A sad face

Laura Bullion, member of the Wild Bunch gang, head-and-shoulders portrait in1893, mounted on Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency identification card.

Laura Bullion (October 1876 – December 2, 1961) was a female outlaw of the Old West. Most sources indicate Bullion was born of German and Native American heritage in Knickerbocker, near Mertzon in Irion County, Texas; the exact day of her birth is unclear. Data in the 1880 and 1900 Federal Census suggest a Laura Bullion might have been born on a farm in the township of Palarm near Conway in Faulkner County, Arkansas, and might have grown up in Tom Green County, Texas. Other sources claim Laura Bullion was born in Kentucky in 1873.

In the 1890s, Laura Bullion was a member of Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch gang; her cohorts were fellow outlaws, including the Sundance Kid, “Black Jack” Ketchum, and Kid Curry. For several years in the 1890s, she was romantically involved with outlaw Ben Kilpatrick (“The Tall Texan”), a bank and train robber and an acquaintance of her father, who had been an outlaw, as well. In 1901, Bullion was convicted of robbery and sentenced to five years in prison for her participation in the Great Northern train robbery. She was released in 1905 after serving three years and six months of her punishment.

Laura Bullion moved to Memphis, Tennessee in 1918, posing as a war widow and using assumed names. She supported herself as a householder and seamstress, and later as a drapery maker, dressmaker and interior designer. Her fortunes declined in the late 1940s, at which time she was without an occupation. In 1961, she died of heart disease at the Shelby County Hospital in Memphis. Her final resting place is at the Memorial Park Cemetery in Memphis.