by Paul Martin
In February 1904, the Arizona Rangers and Cochise County’s latest sheriff, Del Lewis, cornered Alvord and Stiles at a ranch near the town of Naco, Mexico. When the two fugitives drew their guns, the posse opened fire. The shootout was a farcical variation on the last stand of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Alvord was hit in the ankle and thigh, while Stiles, with his usual dumb luck, got away. Alvord was hauled back to Tombstone and quickly transferred to the Yuma Territorial Prison. There would be no escaping this time. Inexplicably, his original sentence was not extended. For all his crimes, he got off with a piddling two-year term.
When Alvord’s stretch at Yuma was over, he traveled to Los Angeles to visit his younger sister, Mary, announcing to the world, “I am out for good.”16 The tale of the lawman turned train robber might have ended there if he hadn’t left so many hard feelings in his wake. Authorities in Arizona and Mexico still thought he had crimes to answer for. In October 1905, Los Angeles detectives showed up at his sister’s house to serve extradition papers, but Alvord had disappeared. From then on, his life became a mystery. Stories cropped up about him living in Canada, in the Canal Zone, in Argentina, Brazil, Barbados, and Jamaica. In 1938, two of Alvord’s nieces told the Arizona Historical Society that their uncle had died in 1910 on an island off the eastern coast of Panama.17 Maybe he did, or maybe he hopped a slow boat to China or trekked to Timbuktu. With Alvord, nothing would be too outlandish to believe.
It’s hard to fathom the life of Burt Alvord. Perhaps he spent so much time around criminals that the line between acceptable and unacceptable behavior became blurred for him. Criminals killed, and he killed. Criminals took what wasn’t theirs, and he skimmed a little when he could. They were all men with guns, living violent lives. So what difference did it make if he robbed big time instead of just holding back a little recovered loot now and then? Or perhaps, like so many men in power, Alvord came to see himself as above the law. Most likely, he had the seed for lawlessness inside him from the beginning, and only his father’s influence and the force of habit kept him on the up and up for those fifteen years he spent as a peacekeeper. Mix in alcohol and bad company, and you had the classic recipe for disaster.
Nonetheless, it’s difficult to understand how a man who upheld the law with such vigor for so long could make the wrong turn. He wasn’t desperate or down on his luck. He had a wife and home, a good job, a decent reputation. Why would someone with so much going for him throw it all away? At first, he probably thought he could avoid being caught, as most men do who dabble in larceny. Yet after his initial arrest, he wasn’t contrite. He chose flight rather than doing his time and putting his mistake behind him, something you only expect from hardened offenders. Even stranger was his decision to escape a second time, when he knew he’d received little more than a slap on the wrist for two train robberies, a jailbreak, and assorted other transgressions. It seems by that point, Alvord just didn’t give a damn, preferring to live for the moment.
Those who visit the old Cochise County Courthouse in Tombstone, now a state historic park, can still see the courtrooms where Justice Charles Alvord once sat in hearings and his wayward son later stood in the dock. It’s sad to contemplate that juxtaposition. Of course, this isn’t the only time a family has demonstrated such vivid contrasts in morality. It’s virtually a cliché in the daily news, but it still seems shocking. The spectacle of a good person turning bad is one of the eternal mysteries of human behavior. The central question it raises just won’t go away. Why? In the case of Burt Alvord, it whispers to us even after a hundred years, like an errant breeze blowing down from the Huachuca Mountains.
Joseph Weil
Judging by his exquisitely tailored suit, diamond stickpin, and aristocratic manner, the bearded, bespectacled Dr. James R. Warrington might have been a banker or a captain of industry. From the looks of his yellow vest and spats and the yellow gloves lying on the table beside his gray homburg and walking stick, he was also a man with a whimsical sense of style.
As a steady procession of cars and delivery trucks honked and jitterbugged down Chicago’s Michigan Avenue, the red-haired Dr. Warrington leaned forward and confidentially mentioned to his companion that he’d recently acquired a $300,000 option on some oil lands that were worth millions. But, alas, Dr. Warrington had only been able to raise $262,000 toward the purchase of the property. It was frustrating for him to come so close to being able to profit from this fantastic opportunity. If he could just lay his hands on that last $38,000. Bargains like this didn’t come along every day, even in the effervescent economic climate of 1924.
Seated across the table from Dr. Warrington, businessman H. L. Kutter of Hamilton, Ohio, stroked his chin and considered the situation. He hadn’t known Dr. Warrington long, but he’d become convinced that the man was a savvy investor. Kutter had been impressed by Warrington’s professional knowledge and his thriving place of business. As the dapper Dr. Warrington gazed thoughtfully into the middle distance, Mr. Kutter made up his mind. With a determined look, he announced that he wanted in on the deal.
A few hours later, Kutter delivered $38,000 in cash to Dr. Warrington, satisfied that his investment would pay him back with an immense windfall. Sadly for the Ohio executive, his new partner—along with his $38,000—disappeared forthwith. What’s more, when Kutter returned to Warrington’s office to make inquiries, he found it deserted, with a For Rent sign hanging on the door.1
Mr. H. L. Kutter had just become another victim of one of the slickest confidence men to ever ply his trade on American soil—the infamous Joseph “Yellow Kid” Weil, a colorful grifter with an uncanny talent for separating the gullible from their money while using a variety of assumed identities, this time as the elegant, sagacious Dr. Warrington. Over the years, the Yellow Kid passed himself off as a stockbroker, banker, physician, mining engineer, chemist, geologist, land developer, and international purchasing agent. His entire life was one elaborate game of make-believe. The Chicago Tribune dubbed him “the genius of things which are not as they seem to be.”2
A natural-born actor and student of human nature, Weil knew how to take advantage of one of man’s predominant traits: greed. With his old-school eloquence and distaste for violence—like most grifters, he declined to carry a gun—Weil was a sort of philosopher-hoodlum. He maintained that “you can’t cheat an honest man.”3 He looked upon his crimes as opportunities to teach the avaricious a lesson. “Every victim of one of my schemes had larceny in his heart. An honest man would have had no part of any of my schemes. They all wanted something for nothing.” Weil instead gave them “nothing for something.”4
From the 1890s until 1942, when he retired after a stretch in the Atlanta federal penitentiary, Joseph Weil ran scams in and around Chicago and in other US cities—inventing or perfecting many of the frauds that have become standards in the wildly creative repertoire of confidence men everywhere. Weil is credited with originating the phony bookie operation portrayed years later in the Paul Newman–Robert Redford movie The Sting, a “long con” that entailed setting up an ersatz betting parlor staffed by hired flimflammers pretending to be employees and gamblers. Weil himself was like a filmmaker. He had the ability to create a setting and assemble a cast of characters then orchestrate everything to the desired end. Only, “the actor has a script carefully prepared for him in advance,” Weil said. “I made my own script as I went along.”5
Weil was born in Chicago in 1875, the son of German immigrants who ran a neighborhood grocery store. Although he was a good student, Weil left school at seventeen and began working as a bill collector. The job didn’t pay much, but Weil figured out a way to supplement his wages. Noticing that other employees were skimming from the collections, he informed them that he would keep quiet for a cut of the take, his first foray into crime. “I had seen how much more money was being made by skullduggery than by honest toil,” he said.6
Two years later, Weil signed on as a shill in a traveling medicine show run by Chicago grifter Doc Mer
iwether, who would help educate Weil in the art of the con. Weil’s role in the show was to pose as a member of the crowd and vouch for the curative powers of Meriwether’s Elixir in order to encourage locals to buy a bottle of the potent concoction, a nasty-looking black liquid consisting of rainwater laced with alcohol and laxative.
During his time with Doc Meriwether, Weil honed his skills in a variety of “short cons”—simple scams that required little preparation, such as the shell game and three-card monte. After a couple of summers in the hinterlands, Weil returned to his hometown to take up his life’s work as a big-city con artist. He began to associate with other Chicago swindlers, including a man named Frank Hogan. The two became partners for a time, and they often hung out together at a bar owned by city alderman “Bathhouse John” Coughlin. It was Coughlin who gave Weil his nickname. The country’s first successful newspaper comic strip, “Hogan’s Alley,” was popular at the time. The strip featured a goofy looking character named Mickey Dugan—also known as the Yellow Kid. Bathhouse John suggested that the sidekick of Frank Hogan should fittingly be known as the Yellow Kid, and the tag stuck.7
Chicago was particularly fertile ground for a grifter in the early 1900s, thanks to a local law that defined confidence schemes as activities that took “unfair advantage of an unwary stranger.”8 Yellow Kid Weil skirted the law by preying on Chicagoans who weren’t exactly innocent. As usual, Weil knew how to find his victim’s weak spots. He also knew where to flush out a pigeon, and the Chicago racetracks were some of the best places.
In one of his racetrack scams, Weil acquired a sleek, impressive-looking thoroughbred named Black Fonso. The animal turned out to be a “morning glory”—a horse with the curious trait of being fast in the morning but slow in the afternoon, which is when thoroughbred races take place. Nevertheless, Weil envisioned a way to make money with Black Fonso. He invited his marks to witness the horse’s speed in a morning workout then told them that he owned a much slower look-alike horse he was running under the same name. Weil said that when the betting odds on the slow horse dropped far enough, he intended to substitute the fast Black Fonso in a race and clean up. The marks naturally wanted in on the action. Obviously, there never were two horses, just the one Black Fonso that always ran out of the money.
On the day of the race in which Weil supposedly substituted his speedier horse, he and his marks placed large bets on Black Fonso. The marks didn’t realize they were handing over their money to one of Weil’s pals who was posing as a betting agent. As usual, Black Fonso came in far back in the pack, and although no wagers were actually placed, the marks thought that they’d lost their money on a fair bet. But even if they’d suspected that Weil had ripped them off, they wouldn’t have complained to the authorities, since they’d have had to admit that they’d bet on a horse they believed to be a ringer. Because of their willing participation in a shady deal, the victims were simultaneously fleeced and muzzled—the hallmark of most successful cons and the reason that relatively few swindlers are ever convicted.9
Weil always employed an exceptional level of detail in pulling off his scams, hewing as close to reality as possible. “I had a positive passion for fact,” he said. “That’s what made me such a good liar.”10 To set up his stock swindles, Weil would create a phony brokerage office that included scurrying messengers, a clattering ticker tape machine, and a functional stock index board. On other occasions, he simulated working bank offices, staffing them with cronies who passed themselves off as customers, tellers, and managers. He added touches of verisimilitude by setting out deposit slips swiped from a real bank and prominently displaying stacks of boodle—fake currency—and canvas bags filled with metal washers to look like sacks of coins. When the sting was over, Weil and his friends packed up their props and vamoosed.
To convince his marks that he was who he said he was, Weil fabricated magazine and newspaper articles describing the achievements of whatever character he was playing at the time, complete with photos of himself. He also inserted his photo in copies of books written by an eminent mining engineer he sometimes pretended to be. He printed phony business cards and stock certificates by the bushel. By writing to well-known companies and then copying the letterheads on the replies he received, he was able to forge seemingly real correspondence to dangle under the noses of his victims.
Another “long con” Weil took part in involved a mind-reading fortune-teller who preyed on wealthy women. With the aid of an accomplice concealed behind a curtain and a telephone headset hidden under his turban, the swami was able to “discover” secrets about his clients and offer them nuggets of wisdom. During one promising session, the bogus soothsayer dispensed this bit of bunkum to a rich spinster from Maryland: “I see a man coming into your life. This man wears a beard. I can’t tell you when or under what circumstances you will meet him. Nor can I tell you what he will advise. But heed him! For the bearded one holds the key to your fortune.”11
Shortly after the woman returned home, a bearded man appeared on her doorstep asking to use her telephone. The stranger’s car had broken down as he was passing the woman’s estate. It was the Yellow Kid, of course, posing as a well-to-do businessman on his way to Baltimore to close a sale on some valuable real estate. Ingratiating himself with his patter about his world travels, Weil accepted the woman’s offer to stay in her home until his car could be repaired. By the time the Kid departed, he’d sold his hostess a parcel of “fabulously rich oil lands” in Texas for $180,000—property that had cost him $1,500 just days before.12
Weil delighted in inventing new ways to lighten his victims’ wallets. He once published a financial newsletter touting the worthless Copper Queen mine in Colorado, whose stocks he’d acquired from a friend for a penny a share. After mailing his newsletter to a list of wealthy investors, he was able to unload thousands of Copper Queen shares for five dollars a pop. In another fit of inspiration, the artful grifter started a company that gave away free “dream vacation” lots. He then raked in exorbitant fees when the new owners registered their deeds. The lots, which had cost him a dollar an acre, were located in the middle of a Michigan wasteland.13
Weil also made a killing through a short-lived Ponzi scheme based on an “investment bank” that did nothing but bet on horse races, and in another imaginative ploy he conned a rich businessman into betting on a fixed boxing match in which one of the fighters spewed out copious amounts of chicken blood and pretended to die in the ring. In his most lucrative and long-running con, the Yellow Kid persuaded marks to invest in the nonexistent Verde-Grande Copper Mining Company, convincing them that the mammoth J. P. Morgan financial firm was secretly after the shares. He once touched an Omaha banker for $350,000 with this ruse, his biggest single score ever.14 As with all his tricks, the moment Weil laid his hands on his victim’s money, poof—he was gone.
Most of the suckers that Weil bamboozled with such schemes were wealthy businessmen, bankers, doctors, or lawyers. He seldom bothered with people who had little money. According to Weil, successful professionals were the most gullible marks of all because they felt that they were too smart to be hoodwinked. “They had plenty of money, but they fell for my schemes because they were greedy for more. In my time, I devised some ingenious plans to relieve these people of part of their wealth.”15
This demi–Robin Hood stole from the rich all right, but he kept the proceeds for himself, although he didn’t hold on to any of it for very long. He claimed to have raked in between eight and ten million dollars during his long career, and he blew it all on high living, freely indulging in his tastes for expensive clothes, fine food, and fancy cars. “People have often asked me what I did with all the money that came into my possession,” he once wrote. “The cash melted away,” he explained, noting that “we often entertained on a lavish scale.”16 That was an understatement. After laying out a small fortune in St. Louis for three days of champagne, showgirls, and a hired ten-piece band, he excused his excesses with a shrug. “We made money
in large amounts and we spent it that way. We cared for money for only one reason—the fun and the things it would buy.”17
Weil put his silver tongue to good use in Chicago’s courtrooms, where he was a regular guest. A list of his larcenous activities in the October 26, 1918, edition of the Chicago Tribune ran nearly half a column—and that was early in his career. The Tribune’s September 19, 1925, edition reported that Weil had talked his way out of a year in jail and a thousand-dollar fine over a bad check charge. When the law caught up with him in the matter of the $38,000 swindle he’d pulled on H. L. Kutter, the Yellow Kid unleashed this flurry of oratory: “The dastardly fabrications of the metropolitan newspapers, the reprehensible conduct of journalists to surround me with a nimbus of guilt, is astonishing,” he proclaimed. “It is what has led to this prosecution. I am an honest man now. I am innocent of the crime mentioned. There has been gross misrepresentation here.”18 Even though they had him dead to rights, you had to tip your hat to a crook who could come up with the phrase “nimbus of guilt.”
For all of his many offenses, Weil paid a surprisingly small price. Though he was arrested repeatedly, he only served about a dozen years behind bars altogether, including stays in Joliet, Leavenworth, and Atlanta. He accepted his punishment with equanimity, saying his imprisonment gave him “time to relax, reflect, and catch up on my reading.”19
Weil always announced that he was going straight after every jail term, and he gave it a try a few times, starting companies to sell chewing gum and coffee, working as a door-to-door salesman for the Catholic Encyclopedia, running a Chicago hotel, and even managing a circus. But each time he returned to the confidence game. However, in 1942, following his final two years in prison, Weil gave up his criminal career for good. In his late sixties, he retired to a quiet life in Chicago. Having blown through all the money he’d stolen over the years, he earned an honest living by making telephone solicitations for churches and charitable organizations.20
