7 of the Baddest, Meanest, Most Cunning Outlaws in Texas History

Texas truly was the “Wild West,” filled with outlaws, thieves and n’er-do-wells. Here are seven of the worst.

1. Johnny “Center Strike” Pulmainski

A ruthless gunslinger and cattle thief, Abilene-born Pulmainski earned his nickname from his deadly accuracy with pistols, rifles and shotguns. In 1867, he took out an entire group of lawmen hunting him down for stealing 1200 head of cattle on a drive heading from Ft. Worth to Montana.

In less than an hour, he only used 15 bullets and shotgun shells to pick off 15 officers of the law. The following year, he only needed ONE bullet to kill two sheriffs tracking him in the Texas Panhandle.

2. Madeleine “Short Fuse” Bloitupagin

Perhaps the most notorious female outlaw ever known in Texas, Bloitupagin was the daughter of explosives expert Howard Bloitupagin. The brain behind a rag tag group of outsiders and vagrant criminals known as the Dirty Thirty, she masterminded more than 300 bank heists.

She developed a new and dangerous “short fuse” method to blow open vault doors. While it proved very effective, whoever lit the fuse had only a few seconds to clear the area. She was careful to always talk one of her cohorts into lighting the fuse, and over the years 75 men didn’t get out fast enough.

3. Frances “Ride Out” McForsterson

McForsterson specialized in train robberies, leading the feared “Thunder Raiders” in a string of train robberies all over Texas in the 1850s and the 1860s.

He taught his crew to ride along side speeding trains with one gang member sitting on top of the shoulders of another, sometimes stacked five or six high. This allowed one person to focus on riding while the others could shoot at anyone foolish enough to try to defend the attack.

4. Jules “Jailbreak” Kolkranmet

Let’s say you are a career criminal in Texas in 1847. Despite your success, some of your gang gets caught in a botched raid and are being held in a jail cell in Bandera, Amarillo or Santa Anna.

Who you gonna call?

Chances are you’d get word to Kolkranmet, who had an uncanny knack for busting criminals out of jail. A lifetime student of espionage, reconnaissance and shadowing techniques, he relied on deception, confusion and subterfuge rather than brute force and explosives to spring more than 450 criminals in a career spanning four decades.

5. Kristy “Call Me Jed” Lawrider

Like many female outlaws of the day, Lawrider often dressed up as a man to mask her identity in a string of more than 500 train robberies, bank heists and “snatch and grabs.”

After a long dry spell, her long career came to an end on a down note in 1867 when she shoplifed some pickles and mincemeat from a general store in Paint Rock, Texas. At first, the arresting officer did not recognize her as she was wearing women’s clothes at the time.

His doubts were confirmed when he stopped her on the boardwalk where she wheeled and brandished a shotgun from under her dress. She missed the officer, who returned fire and shot her dead, pickle juice and mincemeat flying all over the front of the neighboring post office.

6. Emmanuel “Rest Easy” Escondido

Escondido was a cold-blooded killer, a hired gun in land where shooting skills and a calm hand often meant the difference between living and dying. He worked as one of the country’s first dedicated hit men, stalking his targets for weeks to find the optimum time for the kill.

His trademark was to “shoot to wound” on the first shot, then walk up to the victim and say, “rest easy,” before unleashing the remaining 5 bullets from either his trusty Colt 1849 Army-Navy Game Revolver or a Smith and Wesson “Black Book” Model 15.

7. King “Stache” Bublinksy

Sporting perhaps the bushiest moustache west of the Waco-Corpus Christi line, Bublinksy joined the Rio Grande Boys in 1969 to run raids into Mexico to loot towns as far south as Monterrey. Fluent in Spanish, he was skilled at “lightning strikes,” high-speed raids where 50 members of the Rio Grande Boys would thunder into town on horseback, rob and loot as much as possible and run back to the US before victims could sound the alarm.

Double-crossed by a loyal gang member, Bublinsky was shot in the back as he left a brothel in Laredo in 1889. It was payback for a triple murder Bublinksy committed five years earlier. Three people behind him in the local theater wouldn’t stop talking during a Shakespeare play. After asking them to be quiet one time, he turned and shot them in cold blood. The red stains can still be seen on the seat backs to this day.