Christopher Evans (outlaw)

Christopher Evans (February 19, 1847 – February 9, 1917), a native of Bells Corners near Ottawa, Canada West, was an American farmer and teamster turned outlaw, and the leader of the Evans–Sontag Gang.

Alongside John Sontag, Evans was accused of organizing multiple train robberies on the Southern Pacific Railroad in California between 1889 and 1892. After killing a member of a posse outside his home on the outskirts of Visalia, he fled to the Sierra Nevada mountains with Sontag. While Evans and Sontag hid out in the mountains, writers Ambrose Bierce and Joaquin Miller championed their cause in the San Francisco Examiner. The outlaws evaded capture for ten months, all while being hunted by posses of lawmen, railroad detectives, and hundreds of bounty hunters. A shootout with a posse at Young's Cabin resulted in the deaths of Wilson, the posse leader, and McGinnis, a former friend of Evans'. In June 1893, both Sontag and Evans were seriously wounded in what is called the Battle of Stone Corral: Evans ultimately lost an eye and his left arm, and Sontag died of his wounds several days later.

Evans was taken into custody but escaped from the Fresno County Jail while awaiting trial with the help of an accomplice, Ed Morrell. Living as fugitives for several months in the mountains, Evans and Morrell were eventually captured after being lured into Visalia under the false belief that Evans' son was deathly ill. After his surrender, Evans was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in Folsom State Prison in Folsom, California. John Sontag's younger brother, George Contant, testified against Evans and hence acquired the lifelong hatred of Evans' family.

After serving seventeen years at Folsom, Evans was paroled in 1911 by Governor Hiram Johnson, a liberal Republican who had been elected on an anti-Southern Pacific campaign theme. Banished from California, Evans died in Portland, Oregon, in 1917, denying to the end that he had ever robbed a train and continuing to assert that he had killed only in self-defense. He also wrote a socialist book which called for expanded government restrictions to check what he viewed as the abuses of the business community. Evans is interred in Portland at Mount Calvary Cemetery. Evans' accomplice, Ed Morrell, served fourteen years total in Folsom and San Quentin. Championed by author Jack London, Morrell was pardoned in 1908 and thereafter became a well-known advocate for prison reform.