15. Tracking Down the Outlaw Poet
As Black Bart fled from his last robbery, he dropped some personal items, including a handkerchief with a laundry mark. Wells Fargo detectives canvassed San Francisco, found the laundry using that mark, and learned the identity of the handkerchief’s owner. Under interrogation, Black Bart eventually confessed to robbing Wells Fargo stagecoaches, but only before 1879: he mistakenly thought that the statute of limitations had run out on robberies committed before that year.
The company pressed charges only for the last robbery, and he was convicted and sentenced to six years. He was released after four years in 1888 for good behavior. Ailing, Black Bart did not return to his family, but he did write his wife that he was depressed and wanted to get away from everybody. His last known whereabouts were a hotel in Visalia, CA, from which he vanished a month after regaining his freedom.
Related: Black Bart the Stagecoach Robber Escapes the Law in California (1883)