‘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 enforcement 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 often, 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.”
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 brandished, 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 telegraphs 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.
