The Blalock-Fry Gang pulled off a string of robberies.
On the night of March 16, 1888, in Columbus, Kansas, John and William Blalock shot Constable David Gordon, then crossed the road to their home, where their mother, Ellen, asked them about the gunfire. John, 28, told her he and Bill, 26, had killed “some goddamn son of a bitch prowling around in front of the house.” Ellen Blalock made a fuss, since a constable was involved, but John told her Gordon had cocked his pistol and would have shot them had they not shot first. Apparently that explanation satisfied her, because she fed the boys and gave Bill some money she had been holding for him. The brothers then changed clothes and left the house. They had a good thing going with the Fry brothers—robbing and stealing here and there without having to go far from home. But now they had killed a lawman, and that was serious business. Gordon’s murder marked the beginning of the end for their neighborhood gang.
A string of crimes had plagued the Columbus area in southeast Kansas through much of 1887. In January burglars took assorted items from the home of Fred Basom, doused the house with coal oil and set it on fire. In late May, robbers hit a railroad car in Columbus. A month later, Basom was wounded by what at the time was considered stray gunfire. Later in the summer, outlaws robbed a post office/store at nearby Sherwin, and broke into a jewelry store in Columbus.
After a brief lull, the crime wave resumed in March 1888. Burglars broke into the train depot at nearby Crestline, and a week later robbers knocked over a store at Lowell. The citizens of Cherokee County grew increasingly fearful that a gang of outlaws dwelt in their midst. The authorities may have had their suspicions about who was responsible for the crimes as early as 1887, but there was no proof. No crimes were recorded at the end of that year. The Blalock boys and their friends the Frys had been away for much of the winter. Their return to Columbus in March coincided with the renewed crime spree. Local lawmen took note and kept an eye on the Blalock and Fry families.
The Blalocks did not have a sterling reputation. The father, 53-year-old Oliver, had recently undergone treatment at an insane asylum, and Ellen had had her hands full raising her brood, which included John, Bill and one other adult son, Clay, as well as five daughters. Ten years earlier, John had spent a couple of years in jail for stealing cattle, and lawmen suspected that shortly after his release, he and Bill had stolen a brace of mules. One bright spot was 18-year-old Clara, a local schoolteacher who was well liked.
The Fry family had a similarly unsavory reputation, although none of that brood —Andrew and Mary, their three adult sons (Alex, Dan and Fred) and at least three daughters—had apparently ever served time in prison or an asylum. Twenty-one-year-old cousin Grant Alley was also staying with the family. Andrew Fry was unemployed because, according to one of his daughters, it was “very dull here for men to get work.” The Blalock sons and the Fry boys were known cohorts.
On the evening of March 15, 1888, one night after robbers hit the Lowell store, outlaws stole $360 from the railroad depot in Columbus. Cherokee County Sheriff Jim Babb was convinced more than ever that the Blalocks and Frys were involved. The next evening, he sent Constable Gordon to the Blalocks’ neighborhood to monitor the family’s movements. It so happened that John and Bill Blalock were visiting at the Fry residence, several blocks away, but Gordon didn’t know that. For most of the evening, the constable waited at a lookout spot behind a hedge among some apple trees at a nursery across the street from the Blalock house.
Gordon was probably half asleep by the time the Blalock boys made their way home near midnight. John carried a Winchester rifle and Bill a shotgun, but they were not known to have shot anybody. As the brothers neared their house, Bill pointed out a shadowy figure on the nursery grounds. The two stopped in the road, and John called out, asking the man what he wanted. Gordon did not identify himself. The only answer was the click of a pistol being cocked. John immediately fired his rifle, which sent Gordon running. He didn’t get far before Bill blasted him with the shotgun. “Don’t shoot!” Gordon yelled as he fell. “I’m badly shot.”
The Blalocks held their fire and cautiously approached the fallen man. He was dead by the time they reached him. They then went to their house. Ellen heard her sons’ tale and gave Bill his money, but she did not notify authorities. The brothers took a lantern to double check on Gordon. Yes, he was still quite dead. Next, Bill and John walked downtown, then took the road west. A few miles outside of Columbus, they turned south. They spent the next day, Saturday, March 17, holed up in a rural schoolhouse.
That morning, passersby discovered Gordon’s body and reported it to Sheriff Babb. It wasn’t hard for him to put two and two together. He held the Blalock parents and their daughters as witnesses and obtained a search warrant. In the Blalock house, he found a cache of stolen property and other incriminating evidence.
Later that morning, a coroner’s jury questioned Clara Blalock. She denied any knowledge of Gordon’s death or John and William’s whereabouts. Letters found at her home and addressed to her alluded to criminal activities, but she said she didn’t know who had written them (it turned out to be John). Two younger sisters also testified they knew nothing.
That night Clara and her mother finally spilled the beans after Clara was granted immunity and her mother leniency. Ellen Blalock told all she knew about Gordon’s death, and Clara revealed details of many of the crimes committed in the area during the past couple of years. She implicated her brothers and the Frys and admitted being the gang’s “secretary.”
On Sunday, John and Bill Blalock walked back home, but seeing the house under guard, they retreated several miles southwest of town. They sought shelter in another rural schoolhouse by sawing a hole in the roof to access the attic. A passing young man heard the sawing and spotted a shadowy figure out front. He hurried down the road and told the farmer he worked for what he’d seen.
The following morning, the farmer went into Columbus and reported to the sheriff, who sent a posse to the schoolhouse. The lawmen soon discovered the attic hideout and shouted for the fugitives to surrender. The Blalocks, fearful of being shot or lynched, did so and were whisked away to the county jail at Columbus.
The coroner’s inquest was in noon recess when word reached the courthouse square the brothers were in jail down the street. A crowd soon gathered, and some townspeople called for the killers to be strung up. Cooler heads prevailed when a posse member reminded the group that the Blalocks had surrendered peacefully on condition they would be protected.
On March 19, testimony before the coroner’s jury continued. Bill Blalock implicated the Blalock-Fry Gang in nearly all the burglaries and robberies that had plagued Cherokee County in recent years. He also confessed that he and John had killed Constable Gordon not because they feared for their lives but “because he was watching our house.” John Blalock gave much the same testimony. He said he’d “been in the business of robbing…about three years.” John also admitted having burned down a factory in Columbus because he “was mad at everybody for the hard luck I was in.” Also giving testimony was 18-year-old Helen Fry, who said she’d tried to talk her brothers out of “yanking” other people’s property. But she said they told her they “didn’t give a damn” and planned to keep on stealing. Clay Blalock was arrested that same day in Abilene, but he was released when it was determined he was not part of the gang.
At their preliminary hearings in May, the principals in the gang pled guilty to a variety of crimes. John and Bill Blalock were sentenced to life in prison for murder and robbery. Their mother got three years for receiving stolen property. The three Fry brothers and their cousin received from six to 16 years for burglary, while their father got five years for receiving and concealing stolen property.
John Blalock died in prison in 1898, but Bill was pardoned in 1908 and went to live with his sister Clara in Wisconsin, where he worked as a cobbler until his death in 1915. Their mother, Ellen, served a couple of years in prison before returning to Columbus, where she died in 1901 at 62. The Frys did their time and were released.
A newspaperman claimed at the time of the Blalock-Fry arrests that they were “one of the worst murderous and thieving gangs that has ever infested any country.” While this was a fine piece of exaggeration, the gang’s notorious reputation was grist for the gossip mill throughout southeast Kansas back in 1888. And more than a century later, while the Blalocks and Frys are hardly mentioned in the same breath as, say, the Daltons, their story remains a local legend.
Originally published in the October 2009 issue of Wild West. To subscribe, click here.
