I keep coming back to the Bad Boy Greers, such an interesting bunch. Of course that goes back to Matthew Greer and Ruth Allingham, I wonder how they would have felt about the Bad Boy Greers but, of course, they were dead before the Bad Boy grandchildren were even born.

I wrote about this Greer family several years back but I just want to focus on 3 brothers who I’ll call the Bad Boy Greers. They were what genealogist would call collateral relatives since they are not direct ancestors but were first cousins to one of my grandfathers.

The first son and 3rd child is the infamous one. Horace Aloysius Greer was born in 1894 in New York City (NYC). Horace Greer , a chain-gang escapee using the alias Joe Kelly, was tried for attempted murder the shooting of Courtland Dines in the Mabel Normand scandal of the 1920s. After that period in the spotlight, he seemed to lay low and keep out of the news. I believe he probably died in California in 1966 with no known children.

It seems likely that the second son John J. Greer was the criminal who I found in Folsom prison (Folsom, California). John J. Greer has a long criminal record including burglary, theft and counterfeiting. And spent a bit of time in the penitentiaries in Atlanta (GA), and Lewisburg (PA).

A third son Charles John Greer was born around 1900 and among other things he was convicted of murder, escaped from Sing Sing prison, was captured and died in another prison shortly after that. I’ll have to re-read what I have on this blog and fill in some of the missing information in another post.

I think the other children may have turned out fairly normal but I know more about these as Bad Boys seemed to get a bit more press.