Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with IHeartRadio.

Bell Star, petticoat Terror of the Plains, once said of herself, quote,

I regard myself as a woman who has seen much of life.

And that's probably the truest thing anyone has ever

said about her. In her day on the American frontier, she was thought of as a notorious criminal who

killed countless men, knocked over innumerable banks and trains, and was, quote, a demon with a

bloody knife between her teeth

and a pistol in each hand, terrorizing whole communities and making deputy marshals hit the high

places. Bell considered herself differently than that vivid character description as a, quote,

friend to any brave and gallant outlaw.

She lived a larger than life, life, that's for sure.

But there's one big missing detail.

What no one knows is, who shot her in the back?

And why?

Welcome to criminalia.

I'm Maria Tremarky. And I'm Holly Fry. Myra Maybel was born on February 5, 1848,

the only child to John Shirley and his third wife, Elizabeth Hatfield. Yes, that is the same

Hatfield family as the famous Hatfield-McCoy feud. And theirs was a large blended family with children

from her father's previous marriages. John was a prosperous innkeeper and kept a hotel at Carthage

in Jasper County, Missouri. It's on the family's nearby farm where Bell was born. Known as May in her childhood, she grew up to be

Bell Star, a notorious female outlaw nicknamed the Outlaw Queen in America's Old West.

Then and now, legends flourish about her, telling the story of a woman who rode with and loved the

...