Gentleman Bandit by John Boessenecker

Author:John Boessenecker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hanover Square Press
Published: 2023-01-04T15:49:45+00:00

JOHN BOESSENECKER COLLECTION.

Harry Morse, the famed California lawman.

They jailed Barber in Napa, where he was questioned closely by the three Wells Fargo sleuths. Morse and his fellow detectives then brought the prisoner to San Francisco, where they continued their investigation. Within a few days, a Napa journalist reported, “A letter received from San Francisco Monday evening from Detective Aull states that the detectives are clearly of the opinion that the man Barber arrested last week is not Black Bart the highwayman, although a first-class counterfeit of him. They took the pains to verify many of Barber’s statements and found them all straight, hence they consider there is no further reason for his detention. Barber was paid by the officers for all the trouble he had been put to and sent on his way rejoicing.”9

By this time, Boles was on one of his frequent visits to Sacramento. In mid-August 1883, he arrived in the state capital and checked into a lodging house on Fourth Street. According to a Sacramento reporter who later interviewed some of Charley’s acquaintances, “For the first time, as recorded in his long career, [Boles] was ‘captured,’ and became a slave to the charms of a woman, the object of his heart’s idol being the temporarily engaged chambermaid of his lodging house, a woman well known on the streets of this city.” The reporter provided only the paramour’s first name, Mollie, and said that she had another lover, a Sacramento fireman. “The Po8 spent the greater part of his time in his room writing and whispering words of love and devotion into the ear of his ‘Mollie darling.’ Cruel fate in this, as in many other love affairs, had placed an obstacle in the way of the entire twenty-four hours being passed in love’s embrace, as at night the lovely maid had to hie herself away to the abode of her other admirer.”

In early September, the capital city was agog at the arrival of a circus, the only one to tour California that year. It featured five elephants, camels, and other exotic animals, as well as numerous female acrobats and high-wire performers. Charley got tickets and took Mollie and two of her friends, one a tall woman identified only as Susan, to the circus. “On another occasion,” wrote the Sacramento reporter, “he took his adored to a shoe store on J street, where he had her tiny feet fitted with the best the establishment afforded, urging her not to think of price at all but to please her taste.” Boles left town for a few days, then returned on September 6 and checked into the International Hotel on K Street, two blocks from the train depot. Mollie, Susan, and their friend came to visit, the journalist said. “At a seasonable hour, two of the females withdrew after having given the Po8 and his ‘Mollie darling’ their blessing for the night.”10

Charley stored his valise in the hotel’s baggage room, then returned to San Francisco, where he checked into the Webb House at 37 Second Street.

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