Bad vs Evil

A gang of train-robbing brothers. A vigilante army with hemp ropes. And a second act of violence that shocked the nation.
In Civil War–era Indiana, the infamous Reno brothers turned rebellion into an art form. From petty cons to the nation’s first moving train robbery, they built a criminal empire fueled by bounty-jumping scams, counterfeit money, and fear. But when the justice system failed, a group of masked vigilantes took matters into their own hands, executing ten members of the gang in three midnight lynchings that blurred the line between justice and murder, and creating an international incident.
That could’ve been the end of the story. But three decades later, on a misty night in 1897, a second wave of vigilante violence erupted in the town of Versailles. This time, it was another gang, another jailhouse, and another tree. When a mob of 250 masked men lynched five inmates in cold blood, it triggered a national outcry, a full-scale investigation, and a perjury-filled preliminary trial against the suspected leader of the mob.
Based on real events, Bad versus Evil is a sweeping true-crime epic of post–Civil War America, where the first train robberies began, sheriffs were frequently corrupt, and justice could arrive with a torch and a rope.
This is the forgotten story of the Reno Gang, the Versailles lynching, and the vigilante war that made the Wild West look tame.