Young Brothers Debacle

Paul, Harry, and Jennings Young were these three man crime wave brothers in Missouri.  All of them had done time in "Old Jeff", the Missouri pen home to such alumni as James Earl Ray.  These kids were busy, busy.  Then one day Harry Young and friend kill Mark Noe, city Marshall of Republic, Missouri.  The three brothers flee to Texas for the next two and a half years, establishing a car theft ring of amazing proportion.  But family ties bring them home.  January 2, 1932, Sheriff Marcell Hendrix of Greene County Missouri, receives word that the brothers are at a family farm near Brookline, Missouri.  He puts together a posse of ten officers and one civilian, all carrying only handguns and with little to no reserve ammo.

Marcell Hendrix, Sheriff of Green County.

The posse assembles in the front yard and yell for the brothers to come out.  Sheriff Hendrix and his deputy, Wylie Mashburn, kick in the back door and get blown away by a twelve gauge wielding assailant. Four more policemen are shot and killed in short order.

The dead cops. They weren't no cowards.

Harry and Jennings Young are killed in a Houston hotel bathroom.  It is not clear that they were killed by law enforcement, they may have shot each other. Academic point, to be sure, but the cops that came through that door after them were armed, and I do mean armed, to the teeth. Rifles, Thompsons, shotguns, tear gas, i.e., the works.  Even back then we do not play in Texas.  And it was a boarding house, not a hotel.  I looked at lots of stories and articles about this and all interest in the Young's seems to have stopped at their deaths. This was the worst killing of American law officials in the 20th century, not matched until the events of 9/11.  Supposedly this galvanized American cops to be more professional, but even a cursory glance at the career of Clyde Chestnut Barrow shows how poorly trained and equipped the police remained.

The b'hoys.  At the moment I cannot find out what happpened to Paul. (He was picked up for suspicion and subsequently did several years, arrested numerous times, he served as a shipfitter during WWII and seems to have lived into his nineties).    But I will say this, warfare is a game played for keeps.  One must be very serious when you pick up a gun. If it had been me, I would have burned the house down and shot anyone running out.  Oops! The Pinkerton's tried that with Jesse James and got his younger brother and his mother.  Maybe the cops in Missouri were a bit leery after that, but I doubt it.  I think they just did not expect such a fight.  They were game, I'll give 'em that.

Harry Young on his way to a Houston hospital.  No, that's wrong.  Harry Young on display.

Browning Automatic Rifle.