AZCENTRAL.COM | SUNDAY, MARCH 23, 2025 | 9A
I'mIt seemed a strange location for hundreds of boxes of brand-new Nike sneakers. Yet there they were, sitting by railway milepost 384 in the scrubby forest outside Williams, Arizona. They were a new Air Jordan 4 style, a striking red-orange collaboration with BMX athlete Nigel Sylvester, appropriately dubbed “Bike Air.” When they go on sale in the spring, they will retail for $225. Before their unexpected stop in Coconino County, the shoes had come a long way. h On Dec. 12, 2024, safely ensconced in a shipping container on the MSC Mediterranean, they had set sail from the Chinese port city of Xiamen. The cargo ship crossed the Pacific in 19 days and arrived in Los Angeles on New Year’s Eve. h Two weeks later, on Jan. 13, the shoes were still in the container, hurtling eastward on a BNSF train. The train was passing through a sparsely populated region of northern Arizona when, authorities say, it was breached by a brazen gang of train robbers. h Another heist was underway. The sneakers’ journey wasn’t over yet.
BILL CAMPLING/USA TODAY NETWORK; AND GETTY IMAGES
“I’VE HAD CONDUCTORS TELLING ME THAT THEY ACTUALLY WATCHED THEM
UNLOAD IT, BUT BY POLICY THEY CAN’T CONFRONT THEM BECAUSE THEY’RE NOT
ARMED, AND THE BAD GUYS COULD BE ARMED.”
KEITH LEWIS VICE PRESIDENT OF OPERATIONS AT CARGONET
From Old West history to modern heists
Train heists conjure up romantic images of the Old West.
Popular culture is replete with depictions of gun- toting outlaws coolly holding up trains before fleeing with the goods on horseback. Dramatic license notwithstanding, train hold-ups were a big issue at the turn of the 20th century, peaking in the 1890s.
But the bold stick ’em ups dwindled in the early 1900s as the risk-reward ratio began to fall in the au- thorities’ favor.
Decades after such robberies had ceased, film- makers and novelists kept the era alive. Westerns like “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” drew on real-life events, including a spectacularly bungled rob- bery near Willcox, Arizona. But more on that later.
Today, train theft is back — but it looks very different.
Federal court documents offer a glimpse of how the Department of Homeland Security sees the mod- ern Southwest train heist.
First, robbers identify shipping containers with high-value contents — think electronics or shoes — traveling on eastbound trains out of California. Once the target is set, they scout for a location to get on the train, typically when stopped at a staging area. When the train is moving, they move from container to container, opening them with saws and bolt-cutters.
When they find something worth stealing, they’ll often force the train to stop by cutting the braking
system air hose. At the same time, they’re communicating their location to accomplices on the ground, ready to collect the goods in a box truck.
it takes the train miles to stop, but once it grinds to a halt, it’s time to unload. Sometimes the goods go right next to the track, maybe obscured in brush or hidden in a nearby field, to be picked up later and distributed to third-party sellers. Other times, accomplices will turn up almost immediately, ready for loading right off the train. This latter scene is a familiar one to Keith Lewis, who is vice president of operations at CargoNet, a private company that provides supply-chain theft intelligence to law enforcement. He described it as a “human conveyor belt,” the goods passed from the train, to the ground, to the truck. “It’s done fast. It’s fast as lightning.” He knows, because he’s seen it. “I’ve watched them through binoculars,” he said. “I just couldn’t get there in time.”
with possession of stolen goods in the U.S. District Court.
‘Sophisticated and very dangerous’
There’s a reason train robberies happen out in rural Arizona, Lewis said. “There’s not a lot of witnesses.”
Nevada and California counties like San Bernardino and Riverside have the same problem, he added. Cargo trains run through vast swaths of country where barely anyone lives, allowing thieves to move from container to container without anybody calling 911.
“A lot of those areas you can’t get to other than with a helicopter,” Lewis said. “You can’t even get to some of those rail tracks with off-road vehicles.”
Even if they were spotted, it’s not as simple as the train stopping and some- one running back to apprehend the thieves. Cargo trains take miles to stop, offering the robbers ample opportunity to flee, and generally don’t have security on board.
If the brake line is cut, the conductor and engineer are stranded along with the disabled train. Ill-equipped to stop a robbery, they can’t really do anything except call 911.
“I’ve had conductors telling me that they actually watched them unload it, but by policy they can’t confront them because they’re not armed, and the bad guys could be armed,” Lewis said.
Arizona train heists have been in the news lately, but we don’t always hear about them.
Lewis said that’s because rail companies, which have their own law en- forcement agencies, are reluctant to publicize thefts as it puts them at a competitive disadvantage.
He thinks reported robberies are a fraction of what really goes on. “I live in Mojave County. And I was a past deputy sheriff in my life,” he said. “I can say there’s a lot of train thefts.”
On Jan. 13, the U-Haul and the Ford were intercepted full of shoes. But of- ten, Lewis said, the box truck immediately drives to another location, where the goods are distributed into passenger cars, which drive off in all directions. Once the goods are gone, they’re usually gone for good.
“If I find 10 of them in somebody’s warehouse, how do I know that the guy didn’t buy them legitimately? Or they’re stolen? I don’t know,” he said. “It loses its identity once it’s off the trailer.”
The people arrested don’t tend to be the top dogs. They’re just minions in a larger criminal scheme.
“This is a very sophisticated type of process, and it’s a very dangerous type of process,” Lewis said.
He was once investigating a case on a train when it began to move, and he had to rapidly get off.
“And if I did not,” he said, “I don’t know what state they would next stop in.”
The first Arizona train robberies
Back in the late 1800s, there was — arrests and oil leaks notwithstanding — perhaps even more potential for things to go wrong.
Back in the 1800s, Arizona State Historian Marshall Trimble said bandits would lie in wait until the train was struggling up a long slope. Once it had slowed down, robbers could jump on board, stick a gun in the engineer’s face, and cry, “Stop the train!” MARK HENLE/THE REPUBLIC
The first known train robbery in Arizona happened in 1887, a few years after transcontinental railroads were built across the south and north of the state.
According to Arizona State Historian Marshall Trimble, bandits would lie in wait until the train was struggling up a long slope. Once it had slowed down, robbers could jump on board, stick a gun in the engineer’s face, and cry, “Stop the train!”
At the same time, a co-conspirator would enter the passenger car, scaring them into submission.
“One guy couldn’t do it,” Trimble added. “It was a fool who tried to rob a train by himself.”
Though guns were often bran- dished, they were infrequently used. Most outlaws just wanted money, not a murder charge on their heads.
Still, the stakes were high. In 1889, Arizona joined New Mexico in making train robbery a capital crime, putting an end to a short, bizarre period in which bandits would stake out trains near the state border and rob them as soon as they had crossed it.
But the harsh law didn’t work, Trimble said. Juries were reluctant to send outlaws who hadn’t actually killed anyone to the gallows, and in practice, it led to fewer convictions.
Some of the train robbers were practiced outlaws, some were cow- boys looking to make a quick buck, some were even lawmen themselves. But unlike the thieves of today, with a variety of products to pilfer and resell, they were all seeking the same thing: cold, hard cash.
Trains carried money transfers between banks and monthly payroll to mining towns. The cash was kept in the express car, usually right behind the engine. Robbers would often separate the engine and express car from the rest of the train, leaving behind a load of angry passengers.
Then came the next challenge.
“You had to know how to deal with dynamite, too,” Trimble said, “because you blew the safe with dynamite.”
A real train robbery?
Like their modern equivalents, train heists back in the day didn’t always go to plan. Remember the scene in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” when they try to break the safe and blow the car to smithereens?
Doug Hocking, who wrote a book about Old West train heists and the colorful outlaws who perpetrated them, recalled one such incident in Willcox.
It was 1895, and a couple of cowboys decided to hold up a train. They got past the first few steps, but struggled to blow up the safe, not being particularly familiar with dynamite.
Eventually, frustrated, they piled sticks of dynamite onto the safe and covered it with sacks of Mexican pesos as ballast.
They lit the fuse and ran. The safe exploded. So did the express car. Pesos rained over the Willcox Playa, a destructive shower of silver.
“If you really want to, you can still find some pesos up there!” Hocking cracked.
That was the heyday of train robberies, but before long, the advent of wire transfers made the express car a lot less valuable. The spread of tele- graphs and telephones made it easier for law enforcement, who could call surrounding towns and tell them to watch out for fleeing thieves.
As the risk grew greater than the reward, train robberies died out. Or at least, the stick-em-up style did.
Now cellphone and tracking technology make it easier for law enforcement — and for thieves, too.
“You’re not seeing guns,” Hocking said. “What you’re seeing guys doing is breaking into box cars. And that’s been going on forever.”
To Hocking, Nike boxes stacked by the railroad don’t really measure up to the pesos scattered over the Willcox Playa.
“That’s a real train robbery,” he said.
BILL CAMPLING/ USA TODAY NETWORK; AND GETTY IMAGES
THE FIRST KNOWN TRAIN ROBBERY IN ARIZONA HAPPENED IN 1887, A FEW YEARS AFTER TRANS- CONTINENTAL RAILROADS WERE BUILT ACROSS THE SOUTH AND NORTH OF THE STATE.
According to Homeland Security, the perpetrators are typically transnational theft organizations with origins in Sinaloa, Mexico, operating out of California and Arizona.
Such robberies have been occurring in the Southwest over the past 15 years. In the last two, there has been an up- tick, and possibly far more than we ever hear about.
In October, two people were arrest- ed after a Yavapai County Sheriff ’s Office deputy responded to a report of a train burglary and chased four vehi- cles down Interstate 40 for miles.
In December, a passing BNSF train noticed a bunch of Nike sneaker cases piled up next to the railway at Yampai, west of Williams along Route 66. Four people — all U.S. citizens — were charged with possession of stolen goods after picking up the boxes.
And on Jan. 13, a BNSF police officer saw the Nike sneakers by the tracks.
What happened to the sneakers?
Here’s what authorities say happened that day: Around 11 a.m., a BNSF train reported a cut air hose at mile-post 384. That particular train exclusively carried Nike products, and had consequently become a target for thieves.
The sneakers were in master cases, each containing six ordinary shoebox- es. Around 6:30 p.m., law enforcement officials placed trackers into four of the cases.
Soon after, they saw a Ford Econoline truck and a U-Haul box truck driving toward the goods, and just before 8 p.m., a Coconino County sheriff ’s dep- uty saw people loading the U-Haul with boxes.
One tracker correlated with the location of the Ford Econoline, heading south on Forest Service Road 124. Two correlated with the location of the U- Haul, moving along Forest Service Road 113 before it suddenly stopped.
The Ford Econoline was intercepted on Interstate 40, near Kingman. One of the two men inside fled, jumping a barbed wire fence and attempting to disguise himself in a tree. The other stayed put. Both were arrested. In the back of the truck, there was around $200,000 worth of Nike shoes.
Meanwhile, the U-Haul was still stationary just off of Forest Road 113. A law enforcement camera caught an SUV driving toward the U-Haul, and about half an hour later, driving back.
A short time later, Coconino County sheriff’s deputies stopped an SUV in Williams with nine people inside. One of them was carrying a key that matched the parked U-Haul. All were arrested.
After that, law enforcement searched the U-Haul. It had left an oily trail from the site of the robbery to where it was parked, and agents sur- mised the rocky terrain had damaged the oil pan, springing a leak and potentially disabling the vehicle. The back was stuffed with Nike shoes.
All 11 people, one U.S. citizen and 10 Mexican citizens, have been charged.
