Otto Wood, the Bandit by Trevor McKenzie

Otto Wood, the Bandit by Trevor McKenzie

Author:Trevor McKenzie [McKenzie, Trevor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, Social & Cultural Studies, Social Science, Folklore & Mythology, True Crime, History, Americas, United States
ISBN: 9781469664729
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
Published: 2021-08-17T04:00:00+00:00


As Virginians waxed poetic, a Greensboro reporter took a small survey of the public opinion about the renegade in his hometown, the site of Wood’s one notorious murder: “Whether he just had to spend the Thanksgiving among more familiar and friendly scenes, or decided to increase the sale of his life, published some time ago, is not known—betting was about even on each of these propositions around the city yesterday. And it was somewhat interesting to hear the remarks of those who know much of Wood’s career, it being almost a universal sentiment hereabouts that since he was gone, he ought to stay gone by seeking entirely new fields.”50

The opinions and literature inspired by Wood’s third prison break continued to pour in as the fugitive himself remained silent. While some urged Otto to seek “new fields,” Winston-Salem resident G. M. “Red” Austin boasted, “There is one man in North Carolina who is not afraid of Otto Wood and that is myself.” Austin, whose comments featured prominently in an extended exposé on the bandit’s history, married Rushey Hayes after she gained a divorce from Wood in December 1924. The article continued to impart the elaborate tale behind the relationship between Wood and Miss Rushey Hayes, “a typical honest Wilkes county country girl” and “a member of one of Wilkes county’s most highly respected families.” As the newspaper recounted, the courtship read “like a page out of a book of fiction,” in which Wood convinced Miss Hayes that he worked as a traveling salesman while moonlighting as a desperado. In its highly stylized and dramatized portrait of Wood’s crimes along the Boone Trail, the article effectively framed Otto Wood’s criminal adventures against the backdrop of the Appalachian Mountains.51 The journalist who wrote the article was also obviously completely unaware of reports of Wood’s wife and child accompanying him on his crime sprees as far away as Texas.

Unwilling to follow the advice to leave North Carolina, Wood broke his silence on December 4, 1926, in a letter from Ashland, Kentucky, to the Greensboro Daily News. The outlaw, in a manner deemed by one source as “spectacular as ever,” offered terms for his surrender to the state. North Carolina newspapers reprinted the fugitive’s proposal for terms of surrender and his statement of grievances:

Ashland, Kentucky, 11-28-26

I guess there are a good many people throughout the state that are very much interested in my whereabouts since my third escape. I haven’t went to Australia yet and don’t think I will go any ways soon [sic]. The reason why I left the state prison is because there is so much difference made between me and the other prisoners. I am the only prisoner that has been locked up in solitary confinement I stayed in solitary one time 10 months, another time seven months and another time five weeks, all told 18 months and one week and it is a living hell. There have been other prisoners that escaped as many as six times; the only punishment they got is C grade.



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