Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.
Hi Saron, Hi Elizabeth. How are you doing pretty well? How about you?
Pretty good? Pretty good? Listen, got a question for you. How old?
How old?
Just how old?
Probably eighty three?
Cool? Do you know it's ridiculous?
Okay, So imagine you work at Walmarty. You do security, sure, and you have to call the police, and you're informing to the police that there's this thief who's come back to the store. They've been in the store. They've been you know, either seen in old previous days or maybe even talk to or even apprehended momentarily. But now you're calling in to get the police to come and help you because this thief just keeps stealing baseball cards, like for four days in a row, they keep leaving without
paying for baseball cards. And then then the police are like, okay, can you describe the suspect. You're like, yeah, he's a priest. In fact, he's the dean of Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in downtown Pittsburgh. Whoa yes, whoa. So apparently the head priest for the Episcopalians in Pittsburgh. They have this guy, the very Reverend Aiden Smith. He gets arrested February twenty seventh of this year after leaving a Walmart and he had twenty seven packs of baseball cards. Shoved him to his priest.
Get up baseball card.
I mean anyone can be a kleptomania apparently. Wow.
Yeah, So he'd stolen over a few days about eleven hundred dollars in baseball cards. Yeah. And he was just a light fingered priest. And he was like married, had a whole family. He wasn't like some fly by night. Look, I'm just in the area for a cow.
No, he was an established member out.
Of the church. So there you go.
Never ever see it coming, No, you don't.
So don't judge the books by them covers. Even the cover says the Bible.
You know what that that's ridiculous, right, that is ridiculous. Do you want to know what else is ridiculous?
Oh?
Please messing up the escape.
This is Ridiculous Crime A podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists, and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous.
Are you damn right?
Yep. We do pretty robust and comprehensive research here, like We've got Marissa and Jabbari doing some of it, you know, good portion, and then the two of us will do all by ourselves or we'll add to what Marissa and a lot.
Of reading, a lot of newspapers, dot com.
A lot of deep dives, a lot of side quests. It's super fun and every day. Yeah, of the time, the research is pretty straightforward. Each source confirms another, things line up. There are official documents to use as a foundation, a.
Lot of corroborating evidence.
Yeah, and then there's the ten percent that I love. As I told Marissa recently, I am a sicko. I love when the story is a little murky, and I really enjoy when people put their spin on something, whether the subject makes up their own mythology just for kicks or someone else, Like I think it's genetic that toying
with the truth. Because I really like genealogy. I've researched my family and I've learned really interesting things, like stuff that didn't get passed down in family lore, great stories. And I've looked through a lot of census records and I've seen familiar places of birth that line up with birth certificates, like California Texas, France, Irish Free state at sea on the Pacific, under a French.
Flag, under a French flag, under.
A French flag. Then you get to my great grandfather. His birth certificate it says he was born in Georgia. But when he becomes an.
Adult, the state, not the country.
The state, and he's the one who has to answer a census taker as to the place of birth. It changes every time taker. He talks at every ten years when the census rolls through, he comes up with another place that he's originally from. So like these are also, these are when he's living. These are from upstate New York. So you've got a guy with like a thick Southern accent telling the government that he was born in New
York City or Chicago or some other place. And I asked family, and they said, oh, he just got a kick out a messing with the federal government.
It is natural.
Way more is way more interesting. So never let the truth get in the way of a good story, they say. And I'm a believer in that to an extent.
Yes, an agent of chaos.
I am an agent of chaos. I don't cot into lying when it matters. No, no, no, I can't stand liars. I think that's cowardly, disrespectful, but fudging the truth for entertainments, let's.
Go fabricators of tall tale.
Yes, and that's all to say that I have a woman today with a complicated history, and as with many criminals, her origin story is murky. There are different versions, and then when she has the opportunity to tell her own story, she plays around with things like, Yeah, she seems to enjoy developing a biography that appeals to the masses. So a lot of the people, much like the Lady Gopher's story. The core is true, so the whole ridiculous crime point
is undisputed real. It's just how we get there and how we fade out that gets squishy.
Okay, So the essence is what we should be looking.
Yeah, and I kind of love that. I have a weird respect for these outsiders who create a narrative like this. You know, it's generally because they're being exploited, and it's like this sneaky way to get some of their power back.
Oh, it's a way to get free.
Yeah, and it's thumbing your nose at the establishment. So with that caveat in mind, some of the details today may be loose. I want to tell you about a goal named Pearl Heart. Pearl Heart's Pearl Heart Lady Bandit. Yeah, so the lawyer, historian, former cop, and nonfiction writer John Bosenecker. He wrote a book called Wildcat and told story of Pearl Heart, the Wild wests most notorious woman bandit. It's a great book. He's an expert on frontier crime in
law enforcement. And here's his caveat about pearl story quote. For a century, newspaper reporters, magazine writers, and historians repeated and even invented countless wild tales about her. She was the West's first woman stage robber. She was the West's last stage robber. She was the daughter of a wealthy Canadian family. She was a virtuous schoolgirl in Phoenix. She performed with Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show.
She was a trick shooter. Really, I was going to joke about she was a trick shooter. He really was.
Even her identity has been the subject of controversy. Her real name was Missus Frank Hart, Pearl Bandman, Caroline Hartwell, Pearl Taylor, Missus E. P. Keel, Missus Earl Lighthawk, and Pearl Bywater. She was born in Canada, Ohio, Kansas. Her husband was Brett Hart, Frederick Hart, Frank Hart, William Hart, James Taylor, Dick Baldwin, Harry Borderman, Joe Boot, and Calvin Bywater. But most of that is not true. The tales she spun and the Tucson jail have confounded authors, researchers, and
historians for the last one hundred and twenty years. Though Pearl Heart has been featured in hundreds of magazines and articles and books, not one of them comes close to an accurate depiction of her life.
Ooh, and you're gonna be the first.
Oh no, I'm not gonna be as I'm gonna be just shooting in the wind like everybody else. So, as I said before, there's not a specifically accurate understanding of her life, okay.
And so while some sources shrouded from fact.
Yes, some sources contradict each other, but many support a loose narrative. And it's a fascinating one. And that's the one I'm going to tell you today.
I love a loose narrative me too.
So Pearl Pearl Taylor was born in Lindsay, Ontario, Canada, eighteen seventy one. Allegendly yeah well, Bosenecker says, her original first name was Lily, whatever it's pearl. She had this really rough, tumultuous upbringing. Her dad was locked up, so she and her siblings had to do whatever it took to survive. And she was this beautiful young woman, just a wisp of a thing, five feet tall, one hundred pounds, soak and wet. She had dark hair, very striking blue eyes.
Bosenecker describes her childhood as such quote, at eleven years old, Lily and her thirteen year old brother William stole a cow from a neighboring farm and re sold it before they were caught. Lily and her sisters Catherine and Saphronia frequently ran away from home, usually to the Western United States. They cut their hair short and dressed in men's clothes,
which helped them fly under the radar. Once they'd been discovered, which they always were, the sisters were usually sent back to New York, where their mother had moved prior to their father's imprisonment for violent crime. One brother, ten year old Henry, would take his younger sisters and even their toddler brother on his burglaries.
On his burglary, I'm gonna need a cover family, Yeah, exactly.
So she had an unusual childhood's a little out there. When she was sixteen, she met a guy. He was a smooth talker, super handsome. They made a good looking couple.
Appropriate.
Uh yeah, who knows? Who knows? This guy though? He was a gambler, so I'm gonna think he's a little older.
Ok.
Yeah, he was a con man. Home you never had or did on this labor. He was a little loose with the truth, so he went by either William or Brett or Frank, depending on who he was talking to.
He answered all three.
But we do know that his last name was hert h a Art, and soon enough, shortly after they met, that was Pearl's last name too. Oh so they got I got married. Here's how Pearl herself told the story to Cosmopolitan magazine in eighteen ninety nine.
I didn't know Cosmopolitano, did.
I take quote? When I was but sixteen years old, and while still at boarding school, I fell in love with a man I met in the town in which the school was situated. I was easily impressed. I knew nothing of life. Marriage was to me but a name. It did not take him long to get my consent to an elopement. We ran away one night and were married. I was happy for a time, but not for long. So she goes on to explain that he was violent, so she left. But before she did that, she and
her husband went to the World's Fair in Chicago. Oh. Yeah, and he got a gig as a midway barker there.
Okay, Pearl a Carneye.
He's a Carnie Pearl who had a kid by this point. Soaked up what the fair had to offer and was just like captivated by all the cowboy exhibits and demonstrations, in particular Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. She saw Annie Oakley perform and she was just spellbound. And then she went to see speakers at the Women's Fair and something
clicked in her. She's like, I gotta go West. There was a cowboy at the fair who was sweet on her, and she used this to her advantage and got cash out of him, and she dropped her kid with her mom and then took a train to Colorado.
To go chasing cowboys.
Yeah, and she found herself in Trinidad, Colorado, small mining town so she got a job as a cook in a boarding house, and at night she was a saloon singer. According to the Arizona Daily Star, she may have quote supplemented her meager wages by providing more provocative services for the miners.
More individualized entertaining.
That's a great way to put it, the provocative services.
She provoked me.
In the eighteen ninety four she went to Arizona Territory. She went to Tucson. She worked as a prostitute and a cook. There were very few options for women then, and even fewer than few in the wild West. In Phoenix, she found work as a cook and a maid. In eighteen ninety five, her husband came to Arizona begged Pearl please take me back, and it seems like they reconcile.
Her former William Brett Hart.
Yeah whatever, his name is Hart, for the first time in his life, he got an actual steady job, worked as a hotel manager.
It had changed.
Yeah, life was good. They're happy. They even had another kid, and I think the first one was still with Pearl's mom, though, which, to be honest, I'm gonna be honest, that was probably way for the better. So the couple was working and they had a new baby, but they also they wanted a party. They hung out at the Saloons all along Washington Street in town. They boozed it up. Pearl started dabbling in morphine. Oh why not? And then she got pregnant again, let's do that.
That's great into pregnancy.
So Fred was like, you know what, this is all kind of cramping my style. If I'm gonna be honest with.
You, this is cramping my style.
Which party he wanted to be solo and free against? So he split down. Carney, he well, now this is what he did. He joined the army and he got assigned to Teddy Roosevelt's rough Riders.
Oh, he went down to Cuba.
Off to Cuba fight in the Spanish American War.
Like later, dude, I got a hill named San Juanda go.
I don't know if he intended for it to go that way or not. Anyway, and was he much of a cowboy?
I mean, those are all guys for their riding skills.
I don't think so. Okay, So then we get to the point of did he go, I'm off to join the rough just gonna go? Yeah? So Pearl, there she is in Phoenix, she's got two little kids, not a lot of options. By this time, her mom had moved to Ohio. Now the reasonable thing would be for Pearl and her kids to get on a train go to Ohio. She could raise her kids live with her mom straight, But we don't traffic and reasonable here. No, Pearl put her kids on the train to Ohio to go to.
Her moms good book.
And then she decided to go out for more adventure in the wilds of the western US.
Okay, she still wants to be a cowgirl like.
She's got a deeper bliz. Yeah, let's take a break, and when we return, I'm going to tell you about Pearl's latest hair brain.
Ideas, Zarah Elizabeth.
So here we are. It's eighteen ninety nine.
Gid up.
Pearl Heart has put her kids on a train to go live with her mother in Ohio.
Bye, when you see grandma, get.
Off, Yeah, just jump off. When you get you'll see it looks familiar. And they're like, we ever been.
It doesn't matter, it's fine.
So then she went up into the Pinel Mountains outside Globe Arizona. If you say so, system, Yeah, I actually know people in Globe Arizona. Which is so weird reading this.
Yes, they're just they.
Just live there. It looks like a cool place, but I've not been, but it looks like a cool place, like like gently rolling hills and dramatic mountains in the background.
So it's not like a mining more like agriculture area.
No, it's a mining it's a mining area. So it's like a ways east of Phoenix. And the place names around there are amazing. There's six Shooter Canyon, Yes, the Superstition Mountains. Oh wow, Tortilla Flat, not the Steinbeck one.
Okay, top of the World Mountain.
That's a town town. Yeah, dripping springs. And it's right next to the San Carlos Apache Reservation, which in Pearls time had been established only twenty or so years.
It's still fresh.
Yeah. So out there, she got a job as a cook in the mining camps, and so like this hard scrabble existence, you know, in this rough place, only made her rougher, and so she boozed it up. She smokes cigars, you know. She still kind of messed around with morphine a little bit of just let off some steam. She'd work and then save her money up and then the mine would shut down and she'd go looking for another one in need of her services. Then she got some
bad news. Her sister wrote to her somehow like I have no idea how you write a letter to someone. Yeah, yeah, and told her that her mother was in a very bad way, wasn't expected to last much longer. So I wonder how long did it take for the letter to reach her in the middle of nowhere Arizona from Ohio. Back then, I feel like her mom may have already expired by the time she gets the letter.
Yeah, is she going to be replying or is she just going to jump into actually.
Pearls Besides, she gets this news, she's like, I've got to get back to Ohio. Oh my gosh, I have kids there too. But she's like, I didn't have the money for it. And so she was telling a friend all about her problem, a miner by the name of Joe Boot, and that's a great old West yes yea. So Boot told Pearl that she could go in on a mining claim with him, they could work it, and then she could get the cash she needed.
So it was not like an immediacy into Pearl.
Your mom is deathly ill. I don't think you have the time to go and try and get silver.
Out of the ground.
You need cash, girl, So she didn't think she had any other option, so they went off to mine the land. Only the steak was tapped out.
No, no, nothing.
So then Boot was like, okay, you know, I have another idea. Yeah, this is one that he'd been thinking about for a while now, it seems her a long time he'd been wanting to start a career in criming.
Oh.
He had all these like a variety of criminal money making ideas positions. It's a self starting kind of thing. They range from like everyday scams to train robbery, and Pearl's like, you know what count me in. I did this as a kid. It's funny. I have some experience on my resume. So she knows the life and she's
hard boiled, like this is a good fit. So to start things off, they did like the old love scam where Pearl would lure a guy to her room and they'd talk of romance and steamy stuff and then the guy would be like warm for her tiny form and as soon as they got their Boot would jump out and like hit the guy over the head and knock him out, and then Pearl and Boot go through his pockets and such and take everything he had.
Oh, they would just jack them.
They just jump it.
We're going to blackmail you to your wife.
No, no, it was very yes, and so this got the little bits and bobs here and there. But they wanted more, like they wanted a big score. So they decided to maybe, I don't know, rob a stage coach.
That's the next steps more people.
Per the Arizona Daily Star quote, there's no telling which one Pearl or Boot came up with the idea to rob a stage coach. But one thing's for sure. Neither invested much thought into an escape plan. Oh no, yeah, I know how much that annoys you, mister Burnette.
Always it bothers me too. It's a big part of the crime getting away.
If you're going to go to the effort to break the law and take this huge risk, Yes, you simply must think it through.
Yes, that has got to be part of the process.
From the moment of the crime on is like the most important part of plan.
Imagine if you were a farmer and you like you go through all the work of tilling your field, you you plan everything, and you're like, oh, harvest, I never thought. I thought people would just come out and buy it out of the field act.
So they did. They did some forward planning. They went out and got horses.
Okay, you're gonna need those, and guns, also going to need those, and snacks.
S Pearl got herself an incredible outfit.
I was wondering.
She got a wide brimmed hat that in some accounts is called a sombrero its own. She had jeans, knee boots. You know that there's that kind of like spaghetti western hat that's been gentrified by the Coachella Indio festival mom set, like the flat brim. I think the new hip hat is going to be the sombrero. It's giving desperado, not like the comical straw ones, but like felt.
The felt embroidered. We may already be there.
I had choices. Isn't too far from a sombrero?
What you had a choice?
Well?
I looked up what they were called, because I didn't know the straw lifeguard hat you've seen when I embarrass you and wear it outside.
Yes, why it looks like a cowboy hat that has fallen down.
It's like a wide, downward brim straw. They celebrate the beach in like hardware.
Yeah, it's like if a cowboy hat can say it's too hot.
I'm tired. Yeah, I got mine at the Oakland Coliseum flam of course, usually made Mexico. I love those hats.
They're a good look.
And maybe I'll wear one to rob a stagecoat.
Who's to say, let them know that you were coming.
In exactly, yeehaw. So Pearl and boot. They left Globe in late May eighteen ninety nine, and they made their way through Pioneer Pass.
By the way, can you imagine you wearing like one of those straw boaters as opposed to like your straw cowboy hat, but like it's a flat brim. It looks like you're going to like a political rally in eighteen ninety five.
I'm going to be like in a barbershop court.
Yeah, exactly what the armbraces in the bow tie.
Don't tempt me, don't dare me to these things. So they go, Okay, so they're leaving Globe. They went down this steep trail that led into Cane Spring Canyon. Okay, they like teetered along these sheer cliff sides, picking their way gingerly down the trail until they reached their destination, Riverside, Arizona, on the Hiela River. Oh yeah, okay, I have to say that in doing the Google street view of.
This area, which is scant to the matter, do they send someone to their backpack walking through?
I get the question that not a whole lot has changed since Pearl and Boot were traveling through. Like, there aren't a lot of structures. A highway runs through it now, but the majority of the land is untouched, and the opportunities to see it at street level or few. But what you can see is pretty red. So Riverside at that time was a settlement. It's not too different now, just like a collection of houses and trailers. It's like about an hour and a half outside of Phoenix.
A hamlet of desperation.
Yes, in eighteen ninety nine, there was a stage coach.
Stopped there, okay, like a way station.
Yeah yeah, population of about fifty which it looks to have held steady all the way into twenty twenty six. So Pearl and Boot they set up camp just outside of town, and they watched as the stage coaches passed through, and they tracked the various ones for enough days to figure.
Out the schedule they get the whole rhythm motive.
Yeah, they also saw that it wasn't usually Wells Fargo rolling through, and they were relieved because Wells Argo guards were legendary at this point for their skills with a shotgun, not because like see, stage coach robberies were common for a while there. Oh yeah, and the companies had had enough. They tightened security and turned up the heat. So by eighteen ninety nine there weren't a whole lot of stage coach robberies still happened, your Yeah, Wells Fargo worked hard
on that. Yeah, but these weren't Wells Fargo rigs coming through Riverside. So Pearl and Boot they wandered into town and tried to act like they belonged. Of course, yeah, of course everyone takes note of them. Come on, and here's my favorite. One resident heard them arguing. Boot apparently said quote, I can never do it, never, never, never. Then Pearl said, but you must, we must, and it's easy. All you have to do will be to hold your gun out straight and keep quiet. I'll do the rest.
This is a public argument that they have. Yes, it's like not the most subtle conversation in a town of.
Fifty people on the way into town.
Oh my god. So May thirtieth, eighteen ninety nine, Pearl and Boot figured it was time to make their move. Everything primed, they saddled up, and they headed to Caine Springs Canyon. They planned to intercept the Globe to Florence stage coach. Run there.
Okay, it's like a local yeah yeah.
And they sat in the hot sun for three hours waiting for it. Five pm they hear it coming. It's go time, nice Zarin, closeure eye. Yes, Oh my god, I want you to picture it. It's early evening on May thirtieth, eighteen ninety nine, and you are a passenger on the Globe to Florence stage coach. Harding is your name. You're headed from Globe, where you had some business, back to Florence, a county seat, a proper town. You like to think. There's a lady in the coach who driving
you nuts. She won't stop humming some church song. Enough. You shouted at her about ten miles into your sixty mile journey, but she just stared at you and kept humming. As the coach bumps and rocks along the trail, you dream of the dinner you're gonna have in Florence a nice big steak bottle of wine. You made a lot of money and you deserve it. The third passenger is an older guy. He's asleep. You look out at the Heela River below you. Suddenly, the lady's humming stops. You
look at her. Her eyes are wide. You turned to face forward, peering out the window, following her gaze. The coach is now stopped and in front of it are two outlaw types. One holds a six shooter, the other a Winchester rifle. Both have their weapons fixed on the stage coach. One is of average height but looks positively enormous compared to the other one. That one is just a little thing, maybe five feet tall. Must be a kid. Shame to see that. They shout for the driver of the passenger to get out.
Well.
The taller of the robbers yells out elevate to the coach driver. You haven't heard that one before. The humming woman gas You reach out and take her hand. You tell her that if they do as the outlaws say, everything will be okay. She just needs to stay calm and don't start that infernal humming again. She shoots you a look jam packed with daggers. You worked hard for the gold you carry, and you aren't about to let
those creeps take it from you. You quickly take the small leather tobacco pouch full of gold out of your breast pocket and shove it into your cheek. You step out of the coach and assist the woman, then stepping down onto the dirt, The old fella is surprisingly nimble as he hops out and faces the robbers. The taller one tells you all to get on the ground. You all comply. It's still light out, but the birds are
singing their hearts out in anticipation of the gloaming. In this stillness, you hear the faint, sporadic croaking of frogs down at the river. The robbers make quick work of digging through all your pockets. The old guy squirms a little as the smaller robber tries to empty his pants pocket. He growls, or I'll plug you. That voice is awfully high for a man must be a kid, for sure, what's the world coming to? Or wait? Is that a woman?
You look at the hands, that's always the tell, and sure enough they're soft and delicate.
Hmmm.
The woman passenger lying next to you in the dirt, looks at your face and makes a gesture to her lips. Why madam, this isn't the time, you think she points at you. You quickly bring your fingers up to your mouth and realize what she's on about. The ends of the strings and the closure on your tobacco pouch full of gold are sticking out of your mouth. You poke them back in and wink at her. She rolls her eyes and turns her head away from you. This small
robber tells you to stand up. Each of you rises and instinctively brushes the dust from your clothes. The robber peels off four one dollar bills. Here, she says, you are now convinced this is a woman. She doesn't let anyone see her face under the wide brim of her hat, but you catch a glimpse of some delicate curls poking out above her ear. She hands each of you one dollar, tells you so that you can get a meal when
she gets to Florence. Then the two outlaws scurry off into the brush, and shortly thereafter explode out onto the trail on horses, headed back towards Low so Zaren. Yes, as far as stagecoach holdups go.
It could have been much worse, totally. I mean, they got away better and with more than I thought.
Yeah, well, the hall was pretty good. According to True West magazine quote from one they took three hundred and ninety dollars, his pistol and a gold pocket watch worth fifty dollars.
Okay.
The stagecoach driver coughed up his six gun and eight dollars, but Pearl handed the money back to him. They relieved another passenger of thirty dollars. The bandits took forty dollars from the other passenger, Harding. However, before climbing out of the stage, Harding had slipped into his mouth a tobacco pouch holding eighty dollars in gold. A journalist who later interviewed the passengers wrote he presented a ludicrous appearance, with his cheeks swelled out and the strings of the pouch
hanging from his lips. The highwaymen failed to notice it, however, So that was Baby's first stagecoach robbery. Let's take an ad break. When we get back, we're going to follow this criminal duo into their next caper.
Yeah, Zaren, Before the break, I told you I was going to fill you in on Pearl.
And boots next caper.
Yeah, you did well.
It turns out the caper was just trying to get away. See, they scoped out Florence, but they weren't really familiar with the area in general, and they got confused. They got lost.
They obviously didn't have maps.
They wound their way through this thick brush and by this time, like the sheriff and his posse was a lookout and they're going through, they're traversing the same scrub and hills. The law men knew the land like the back of their hands. Pearl and Boot not so much.
So.
For a while they were just riding in circles.
It follow them. They couldn't possibly be And.
Then when they were finally caught by the posse, it wasn't like some standoff on a ridge. There wasn't a wild chase into a ravine.
Nothing through the hills, other woods.
No.
Pearl and Boot had set up camp and gone to.
Sleep, napping.
They were snoozing when the sheriff snuck up and arrested them. Like there's no planning.
Really, they literally got caught sleeping.
Yeah, Pearl tried to put up a fight, but Boot was like whatever, puts his hands out.
To be cuffed with all five pounds of her.
Yeah, and so they to the Pima County jail. Boot gets taken to the jail in Florence. Pearl immediately turned on Boot, but not in a way to pin it on it. She just talks smacked like she was complaining about what a coward he was. She was to the to the sheriff, he ain't making fun of how scared he was the whole time. And like so, as you could probably guess, the press loved her at the public So here's this like cute little twenty eight year old Bandita.
She's feisty. She wrote a letter to the prosecutor that said, quote, I shall not consent to be tried under a law which my sex had no voice in making. Oh, they take issue with most of her behavior and choices, but that is a badass line.
Totally. I'm with her. She stands on business on that.
And so of course, like she becomes then a favorite of the women's subjects movie and so she's all over the papers. Photographers and reporters are camped outside the jail. She becomes a national celebrity. She was given autographs. People would send her presence, including a bobcat that the prison officials let her keep alive.
Alive, How do you send that in the mail? I know they used to send babies on the trains.
Dropped it off. I think they put a bow on its collar and dropped it off.
You're going to be bored in jail.
She became known as the bandit Queen, and she yea one failed robbery and she was loving the attention. So Cosmopolitan Magazine sent two correspondents out to Arizona to conduct an in depth interview with her. John Bozenecker wrote quote the two correspondents scribbling furiously wrote it all down, oblivious to the fact that they were helping create one of
the most enduring legends of the American frontier. For although Pearl Heart was the West's most notorious woman bandit, her true story has long been lost in the midst of the past. Her personal history is thoroughly obscured by legends, many of them created by Pearl herself. So she's got these two people hanging on her every word, scribbling everything down. So she's just riffing.
Scenographers for her legend. She's jazzing it.
Out, totally jazzing it up. And then she also met and wooed a fellow inmate at Hogan.
Yes, get it girl, And she had a request for him. What was the request?
Helped me escape?
Solid request?
And he's like, yeah, sure, yeah, so he cut a hole in the wall of herself. What did the two of them skid.
Outlets they worked?
I guess they ran to the train tracks, hopped on a freight train, and they made it all the way to New Mexico before they got picked up to New Mexico, New Mexican, Mexico, Mexico. And when it came time for her trial, she had all these excuses and explanations.
I like that she like fled east. She's like, I'm going back.
Yeah, basically got I forgot my kids. She went into detail about her mom dying and how she wasn't in her.
Right mind over it, drinking with grief.
Yeah, she was desperate to see her. She would have done anything.
I think I have some kids. I probably need to feed back.
I remember that. Plus, like she in court, she's all dulled up and she looks so sweet and innocent, and the all male jury acquitted her in less than an hour.
In less than an hour.
They're like that pretty little thing. So the judge was livid.
And thirty minutes later two were asking for dates. Yeah.
The judge was like, you saw all of this evidence and you acquit it? Are you kidding?
I can't stop you.
Then he orders her to be tried for stealing the coach driver's gun.
New charges like we got to get her on something.
Oh, and tampering with the US mail. Throw that in there too. Oh, and this is going to be a bench trial, new jury.
Oh, I like it. They put the power vested back in.
My gass exactly. So he found her guilty and sent her to human prison for a five year stretch. Boot got thirty years for the robbery. Oh yeah, and he only did a fraction of that though, because he was on his very best behavior, which got him a trustee gig. Oh and they let him drive loads of food and supplies to the chain gangs, Like he, you know, pilot this wagon out there.
Yeah, sure, they're out there laboring in the sun.
He shows up with lunch, right, And he did that for a while, and then one day he headed out and never came back.
I got law.
Not so trustworthy and so no one ever heard from him again. Yeah, he was successful. Pearl did her bid in Yuma. According to the New York Post quote, she would serve her sentence as the only female resident among two hundred and sixty prisoners at the infamous Yuma Territorial Prison, a quote repulsive hellhole on the banks of the Colorado River.
How did she have her own space in this repulsive hell hole? Did wing?
Or she did? She had her own special cell. But she also manipulated herself into as many perks as possible.
I bet so.
Unlike everyone else. She can entertain visitors. Yeah, she gave newspaper interviews. I'm sure that she was able to accept gifts.
Yeah, whenever slow newsday got by the jail interview corps.
And then one day she had an announcement. Was she's like, hear ye, hear ye. She was pregnant and she was only a couple of years into the sentence, and so this was going to be an absolute political disaster why per True West magazine quote. According to Arizona legend at the time, the only two men who'd been alone with Pearl were the warden and the territorial governor. After a series of telegrams between the capitol and the prison, it
was decided to release her immediately. Pearl wasn't pregnant, but she wasn't dumb either, and cleverly went on her way a free woman.
So she faked being pregnant.
She faked begnant at.
The fact that the only two possible people it could be was either the governor or the warden.
The governor partner, and he put in the stipulation though, like you have to leave the territory, never come back, don't ever come back here. She's like, okay, she goes. So she drifted around after that. She didn't write a book, but she did the second favorite thing of criminals in this era, baby oh Yeah. But her sister wrote a play called The Arizona Bandit, so her sister got in. It was a cheesy melodrama about the yes and it was a major flop. It was terrible.
I heard, the pacing was slow and the outfits are unimagined.
She went on to tour the East Coast in shows and she would like reenact the hold Up as the Girl Bandit. According to True West magazine quote, the plot was thin and her career as an actress was brief It turned out she was no better at acting than planning a getaway from a stagecoach robbery. Fame was fleeting, and soon Pearl drifted into anonymity.
Too long, didn't read she was no Anti Oakley, Right.
So she did the Vonville circuit for a while. And then there are those who report her touring briefly with Buffalo bills. Well, yeah, the originator circle. But again it's not clear.
Sure, but she did stand on the same boards as right.
This is where the trail gets murky again. A story pops up that she was running a cigar store in Kansas City and that she got pinched for receiving stolen goods and running a pickpocket ring there.
Oh, I can believe it.
I can believe it. But then there's also the story that she was arrested in Kansas City under the name of missus L. P. Keel for buying stolen canned goods. Well, I could also believe that. American Cowboy magazine reports quote some accounts put her in New York, others in San Francisco, and many say she returned to the territory to marry a rancher whom she lived a peaceful life with into her eighties. So depending on what you read, she also may have died in San Francisco in nineteen twenty five.
Okay, which do you do? What you read?
Well, the peaceful life apparently was with a rancher named Calvin Bywater in glow.
Oh that's whe the bye, she goes right back to Globe.
But I'm not buying that.
But Pearl Bywater that's a great name, right.
Bosenecker said that he thinks she died in nineteen thirty four at her daughter's house in Los Angeles.
Oh, so she reunited with the kids.
Yeah. He said that she's interred at rose Hill Memorial Park under her married name, Lily Naomi Myers. Where I don't know where he gets at whatever? Okay, so zaren.
Apparently he did the old shoe leather dec He has a.
Whole book on what's your ridiculous takeaway?
I love a murky legend, god, right, And when you have a figure who is having as much fun at the center of it as her, like, you've won my heart. I don't even get if she didn't really hurt anybody. So I'm happily over here rooting her exactly. Years later or whatever exactly not how many women there are in the wild West or the you know, the era of the West we've never heard of. But at the time they were the banded Queen. They were the like they're all hyped and it just didn't take like a legend,
didn't all. No, what's your ridiculous take away.
I think it's interesting that she wasn't able to really parlay things beyond uh what she did, because she really wasn't abandoned. No, it wasn't it botched exactly like hijacking.
And not a legend. Does this make no?
But I mean I do love I do love her moxie. I love the scams she pulled to get the party. Yes, that's clever.
That is really Bally at work. And I also mean it's sad that like she didn't have enough like you know, experience to like pull off her ted talk approach to life. But like you think she would have like exaggerated some and come up with a bunch of like you know, there would be a lot to like you know, kind of like refue wi.
Yeah, I will. I mean that's the thing that I don't know much about her, her kind of vaudeville show appearances and re enacting the robbery. But at that point, just you know, say like that was one they caught me for? But I, yes, exactly see the stage coach.
Let me.
You're already not tell the truth about it, So who cares? Do you want to hear? Talk back?
I love them.
I love a talkback right now?
Oh my god much, I let you, Hey, ridiculous crime family. I want you to close your eyes and picture this. You are an eleven year old girl in a small town in Texas, and you want to make friends, so you learn how to play twenty one. But then you learn how to count cards, and soon enough you are
taking everyone's lunch money. And then someone complains to their mom that they don't have lunch money anymore, and so you require to give back all the launch money, except you don't have it anymore because you've spent all of it on Pokemon cards. Also for reference to the yours two thousand and two Love you.
Oh okay, so that's better than Pearl Heart, an elementary's coke card shop or middle school.
It is even better.
Oh that is so good the card county. Yes, well, little genius, you're a genius. I love it.
I am was like, this is my way to make friends and make a little extion milk money.
And then you realize I don't really want to make friends with these Yeah, forget it.
I'm on my own now.
I love that. That's it for today. You can find us online at ridiculous Crime dot com. We're at Ridiculous Crime on Blue Sky, Instagram, YouTube, Ridiculous Crime pod, email, Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com. Leave a talkback on the free iHeart app. Please, I don't know if you can top a baby card sharp that's good reach out. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Duntan and Zaren Burnett, produced and edited by HeLa County Sheriff Dave Couston, starring
Analyse Rutgers Judith. Research is by Wells Fargo, Director of Stagecoach Security Marissa Brown and Grizzled minor Jabari Davis. The theme song is by World's Fair Carnival Barker, Thomas Lee and Travis Boy Bandit Dutton most wardrobe is provided by Botany five hundred producer Dave Couston's wardrobe by mister Guy of Beverly Hills. Guest hair and makeup by Sparkleshot and mister Andre. Executive producers are Mayor of Globe Arizona, Ben Bollen and missing prison trustee Noel Brown.
Disquime Say It One More Times
Crime Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio four more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.