[Music]
howdy folks I'm Hank Scheffer and welcome to another
true life adventure right here with Marshall Trimble on Mysteries of the
Superstition Mountains
the vanishing...The case of the vanishing train robbers this was
this was in 1887 it was the first train robbery April the 27th 1887 the first
train robbery in Arizona the railroad arrived at 1882 Tucson and by 1881 it
had crossed across into New Mexico but they were a little slow to I guess the
stagecoach business they were doing all there were a lot of stagecoach robberies
down there because there was a lot of money Wells Fargo was shipping a lot of money
out of their tombstone at Bisbee both so anyway they're there they turn they turn
to train robberies and this happened at Pantano which is just a few miles east
of Tucson and it's at pantano station there's a Pantano wash right in that
area and they they're going to have their robbery there well they they they
jump on the train and and just for good measure they fire fire a few rounds into
the boiler of the steam engine and they make it they put a gun on the engineer
and make him stop do the same old routine separate the engine and Express
cars from the from the mail car in the passenger cars leave the passengers here
and go on down going down the road but they've got another plan in mind here
because the horses but the horses they didn't have their horses so they they
get into the the oh we've got to get him into the Express car first they there's
a guy named J E Smith in the Express he's Express passenger and he's a quick
thinker because as soon as he realizes the trains going to business being
robbed he takes $5,000 out of the safe and
puts in the coal pot-bellied stove puts a lid back on and the robbers break in
and the safe they opened up the safe he said you know they should have known
something was up when he let him open the safe without any problems and they
found there were just a few bucks in there have nothing much and so they they
take the money they're kind of disgusted with the whole thing but the robberies
turned out to be a flop but now you got to get away so they kick the engineer
off in the firemen one of the one of the robbers probably obviously had been a
former Railroader anyway they start going down the right
track towards Tucson well sometime during the night they realize in Tucson
there's a missing train and so they send a search train out and train comes along
and they're in the middle of nowhere is this engine and Express car and so they
go a little further down and to find the engineer and the fireman and the
passengers waiting down here towards Pantano
and they report the robbery and everything they could go back to Tucson
and and they take the train in and it they they can't figure out though
because they get Pima Indian trackers out there and they cook that keep trying
to cut a trail you know keep circling around and circling around trying to cut
a trail there are no tracks there's no sign of these train robbers how did they
leave the train how'd they get off how they get away they figured that they
stopped the train had to stop the train had their horses picketed out there
somewhere and and they would have left tracks and it makes sense makes perfect
sense but the mystery could not be solved they could not figure it out well
a few months later the train robbers come again same gang it turns out and
about the same place this time this time they they open fire on the train on the
engine and they derail it and the engineer the engineer they actually
shot and shot his mustache off and and the Train flips and the engineer falls
out and fireman jumps the engineer falls out the train goes over over a kind of a
Gulch there and and the fireman lands in a tree - is mustache and they they
robbed the train to go in the Express car and sure enough
who's there again Smith the same messenger well apparently Cowboys and
outlaws read read paper newspapers too because when Smith had pulled that slick
job of putting the money in the pot-bellied stove it
made the papers all over the southwest but in what a hero he was for quick
thinking and Wharton this Train Robbery and they recognized him and he said the
guy cowboy the outlaw looks at him and he said he said Smitty don't try that
stove racket again okay and he cocks him on the head with his pistol and so they
they opened the safe and they take they take some money and that led to a lost
treasure story because the I'm jumping ahead and then I'll come back to the
rest of the robbery but they they there's a train of a treasure lost
treasure story in colossal cave because all of this is right near colossal cave
and there is supposed to be a missing a missing treasury of robbery in there but
nobody has ever found it and it's funny how they got them when they they left
the treasure in there they think but they they built a fire to smoke them out
and and when and when the place was just full of smoke you know the posse runs in
thinking the outlaws are smoke you know suffering from smoke damage and and nada
they're not there turns out there's another end of the thing they went out
the other end and got away and so did they take the treasure with him well
according to the story that the treasure stayed there what happened to that first
a bunch of train robbers same gang what happened how did they disappear like
that nobody could figure it out well they pulled another robbery this time in
right outside El Paso and they they fingered him because well the the
recognize that one of the guys that was living in a local boarding house and it
was Doc Smart who was the leader of the gang and so doc smarts arrested and they
he finally confesses to the whole - how they did it they rode the engine into
Tucson and got off in the yards where there were lots of tracks and they could
you know nobody could pick up their tracks and then they put the engine in
reverse and backed it back and tell it ran out of steam because remember I said
they punctured the they prefer perforated the boiler with bullets and
that's why there was no tracks the tracks they left the tracks of Tucson
docks mark told him how they did it because they never had solved how that
happened and he told him and and then what happened after his first robbery is
that while this posses were scouring the countryside looking for the robbers out
there doc doc smart and the boys were living it up and Tucson and then one of
them had a friend who worked for the Southern Pacific and they slipped him on
a freight train and come back to El Paso I used to tell I that I used to tell
that story to kids and they and I'd say but I'd say now tell me how did they do
it and these kids had come up with all kinds of things you know flying saucers
pick them up but that's the vanishing train robbers the case of the vanishing
train robbers thank you for watching this episode of mysteries of the
Superstition Mountains
you