Thomas Edward "Black Jack" Ketchum: The Outlaw Who Went Out With a Bang (and a Snap)

Dec 9, 2024
7 min read

Men gather on a wooden gallows platform, adjusting a noose over a suited man, with a brick building behind.

Thomas Edward Ketchum, better known as "Black Jack," wasn't your average cowboy. Born in San Saba County, Texas, in 1863, he started life with a fairly unremarkable existence on the family ranch. But as with many young men in the Wild West, the lure of adventure and, later, crime proved too strong. By the time of his infamous execution in 1901, Ketchum had gone from ranch hand to one of the most colourful characters in American outlaw lore.

A Cowboy with a Wild Streak

First, the name. Ketchum didn't come up with "Black Jack" himself. He acquired it by accident, after being repeatedly mistaken for another outlaw called Black Jack Christian. Christian was killed in 1897, but by then the nickname had already stuck to Ketchum, and he didn't seem to mind.

His father died when Tom was five years old, and his mother went blind before dying in 1873, leaving Tom and his brother Sam largely to fend for themselves. Tom's eldest brother Berry went on to become a respectable and wealthy cattleman. Tom took a different path. His first brush with the law came in 1880, aged just 16, when he was summoned for contempt of court after failing to appear as a witness. By 1889, the sheriff of Tom Green County was arresting him for chasing a dog into a church during a religious service. It was, in hindsight, a small preview of things to come.

Black Jack's early life was a mix of cattle drives and dusty trails, but things took a turn in the early 1890s when he left Texas under something of a cloud. He ended up in New Mexico, working as a cowboy along the Pecos River. It wasn't long before his older brother Sam joined him, and the duo began dabbling in a bit of mischief that would soon spiral out of control.

In 1892, Black Jack and his gang made their mark with a robbery of an Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway train near Nutt, New Mexico. The gang, likely figuring that payroll trains were the Wild West equivalent of a jackpot, grabbed their loot and got away. This was just the beginning of what would become a string of robberies and, eventually, murders.

A portrait of a well dressed man in Victorian clothing,

Trouble in Liberty: A Messy Heist Turned Deadly

In early June 1896, Tom and Sam had been working legitimately at the Bell Ranch in New Mexico. They quit, stole some supplies, and rode to the small settlement of Liberty, north of present-day Tucumcari. On the night of 10 June, they sheltered from a thunderstorm at the store owned by brothers Levi and Morris Herzstein, who invited them in. They repaid the hospitality by robbing the store and post office before dawn and riding for the Pecos River.

Levi Herzstein led a posse of four men after them. They caught up with the Ketchums in the Plaza Largo Arroyo. The gunfight that followed left Herzstein and another posse member, Hermenejildo Gallegos, dead. Ketchum didn't hesitate to empty his rifle into the fallen men. Two survivors, Anastacio Borgue and Placido Gurulé, made it out. Gurulé later told his children and grandchildren: "I knew if I moved a muscle I would be a dead man."

Although Tom and Sam evaded capture for this particular crime, the incident left a long shadow. Levi's brother Morris Herzstein later witnessed Black Jack's execution, bringing a kind of poetic, if gruesome, justice to the whole affair.

Friends in Low Places: The Hole-in-the-Wall Gang

After Liberty, the Ketchum brothers found themselves operating alongside the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang, a loose coalition of outlaw gangs using a remote, near-impenetrable pass in Johnson County, Wyoming as their base. The geography was everything: there was only one way in and one way out, guarded around the clock by the outlaws who lived there. No lawman ever successfully entered during its years of operation. The most famous faction operating out of Hole-in-the-Wall was Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch, which included the Sundance Kid and Elzy Lay. Ketchum's gang was a separate outfit, but members crossed over. Kid Curry and his brother Lonnie had ridden with Black Jack before gravitating toward Cassidy's faction, and Ben Kilpatrick, later a Wild Bunch member, rode with Ketchum around this time too.

Black Jack's relationship with Harvey "Kid Curry" Logan was particularly fractious. Logan was widely considered the most dangerous man in the Hole-in-the-Wall, with a reputation for violence that made even hardened outlaws uneasy. The two clashed repeatedly over the division of loot, and by 1896 the split was permanent. Ketchum avoided Curry as much as possible after that. It was probably wise: over the following eight years, Curry killed nine lawmen.

The Ketchums had a knack for hitting trains, especially along the Colorado and Southern Railroad. Their favourite spot was a stretch of track near Twin Mountain, New Mexico. Between 1897 and 1899, the gang robbed trains there three times, creating quite a headache for the railroad company and a lot of excitement for local newspapers.

A Botched Robbery and Brotherly Loss

In July 1899, Sam Ketchum led a train heist near Twin Mountain without his brother. Things didn't go well. After the robbery, the gang was tracked by a posse into Turkey Creek Canyon, where a gunfight erupted. Sam was gravely injured but managed to escape briefly before being caught. He died in custody at the Santa Fe Territorial Prison from his wounds, and was buried in the Odd Fellows Cemetery on Cerrillos Road in Santa Fe. Tom was now carrying the outlaw torch alone.

Black Jack didn't seem to learn from his brother's fate. Just a few weeks later, in August 1899, he decided to rob the very same train at the very same spot. And this time he was flying solo. He approached the train as it slowed, only to be met by an alert conductor named Frank Harrington, who promptly shot him in the arm. "I tried a dozen times to mount my horse but was too weak to do it," Ketchum later said. He sat down by the tracks and waited for the posse to arrive. He was taken to Trinidad, Colorado, where doctors amputated his arm.

An old photo of cowboys posing with a body — Tom's headless body

The Trial of Thomas Edward "Black Jack" Ketchum

After recovering from his injuries, Black Jack was sent to Clayton, New Mexico Territory, to stand trial. His crime was attempted train robbery, and the penalty was death. This was thanks to a New Mexico territorial law, passed in 1897 specifically to curb the epidemic of railway banditry that had plagued the region throughout the decade. The law made train robbery a capital offence, even without violence. Critics argued from the outset that this was disproportionate and unconstitutional, since no federal statute made attempted robbery a hanging offence. Appeals on those grounds were lodged on Ketchum's behalf but failed. He was convicted and sentenced to hang.

The execution was delayed several times amid rumours that former gang members were planning to break him out. When those rumours persisted, the authorities pushed the date forward to 26 April 1901, giving any would-be rescuers less time to organise. On the morning of the hanging, the people of Clayton gathered in numbers. It was the town's first and, as it turned out, only execution.

The Hangman's Rope

The problem was that nobody in Clayton really knew how to conduct a hanging. There was debate about the correct drop length for a man of Ketchum's size. It was decided that a drop of 5 feet 9 inches would be appropriate, but someone extended it to 7 feet. This was already a catastrophic miscalculation at 5 feet 9. At 7 feet, for a man who had gained considerable weight during his time in custody, it was fatal in an unintended way. A Clayton newspaper later reported that Sheriff Garcia had also soaped the rope "to make sure it slipped properly," which only compounded the problem.

Sheriff Salome Garcia's account of the execution was detailed:

He walked firmly up the steps, saying as he went up, "Dig my grave deep, boys." Stepping upon the trap door he asked for the black cap, and it was placed over his head but [it] had to be removed to permit the rope to be placed on his neck, and while they delayed somewhat he became impatient and said, "Let her go boys." ... The sheriff cut the trigger rope with a hatchet, and his body shot down with all its 215 pounds of weight. Everyone within or without the stockade held their breath, and their hearts gave a great bound of horror when it was seen that his head had been severed from his body by the fall. His body alighted squarely upon its feet, stood for a moment, swayed and fell and then great streams of red, red blood spurted from his severed neck, as if to shame the very ground upon which it poured. The head rolled aside and the rope, released, bounded high and fell with a thud upon the scaffold from whence it came.

Ketchum's last words, "Good-bye. Please dig my grave very deep. All right; hurry up," were strangely prophetic, though not in the way he intended.

Legacy: The Myth of Black Jack Ketchum

The photograph of Ketchum's decapitated body circulated as a postcard in the weeks that followed, cementing his status as a Wild West antihero. His story was grim enough to be entertaining and grotesque enough to be unforgettable, which is more or less the recipe for frontier legend.

He was initially buried in Clayton's first cemetery, then moved on 10 September 1901 to the new Clayton Cemetery. The townspeople who organised the reburial described him as "the leader of the worst gang of outlaws that ever infested the southwest," which, given the company he kept, was quite a claim.

Today, Black Jack Ketchum lies in Clayton Cemetery, which gets a steady trickle of visitors. His story has everything the Wild West mythology demands: train heists, gunfights, brotherly loyalty, a falling-out with the most dangerous man in Wyoming, and an exit so spectacularly mismanaged that it ended up in the history books twice. For another outlaw from the same era whose story took an equally strange turn after death, read about Big Nose George and what happened to his remains.