The Real Death of Matt Warner

Accounts of his end were made up.

Outlaw Matt Warner rode with Butch Cassidy and Elzy Lay and members of the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang in the late 1800s. He did prison time for his bad deeds (and went straight once he got out). But his end has been misreported. Biographer Charles Kelly, in the book Last of the Bandit Riders, said Warner drank himself to death in 1938 after accusations surfaced that he’d beaten his first wife. The ex-wife had mentioned something about Matt hitting her. He denied it. And he died of natural causes.