Josie Bassett - After The Outlaw Days

After The Outlaw Days

As time passed, the Wild Bunch gang eventually faded. By 1904, most of the gang members closest to the Bassett girls had either been killed or captured. Josie's former lover, Wild Bunch gang member Elzy Lay, reportedly visited Ann and Josie at the ranch shortly after his release from prison in 1906, before he moved on California where he lived out the remainder of his life as a respectable businessman. Although he is reported to have been killed in Bolivia, Josie claimed that Butch Cassidy visited her in 1930 and lived in Utah until the late 1940s.

Josie Bassett lived most of her life on her father's property, operating the ranch and choosing a mostly outdoor life, with camping, fishing and hunting being her primary hobbies. She married five times over the course of her lifetime. She divorced four of her husbands, allegedly running one off with a frying pan. A fifth husband died, reportedly of alcoholism, but rumors persist that Josie poisoned him. With one husband, Carl McKnight, Bassett had two sons, Crawford McKnight and Herbert "Chick" McKnight.

In 1913 she moved to a homestead near Vernal, Utah, and made a new ranch there her lifetime commitment. In 1924, Crawford helped her build a new cabin on this property.

During the Great Depression, she supplied food to others in the area, particularly with supplies of beef. She made her own soap, sewed her own clothing, and became known for her prowess at hunting deer, which she often did not only for her own family but to help feed less fortunate neighbors. In one instance, a Game Warden stopped by her cabin announcing that he was there to arrest her for poaching. She confessed that she had just killed a deer and took him to the carcass. The game warden was joking with her and took no action.

During the Prohibition years, Josie made and sold bootlegged whiskey but she was never arrested. Years after Prohibition, she continued to make her own brandy and whiskey until she was finally warned that revenue agents were looking for her still and her son threatened to break it up.

In 1936, rancher and former adversary Jim Robinson accused her of butchering his cattle and selling it in town. Six other ranchers joined in on the accusations. Hides from the carcasses were found on her property. Bassett was arrested. She claimed the evidence was planted. Several neighbors supplied her with bail money until her trial. She was tried twice, each ending in a hung jury. After the second trial, the local prosecutor dropped the charges.

In 1945, she fell victim to a land scheme and lost most of her land. However, she lived frugally in her cabin and supported herself well into her 80s. In later life, she became an eccentric, and talked often with neighbors about the wild days and her associations with outlaws.

In 1963, she fell when a horse knocked her down, breaking her hip. She died a few months later at the age of 90. She was the last remaining associate of the Wild Bunch gang, and the last direct source of information about its members, their personalities, traits and demeanors.