Henry Loftus and Harry Donaldson
Henry (Lorenz) Loftus (born 1915) and Harry (Dwyer) Donaldson (born 1910) were two young men who made national headlines for their unsuccessful attempt to rob the Southern Pacific Railroad's Apache Limited in 1937. The last major train robbery in the United States, the two have been referred to as "the last of America's classic train robbers". Though they were not professional criminals, their unhealthy fixation with the American Wild West prompted them to rob the train which resulted in the intentional wounding of one passenger and the accidental death of another. History Henry Loftus (or Lorenz) was born and raised in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, to German immigrant Conrad Lorenz. As a bored teenager living in a small town, Loftus developed an interest in dime novels and the American Old West. This interest eventually evolved into what his family later called a "Wild West complex"; they humored him, hoping he would outgrow it. Loftus was still living at home at the time of his first arrest for burglary. The local town judge sympathized with the young man, suspended his sentence and released him on probation. Shortly afterwards, Loftus' father moved the family to Chicago, where he opened a shoe store in 1936. Loftus stayed for only a few months and, after living in Brooklyn, New York, for a time, announced that he was going west "to seek fame and fortune in the wide open spaces". His companion on this journey was Harry Donaldson (or Dwyer), a young Canadian he had recently befriended, who had a similar interest in the Wild West and its outlaws in particular. A year later, they boarded a train on the Santa Fe Railroad to El Paso, Texas. Upon their arrival, they were disappointed to see that El Paso had long since left behind its frontier past and had become a modern city with paved streets and automobiles much like what they left behind in Chicago. While in El Paso, they purchased cowboy outfits, including chaps and Ten-gallon hats, and soon found themselves a source of amusement to the local residents. Loftus and Donaldson eventually decided to leave the city by purchasing two horses and heading westward hoping to find something left of the American frontier. After two days on the trail, they arrived at Deming, New Mexico. Confronted with the fact that the frontier no longer existed in the American Southwest, the two formed a plan to rob a train. Selling their horses, they used the money to buy old fashioned six-shooters with hand-tooled holsters and train tickets back to El Paso. On November 24, 1937, Loftus and Donaldson were travelling as passengers on the Southern Pacific Railroad's westbound Apache Limited out of El Paso. About an hour into the trip, Loftus sat up from their seat and drew his pistol on conductor W. M. Holloway. Holloway later recalled that he "thought [Loftus] was drunk. I didn't think it was a holdup. I was afraid that gun was going off when the amateur's hands started shaking". Regardless,