A few frontier lawmen had one foot on each side of the law. They enriched themselves by expropriating cattle and horses, and by levying "fines" on crooks. They set out to capture desperados and returned home alone: The felons were never heard from again, shot dead presumably, by lawmen who reached their own verdicts and imposed their own sentences.
Two lawmen who crossed to the dark side were train robbers Burt Alvord and Billy Stiles. Both had been deputy sheriffs.
They and two lower-level lawmen, Bill Downing and Matthew Burts, conspired in September 1899 to hold up a train at Cochise. Alvord returned to nearby Willcox, and when "news" of the robbery reached town the next day, he led a posse in pursuit of the thieves. In other words, he went looking for himself.
A break in the case occurred five months later when a train was robbed at Fairbank. This time, famed lawman Jeff Milton was aboard. He was shot and injured, but he also plugged one of the bandits - Three-Fingered Jack Dunlap. The robbers abandoned Dunlap, who died several days later, but not before he squealed on the Alvord-Stiles gang - which included others not named here - as the brains behind the holdups.
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Stiles confessed. Burts split. Alvord and Downing were locked up at the Tombstone jail, and Stiles was supposed to testify against them. For his cooperation, Stiles was given access to the jail, and he took full advantage. He demanded the keys, and when jailer George Bravin refused, Stiles shot him in the leg. He then liberated Alvord and other prisoners. They armed themselves with guns from the sheriff's rack, stole horses and rode off into the mountains.
It isn't clear from old newspaper accounts how Burts was brought to account, but in 1901 the Phoenix Republican reported that he had been pardoned by the governor after he "turned state's evidence and materially contributed to the conviction of his guiltier associates."
Stiles eventually surrendered, as did Alvord in late 1902. The Tucson Citizen reported that citizens "could not believe their eyes" as they watched the pair stroll down Congress Street accompanied by the sheriff of Cochise County. They were neither cuffed nor shackled, the paper reported, and Stiles had a six-shooter sticking out of his trousers.
It turns out the notorious pair had gone into Mexico at the behest of Burt Mossman, boss of the Arizona Rangers, to help him capture a killer named Augustine Chacón. Mossman promised to put in a good word for the train robbers if they brought in Chacón and then surrendered themselves.
Alvord and Stiles didn't become law-abiding, though. They were together again in the Tombstone jail in 1903 when they sawed through the cell bars, dug out of the main room and escaped - along with 11 others. Or, as the Star story put it, accompanied by "all that desired to do so."
Alvord got into more scrapes with the law, but finally fled to South America and died there. Sightings of Stiles were reported as far away as China and South America, and also along the Arizona-Sonora border. About 1907, a Nevada deputy sheriff named William Larkin was killed by a cattle rustler. Larkin's widow said his true identity was William Larkin "Billy" Stiles.
The last of these robbers, Downing, served time in prison, then returned to Willcox, where he opened a notorious saloon called The Free and Easy. He killed a patron in a barroom fight and was shot dead himself in 1908 by Arizona Ranger Billy Speed.
