Bob Dalton, the leader of what had recently become the notorious Dalton Gang, had a serious management problem…Bill Doolin. It was July 17, 1892, two days after the gang’s successful train robbery at Adair. The gang was encamped on the banks of the Verdigris River headed for the Osage Hills, but there was bad news. According to reports, during a flurry of gunshots following the successful heist on the northbound Katy train, two doctors had been shot and one had died.
According to the available information, after the gang had loaded the railroad safe on to the buckboard wagon and headed west from the station unscathed, 18 to 20 shots had been fired at bystanders for no apparent reason and the doctors had been hit. The injured men had been loaded on to the train which proceeded to Vinita where Dr. W.L. Goff of Fredrickstown, Missouri, who was visiting friends in Adair, had his leg amputated but died from loss of blood. Dr. T.S. Youngblood, who engaged in the practice of medicine in Adair, was shot in one foot and it had been partially amputated, but he survived. This was bad news for the leader of the Dalton Gang because while the general public was ambivalent or often even supportive of robbing “blood sucking” banks or railroads, there were unwritten boundaries about so-called collateral damage. Gun toting marshals, railroad detectives or other townsmen engaged in a shoot out were fair game, but women and children, preachers, teachers and physicians were off limits. Compounding the situation was the fact that the Daltons were local boys, well known in the Adair and Vinita communities. James and Adie Dalton and the family had moved from east of Coffeyville, Kansas and farmed for several years five miles southeast of Vinita in the Locust Hill community. Support could easily erode, shooting innocent citizens in addition to whatever local gossip might be added, would not be good for the gang’s image.
Dalton had been suspect of Bill Doolin for some time. After the Wharton train robbery during May of 1891, Bob had recruited Doolin for the Lelietta job. Lelietta was an engine watering station four miles north of Wagoner and Doolin had worked for ranchers in the area and knew the territory. However, during that robbery he had walked up and down the platform brandishing his long barrel pistol, frightening the passengers instead of tending to the business of robbing the safe on the train. Then at Red Rock, another watering stop 40 miles south of Arkansas City, Kansas, Dalton suspected that Santa Fe authorities had laid a trap. They had sent a train loaded with detectives ahead of the one regularly scheduled to arrive. Both Bob and his brother Grat had served on the side of the law as deputy marshals and were familiar with such tactics. But Doolin had argued with the Daltons and almost sprung the trap. Now, although he had conducted himself well in the Adair firefight with eight MK&T detectives, Bob was convinced that it was Doolin and maybe someone else that had needlessly fired into the crowd of bystanders.
As leader, he called a committee meeting with his brothers Grat and Emmett to discuss the future of the gang’s eight members. In addition to his concern about Doolin, Charley Pierce and George Newcomb were added to the list. The brothers were convinced that the two were getting too fond of venturing into nearby towns and making friends, commenting that such familiarity might someday cost everyone their lives. As a result, Doolin, Pierce and Newcomb were counseled out of the gang by Bob who informed them that he didn’t have any robberies planned immediately but that when he did, “he would be in touch.”
Bob was satisfied that he had taken care of his “management problem,” but his explanation to his ex-employees wasn’t really true, he did have a plan. The success of the gang during the past 13 months and the fact that even now they were being credited with every robbery in the territory, had led him to envision an even grander scheme. His ambition was to commit a robbery so daring and sensational that it would eclipse any crime committed by previous gangs such as the James or Younger brothers. His dream was that the entire nation would be shocked and that it would establish the Daltons as the most feared gang in the history of crime. Now that he had pared them down to a trustworthy few, he knew just how and where the feat could be accomplished. They would rob two banks at the same time in Coffeyville.