Digital Repository

Belle Starr

"Belle Starr was the most desperate woman that ever figured on the borders," declared an 1889 news report that she'd been shot dead by an assassin. Confirmed details of her life are few. But after her death at age forty, her legend grew, and she became known as "Belle Starr, the Bandit Queen."

Image: Belle Starr standing with pistols, ca. 1886. Image courtesy of the Dickinson Research Center, National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Audio: Houston Public Media

Photograph of Belle Starr with pistols