THE REAL “BAD BOB” (Part 6)
The Final Shootout (Part 1)
There are no people in Lone Oak, Texas, who are still around to tell the stories of Bob “Bad Bob” Barnett in the early days firsthand, but there are a few who can tell stories handed down through the generations. Of course, the more times it is told the more likely that variances to the story will occur. There is one person in Lone Oak who was very close to the events surrounding Bob Barnett in his final days. Her name is Mary Rafe Wallace, and she still lives practically across the street from our house which Bob Barnett and his family first called home.
Mary Rafe’s mother was Katy Barnett, Bob Barnett’s sister. I sat down with her for a couple of hours and listened to her tell the story of the end for her uncle, Bob Barnett, and the famous shootout between Bob Barnett and her father Rafe Wallace, Bob’s own brother-in-law. She qualified her story that her father wasn’t proud of what he was forced to do and seldom talked about it.
She said that her mother and Bob were raised in a big house just across the road in the home of her grandparents, Jim and Susan “Lively” Barnett, along with her two aunts: Bertha and Mary Emma Barnett. Mary Rafe told me that her grandfather, Jim Barnett, built the big house for his son Bob and then she added that he would later say, “Be careful not to do too much for your kids.” She also said that helping your grown children out of scrapes is not a good practice. It is clear that Bob developed a sense of entitlement, especially to other people’s livestock.
Before I tell the story of the final shootout, let me give a little more background. Bob had a reputation for “acquiring” livestock that simply wasn’t his. Most of the time people simply let it go rather than confront the man with a quick temper and a willing trigger finger. However, on March 21, 1932, Barnett was charged with stealing a mule and on April 13, 1932, “Bad Bob” was sentenced to two years in the State prison in Huntsville. During the trial his brother-inlaw, Rafe Wallace, testified against him. It is said that Bob’s relationship with his sister’s husband was never the same.
Mary Rafe Wallace told me that her uncle was a nice congenial man but “he could just snap” and become someone else. He had friends in Lone Oak, loyal friends, because in his murder trials there were people who came forward to testified on his behalf one even to the point of flirting with a perjury charge before he changed his testimony. But when “Bad Bob” felt aggrieved, it was very likely that bad things would follow.
Locals said they could almost always see him sitting on the second-floor porch of his big house with his Winchester 30-30 across his lap. They say that he was always paranoid that someone would sneak up and try to kill him. So, he would hobble upstairs with a great deal of difficulty because he suffered greatly from diabetes which had all but taken one of his feet.
In January of 1945 Bob took his last stray mule. He took a mule that belonged to his brother-in-law, Rafe Wallace. Rafe was a good man and not prone to put up with “Bad Bob’s” larceny. He told the Hunt County Sherriff that Bob had taken his mule, and the sheriff advised him that he would try to sort it out but advised Rafe that he should carry a shotgun. Rafe took his advice.
(Next Week: The final Shootout)
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