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Bartee Haile
On Sept. 3, 1878 was another tense day for Wild Bill Longley, as the famous gunfighter waited in the Giddings jail for an appeals court to decide whether he lived or died. At a precocious age, William Preston Longley displayed a talent ideally suited to the violent times that followed the Civil War. From horseback at a full gallop, the 14 year old could hit the mark with every shot. The boy was a born gunman. Longley left his hometown of Evergreen in 1866 to see the sights in Houston. To cut down on casualties in the conquered city, the black state police had been stripped of firearms and issued heavy lead balls attached to their wrists. But the change in weapons did not reduce the daily toll, as ex-Rebs were found bashed to death instead of simply shot. His first night in Houston, Longley and a young companion brawled with a burly state cop. The anonymous acquaintance fatally stabbed the ball-swinging black man, and Bill snatched his pistol and ran home with the prize. In his last hours, Longley confessed to killing 32 men, most of them black. Although he committed a variety of crimes during his 12-year career, armed robbery was not in his repertoire. With a hair-trigger temper and a seething hatred of freed slaves, Longley coldly dispensed death at the slightest provocation.
Gunplay came easily and often, and the number of victims rose rapidly. The shooting of a black antagonist in 1868 made him a wanted man at 17. Longley’s father urged him to join up with Cullen Baker, head of an elusive band of incorrigible Confederates who roamed East Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana. According to legend, the bandit chief taught the juvenile fugitive his deadly quick-draw technique. Following Baker’s demise in 1869, the gang broke up and Bill lit out for the Rockies. Several uncanny escapes plus his prowess with a pistol soon established Longley’s reputation as an invincible outlaw. One time he was seized by a lynch mob, strung up along with a horse-stealing friend and playfully peppered with pot shots by the departing riders. One bullet ricocheted off Bill’s belt buckle, and another incredibly snapped the rope saving his life. Late in 1873, a hundred- man posse trapped Longley outside Kerrville and took him to Austin to collect a hefty reward. When outgoing Gov. Edmund J. Davis, the unpopular Radical Republican, refused to pay one red cent for the notorious prisoner, a fast-thinking relative bought his freedom for $500.
A personal grudge proved to be Longley’s undoing. He shotgunned Wilson Anderson, reputed murderer of a cousin, on April Fools’ Day 1875.
“Oh, God!” cried the dying man. “What did you shoot me for, Bill?”
“Just for luck,” was the ice-cold answer.
Longley went into hiding on a secluded Louisiana farm in 1877. Checking out a tantalizing tip, the Nacogdoches sheriff and a small army of deputies hopped across the state line and took the gunslinger by surprise without a struggle.
Longley was tried at Giddings for the Anderson murder. The jury deliberated only an hour before returning a verdict of guilty.
Bill expected a sentence similar to the 25-year term recently given fellow gunfighter John Wesley Hardin, but it was not a day for mercy. The judge decreed death by hanging, and an appeals court gave the goahead for the execution.
Wild Bill calmly surveyed the 4,000 spectators, who surrounded the gallows at Giddings on Oct. 11, 1878. The enormous crowd fell silent as the condemned uttered his last words.
“I have got to die. I see a good many enemies around me and mighty few friends. I hope to God that you will forgive me. I will you.”
Many onlookers shouted, “So long, Bill.” He smiled faintly before the black hood covered his head.
The trap door was sprung, and the convicted killer dropped toward eternity only to land on his knees. Somehow the rope had slipped leaving Longley very much alive.
Lawmen carried the moaning outlaw back up the steps to the hangman.
This time he got it right, and 11 minutes later a doctor confirmed the passing of the 27-year-old legend. Published accounts of the execution were met with outright disbelief. Skeptical Texans gave more credence to whispered claims Longley had cheated death than newspaper reports of his hanging. Countless people accepted as fact the rumor that Longley was alive and well masquerading as a wealthy cattleman south of the border. However, even those who rejected that tale as ignorant folklore sat up and took notice in May 1917. On the passenger list of the Lusitania, the ship torpedoed in the Atlantic by a German U-boat, was a hauntingly familiar name with a South American address -- W.P. Longley.
Did the desperado with the fast draw survive the Giddings gallows by 39 years?
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