeing from the law at this point,

(34:38):
and Frank West and his posse had shot the horse
out from under so and he vowed revenge. According to
the you know, the story as it goes is he
vowed revenge for killing his wife's favorite horse. And yeah,
when he saw Frank West warming himself by the bonfire,
you know, at the base of the hill, just blow
this cabin where the party was, he couldn't resist, and
he called him out, and he went down and challenged

(34:59):
him to a gun duel. And again, many aspects of
bell Star's life are very cinematics. This is one. It's
like right out of western movie. They both drew their guns,
they both fired, and they both died essentially at the
same time. So both men fell dead, Frank West and
Sam Starr. And that was how Bell Star became a
widow for the second time, again because of a gunfight.

(35:20):
Because of gun violence. I mean, I guess you could
say in a way, he kind of died defending her honor.
And to answer to answer your question, I think that
was the one romantic relationship she had where I think
it was actually like a pretty loving criminality aside maybe
even healthy, healthy relationship.

Speaker 1 (35:42):
We often talk about morals, I think in crime. I
had a forensic psychologist when I said, I've said this
before on the show, when I said, well, serial killers
don't have any morals or ethics, and she said, yeah,
they do, they're just not our morals and ethics. And
I thought, back to a serial killer I wrote my
first book about killed all these women and then spent

(36:02):
all of his money putting down his old decrepit dog
because he loved this dog so much and he knew
it wouldn't survive without him. And so, you know, I've
talked to Brian Burrow about the honor code of the
Old West. What were what were the lines that should
not have been crossed? At least from maybe Sam or
you know, the people that he was working with and
Bell's experience, like don't attack other people who are members

(36:25):
of the Cherokee Nation, or was everything up for grabs?
Don't take this person's you could take anybody's horse, you won.

Speaker 2 (36:32):
Sure. I think there were some codes, and in the
few written accounts that remain that from Bell Star herself,
she definitely had a code, and she did have this
this idea of kind of of honor, of being an
honorable outlaw. And one of the elements of this code
was that you didn't betray other outlaws, like who are
friends of yours? Because one thing I think that that's

(36:54):
maybe been lost a bit about this era things like that,
is they would always put bounties on these wanted criminals,
and the worst crimes you committed, the bigger the bounties
would get to the point where your own friends were
willing to turn on you because it would be an
incredible amount of money. And this is part of the
reason too. Oftentimes people ran with their brothers, like Frank
and Jesse James, and you know, the younger brothers, because

(37:15):
you could usually trust them not to turn on you,
or on the case of these Confederate girls, war buddies too.
So if they were relatives or war buddies, you usually
could count of them not to turn on you for money.
And I think that was very frowned upon. And that's
sort of what happened to her first husband, Jim Reid.
He was killed by a bounty hunter, but it was
by a bounty hunter he kind of knew already and
was sort of pretending to be his friends to get

(37:37):
closer and ended up killing. So that was really frowned
upon turning on other outlaws for bounties. And also I think,
even though I don't think they always lived up to this,
this is definitely like hypocritical. And you see this especially
among characters like Frank and Jesse James, particularly when are
Cole Younger people like that when you read their memoirs,
they like to portray themselves as Robin hoods, like figures

(38:00):
you know, because it was after the Civil War, they
would claim they were kind of avenging, avenging the South
in some case by like stealing from the federal government
or whatnot, or stealing from kind of wealthy people, you know,
rich rich people, carpet baggers, bankers, people like that. They liked,
they liked to champion this idea that they were they
were sort of fighting for the common man and stealing

(38:22):
from wealthy individuals or the federal government or banks or whatever.
And there may have been a little bit truth to that,
but the effect of the matter is they I mean,
one thing I'll say about about Belstar Court, they definitely,
I mean, they they blew all their month, their money,
exactly the way he would expect wild West outlaws to
blow their mind. They weren't. They weren't helping the poor
or anything like that. They were. They were drinking whiskey

(38:43):
and gambling and having high times. They were. They lived
the lifestyle. And they didn't always steal from wealthy people either.
And they definitely in most cases they had one big
score against It was a famous Grayson robbery. It was
a huge score. Those were the first crimes bell Star
was even was ever involved with. But she was kind

(39:03):
of a little bit of a sidekick. She'd watch the
horses and that score they did. They made off with
like over thirty thousand dollars in gold from a very
rich kind of rancher and tribal government member in an
Indian territory.

Speaker 1 (39:15):
Wait, let me ask this. Thirty thousand now or thirty
thousand in the eighteen seventies, this.

Speaker 2 (39:20):
Was it was actually, I believe around thirty two thousand
dollars and this was back then. This should have been
the score of a lifetime. And it's interesting. This is
one of the things I think that really ruined her
marriage to Jim Reid and why they sort of were
on the outs when he was killed, is she participated
in this. She wasn't one of the gunmen, but she
was waiting outside with the horses when they did this.

(39:41):
And it should have been the score of a lifetime.
And not only did he not give her any of
the money. You know, he was like, no, you know,
he was just his wife. You know, he was managing
the money, which I think really evoked her ire because
she didn't like being treated that way. Not only that
he blew all the money in a matter of weeks.
I mean just horse racing, gambling, drinking, all these sort

(40:04):
of things. And on top of that he ended off
running off with a younger mistress. So all these things
were sort of the last straw I think for bell Stars,
so their marriages aren't in the out he was killed.
So that was a case where they did rob someone
who had considerable wealth, but also the people she was
found guilty of, and I was like, you robbing horses,
I don't think most of them were wealthy ranchers. And

(40:27):
there's at least one stick up yet it was this
She was charged with the crime of doing kind of
an armed robbery. Later in Indian Territory she was found innocent,
But honestly, I think she did it because one of
the witnesses claimed that there was a woman dressed as
a man in the robbery and identified bell Star. And
there's really I mean, as you were saying before, there
weren't that many lady outlaws willing wh would dress up

(40:50):
like men to do robbery. So I'm fairly confident, even
though you can't prove it that she was involved, and
in that case, they were not at all robbing wealthy individual.
She was just sticking up kind of like local farmers,
you could say, so, yeah, she didn't definitely did not
adhere to this code of only of kind of robbing,
robbing from the rich to give to the poor or
whatever that. But the other aspect I said though about

(41:13):
kind of not having this brotherhood of thieves and not
betraying other outlaws whatever, as far as I know that
she did adhere to and she did. She did make
a lot of money at part of her criminal empire.
You should say it was protection racket. But she had
this ranch and Youngers Bend in the Cherokee Nation where
outlaws including Jesse James was one of her first customers.

(41:34):
Because they had this long standing relationship going back to
the Civil War where after a crime, after a big
stick up, hold up, whatever, they would come hide out
at her ranch, give her some of the money is
a tribute, use that as a safe house. And because
there's this interesting relationship between the Indian you know, the
Indian Territory and the federal government where they had their
own police force, and ultimately federal US marshals could go

(41:58):
on to you know, soalv and tribal nations to pursue criminals,
but they usually didn't like to unless it was really
a serious crime. So in many cases, you know, you
had these criminals. It was just like I said though,
back during the Civil War, after a big raid, go
hide out at Tom Starr's place, and then later Bell
Star's place, pay her tributes, give her some of the loot,
and then a couple of weeks a couple months later,

(42:20):
when things had died down, say thanks and be on
their way. So she did have these these close relationships
with a lot of these outlaws.

Speaker 1 (42:26):
Tell me about her time in jail or prison. I
know you had mentioned for horse theft. How many times
do we think she encountered the law and lost? And
what would the experience for a woman have been like
in jail or prison in this time period.

Speaker 2 (42:43):
One of the things that's really fascinating about Bell Starr
is ntil like, one of the reasons I really want
to write this book is there have been a number
of historical detractors who, when writing about her kind of
say tread to downplay her. You know, her legend, and
to be fair, there is a lot of exaggerayeneration involved
in her legend. I talk about this in the book too,

(43:03):
But there was this effort to downplayer as a legitimate criminal,
as a gang lord, all these things, and when you
start looking at the evidence, it wasn't that's not the
case at all. I mean, she definitely, I mean the
federal government put tons of resources into pursuing her and
putting her behind bars. But one of the things the
arguments they would use, they would say, oh, the only

(43:24):
thing she was only convicted of was horse theft. It
was like one charge of horse theft. First of all,
that that was the only charge she was convicted of.
She was charge of horse theft once. She was also
charged later with armed robbery. She was charged with another
kount of horse theft later, but she beat those two
other charges. And on top of that, what I would
say is you got to think of it a little bit,

(43:45):
and this is just something about organized crime in general,
like al Capone. You know, they he ended up going
buying bars for tax evasion because organized crimespecifically before the
Rico Act and all that sort of thing, it was
very hard to prove criminal conspiracy and a lot when
in the shadows. So it's true. The only thing she
was ever officially arrested for, charged with, and did time

(44:07):
for was the single case of horse left. But she
she was arrested multiple times, she was compound or ranch,
was constantly getting rated by US marshals. There was a
huge effort both by tribal authorities and federal authorities to
put her behind bars. And so it was a long
standing thing, this, you know, decades long thing of her

(44:28):
problems with the law. So that that was the first
part of your question. The second about her time when
she did when she was actually charged the first time,
she got sentenced to one year in the Detroit House
of Correction. And I believe part of the reason they
sent her there is because of the one of the
only facilities that had a section for women, for women criminals,

(44:49):
for female criminals, which is interesting. And she was sent there,
and I have to imagine it was a huge culture
shock because she sort of this creature of the frontier
of the you know, Carthage, Missouri, on the edge of
the Ozarks, then Texas. You know, she grew up amongst
settlers and Native Americans and people gunfighters passing through and

(45:11):
then then to suddenly go to Detroita. Remember it seems
it can seem like a long time ago. This is
this would have been the eighteen eighties in Detroit. This
is like steeled, almost like industrial era. Their factories belching smoke,
they have electric lights, baseball teams, all this stuff. So
I think it was a would have been a real
culture shock for it to suddenly be thrown into a big,

(45:33):
multi ethnic industrial metropolis, kind of a booming metropolis, after
having grown up on the sort of plains of Texas
and the edge of the Ozarks. But by all accounts
from what I've read, again, it's hard to know how
much is fact and not, but she was a fairly
model prisoner, even kind of made friends with a warden
and whatnot. I think she was a little bit of

(45:54):
an of a novelty, you know, this kind of stylish
lady outlaw from the wild West who also happened to
be fairly educated and you know, could, according to legend,
converse in French and whatnot. So I think she was
seen as a novelty, maybe even got a little special
treatment because of that. But I don't from what I've read,
like she was kind of just a model prisoner, did
her time, and then her and her husband, I think

(46:16):
both got off at roughly the same at roughly the
same time, and then she went back, went back to
younger's bend in a today Oklahoma Cherokee Nation. And from
what I understand, she tried to go straight. She did.
I think she had this brief kind of scared straight
moment from going to prison. I think it was also
very hard for being away from her children, and I
think she made this effort to go straight to stay

(46:38):
away from her outlaw friends, a criminal life, and she
just couldn't do it. It was too tempting. And then she
ended up getting back to it and went on this
criminal rampage, and her husband went on a criminal rampage,
Sam Starr, doing all these hold ups and stuff. He
had to go into hiding, and then she This is
around the time when she was charged with the second
act of horse theft and when she was when she

(47:02):
was charged with the armed robbery. So she did make
an effort, but then went right back to the criminal life.

Speaker 1 (47:07):
I wonder about the in game for people in the Frontier.
In my second book, I wrote about three brothers who
wanted to be train robbers in a time when the
Marines were now guarding the trains and they were using
large safe So this was a terrible idea and it
went horribly for them. But you know, their in game
was the three of them had young women who they

(47:28):
were involved with, and they said, this is a one
time thing. We're not bank robbers, we just want to
get money in then we want to go, and they
wanted to move out west and buy some land and
have kind of create this like deal Tremont compound this family.
Did you have an idea about what her in game
specifically would be. Did she really think she was just
going to survive and raise these kids into her nineties

(47:50):
or was was it really like what am I going
to do tomorrow, not what's going to happen in decades.

Speaker 2 (47:55):
My impression reading all the sources available inutter life is,
I think, particularly towards the end shortly before she was killed,
you're seeing the end of the wild West era. And
I think it was fair like it was. It was
fairly obvious. I think people were aware of this, that
you just couldn't get away with crime the way you
could before. There weren't places to hide out as much anymore,

(48:18):
that this age of the wild West and of wild
West banditry was coming to a close. And I do
have the impression I did get the impression that she
was thinking of going straight and doing some kind of
more legitimate, legitimate activity, or maybe do still kind of
doing shady criminal things, but in a more respectable fashion,
you know, with and and her base for this, I

(48:41):
think was Younger's Bend. And this Younger's Bend was this
this ranch she had in the in the Cherokee Nation.
But the issue was she was not officially a tribal citizen,
and she could only stay there as long as she
was married to a tribal citizen. And I do think
that this was she loved Younger's Bend. I think she

(49:01):
the best years of her life was there, and I
think she really wanted to figure out a way to
get full control of this of this ranch and use it,
make it profitable, use it for something. It was kind
of her home base. And I think a lot when
you look at a lot of her, a lot of
activities like it starts to it starts to make sense
because this is what she'd always been denied. Her dream

(49:23):
has always been to be dependent, to be her own independent,
to be her own person, to have her own life.
And I think, like I said, to be like her father.
And this I think she saw Younger's bend as this
little ranch farm, as her key to it. And I
do think that was kind of her her end game
in some form or another. And I think towards the

(49:44):
very end she wasn't really that. Her last year or two,
after this brief sort of criminal rampage her husband went on,
I think she kind of made a piece of sorts.
I think she decided to back down a bit from
the criminal life, try to go legit. I think she
was trying to repair the relationships with her children because
her lifestyle took a pretty you know, heavy toll on her.

(50:06):
She's her children and this is this is this is
just you know, straight out of some kind of gangster
movie or something like that. This is also when she
was killed. You know, the moment, the moment when it
seemed like her future was relatively secure, that she you know,
she was starting to turn away from the sort of
wild route and toute in lifestyle and maybe even considering
ways to go legit. That she got gunned down off

(50:28):
her horse. And this is really the great mystery of
the book and what I start with. She was riding
her horse back well, interestingly enough, she was actually helping
Jim July. She she had another young husband after Sam
Starr was killed. She was escorting him to turn himself
in for a horse theft charge. And this is also
kind of her way of tying up blue scent. She
was done running from the law. He was going to

(50:48):
go answer to answer these charges. She'd just gotten off
her charges, so she beat the charges a trial, and
so she was she was telling her husband like, listen,
just go turn yourself in. Let's get let's just get
out all this side of the way and you know,
stay out of trouble. And she was riding back alone.
This would have been Fort Smith, Arkansas, which is a
couple of days right away. She was riding back alone.
She stopped at a friend's place and was having really

(51:09):
kind of just like a little picnic after church picnic
or something like that on a Sunday. Stopped by there,
briefly said alo to a few friends, then was continued
on towards younger Ben down towards the South Canadian River,
which she had to cross, and not far from the
river bank, someone gunned her down from behind. One blast
from a shotgun that knocked her off her horse, and
then kind of a death blow of point blank range

(51:33):
with the second barrel of the shotgun.

Speaker 1 (51:35):
A shotgun. That's awful, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (51:37):
A shotgun. And the big mystery has always been who
killed Bell Star?

Speaker 1 (51:42):
Did she have a bounty on her head at this point?

Speaker 2 (51:44):
At this point, I don't think she had a bounty
on her because she'd beaten her last charges like she had.
She had the horse theft in the armed robbery charges
against her, but she'd gone to trial and won, so
she was in pretty good standing at this point. You know,
as to who killed her, this is the great mystery,
and this is I devote the end part of my
book to talking about this is There a number of

(52:05):
interesting candidates, and the initial suspect was this sharecropper, and
he was a white sharecropper who'd come from somewhere back east,
the Deep South, I think part of like part of Florida,
and was renting some of her or at least had
tried to rent some of her land as a tendant.
It's still there's some debate about why, but that the agreement.
She ended up deciding she didn't want him as a tenant,

(52:26):
or it didn't work out. There was some bad blood,
but it seemed like things were clear they'd had this dispute,
but it seemed like they'd made an agree and he
found land somewhere else, so it seemed like everything was okay.
This guy named Edgar Watson, but he was one of
the initial suspects that particularly like members of her family,
local churches initially fingered him, said I think it was Watson,

(52:46):
and it occurred very close to his house. And also
he did own a double barreled shotgun like everybody, like
a lot of people had shotguns. So he was the
initial suspect.

Speaker 1 (52:57):
Tell me again, how close was she to her home?
Was she in Oklahoma at this point when she gets
gunned down, or is she in the middle of this
two or three day trip.

Speaker 2 (53:05):
She was very close to her home. She was just,
like I think, like a couple miles a couple miles
away from her home when this happened. And like I said,
she'd stop by a friend's place, like one of her
neighbors for this little picnic gatherings to say hello. And
so a lot of suspicion fell on him initially, and
they did. They kind of grabbed him. But he also
showed up at her funeral, which is interesting. He showed

(53:26):
up as his funeral with his wife. Wasn't fleeing anything,
and almost seemed surprised when they grabbed him and said
we think he did it. And they took him into
Fort Smith because he wasn't a tribal citizen. He was
a white sharecropper, so they had to take him to
face federal you know, the federal government in Fort Smith.
They couldn't take him to tribal authorities, and they took
him in they were considering, you know, charges, there was

(53:48):
a hearing whatever, but several witnesses came forward and said
it couldn't have been him. One one witness claimed that
he was with him, you know, just a minute before
the shooting and they heard the shots, and they said
he I was right with him. It couldn't have been him.
Someone else said they heard him calling in his hogs
just seconds or minutes before the shooting took place farther away,
and they said, you know, there's no way it could
have been him. And so in the end they released

(54:10):
him and he immediately high tailed it out with his wife.
He got out of there because there are people a
lot of people who still wanted him dead regard you know,
who still thought he was guilty, but so that raised
the question if he wasn't guilty, which if these if
these witnesses, you know, if the judge was correct and
releasing I'm saying, you know, we have witnesses saying it
couldn't have been him? Who was it? And it's interesting
because there are there are some potential killers worth looking at,

(54:33):
And some people suggested maybe even her own children, because
she had this very contentious relationship with both her son
Eddie and her daughter who at this point where you know,
I said they were older teenagers, I think, you know,
twenty something like that, and some people have suggested this. Personally,
I don't think there's no evidence. There's not really any
evidence that they were that they were involved, or that
her son was involved, even though there had been some

(54:56):
disputes and he was at the moment, like not living
at home. But I don't think. I don't think there's
no evidence that he had anything to do with I mean,
by all accounts, he was very distraught and spent you know,
spent hours searching through the woods looking for fingerprints, stuff
like that. So I don't think it was either of
her children. Another candidate is this this husband, Jim July

(55:16):
and she was the one who had escorted you know,
to Fort Smith for charges. And they have an interesting
story because whereas Sam Starr her husband prior, it seemed
like a genuine, loving relationship. A lot of people have
proposed the idea that this was sort of a marriage
of convenience. He was fifteen years younger than her, he
had this is a great story. But she actually, according

(55:38):
to the story, made him change his last name to
match hers when they got married, because she was, you know,
she was the boss here, you know, not him. And
as far as marriage of convenience goes, it's been suggested
that because she was marrying a tribal citizen, she could
stake a claim on Younger's bend to stay at her ranch.
And he got a nice arrangement. We had to live

(56:00):
on this. You know. He was like a little bit
of a near do well I think, or kind of
a I don't know. He didn't seem like he was
very firmly grounded. He had a nice place to live,
got his meals covered, you know, he got everything, everything
taken care of. Yeah, so there's some people have suggested, well,
maybe he killed her to get Younger's bet, you know,
and it wouldn't be the first time in history that

(56:21):
you know, someone younger married someone older and then committed
murder to inherit this wealth or whatever. And it's definitely
not impossible either. But there's a couple problems with this one.
It seems very unlikely he could have done it himself
because he was in Fort Smith at the time he
escorted her. I don't think it would have been possible
to come back. It's possibly could have recruited someone to

(56:44):
do it, and some people who even suggested maybe he recruited,
you know, Edgar Watson, this guy to do the killing
for him, the sharecropper, So that seems unlikely. But the
other reason it seems unlikely that that story is correct
is if that were true, it would make sense that
he would around after her death and claim Younger's ben
to be his own. That was his motive, and he

(57:05):
didn't do that at all. He went on a crime
spree immediately afterwards, joined a band of outlaws and ended
up there. It was the Choctaw Nation of the Cricket,
but another ended up dying in a gunfight or dying
shortly after mortally wounded in a gunfight with tribal authorities,
So it doesn't really make sense that version of story
that he was responsible. And then you start to think,

(57:27):
all right, well, who else would have wanted her dead?
She probably did make a lot of enemies over the years,
but you know, she hadn't really tangled anyone recently. And
another candidate is just forces within the tribal government because
she'd been a thorn in their side for years and
they'd been kind of trying to get rid of her.
You know, she was just this just this pariah, you know,

(57:49):
this this outlaw was constantly and because they're limited power,
because she wasn't a tribal citizen, it was hard for
them to prosecute her. They had to rely on the
federal government. But it was hard for them to kick
him out, kick her out because she was married to
a tribal citizen. And it is possible that there were factions,
even in the government or even just within the Cherokee
Nation who just had had enough this outsider, this white

(58:09):
woman who came here has been like kind of engaging
in crime and causing all these problems and whatnot, and someone,
as possible someone finally just got fed up. And it's
also interesting to look at that within the context of
Oklahoma Oklahoma statehood, you know, there was this big lobby,
particularly from outsiders, looking to open up some of these

(58:29):
parts of Indian territory to white settlers. And it was
at this point people were getting really weirded of sort
of the writing on the wall that this was probably
going to happen. And if they were looking to make
an example of someone, you know, an outsider who'd kind
of come and dug in and refused to leave, who
didn't belong there, Bell Star would have potentially been a
good example, even though from what it seems like most

(58:52):
of her natural neighbors liked her. You know, I think
she was pretty well liked in her immediate community. I
think it would have been more kind of like within
the government things like that.

Speaker 1 (59:00):
And she wasn't robbed or anything like that.

Speaker 2 (59:03):
No robbery, no, no, no robbery anything. And this seemed
like a like a hit, one shot from the back
then a you know, point blank range, kind of the
finish of the Koudo graphs, so to speak, the finishing thing.

Speaker 1 (59:14):
I was wondering if it could have been like a
law man, but he would have taken credit for it,
or maybe not, because there was nothing to charge her with,
so would have been an illegal execution, you know, if
she wasn't wanted.

Speaker 2 (59:27):
Exactly, and it could and that's sort of what I
was thinking. That was a possibility too, But there's no
immediate suspects of that, but that's definitely a possibility. But
there's one other theory that I explained in the book too,
which is possible that Tom Starr, her father in law,
may have finally reached the point where he couldn't control
her anymore. And it's also interesting to note for a

(59:48):
long time Tom Starr seemed to have kind of an
arrangement because he had a very complicated relationship with tribal government,
going back to political strife during the Trail of Tears,
which is an their long story. But he'd sort of
made a truce with a government where I think, well,
actually there was literally a truce I forgot about treaty,
but also latergrangement where as long as he didn't cause

(01:00:10):
too much trouble and kept whatever whiskey smuggling horse fencing
like a little under the radar, a little manageable that
they would turn a blind eye. And I think Bell
Starr upset this arrangement, and like I was saying, she
was attracting too much trouble, too much attention, And in
the end, Tom Starr ended up getting sent to prison.
And I think it was a couple of years, if

(01:00:31):
I remember correctly, because it got to the point where
it was almost like a campaign of harassment where the
tribal government started really like pursuing other family members as
a as a way to kind of get Sam Star
to turn himself in when he was on the run,
and to get her to tone down her activities. And
apparently it is what I think is there'd been some
old whiskey smuggling thing on the books from years back

(01:00:54):
that had never you know, nobody even bothered to in force,
and finally out of nowhere, this old kind of patriarch character.
I believe that the tribal authority has collaborated with US
marshals to get him sent to prison for a couple
of years. So he you can imagine he'd just come
back from prison not that long before that. He's also
not great health because of it. You imagine Tom Starr,
his son had died kind of defending her honor, getting

(01:01:18):
mixed up with her criminal exploits. She'd brought way too
much heat from both tribal and federal authorities on their
own kind of criminal dealings and stuff like that, and
heat in the end kind of was responsible for getting
him sent to prison after he had this great deal
going where he was just kind of a prosperous member
of the community rancher with some stuff going on under

(01:01:40):
the you know, under the radar. And it is possible
that he finally reached the point where he just said,
you know that something's got to be done. She just
refuses to play by the rules and is kind of
possibly even challenging his authority. That's that's a possibility too.
I don't know, So it is possible that he is
this sort of ultimate act, even though from all counts
they were quite close for most of the relationship and

(01:02:02):
he kind of took her under a wing. But it
was again one of these kind of classic mafia stories
where he took her under his wing, brought her into
the family, and she and her quest for power just
got too big for breeches or something like that just
kind of got to bar and he in the end
was like, all right, something's got to be done about this.
That is a possibility too.

Speaker 1 (01:02:21):
That's my vote for the record, Tom Starr, that's my vote.

Speaker 2 (01:02:25):
If it is true. He truly was, And I write
about Tom Starring the book with a great deal of
I mean he was. He definitely was a criminal and
probably also a murderer, but a great deal of regard
because he he did lead this exceptional I mean criminal regard.
But he was as a as a political rebel earlier
when he'd led this kind of rebellion against the Cherokee

(01:02:46):
government just after the Trail of Tears as a political rebel,
and the later as kind of a warlord, and then
later is kind of a I guess you would say,
kind of a mafia don of sorts. He was very cutting,
you know, he managed every like I said everyone else
in Belstone, every other man died young of gunfire, and
he did not. He died relatively prosperous at an old age,

(01:03:07):
after a lifetime of crime, after a lifetime of outwitting
his enemies, after a lifetime of you know, of always
coming out on top. So I, you know, I in
the book I write about him is almost with awe.
Even though granted he was a criminal, but a sort
of you know, the sort of respect you have for
a criminal mastermind. I think he definitely was just a

(01:03:28):
really interesting and captivating individual, and he led her remarkable
life and outsmarted everyone in the end.

Speaker 1 (01:03:34):
Who got her land that.

Speaker 2 (01:03:36):
I don't know. I assume it went to another Cherokee citizen.
I do know they tore down the cabin youngers be.
It was around for a while and there's some old
pictures of it. Someone took him, I remember the late
eighteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds, but eventually it was torn down.
I assume it passed on to a tribal citizen mate

(01:03:56):
at this point. I don't know exactly it's I think
it's own private now. I don't know who, but it
is cool if you want to see her grave, because
she was buried right next to her cabin. You can
drive to Oklahoma. I'd remember off the top of my
head exactly where, but in the Cherokee Nation, go right,
you know this point of the road where you stop,
get off, walk just a little bit into the woods
and you can still see her grave with a tombstone

(01:04:18):
that her daughter had made for her, and there is
kind of a replica cabin. Someone built a log cabin
that looks a little bit like her original one not
far away, but her original cabin is gone. You know.

Speaker 1 (01:04:28):
To wrap this up, why was it important do you
think for you to separate the myth from the facts
of this case? You know, she has a fantastical story,
it sounds like legitimately, and then there's you know, all
of these other things that probably have been attributed to
her that we aren't sure. Why do you think it

(01:04:49):
was important to set the record straight.

Speaker 2 (01:04:51):
Well, as I say at the end of the book,
I think you have to be careful as a nation
glamorizing crime and celebrating criminals, you know, I mean, that's
you don't want to celebrate that per se. But I
do think just from a historical perspective, you do want
to at least recognize trailblazers because they they serve an
important cultural role, regardless of you know, an historical role,

(01:05:13):
and she is an important cultural figure. I think she
is an important historical figure. Yeah, and she was a trailblazer,
even though it was, for better or worse, a criminal trailblazer.
But what she did was exceptional, Like I mean, nobody
else was doing this. She rose the ranks of organized
frontier crime and eventually became the leader of a gang
in Cherokee, organized crime essentially at a time when when

(01:05:36):
a woman couldn't open a bank account, you know, all
these things would have would have been almost impossible. And
she just sort of bent, as I said, but bent
the arc of destiny, you know, just through sheer force
of will and bravado. And she she definitely was a
was a trailblazer, and and and by and then that
regard important historically, and I think that's why I really
wanted to try to tell as true a history as

(01:05:57):
I could about her life, because you you have these older,
very fancified legends about her, and there are a lot
of tall tales, and so you don't you don't want
it just to be a just to be a colorful
legend full of exaggerations. But then, like I said, you
also have a lot of these detractors who've kind of
downplayed her role and say, oh, she was just this

(01:06:18):
lonely woman who kind of shacked up with unsavory characters
and might have stolen a horse, and that's not true
at all. I thought it was really important just because
she was such a singular figure and was such a
trailblazer to try to tell her story as truthfully as
I could.

Speaker 1 (01:06:43):
If you love historical true crime stories, check out the
audio versions of my books The Sinners, All About the
Ghost Club, All That Is Wicked, and American Sherlock, and
Don't Forget. There are twelve seasons of my historical true
crime podcast, tenfold More Wicked right here in this put
cast feed, scroll back and give them a listen if
you haven't already. This has been an exactly right production.

(01:07:06):
Our senior producer is Alexis Amrosi. Our associate producer is
Christina Chamberlain. This episode was mixed by John Bradley. Curtis
Heath is our composer. Artwork by Nick Toga. Executive produced
by Georgia Hardstark, Karen Kilgariff and Danielle Kramer. Follow Wicked
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(01:07:28):
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