Bloody Bill Longley: The Mythology of a Gunfighter, Second Edition (A.C. Greene Series)
“Rick Miller’s research has always been excellent. As a policeman, attorney, and longtime county judge, Rick knows how and where to dig. Longley’s hanging had a grisly twist, and rumors persisted that through a ruse Longley escaped death. Rick has addressed this common theme with fresh research about Longley’s end and burial. I found it interesting and persuasive.”--Bill O’Neal, author ofThe Johnson-Sims Feud"Miller has gathered together an unbelievable amount of information on Longley, his family, and his times. His military experiences have never before been discussed in any detail. . . . Longley was not a noble character but certainly was an interesting one. Miller does not attempt to glorify his deeds but presents his biography-history without sermonizing. . . . For the outlaw-lawman buff, this work is a must.”--Chuck Parsons,NOLA Quarterly"Using hundreds of primary sources, Miller examines Longley's fanciful tales one by one, takes them apart, and shows how most of them could not have happened. Stripped of embellishments, falsehoods, and melodramatic flair, then reduced to the facts, Miller tells the story of a brutal fiend, imbued with no other feeling than a desire to kill. He has produced a page-turning account of how a legend was born."--Denver Westerners Roundup"Rick Miller'sBloody Bill Longleypeels away the folklore encasing a once-notorious Texas outlaw. More cowardly braggart than badman, Longley boasted of 32 victims and probably killed six or seven. On trial for murder, he wrote self-serving letters to the newspapers, pleading that he was a victim. Longley's career documents the climate of violence prevailing in post-Civil War Texas."--True West"[Miller] is right that the folkloric quality built up around Longley and others did not die with them, and his book is an interesting look at the process that shaped much of America's cultural memory. Best of all, however, it reads like an old fashioned western yarn, embracing its subject's hyperbole for the whizzing bullets and dustry trails of Texas and the Old West."--Southwestern Historical Quarterly"There was a moment when Bill Longley stood outside his father's gate and railed not only at the finality of his father's rejection of his outlaw lifestyle, but the justification. . . . In this second edition, [Miller] includes much new and needed information that has come to light about the hanging, the hoax that it was faked, and the archaeological information on the burial, and the exhumation of the grave and identification of the body. Overall it is an excellent book.--Dennis McCown,Journal of South Texas