Leon Reporter, Leon, Iowa
Thursday, May 5, l904

'Black Sheep of Lineville Family Safe from Officers who are after Him. Marries Mexican Senorita.'

BEN CRAVENS, the notorious Oklahoma outlaw, is the black sheep of a respectable family living at Lineville, Wayne County. CRAVENS is one of the smoothest and most polished of his kind and this polish and suavity has at last won him as the story goes, a beautiful Mexican senorita for a bride and a high social position in the land of Maximillian.

The recent arrest in Oklahoma of a man the officers thought answered the description of CRAVENS has set all ambitious sleuths to thinking in a vain effort to devise a way to locate and effect the recapture of the notorious bandit king. And all the time the now pious BEN is basking serenely in the protection of grand old Mexico, where his connection with a family of wealth and position affords him immunity from the greedy laws of Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and divers other states and republics prominent on the map.

At least such is the story that is being quickly whispered among GRAVENS' good friends -- and he seems to have hosts of them -- throughout the southwest. Masquerading as the nephew of a prominent ex-official of the State of Pennsylvania, CRAVENS is said to have gained admission to the most seclusive drawing rooms of the City of Mexico, where he met and loved a young senorita of wealth and beauty. With an improvised family tree dating back to when time began, the bandit king of many states at once dazzled the scheming mamma, which resulted in a marriage with the rich and beautiful senorita, who, the rumors add, has already borne him an heir.

Strong with the administration of the republic with position and wealth at his command, CRAVENS can now laugh at the scores of officers who, for years, dogged his every step and followed him through states and territories and have plenty of time to recall and meditate over the downfall of a score or more of the officers of the law who, to use the mighty BEN's own expression, are roasting below.

Since making his miraculous and sensational escape from the Kansas penitentiary by charging the guard with a gun he had carved out of soft pine and covered with tin foil with the exception possibly of a limited number of stunts in imperial Missouri that have been charged up to him, "MR." CRAVENS has sojourned in the southwest confining his operations principally to Oklahoma, since that territory has gained the sobriquet of "the haven for all cut-throats who can no longer remain in Kansas, Texas and Arkansas." In a few localities in Oklahoma, CRAVENS is "wanted" by the officers but every town from the meanest hamlet to the more metropolitan cities, harbors hosts of his friends, who will spare no means to insure his safety when he takes a jaunt through the territory.

Despite the fact that CRAVENS is wanted by the United States officers on a charge of murder in the Ponca Indian reservation and every deputy marshal in the territory has visions of a sensational capture, his last stunt in Oklahoma was to pay a visit to some of his friends in Governor Tom Ferguson's home town, where it is said that getting sleepy, and not caring to scrawl his name on the hotel register, he slept on a pool table in an all-night saloon, knowing that he was surrounded by friends who would order an officer out of the house should one dare to appear. Prior to this last visit, or directly after his escape from the Kansas penitentiary, CRAVENS traveled as a full fledged salesman, was known throughout the territory and among strangers, was supposed to carry a heavy line of staple goods. In that capacity he visited the capital city every fortnight and it is alleged that he once attended an administration ball and afterwards dined with the United States Marshal and several members of the territorial counsel without his identity being detected.

Copied by Nancee(McMurtrey)Seifert
"With permission from the Leon Journal Reporter"
May l5, 2003