SLAIN BY AVENGING ANGELS.

Auckland Star, Volume XXIX, Issue 101, 30 April 1898, Page 3 (Supplement)

SLAIN BY AVENGING ANGELS.

News has reached iEI Paso, Tex., irom Casas Grandes, Mex., of the terrible fate which befell the members of Black Jack's gang, who escaped from ■ this : country several months ag-o, sooii after their leader was slain, and sought refuge from pursuit by American officers in the fastenesses of the Sierra Madre mountains of old Mexico.

The Black Jack gang of desperadoes and cut-throats for several years terrorized the entire border between here and the Gulf of California, and it remained for the 'Avenging Angels' of the Mormon colonies, in the vicinity of Casas Grandes, Mex., to hunt down and annihilate the crowd.

On February 23, Mrs A. F. McDonald, a Mormon woman, wife of a prominent resident of one of the settlements, was -murdered by two iinknown men. She was a storekeeper at Round Valley, fifty miles east of Casas Gi'andes, in an isolated locality. The ruffians split her head open with a hatchet, looted the store and escaped. The brutal crime aroused the en-> tire Mormon community, and the Avenging Angels of the Mormon Church were commissioned to hunt down the murderers.

They scoured' the mountains in all directions, and on Sunday, .March 6, the rendezvous of the outlaws was located in a lonely, unexplored reg-ion, one hundred miles from Casas Grandes. During. Sunday night the Avengers closed.in upon the outlaws, nine in number.

At daybreak a voice from the.rocks commanded the bandits to surrender, warning* them that resistance meant death. They had just begun to stir when the summons came. They made a dash for their weapons, but were shot dowii before they were able to defend themselves. The work of the Avenging Angels was complete.

A party of American prospectors, returning to civilization, stumbled by accident upon the camp of the outlaws several days later and counted the dead. They subsequently learned from the Mormon settlers the manner in which the .desperadoes were .killed. ■The Black Jack, gang was the most desperate, well-organized and successful band of..outlaws that has operated in the Southwest in recent years.

Large rewards were offered by the Government and the express companies for the capture of the outlaws, dead or alive.