Joe Boot
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Joe Boot was an outlaw from Arizona. A farmer by profession, he lived in Globe, east of Phoenix.
In Mammoth, Arizona, he met Pearl Hart, who worked for the miners there. She was the instigator of Boot's downfall. On May 30, 1899, they held up a stagecoach at Cane Springs, on the Globe to Florence stagecoach route, near the present day town of Kearny, AZ. It was the last known stagecoach robbery in Arizona.
Boot and Hart managed to take only about 400 dollars and a revolver from three train passengers. They escaped, but five days later, they were found in Benson, Arizona.
Boot was sentenced to thirty years in the notorious Yuma Territorial Prison. Hart, who had pleaded her case to the all-male jury (as was the law at the time: women weren't allowed to serve on juries), was acquitted of the stage-coach robbery, but retried immediately and found guilty of theft of the stage driver's handgun. She got 5 years and got out early at that. Joe Boot escaped after two years and was never recaptured.[1]
[edit] Notes
- ^ Stanley, John: The Arizona Republic, 3/16/2008, Article Yuma Park, page T9
