On October 6, 1866, the brothers John and Simeon Reno staged the
first train robbery in American history, making off with $13,000 from
an Ohio and Mississippi railroad train in Jackson County, Indiana.
Of course, trains had been robbed before the Reno brothers’ holdup
but, these previous crimes had all been burglaries of stationary
trains sitting in depots or freight yards.
The Reno brothers’ contribution to criminal history was to stop a
moving train in a sparsely populated region where they could carry
out their crime without risking interference from the law or curious bystanders.
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