The Newton Gang

The Newton Gang. . About 1914 the Newton brothers Jess, Willis, Doc, and Joe were getting tired of facing mules' rumps as they plowed their daddy's Callahan County farm. So they drifted into train and bankrobbery in a four-year career that took them throughout the Midwest and central Canada. In 1923 they broke into this building in the early morning of January 4 to rob the old State Bank and Trust Company. They poured so much nitro in the vault door that the side of the bank was partially blown away and coins showered across the street, as they made their haul and casually escaped. Consequently the Texas legislature dramatically increased the penalty for the illegal use of heavy explosives. The Newtons' Careers ended at Rondout, Illinois, on June 12, 1924, after they pulled the biggest train hold-up in American history., On completing long prison terms the brothers lived in comfortable retirement at Uvalde, while the locals speculated about their income which probably wasn't social security. In 1968 Doc Newton attempted one last bank heist at Rowena, Texas. But at seventy eight he had lost his edge. Brother Willis later proclaimed, as he himself was nearing ninety, "I'm not gonna rob anymore banks--not because I'm too good, I'm just too damn old." As Willis saw it: "We was businessmen, just like doctors, lawyers, bankers, and insurance executives. Robbing banks and trains was our business."