Henry Starr (1873–1921)

Henry Starr was a bank and train robber who became a silent movie star in his later years. Sometimes known as the “Cherokee Badman,” Starr claimed to have robbed more banks than any man in America. His criminal career was bookended in Arkansas with his People’s Bank of Bentonville armed robbery on June 5, 1893, and the People’s Bank of Harrison armed robbery on February 18, 1921. Starr also spent several years incarcerated at the Fort Smith (Sebastian County) prison, where he sat on death row among other notorious outlaws, including Crawford “Cherokee Bill” Goldsby, Bill Cook, and members of the Rufus Buck Gang.

Henry Starr was born on December 2, 1873, in Fort Gibson, Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). His father, George Starr, was half Cherokee, and his mother, Mary Scott Starr, was one-quarter Cherokee. Although Starr has sometimes been erroneously described as the son or husband of outlaw Belle Starr, she was married to his cousin Jim and was not a blood relative.

In his autobiography, Thrilling Events: Life of Henry Starr, Starr describes two encounters with corrupt U.S. deputy marshals that turned him from an upstanding young man who dreamed of becoming a rancher to an outlaw. In 1889, at age sixteen, he was framed for bringing liquor into the Indian Territory. Two years later, he was arrested on false charges for stealing a neighbor’s horse. Both times, Starr was transported in chains from Oklahoma to the Fort Smith prison and thrown in with the adult population. He was acquitted in each case, but Starr became embittered, having been branded a criminal in the eyes of the public.

Starr’s first robbery was the Nowata, Oklahoma, train depot in 1892. In response, the railroad hired a former U.S. deputy marshal, Floyd Wilson, to capture Starr. When the two met across an open field with guns drawn, Wilson could not produce a warrant. Starr offered Wilson the opportunity to shoot first. After Wilson fired and missed, Starr shot and killed him. Wilson was the only person Starr ever killed.

On June 5, 1893, Starr and his gang robbed the People’s Bank of Bentonville, which concluded with a spectacular gun battle in the streets. Starr had instructed his men to avoid killing innocent civilians, and they obeyed his orders. Later that year, Starr was captured and sent to the U.S. Circuit Court, Western District of Arkansas at Fort Smith for the murder of Floyd Wilson. Following a trial, Judge Issac Parker sentenced Starr to hang on the prison grounds. Starr appealed his case to the U.S. Supreme Court. Chief Justice Melville Weston Fuller ruled that Starr had the right to self-defense and that Parker’s jury instructions were prejudicial.

While awaiting his retrial, Starr helped deescalate a violent prison break orchestrated by Cherokee Bill that left one guard dead. After retrial, Judge Parker once again sentenced Starr to hang, and once again, the outlaw made an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Justice Edward Douglass White ruled that Parker’s jury instructions continued to be prejudicial and granted Starr a third trial. By this time, Judge Parker had died, and a new judge allowed Starr to plead guilty to manslaughter. Starr was given a fifteen-year sentence at the Ohio State Penitentiary.

In 1903, Starr’s mother traveled to Washington DC and met with President Theodore Roosevelt. He had heard about Starr’s heroic efforts during the Cherokee Bill escape at Fort Smith and agreed to parole him with a promise to “be good.”

The Bentonville (Benton County) bank robbery would continue to dog Starr throughout his life. Shortly after his release from the Ohio State Penitentiary, Arkansas authorities sought his extradition. The hot-headed Starr, unwilling to await the Oklahoma governor’s decision to grant the request, returned to a life of bank robbery. In 1909, following a yearlong spree of heists, Starr was captured and sent to the Colorado State Penitentiary in Cañon City. While there, he penned his autobiography and was released in 1913 for model behavior, claiming to be completely reformed.

Over the next year, Starr would attempt to live an upstanding life through a series of jobs: running a cafe, selling furniture, and working on a railroad. However, when people found out about his criminal background, Starr would be fired.

In 1914, Starr violated the terms of his parole and returned to Oklahoma. Using Tulsa as a base of operations, he orchestrated a series of bank robberies across the state. In 1915, he pulled off the first double bank robbery in U.S. history in Stroud, Oklahoma—a feat the infamous Dalton Gang failed to accomplish in Coffeyville, Kansas, in 1892. During the heist, Starr cemented his “gentleman bandit” reputation when a five-year-old girl walked in during the robbery of the Stroud National Bank. Starr placed her on a chair, gave her a handful of pennies to play with, and promised to buy her an ice cream if she was good. During the gang’s escape, Starr was shot in the hip by a Stroud teenager, and he was captured.

Starr served the next four years in the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. When he was released in 1919, he signed a contract with the Pan American Motion Picture Corporation to play himself in a silent film. Hearing of Starr’s release, Arkansas authorities sought extradition once again, even though the robbery had occurred over twenty-five years earlier. Production of the film was halted until Oklahoma’s governor refused the request for extradition to Arkansas.

In April 1920, Starr’s autobiographical film, A Debtor to the Law, premiered at the New Yale Theatre in Muskogee, Oklahoma. The film was a modest hit, and its theme that “crime doesn’t pay” resonated with audiences. Starr hoped to make a second film and parlay its success into a ticket to Hollywood. However, he had trouble raising the money to produce a second picture, and mounting gambling debts increased financial pressure on him.

Starr always knew where to find money when he was desperate. On Saturday, February 18, 1921, Starr and three members of his new gang attempted to rob the People’s Bank of Harrison in Arkansas. During the robbery, Starr was shot in the back. The rest of the gang fled. Starr lingered for four days in a delirium of pain and medication while Harrison (Boone County) townsfolk kept vigil.

Starr died on February 22, 1921. He is buried in Dewey, Oklahoma, under a tombstone with the inscription, “I’ve robbed more banks than any man in America.”

For additional information:
Archuleta, Mark. The Reel Thrilling Events of Bank Robert Henry Starr: From Gentleman Bandit to Movie Star and Back Again. Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2025.

Kennan, Clara B. “When Henry Starr Robbed the Bentonville Bank: 1893.” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 7 (Spring 1948): 68–80.

Shirley, Glenn. Last of the Real Badmen: Henry Starr. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965.

Starr, Henry. Thrilling Events: Life of Henry Starr. Tulsa, OK: R. D. Gordon Publishing, 1914. Online at https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101074864586&seq=1&q1=stroud (accessed October 24, 2025).