One trick too many: Soapy Smith

There has never been a con-man trickster in American history as devious, or as likeable, as Randolph “Soapy” Smith. He was a sociopath with a smile that could melt the hardest heart. He was a man without a conscience, a natural criminal quite willing to steal from the hapless poor and the greedy rich with an equally shameless eagerness. Soapy’s only measure of man was the wallet he could empty from the day he learned how to cheat at cards, hide the pea in a shell game or invent a scam. He counted few but his gang-members as friends and foisted his scandalous bad habits for theft on everyone else with the cold calculation of a mob boss. He cheated at everything from cards to love. Over several years learning the fine art of flim flam, he developed a glib, friendly persona and it fit perfectly with his dark, brooding good looks, but it was hard earned experience. Soapy began his life of crime as a cow puncher who then became a victim. He quickly learned it was easier to scam the gullible than rob them with a weapon. Then death, like a pickpocket on Soapy’s payroll, took his life in a flurry of gun shots and Soapy was gone...but not forgotten.