A woman on the opposite side of the law than Annie Oakley was Belle Starr, famous Wild West Woman.  Myra Belle Smiley Starr, was born in 1848, in Carthage, MO.  She was well educated and excelled at many school subjects.  Her father was a wealthy innkeeper and her mother was related to the Hatfield clan of the famous Hatfield and McCoy feud.

As a teenager, Belle reported the Union troop locations to the Confederates.  When the Union burned Carthage to the ground, the family moved to Texas.  Belle had been friends with Cole Younger who joined up with Frank and Jesse James whose gang often hid out at the Smiley farm.  Their influence fueled Belle’s enthusiasm for outlaw ways.

In 1866, she married Jim Reed and had a daughter and a son.  When Jim shot and killed a man who had accidentally killed his younger brother, the family had to flee and hide in California.  Within a few years, he was robbing and passing counterfeit money.  Belle was supposedly his accomplice.  Again the two went into hiding with Belle going to Dallas, Texas.

It was here that her reputation for lawlessness flourished.  She was living off the robbery money and wore buckskins, velvet skirts, and a Stetson hat with a plume and she wore two pistols.  She hung out in saloons and played cards and dice games.  She was known to ride her horse in the town’s streets shooting her pistols into the air.

Jim was killed in 1874 trying to escape from a sheriff.  Belle gave her children to her family and left for Indian Territory in Oklahoma where she continued her lawless ways.  She bribed the local officials to look the other way for her rustling enterprises.  In 1880, she married Sam Starr.

Judge Parker, the Hanging Judge, wanted desperately to catch Belle in her criminal activities.  He finally was able to sentence her to nine months in jail.  She was a model prisoner and when released, she went back to her old ways.

She faced several charges of robbery but was not convicted.  Sam Starr was killed by a family enemy.

Belle died just days before her 41st birthday on 3 February 1889 when she was shot in the back while riding her horse.  No one was ever charged with her murder but the suspects included Edgar Watson with whom she feuded over land, her lover Cherokee Indian Jim July and her own son, Ed.

Belle, a legend in her own time, continued to be famous with the making of several movies concerning her lawless life.

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