The Shooting Starr Over Bentonville

As most kids do, I played my fair share of “cops and robbers” with my cousins and neighborhood kids growing up in Downtown Bentonville. We staged epic shootouts with our stick guns and made daring escapes on our bikes and Razor scooters, convinced we were living out some great Old West adventure.

Little did we know that our imaginative escapades were playing out just a block away from the site of an actual, real-life showdown. On a summer day in 1893, nearly a hundred years to the day before I was born, bullets flew, townspeople grabbed their guns, and a group of outlaws made a run for it after a bank robbery that turned the quiet town of Bentonville into a battlefield

Today, that historic bank is home to Taco & Tamale Co., where most people probably sip their margaritas without a second thought about the history beneath their feet. But long before patrons crossed its threshold to secure delicious tacos, the building’s doors swung open to bandits demanding, “Give us all you got!”

This is the story of the day Bentonville stood its ground against Henry Starr and his band of outlaws.

A Crime of Passion

Henry Starr was no ordinary outlaw. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he saw himself as a professional—a gentleman bandit, if you will. But, successful at stealing as he was, he was about to give up his life of thievery. Henry was in love. However, she wouldn’t marry him unless he gave up the outlaw lifestyle.

So around late May 1893, he rode into Bentonville for one final score—one that would secure enough loot to let him start a new life. His target? The People’s Bank.

For a week before the robbery, Starr had been lurking around Bentonville, playing the part of an unassuming traveler. He mapped the streets and alleys, watched the bank’s routine, and even got friendly with the town marshal to gauge his habits. He knew exactly where the town’s guns were stored and, more importantly, when the People’s Bank was most vulnerable.

The Heist Begins

The day of the heist was June 5, 1893. It was about 2:30 in the afternoon when six armed men met Starr in an alley by Brock’s Music House. His gang was all there: Frank Cheney, Bud Tyler, Hank Watt, Kid Wilson, Link Cumplin, and a mysterious character known only as “Happy Jack”.

After taking several townspeople hostage, they left Happy Jack to guard the prisoners and horses, while the others marched toward the People’s Bank, rifles in plain sight.

As the robbers reached the bank, Link Cumplin stationed himself at the top of the entrance steps between two iron pillars. In a bellowing voice, he hollered for everyone to clear the street and fired a shot from his Winchester rifle for good measure.

The citizens, who had been going about their business a moment before, suddenly found themselves ducking behind barrels, diving into doorways, and making quick prayers.

Inside the bank, it was a tense affair. The robbers forced cashier J.C. McAndrew to open the vault, loading gold and currency into one bag and silver into another.

Meanwhile, outside, Bentonville was waking up for a fight.

Bentonville Strikes Back

After the initial shock wore off, Bentonville’s citizens started grabbing whatever weapons they could find. The town marshal, Ben Allison, and Sheriff Pierce Galbraith rand home to fetch their guns. They weren’t sure how they’d match the outlaws’ Winchesters, but they had to try.

Deputy W.L. Marley positioned himself near the courthouse, meeting up with store owners Joe Peel and Colonel J. Dillard James. James, armed with a revolver, advanced down the west side of the square, shooting whenever the gunmen weren’t looking his way. He eventually made it close enough to put a bullet in Cumplin.

The Escape

By this point, the other townspeople were getting bolder and joining the fight. Cumplin sustained at least eight bullet wounds—one taking out his eye. The robbers knew their time was running out. They forced four bank officials out onto the street as human shields, using assistant cashier George Jackson to carry the heavy sack of silver.

As the bandits walked by a local office, a newspaper worker by the name of Miss Maggie Woods flung open the office door and yanked Jackson inside, slamming it shut behind them. The startled robbers hesitated just long enough for her to hide the 65-pound bag of silver upstairs—money that would later be used to reopen the bank the next day.

With bullets flying around them, the robbers finally made it to their horses and tore off south. The posse gave chase, but Starr had planned well—he and his men swapped out horses at every opportunity, while the lawmen were stuck with tiring mounts.

The gang got away, but their freedom would be short-lived and hardly enjoyed.

After The Heist

After the Bentonville heist, Henry Starr and his gang escaped with $11,000—far less than he had hoped. After the seven-way split, it wasn’t enough to retire or marry the woman he loved, and in the end, he never did.

The gang didn’t fare much better. Frank Cheney was killed by marshals a year later, remembered for his sharp wit even in the face of death. Link Cumplin met his end in Alaska and was gunned down while trying to rob an express messenger. Happy Jack was killed just months after the Bentonville job. Kid Wilson was captured alongside Starr in Colorado. He was later paroled but returned to crime and was eventually killed. Of them all, only Bud Tyler lived long enough to die of natural causes.

Starr’s luck ran out three years after Bentonville when he was captured and taken to Fort Smith, where Judge, Isaac C. Parker, the famous “Hanging Judge,” called for the noose on fourteen accounts of robbery and one for murder, but Starr was later sentenced to federal prison in Ohio.

A Brief Reform

President Theodore Roosevelt later pardoned Starr on the promise that he would reform his ways, and for a time, he did. He married, had a son—whom he named Roosevelt—and entered the real estate scene in Tulsa.

But Arkansas never forgot his string of crimes. The Bentonville indictment followed him, and when Oklahoma became a state, authorities renewed their efforts to extradite him. So he went underground.

Though he had stayed out of crime, newspapers began blaming him for a string of bank robberies he had nothing to do with. He decided that if he were going to be accused of robbing banks, he might as well have the fun of robbing banks. So he and a friend rode west, robbing banks along the way, until they reached Colorado.

Passing through the town of Amity, they spotted an easy target and decided to strike—but this time, Starr was caught, and he spent 25 years in the Colorado State Penitentiary.

Starr the Star

During his prison sentence, Starr wrote his autobiography, Thrilling Events, Life of Henry Starr. After securing parole in 1919, he did a brief stint in Hollywood, actually starring in the 1919 silent film A Debtor to the Law, where he played a dramatized version of himself.

But apparently, acting it out didn’t scratch his itch for a true outlaw life. On February 18, 1921, Starr attempted to rob a bank in Harrison, Arkansas, and was shot by the bank’s president, W.J. Myers.

Starr succumbed to his wounds shortly after.

More details of this story have been carefully recorded by Vintage Bentonville and the Bentonville History Museum.

• Read a more detailed account of the shootout on Bentonville Square HERE.

• Read an account of the event from Henry Starr himself HERE.

• Learn more about what Bentonville was like in 1839 HERE.