The 19-year-old kid who walked into the Texas State Prison at Huntsville in 1870 was probably booked under the name James Middleton Riley.

If he were, there's no guarantee that that was his name. His first name might have been James, but it also might have been David.

His surname might have been Riley, and it might have come from his mother. It also might

have been Middleton, and it might have been neither of those. The most common story is that he was from Bastrop County, Texas, just east of Austin, and about two hours from Huntsville.

He also might have been from Mississippi.

He went to prison for something, obviously.

The two crimes that are most often cited are murder or horse theft.

Given the reputation he soon established and the earliest reference to the crime, it was

probably horse theft.

The story goes that he grew up in Bastrop County, Texas in the 1850s and 1860s, and he

stole his first horse when he was 14, sometime around 1865. He probably got caught for

stealing another one in 1870, and that was why he went to Huntsville, the towering fortress of a

prison that was nicknamed the Walls. Nine years later, infamous killer John Wesley Hardin would

be a guest at the facility.

Fifty years after that, a young thief from Dallas named Clyde Barrow would do six months at Huntsville before he was transferred to a prison farm.

The stint in prison interrupted his blossoming romance with a girl named Bonnie Parker.

In 1870, James Middleton Riley's prison sentence also interrupted a young romance.

He had married sometime before he was caught,

though virtually no information survives about his first wife.

The pattern of uncertainty continues with the year in which James decided

he was done doing time at Huntsville Prison.

In 1874 or 1875, James escaped Huntsville Prison. The rumor was that he somehow secured an

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