The Strange Case of Big Nose George Parrot

In the late 1870s, a band of outlaws called the Sim Jan gang operated in Wyoming. They decided to try their hand at robbing Union Pacific trains. At that time most banking was done by cash, and much of the cash moved by rail. Trains became tempting targets for criminals looking for big scores.

Some gangs became quite adept at train robbery. Sim Jan and his gang never became too adept at it, however. For example, they tried to derail a train out of Medicine Bow, Wyoming, by loosening a length of rail. A railroad section crew on a handcart came by soon after and discovered the damage to the track. After repairing the track, they sped off to report the incident to the sheriff. The next day the gang shot it out with the two lawmen sent to investigate. Deputy Sheriff Robert Widdowfield and railroad detective Henry Vincent were killed by the gang, making them the first Wyoming lawmen killed in the line of duty.

The first member of the gang to pay for the crime was Frank Tole. He was killed a few weeks later while trying to rob a stagecoach. “Dutch” Charlie Buress was soon after arrested for the murders and put on a train bound for Rawlins, Wyoming, where he would have gone on trial. He didn’t make it to trial though. When his train made a stop in the town of Carbon, the hometown of deputy Widdowfield, he was hanged from a telegraph pole by an angry mob who pulled him from the train.

Big Nose George

Next in line for justice was “Big Nose” George Parrot. He might never have been caught had he not gotten drunk two years after the killings and been overheard bragging about his involvement in the crimes. He too was put on a train bound for Rawlins to make his trial date. When the train pulled into Carbon, history seemed about to repeat itself, because once again a lynch mob was waiting. But Big Nose was able to talk the mob out of the hanging by admitting his guilt and promising to tell all if they let him live to face trial. Had he known the fate that awaited him, he might have preferred being lynched.

Big Nose George made it to Rawlins and was tried and convicted for his crime. He was sentenced to death by hanging, to be carried out in 3 and 1/2 month’s time. But he didn’t live long enough to see the sentence carried out. During a failed jail break he nearly killed a guard. A lynch mob decided that a speedier, unofficial hanging might be better than waiting any longer. On March 22nd, 1881, a crowd of about 200 people dragged Big Nose George from the jail and hanged him from the crossarm of a telegraph pole.

Twice.

The mob had to hang him twice because the first rope broke. After a sturdier rope was found, Big Nose George, still very much alive, was hanged again. By then, however, George had managed to untie his hands from behind his back without anyone noticing. So, when he was strung up for the second time, he swung himself, by the noose around his neck, over to the telegraph pole and wrapped his flailing arms around it, holding on for dear life.

Big Nose George had no sympathizers in the crowd. The mob was happy to wait for gravity and muscle fatigue to finish the job. Over the next several minutes, he slowly lost his grip and finally died what must have been a slow and excruciating death.

George’s namesake nose was so big that when he was finally cut down hours later and laid out in a coffin, the undertaker had trouble nailing down the lid because of the dead man’s nose pressing up against it.

George had no next of kin, or at least none who came to claim the body, so two local doctors, Dr. Thomas Maghee and Dr. John Osborne, claimed it in the name of medical science. Dr. Maghee had a personal interest in the case. His wife was criminally insane, the victim, it was thought, of head injuries sustained from falling from a horse.

Maghee wanted to examine Big Nose George’s brain for any signs of abnormality that might explain his criminal behavior, then use what he learned to try to help his wife. With the assistance of Lillian Heath, his 15-year-old apprentice, he sawed off the top of the skull, removed the brain, and studied it, finding nothing unusual. In a macabre gesture, Maghee let Lillian keep the top of the skull as a souvenir.

Dr. Osborne’s interest in Big Nose George was not so scientific. He may have been motivated by revenge. According to one account, he was on one of the trains robbed by the Sim Jan gang and the delay caused him to miss a party. After making a plaster death mask of the deceased, a common practice at the time, Maghee removed the skin from Big Nose George’s chest and thighs, and mailed the human flesh to a tannery in Denver, Colorado, where it was made into human “leather,” definitely not a common practice at that time. Osborne then had the tanned leather made into a coin purse, a doctor’s bag, and a pair of shoes.

Shoes made from George Parrot's skin

Not the entire shoes. They were made from combination of leather taken from the shoes Big Nose George was wearing the day he died and Big Nose George’s own skin. The shoes are on display to this day in the Carbon County Museum in Rawlins. If you’re ever there, you’ll see that it’s easy to tell where the ordinary cowhide ends and Big Nose George begins. Most of the shoes’ leather is an ordinary dark brown, but the leather on the front of the shoes over the toes is the color of Big Nose George’s own Caucasian hide.

Dr. Osborne wore the shoes while practicing as a country doctor. When he diversified into ranching, banking, and politics in later years, he kept wearing them. Even when he was elected the first Democratic governor of Wyoming in 1892 he wore the shoes to his inauguration.

Barrel of Big Nose George's Remains

The rest of Big Nose George’s remains didn’t fare much better. Drs. Maghee and Osborne kept him in a whiskey barrel filled with salt water for about a year; then, when Dr. Maghee decided he’s learned everything he could, or Osborne decided one pair of shoes was enough, Maghee buried the barrel, with Big Nose George still in it, in the yard outside his medical office.

The remains were still there in 1950 when Dr. Maghee’s office building was torn down and the site cleared for new construction. It was then that workmen discovered the long-forgotten whiskey barrel containing a human skeleton with the top of its skull sawed off.

When the medical examiners were called in to investigate, someone remembered that many years earlier a young woman named Lillian Heath had been given the top of the skull of an outlaw named Big Nose George as a gift. She then went on to become the first female doctor in Wyoming. By 1950, now in her eighties, she was still very much alive, and she still had the top of the skull. Over the years she had used it as a pen holder and a doorstop. Her husband had used it for an ashtray. When the skull top was brought to where the barrel had been found, it fit the rest of the skull perfectly. A DNA test later confirmed the match.

Lillian Heath with top of George Parrot's skull

Today, the lower portion of Big Nose George’s skull is on display in the Carbon County Museum alongside the shoes made with his skin, his death mask, and other related artifacts. But if you want to see the top of the skull, you have to go to Iowa. Dr. Heath held onto it for another decade or so, then donated it to the Union Pacific Museum in the city of Council Bluffs.

That leaves the coin purse and the doctor’s bag, also made from Big Nose George’s hide. They haven’t been seen in ages. Who knows? Perhaps they are still out there somewhere, waiting to be discovered.