AI Summary
5 min readOn June 6, 1876, a man calling himself William Black sat in a tiny jail in Cooper, Texas, population roughly 300. He had been arrested for false imprisonment after horse-whipping a romantic rival, but that was the least of his worries. The longer he sat, the greater the risk that someone would discover his true identity. Six days later, in the early morning hours of June 12, he burned a hole in his cell door, escaped, walked eight miles to the farm of the local preacher he blamed for his arrest, found a shotgun, and waited until dawn. When the Reverend William Lay went out to milk his cow, the man calling himself William Black shot him dead. The man was not William Black. He was Bill Longley, a 25-year-old Texan already wanted for at least four murders and a string of robberies across the state.
The Making of a Disaffected Youth
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What you'll learn
- 1 Legends of the Old West: Bill Longley
- 2 (01:12) **The Delta County Jail Escape** - A man calling himself William Black sits in a tiny Texas jail, brooding about Reverend Lay
- 3 (06:16) **Episode Introduction: The Gunman** - Chris Wimmer introduces Bill Longley as part of the generation too young for the Civil War
- 4 (08:13) **The Making of a Disaffected Youth** - Reconstruction transforms young Bill Longley from a good farm hand into a resentful teenager
- 5 (10:05) **First Murder: Green Evans** - At 17, Longley kills a former slave for his horse and launches his outlaw career
- 6 (12:25) **Longley's Unreliable Self-Mythology** - Like John Wesley Hardin, Longley writes a boastful autobiography full of fabrications
- 7 (14:12) **The Army Years and Return to Texas** - Longley enlists, deserts, serves hard labor, and deserts again
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Show Notes
In the 1870s, Bill Longley adds his name to the list of infamous outlaws of the Old West. He roams his home state of Texas, adopting different names and robbing and killing. In the summer of 1876, while on the run after a murder in Uvalde County, Longley lands in a small-town love triangle which leads to his downfall.
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