Bronco Bill Walters, Train and Stagecoach Robber and the Solomonville, Arizona Booty
Bill Walters was born in Oklahoma Territory's Fort Sill. He spent the majority of his adolescence working as a cowboy before starting as a section hand for the Santa Fe Railroad. Walters got involved in train robberies and stagecoach robberies soon after starting his job with the railroad. Around 1893, he joined the Black Jack Ketchum Gang and is thought to have participated in at least two murders there. He quickly persuaded a few of the gang members to depart with him and start their own group that would focus on robbing Wells Fargo shipments. He would achieve his greatest success in this quest. Walters committed multiple murders while robbing unspecified sums of money from shipments between 1894 and 1897. It's highly unlikely that he actually stole the quantities claimed in folklore. But according to tradition, Walters started stashing his booty close to the hideout he and his group were using in Solomonville. Lawmen Jeff Milton and George Scarborough tracked down, shot,...