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, documents late nineteenth-century law enforcement in the Southwest. The Marlows’ fight for justice was dramatized in the movie, The Sons of Katie Elder.