Stagecoach robber charmed jury with Hart and soul

Clay is off today. Here’s a column first published May 26, 2008.

There is an anniversary of interest this week. On May 30, 1899, the notorious Pearl Hart and her partner Joe Boot pulled off what is thought to be the last stagecoach robbery in Arizona Territory. Hart was born in Canada in 1871. As an adult she took a circuitous and unsavory life path that eventually led her to the Globe mining camps, where she hooked up with Boot, a down-on-his-luck miner. Some stories say it was Hart’s idea to rob the stage; some say it was Boot’s. In any event, they found themselves lying in wait for the stage from Globe to Benson. Hart, armed with a .44-caliber Colt, waved down the stage and she and Boot took about $450 from the driver and three passengers.

Hart and Boot rode away and got lost. They were arrested and jailed in Globe within a few days.

Hart was an immediate sensation, granting jailhouse interviews, posing for photos, signing autographs. At her trial in Florence, she owned up to her crime, but said she needed money for her sick mother. A charmed jury acquitted her.

Judge Fletcher Doan was furious at the verdict and seated a new jury that convicted Hart of unlawfully carrying a gun. She got five years in the Territorial Prison in Yuma. Boot got 30 years, escaped after two and was never heard from again.

Hart was released after 18 months. She drifted to Kansas City for a brief career onstage, but not much is known after that. She visited Arizona in 1924, stopping by the Florence courthouse. She is believed to have died in the 1950s.