True Crime

I was on the way back yesterday afternoon from an errand in the city and was sitting at a traffic light when for some reason I turned my head and looked left. A little road led away from the other side of the highway, with a sign by it that said "Castle Rock." So I went to the next turnaround, turned (naturally) around, and came back. The road was called "Rock Ridge Road", and it wound around a steepish hill covered with lower-middle-class houses, little ranchers and such, and at the top of the hill was a massive rock outcropping that was obviously the highest point in that part of the world. It looked a lot like a fort, a ruined medieval castle, you might say, and I just looked at it and said to myself, "Well I'll be damned."

What I was looking at was one of the hideouts of a famous highwayman named James Fitzpatrick. You could see that you might be able to survey the countryside and the road from it, especially if the the area around it had been cleared of trees, which was quite possible. It would also be difficult for pursuers to surprise anyone there. At any rate, it's quite an evocative spot. It happens I've been researching this fellow's life for a while now. He was an indentured servant, working in the fields and as a blacksmith. He joined up to march with the rebels in 1776 and fought in the disastrous Battle of Long Island. But after being whipped for some infraction, he decided he was a Tory after all, and after the British occupied Philadelphia he became a highwayman, harassing local Patriots. He never robbed Tories or the poor. (He was good to his mother, too.) And he was a bold devil of a guy—once he strolled into a tavern right uptown (it's a hair salon now) and ordered a drink, with militiamen all around. They only slowly realized who he was, and he pulled a pistol on them, backed out, and got away.

Eventually his luck ran out, and he was hanged. But they never found his reputed stores of treasure. I got talking to a postal carrier and a homeowner there, and they were telling me about how you could see holes in the boulders where people were going to put blasting powder. They tried that a few times, though, and found that they were making boulders roll down the hill in a dangerous way, and they gave up. This homeowner had a long beard, long hair, wallet on a chain, and huge gargoyles flanking his front door. He chuckled about the boulders and the failed attempts to find the treasure, and I did too. It's hardly a secret that when they're not directly harassing us, there's something about outlaws that people like. And it was fun to look up at those rocks with the car engine running, just stopped in the road, and imagine James ("Captain Fitz," as he styled himself) Fitzpatrick sitting there, rifle across his knees, brooding over his grievances with the rebels and planning his next robbery.