The Burzette Gang of Sioux City

Everett Burzette

Some criminals aren’t born in the dark. They’re trained there.

And Everett Burzette—sitting in a jail cell in Mason City, Iowa, accused of first-degree murder—was raised in the shadow of a name that carried fear like a headline.

Burzette.

A name tied to stolen automobiles, gun smoke, and a man who didn’t plan on surrendering. A name made infamous by Everett’s older brother—Red Burzette—who, as one account put it, “met his death with a belching revolver in his hand,” fighting the police in Sioux City.

That was the family legacy Everett inherited. Now it was his turn to face the rope.

His cousin, Melvin Burzette, was locked up on the same charge in the cell next to him. They were accused of murdering Morris G. Van Note, a well-to-do farmer, shot down in the yard of a rural school building near Mason City. He’d tried to stop them from stealing school property, and—bang . . . Van Note was dead.

A murder like that didn’t sit well in rural Iowa. Folks in the country started sleeping lighter, watching the road more, and keeping their guns close enough to grab in case the devil came looking for them.

Melvin Burzette

After Van Note’s death, Everett and Melvin disappeared for nearly a month. No one knew what direction they ran, who helped them, or how many stolen cars they burned through getting away.

Then, the police picked them up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, rolling through town in a stolen automobile. Heavily armed.

At the police station, someone figured out they weren’t just car thieves with itchy trigger fingers. They were wanted for murder back in Iowa.

Now Everett and Melvin were back where they’d started. In Mason City, behind steel bars with a first-degree murder charge hanging over their heads. And the word people kept circling back to wasn’t “trial.” It was “noose.”

Everett had a long, troubled history. He’d been part of the Burzette Gang during its so-called “reign of blood and terror” in the spring and early summer of 1919.

He’d been in and out of jail even earlier than that. Back in 1917, he stole an automobile with his brother Red in Sioux City. It doesn’t sound like much, but a stolen automobile meant you could hit a town, grab what you wanted, and be twenty miles away before the sheriff got his boots on. Everett learned that trick early and didn’t forget it.

In May 1918, Everett was arrested in Minneapolis for stealing an automobile. He was arrested again in July 1919 in Sioux City. That was where Red ran a gang of automobile thieves. They carried guns, weren’t afraid to use them, and had robbed more than one business. The Des Moines Register said Red was a master criminal who feared neither God nor man, ruling his crew with an iron hand.

He bragged that he’d never be taken alive. Guys like that don’t picture themselves in handcuffs. They picture gunfire, chaos, and headlines that make them sound bigger than life. Red got his wish, not too long after that.

Joy Young, Queen of the
Sioux City Underworld

On July 22, 1919, at about 5:30 in the morning, Red Burzette was sitting at the counter of the Carbarn restaurant in Sioux City with two of his lieutenants, Jim Davis and Tex Maynard. They looked rough, like men who’d been sleeping in their clothes and didn’t care who noticed. Minutes before they walked into the Carbarn, they’d held up a garage at gunpoint and forced the man inside to replace a broken wheel on their car.

When they left the garage, one of them suggested getting a bite to eat before leaving town. Just breakfast. A quick stop. Like they weren’t already halfway to hell.

The mechanic didn’t waste time. As soon as the robbers were gone, he called the police. They enlisted Detective James Britton to help.

The police stopped a block away from the restaurant and surrounded it, trying to catch the gang while they were still chewing. Britton and two officers walked inside with their guns drawn and ordered the men to stick ’em up.

Red went for his gun and started firing.

The restaurant turned into a shooting gallery. One bandit caught a bullet in the leg. Another got hit in the arm. Red took four bullets and dropped hard, dead on the floor. They left him there for hours, covered by a blanket with only his face and flaming red hair hanging out. Hundreds of people passed by to check out his remains.

Britton took a couple slugs, too. He stumbled toward the cruiser, holding his wounds like he could keep himself together if he just squeezed hard enough. They rushed him to the hospital, but he didn’t make it. Detective James Britton died a few hours later, and Sioux City took it personally.

Detectives outside Red Burzette's shack

After that, the police wanted everyone connected to the Red Burzette. They rounded up Wilbur Siglin and William Convey. The court handed Jim Davis a life sentence in Fort Madison for Britton’s murder. That should’ve been that, but it wasn’t.

On December 7, 1921, Davis escaped and vanished. Reports put him in Chicago, which is the place a man like that could disappear for real. The other gang members got locked up for a long time and stayed there.

And then there was Mae Young. Mae was tied into the Burzette gang like a loose wire in a dark room. People called her the “Queen of the Sioux City Underworld.” She was arrested for murder and robbery in the case of Claude Lerner, a Sioux City rum runner, but she beat the rap. After that, she did what smart survivors do. She changed her name to Mae Bentley, kept her head down, and ran a boarding house in Sioux City like she’d never brushed shoulders with gunmen.

Sioux City tried to move on. Mason City couldn’t.

Everett Burzette wasn’t Red Burzette, but he carried the same stink of trouble. He’d escaped jail once before, breaking out in Clear Lake. He’d been wanted in Waseca, Minnesota for holding up the sheriff, and he’d even used the name Everett Turner while he was at it.

Now he was in a Mason City cell, his cousin Melvin right next door, accused of murdering Morris G. Van Note in a schoolyard. Whatever happened out there, it had turned the Burzettes into men a community wanted to see punished hard. Nobody was talking about forgiveness or second chances.

They were talking about a trial and a rope.

Melvin testified Everett shot Van Note while they were trying to steal an oil stove from the school. Everett claimed it was self-defense. He said Van Note fired first.

Maybe Van Note saw two men in the schoolyard stealing property and tried to stop them. So maybe he fired first. But the court wasn’t interested in “maybe.”

The judge ruled it wasn’t lawful self-defense because Everett was engaged in the commission of a felony. In plain words: you don’t get to break in, steal, and then call it self-defense when someone fights back.

They deliberated for eighteen hours before finding Everett Burzette guilty of second degree murder in the death of Morris Van Note. He was sentenced to life in the Fort Madison prison.

Melvin got twelve years in the Fort Madison Penitentiary.

In 1948, Everett walked away from the Fort Madison prison farm. He was captured in Ottumwa the next day.