Robbery, Should We Still Worry?

November 5, 1870. Verdi, Nebraska. Crime history was about to be made.

The Central Pacific Passenger Train was due to be at Verdi at 1:00 that morning. It showed up on time. However, when it was leaving, three masked jumped into the express car. Behind them, five more masked men hurried to their aid.

Six stayed on the express car while the others went back to the west end of the train. The six men on the express car detached the car by breaking the ropes that held it to the main train. Two of the men jumped to the engine, pointed pistols at the driver's head and commanded him to move on. He did as they said. Two brakemen tried to stop the robbers but backed off when the pistols were held to their heads.

The robbers then placed the mailmen and the brakemen in a small car and locked them in a little room inside the car. When they came within six miles of the trains destination, they stopped the train and robbed it of $41,600 in gold coins. This robbery became known as "The Great Robbery".  It was well planned and well executed.

So that they had a better chance of getting away, the robbers had cut all the telegraph wires at Reno, Nevada, (the trains destination).

Robber's being arrested
(they only found two at first)

This was one of the very first big train robberies in the world! When it was put into the paper, it generated a lot of excitement.

There was a reward of $30,000 for the arrests of the men who had robbed the train. In a few short  hours after the reward was announced, many men joined in the hunt for the robbers. 

The Sheriff in charge of the investigation, Charley Pegg, and his undersherrif immediately saddled up and struck for the mountains by a shortcut. They had been given a tip that the robbers had gone that way, but they later learned that it was a false tip.

The next day they went to the crime scene and saw a footprint with an unusually small heel that they knew was the one of the robber's. They then followed up that trail, hoping that they would catch them off guard.  They traveled all night long and didn't find anything. The officer then went to a nearby hotel to see if the robbers had gone there. The owner of the hotel said that some strangely acting men had shown up a few hours before and that they were in a room.

The officer asked to look at the room, and when he opened the door, no one was there. They were gone again!

The sheriff and his partner decided to check out the rest of the rooms to see if the robbers may have been playing a trick or something. When they got to the third room, they found eight men asleep in the room, and they all had a boot with a little heel on it. The officer and his co-officer quietly shut the door and drew their guns.

They woke the men up, and none of them put up no resistance (because of not wanting to be shot). They were arrested and tried for robbing the train. The names of the men were Parsons, Lie Squires, john Chapman, Sol Jones, Chat Roberts, and Fill Cockerell. They were convicted and confined in Nevada State Prison on Christmas Day of the same year. They were never heard from again.


Stories differ about what happened to them. Some people say that they had been out of prison a few years before they died, but others say that they never made it out of prison. No one actually knows.

central Pacific Railroad

I don't know if we are always going to have to worry about robbery. A lot of people say that back then you didn't have to worry about it as much as you do now. I think that there is crime everywhere; no one knows when it will stop or if it ever will.


I am happy the the officer caught the thieves and that no one was physically harmed in this crime. Hopefully, the crime rate does go down....but who knows what will happen.

http://cprr.org/Museum/Robbery.html