Myra Maybelle Shirley (Belle Starr)
They called her the Bandit Queen, though half of what made her famous was newspaper invention she never bothered to correct.
1848–1889 · Born in Carthage, Missouri · Also known as The Bandit Queen
The Story
Belle Starr cultivated an outlaw reputation nearly as theatrical as Jesse James's, riding sidesaddle in velvet and a plumed hat through Indian Territory while her name grew into dime-novel infamy as the "Bandit Queen" — much of it manufactured by sensationalist press rather than her actual, more mundane record of horse theft and harboring fugitives, including her outlaw husband Sam Starr. Born Myra Maybelle Shirley in Missouri to a family with Confederate sympathies, she associated with the James-Younger gang after the Civil War before settling in Indian Territory. She was convicted of horse theft in 1883 in a trial before Judge Isaac Parker's court — the same court Bass Reeves served — and served nine months, one of the few outlaws of her caliber ever actually convicted. She was shot and killed near her home in 1889 in an ambush that was never conclusively solved, with suspects including her own son.
