In Search Of The Desperado Will Harris

True Crime Historian

Richard O Jones

True Crime, Documentary, Arts, Society & Culture, Performing Arts

4.4 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 5 February 2024

⏱️ 86 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Scourge Of Sugar Creek

Episode 164 asks the rhetorical question: Will the real Will Harris please stay in jail? It seems "Will Harris" was the go-to nom-de-plume for a number of Southern scoundrels around the turn of the 20th century. Sometimes the press is confused and sometimes the police are confused, shedding doubt on whether or not they have the real desperado, an imposter, or just another desperado with the same name.

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Popular.com
0:03.0	Richmond, Virginia, 1898.
0:18.3	A police officer Robert D. Austin, attired in citizens' clothes, walked in between two colored men and attempted to arrest the one of light complexion.
0:29.6	They had committed no crime so far as the officer knew, but their actions were suspicious, and he was determined to place them behind the bars of the police station.
0:40.3	William Ruthven Evans testified to the coroner's jury, quote,
0:45.3	This morning as I was coming to market, I saw Mr. Austin at Fifth and Broad Streets on the south side.
0:52.3	He crossed over to the letterbox. He was watching two colored
0:57.0	men. After a while, I saw the two men cross at Fourth Street and go on the side. Mr. Austin
1:04.0	walked up to them just as though he was going to pass between them and grabbed the inside one,
1:10.0	which was the light-skin man mr.
1:12.8	Austin said something to him when he grabbed him I did not understand it as I was too
1:17.9	far off mr. Austin was facing down broad and the man he grabbed turned and
1:24.1	faced up Broad Street then he fired the dark-skinned man walked around the corner and
1:30.8	started to run. He heard the two shots and turned around and fired once. Then the other fellow
1:37.4	fired again. Then the light-skinned one and Mr. Austin struggled until he slipped out of his coat.
1:46.7	Then Mr. Austin grabbed him and Mr. Austin struggled until he slipped out of his coat. Then Mr. Austin grabbed him, and Mr. Austin fell on top of him. Then the other man turned him over and both got up and
1:52.4	they struggled a while longer. Then they broke away and ran. Then Mr. Austin grabbed the
1:58.7	telegraph pole and fired several times. This was the first time he had fired.
2:05.1	Then Mr. Austin walked across the street where I was, and then went back and picked up the coat and hat.
2:12.3	Then Officer Foster came up and said, Who in the world has shot you, Bob?
2:19.7	Then Mr. Austin couldn't speak.
2:23.4	Then Mr. Foster asked him which way did they go.
	...

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