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Published: February 28th 2013
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BURT AND BILLY
Cochise County Court House on the southwest corner of 2nd and Toughnut was the site of much of the court room drama that played itself out for Burt Alvord and Billy Stiles. BURT AND BILLY
When Burt Alvord and Billy Stiles were arrested in connection with the train robberies at Cochise Station and Fairbank their misadventures had just begun. Three Fingered Jack was not yet even cozy in his grave at Boot Hill before Billy Stiles began to talk. As the other culprits were being brought in and prosecution witnesses were being deposed Billy talked louder and with such deep conviction that he was granted immunity. As his friends were roosting in jail and the ducks of justice were being lined up against them, Billy was scampering around Tombstone free as a bird. On April 8, 1900 he shot the jailer and broke them all free. Not all of them wanted to go, but Burt and Billy and Bravo Juan stole some horses and fled into the Dragoon Mountains. Billy was not the sort of man to abide much discomfort of any kind for long and he soon returned to his little bride in Casa Grande. He knew that arrangement could not last long and before the summer was out he had worked another immunity deal and was right back to ratting on his friends. Downing got a ten year stretch at Yuma of which he served seven; the Owens Brothers got lesser sentences because their robbery attempt failed. Matt Burts, who was nearly as big a rat and cry-baby as Stiles was got charged with assault with intent to commit robbery. He was given a five year stretch in Yuma but was out before he had barely even broken a sweat. Burt and Bravo escaped into Mexico and tried to keep a low profile. Long as they behaved themselves the rurales were willing to snooze away the lazy afternoons in peaceful contentment. Burt and Bravo were high profile bandits though and got the blame for every bit of outlawry that took place. Augustin Chacon was a wily border desperado who had been leading lawmen of both countries on a merry chase for twenty years. Chacon was a likely culprit in many of the more vicious crimes that Burt was accused of committing. Burt himself had a history of pursuing Chacon. Both of them, Burt and Chacon, were at the top of the wanted list hanging up in the office of Burt Mossman, the Arizona Ranger Captain. Mossman came up with a plan to nab them both but he needed Burt’s help. Mossman offered to go to bat for Burt in getting the Arizona charges dropped and even share the reward out on Chacon. He pointed out that the arrest of Chacon would be in Burt’s best interest, and that Burt could still reconcile with his wife in Arizona if the exile in Mexico was ended. Burt agreed to the plan but only if Billy Stiles could be included. Billy was working at the Cananea Mine nearby and could be a more persuasive influence on Chacon. Billy Stiles had planned two train robberies and got two lawmen to help him do it, he executed one of the robberies himself. He ratted out his friends, then shot a deputy and escaped from jail, and twice got immunity from prosecution. Now he was an undercover Arizona Ranger, by God. If there was anyone who could convince a serious felon like Augustin Chacon to stick his own head in a noose and smile as he was doing so it would be Billy Stiles, that silver-tongued devil. Chacon was no pushover. He was a vicious, violent killer and thief who had escaped capture and embarrassed lawmen on both sides of the border for twenty long years. The double-cross worked. Chacon was captured on September 2, 1902 and on November 12 up in Solomonville he swung through the gates of hell. On September 4, Burt Alvord crossed the border at Naco and surrendered himself into the custody of Cochise County Sheriff Del Lewis. By December the train robbery charge against him had been dropped and he was free on bail, but there were further charges pending. Billy Stiles had made of himself kind of a hero in the arrest of Chacon by talking to newspapermen. He had let go his job in the mine and was happily trading horses down in Bisbee. Perhaps some of them were even his own. On August 13 Burt’s bond was revoked on new indictments with new bail set at $9000. His backers could not afford to cover it and he returned to jail. The new indictments also applied to Billy and he was taken into custody. By autumn of 1903 Burt and Billy were both right back where they started in 1901; locked up in the same jailhouse in Tombstone that they had previously escaped from. On December 7, 1903 Burt entered a guilty plea to robbing the U. S. Mail during the robbery at Cochise Station and was sentenced to two years in Yuma. Billy’s defense team got him a change of venue to Phoenix, and he put on the docket there for trial in the April court session. While waiting for the wheels of justice to roll over on them Burt and Billy decided that discretion was the better part of valor and on the evening of December 15 they and 11 others escaped from the Tombstone jail again. It was a huge embarrassment for Sheriff Lewis and the entire judicial system in Cochise County. Huge manhunts were mounted but Burt and Billy made it safely into Mexico. They were located at a hideout a few miles west of Naco and after a brief exchange of gunfire in which Burt was hit in the ankle by a shotgun blast and shot through the upper thigh with a rifle slug Billy escaped into the brush. Burt was patched up and shipped off to Yuma to serve every minute of his two year sentence. Burt seems to have gone straight after his release but an adoring public continued to hound him and he went back on the run. In 1910 Burt Alvord died of a fever in Barbados. The day after Burt was captured Billy was run down again and once again he escaped after a brief gunfight to be heard from officially nevermore again. There has been speculation that Billy moved to Nevada under the assumed name of William Larkin, became a deputy sheriff in Humboldt County and was killed December 5, 1908 on the King River while serving court papers to man named Charlie Barr. Burt’s dad, Charles E. Alvord, was a respected jurist of twenty years duration on the bench of the Justice Court in Tombstone. His integrity was beyond reproach. His son, Burt, was living proof that a man simply cannot trust the quality of his own semen.
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