The American West: The Bloody Adventures of…

In the entire criminal history of the country, there is no record equal to Harry Tracy’s for cold-blooded nerve, desperation and appetite for crime. Jesse James, compared to Tracy, is a Sunday school teacher.

–Seattle Daily Times, July 3, 1902

Harry Tracy was a native of New York. In 1896, only twenty-seven years old and already wanted for murder in Utah, he joined Butch Cassidy’s infamous “Wild Bunch” in their hideout in Wyoming. He immediately felt at home with the other gang members, including Harry Longabaugh (the Sundance Kid), Harvey Logan and George Curry. Although his life of crime was short-lived – less than ten years – its brief life was punctuated by dishonesty, murder and terror.

June 9, 1902 proved to be a memorable day at the Oregon State Prison in Salem. Three guards – Ferrell, Tiffany and Jones – were busy counting the prisoners in the courtyard and, satisfied that they were all present and accountable, ordered the prisoners to march to the foundry for another day of hard work . One of the prisoners, Harry Tracy, must have been a bundle of nerves. He knew that an accomplice had hidden a few weapons in a toolbox just inside the foundry door. Tracy planned to use them to escape.

In the shadowy foundry, Tracy saw the toolbox, identified by chalk marks on the lid. He remained in his place in the orderly procession until he came close enough to the coffin to seize it. He threw open the lid and pulled out a rifle and a sawed-off shotgun. Tracy passed the rifle to Dave Merrill, the inmate standing behind him in line, and opened fire with the rifle, killing the three guards instantly. Pandemonium followed. Before the surrounding guards knew what was happening, most of the other prisoners had rushed back into the courtyard, screaming and attacking any guard they came across.

In the confusion, Tracy and Merrill scaled the prison wall and fell to freedom on the other side, shooting several guards along the way. The pair then disappeared into the thick undergrowth. Behind them, the prison sirens blared like frenzied banshes. Telegraph and telephone wires buzzed with orders. One of the largest manhunts in American history had begun.

Shortly after their escape, Tracy and Merrill confronted two deputy sheriffs and seized their horse-drawn carriage. Then they stole some more weapons and headed to Portland. At Gervais, a small village a few kilometers to the north, a band of fifty men surrounded the refugees, but they managed to slip through the fingers of the police. By the time the pair reached Portland, the governor had called in 250 militia members to join the search. Tracy managed to escape by forcing a local boatman to take him and Merrill across the Columbia River to Washington.

If the two believed they were safe in Washington, another thought arose. As they moved north toward Tacoma, both the reward for their capture and the size of the pack pursuing them grew.

The governor of Washington ordered his officers to shoot to kill. Near Chehalis, Washington, Merrill came to the end of his road when Tracy killed him after learning that Merrill had testified against him years earlier in exchange for a lighter prison sentence.

Now alone, Tracy arrived on the Puget Sound, where he captured a fishing vessel and forced the captain to carry him to Seattle. At a farm there, the elusive killer again escaped capture, turned east and headed for Spokane. When he reached Lincoln County he decided to hide for a while and let the fury subside.

By August, rumors of Tracy’s whereabouts were as thick as the ripening wheat in the golden fields outside Creston, Washington. The town marshal, Charles Straub, dismissed most of the stories, but when an eyewitness claimed to have seen Tracy on a nearby farm, the police officer decided to investigate. Straub took the place of four men – Oscar Lillengreen, Maurice Smith, Joe Morrison and Dr. EC Lanter – and the small group saddled up.

On the farm, officers found three men working on a shed. Tracy’s photo was all over the front pages of the local newspapers lately, and Straub noticed that one of the workers bore a striking resemblance to the fugitive. He identified himself as a law officer and ordered Tracy to surrender. Instead, the outlaw grabbed his rifle, fired a few shots and disappeared into the rolling wheat fields that surrounded the farm.

As darkness fell, the five police officers took up positions along the edges of the wheat field, where they planned to wait until morning. Sometime during the night the troop heard a single shot. At dawn they found Tracy dead, a victim of his own hand. They could also see that he had bled profusely that night from a leg wound. Apparently he had chosen a quick death rather than slowly bleeding to death or being captured.

And so ended the career of the outlaw whom the eminent Western historian James D. Horan once described as the “mad dog of the Wild Bunch.” After a few weeks as the biggest news story in the United States, Tracy was largely forgotten.

James A. Crutchfield can be reached at [email protected]