Cherokee Bill's Attempted Escape From the Fort Smith Jail, 1895

The last known photograph of Crawford Goldsby, alias Cherokee Bill. Image from the National Park Service's Fort Smith site bulletin

"Murderers Row"

In 1895, Crawford Goldsby, known as Cherokee Bill, was held in the overcrowded, understaffed federal jail at Fort Smith, in a cell on Murderers Row — the first of the jail's three levels: two rows of back-to-back cells down the middle of the building, inside an iron cage of cross-barred steel.

A smuggled surprise

Searches were routine: guards had found files, slingshots and even pistols smuggled in by friends and family inside cakes, loaves of bread and jugs of buttermilk. On July 10, 1895, a search turned up nine .45 cartridges in Cherokee Bill's cell and a .45 revolver hidden in a bucket of lime in a first-floor bathroom. But the guards missed a second loaded revolver and more ammunition, hidden behind a loose stone in his cell wall.

The breakout

On the evening of July 26, turnkey Campbell Eoff and guard Larry Keating were locking up. Each row of cells was secured by a lever working a long bar across the tops of the doors, and then each cell was locked individually. That night, a prisoner used a broomstick or pole to throw back the lever on the west side, releasing the doors on Cherokee Bill's row. He waited, pistol in hand, his door closed but unlocked — and the guards suspected nothing.

When they reached his cell, he ordered Keating to put up his hands and hand over his pistol. Keating reached for his gun instead, and Cherokee Bill shot him twice. Four more guards rushed in, firing to drive him and another prisoner back into their cells. More than 100 rounds ricocheted through the jail — until prisoner Henry Starr called out that if the guards stopped shooting, he would take Cherokee Bill's pistol. They held fire; Starr walked to the cell and talked him into giving up the gun, and the guards locked him up again.

Justice, not a mob

A crowd outside wanted to lynch him that night, but the courts prevailed. His murder trial began on August 10; two days later the jury returned a guilty verdict in 13 minutes. Judge Parker again sentenced him to hang, and again the case was appealed. But his luck had run out: in December, the Supreme Court upheld the verdict in the Melton case, and Parker set a new execution date — March 17, 1896.

Sources

Based on "Cherokee Bill's Attempted Escape from the Fort Smith Jail (Site Bulletin)," Fort Smith National Historic Site, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain.