Eugene Bunch: A public servant and train robber

Call it a mid-life crisis or a desire for more money, Eugene Franklin Bunch did not fit the stereotype of the 19th century outlaw. He was not a saddle tramp nor a gunslinger but a well-educated son of a Mississippi planter. So why at age 43 did he choose a life of crime?

Soon after the Civil War, Bunch relocated to Louisiana where he taught school and married a southern belle from the same social c…