The Fighting Marlows: Men Who Wouldn’t be Lynched

Many people in northern Texas and southwestern Oklahoma still believe that the Marlow brothers - George, Charles, Alf, and Epp - were thieves and killers. In 1888 they were charged with rustling and murder, tried by public opinion, and betrayed by law officials responsible for their safety. After Alf and Epp were killed in a brutal ambush, Charles and George accomplished a grisly escape, only to be caught and sent to Dallas for trial where, for their own protection, they were deputized as marshals. Their story, as lurid and adventuresome as any western saga, significantly documents late nineteenth-century law enforcement in the Southwest. The Marlows’ fight for justice was glamorized in The Sons of Katie Elder, the movie starring John Wayne and Dean Martin, and has been told in various forms in several publications. Glenn Shirley has documented this bizarre episode in law enforcement history in a definitive account that will become the standard reference and a classic in the annals of outlaw literature.