Orlando Camillo Hanks, aka: Charley Jones or Deaf Charley was an outlaw in the old west and one of the last and toughest of Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch. During the 1880s and into the 1890s he had robbed trains from New Mexico to Montana.
In 1892, Deaf Charley was arrested in Teton County, Montana for his robbery of the Northern Pacific train at Big Timber, Montana. After being arrested, authorities discovered that he was wanted in Las Vegas, New Mexico for murder. He was sentenced to hanging, but was spared by the governor in 1894 and was sentenced to 10 years in the Montana State Prison on December 24, 1894. After serving just 8 years, Deaf Charley was released on April 30, 1901.
Three short months later, Charley had joined Robert LeRoy Parker (Butch Cassidy) and Harry Alonzo Longabaugh (The Sundance Kid) with the rest of the Wild Bunch gang. They had robbed the Great Northern Transcontinental’s express train number 3 in Wagner, Montana on July 3, 1901. It was Charley’s responsibility to keep an eye on the passengers of the train while the other members of the gang robbed them. The Wild Bunch had escaped with almost $30,000 in bank notes!
Wanting to live out his life and spend his cut of the money elsewhere, Charley went down to San Antonio, Texas. On April 16, 1902, he was sitting in a saloon in San Antonio when the local law, Pink Taylor, confronted him about the train robbery. Guns were drawn, a shot was fired, and Deaf Charley was no more.
