Ben Cravens Verdict Last of the Oklahoma Outlaws

CRAVENS, WELTY, BATEMAN

Posted By: David W Sinclair (email)
Date: 3/2/2008 at 13:16:58

IT'S SURE BEN CRAVENS -- He Is Glad to Get Off With a Sentence For Life.
Guthrie, Okla, Jan 25, ---Charles Maust, the former Missouri state convict is Ben Cravens, the former Okla. outlaw, and he is guilty of the murder of Alvin Bateman at Red Rock, Ok., March 18, 1901. That is the verdict of the jury to which the case was given at noon today. The penalty is life imprisonment at hard labor. He probably will be sent to Leavenworth, where his partner, Bert Welty, is serving a life sentence.

The last of the Oklahoma outlaws will be arraigned Monday morning at 9 o'clock for sentence. He was pale when the verdict was read at 5:26 o'clock, but otherwise showed no change from his careless manner. The guards at the jail, who surrounded him in the courtroom, reported him hard to handle today. Heretofore, he has been mild mannered, well behaved and kind. Extra guards have been supplied. In the courtroom today he was surrounded by six deputy marshals, a double number.

The United States attorney, John Embry, went home to bed immediately after the case went to the jury at noon. Embry, unknown to all except his closest friends, had been ill for several days and collapsed after the trail. He spoke this morning for two hours. Cravens escaped from the Lansing, Kansas, penitentiary Nov. 16, 1900. He was serving a 20-year sentence for highway robbery, committed at Elgin, Kan. He escaped with Sam Smith, who was killed by the guards, and Estell, who is now in the Joliet penitentiary for train robbery. Cravens returned almost immediately to Oklahoma and participated in a chain of robberies. In Jan. 1901, he visited the Welty farm, in Kingfisher country and induced Bert Welty, whom he had known in the Lansing prison, to join him. At Red Rock they robbed an Indian trading place in the Otoe country and killed the manager, Bateman, who also was assistant postmaster. For twenty minutes the robbers kept nine men lined up with their hands in the air.

In the fight, Cravens mistook Welty for a pursuer and shot him, leaving him to die on the prairie. Welty crawled fifteen miles to the home of a friend, where he was captured the next day. Cravens also sought concealment at a friend's home, which was surrounded late the next day. In escaping he killed a deputy marshal, Tom Johnson, of Pawnee County. Numerous attempts have been made since to capture Cravens, but all failed until early last year.

A barber in the Missouri penitentiary informed an officer that a convict called Charles Maust was known in the Kansas prison as Ben Cravens, and that he had shaved him there. That led to an investigation. Maust was identified as Cravens and brought to the federal jail here last November to stand trial for the Red Rock murder. He declared he was not Cravens and on that ground only fought the case.

He has been a desperate man for twenty years. He escaped from the county jail at Topeka and the Pottawatomie county jail at Tecumseh, Ok. When arrested as Maust he attempted a jail break at Mound City, Mo.

--Guthrie, Ok. Jan 26.-"There is one thing sure: when I get up to Leavenworth I'll get even with Bert Welty." Ben Cravens, given a life sentence in the federal prison at Leavenworth for the murder, with Welty, of Alvin Bateman at Red Rock eleven years ago, no longer seeks to hide his identity. Welty was brought from Leavenworth to identify Cravens. The Leavenworth warden will be notified officially of Cravens' threat and it is not probable that the two former outlaw partners will ever get together in the prison. Cravens admits that he expected to be hanged. He showed he was overjoyed with the life sentence. Last night at the jail he played cards with the other prisoners, laughing and joking.
----