The story reads like a dime novel: A white-masked train robber succeeds in acquiring “donations” from Union Pacific passengers and, despite a massive manhunt, eludes capture. He robs again. After being caught, he escapes from prison, holds up another train, and is returned to the penitentiary. There, he meets a priest who helps him repent. The robber earns parole, marries, operates a restaurant, and writes a book about his experiences.
Bill Carlisle, right, and his captor Sheriff Rubie Rivera, on the steps of the Carbon County courthouse in Rawlins, 1916. (Courtesy Carbon County Museum.)
Bill Carlisle, right, and his captor Sheriff Rubie Rivera, on the steps of the Carbon County courthouse in Rawlins, 1916. (Courtesy Carbon County Museum.)
But this tale is not fiction. Bill Carlisle and the great rewards offered by the Union Pacific Railroad for his capture “dead or alive” were real. He committed three robberies in 1916 and a fourth in 1919 after his escape from the Wyoming State Penitentiary.
Carlisle, the youngest of five children, was born May 4, 1890, when his father, a carpenter and Civil War veteran, was 60 years old. His mother, twenty-three years younger, died nine months after Bill was born. Because their father was in ill health, the children stayed with relatives or in orphanages. Bill stayed at an orphanage in York, Penn., his mother’s hometown.
