Whenever I stumble upon a photo that catches my eye or leaves me asking questions, I like to try and find out more. It’s not enough for me to just see the image, I need to know the background.
In this instance, I found a photo of what appeared to be an elderly man being held down so that someone could give him a haircut. In another photo it looks like he is quite unhappy with the results. The truth of the matter, he wasn’t happy. So who is he and how did he end up with the forced removal of his hair and beard?
The Photo in Question
Who was Hiram BeBee and was that even his real name?
In the fading shadows of the American frontier, one man defied death, prison, and history itself. His name, at first, was George Hanlon — arrested for grand larceny in 1919, accused of stealing from a drunk soldier in Alameda County. Decades later, under the name Hiram BeBee, he would become infamous for something far darker: the cold-blooded killing of a city marshal in Mt. Pleasant, Utah, in 1945.
But there’s more to his story. Much more.
The Murder of a Marshal
According to multiple contemporary reports, Hiram BeBee (then claiming to be more than 100 years old) shot and killed Marshal Lon T. Larsen in October 1945. Larsen had evicted BeBee from a local beer parlor. When the marshal returned to his truck, BeBee opened fire, shooting him twice with a revolver. Witnesses described BeBee’s parting words as chilling:
“Take that, you little pup.”
He was arrested and tried, with his defense claiming self-defense. The jury found him guilty of first-degree murder. Due to Utah’s capital punishment law, BeBee was offered the choice of death by hanging or firing squad. However, a later jury recommended life imprisonment, sparing him from execution.
The Trial
Hiram’s Wife
When Hiram was George Hanlon
BeBee’s past was murky. During his trial, he testified that he was a Civil War-era young man, a centenarian by the 1940s. He admitted to living under various aliases — including George Hanlon — and acknowledged a prior felony conviction in California.
A 1919 newspaper confirms that a George Hanlon was indeed arrested for grand larceny and held on $2000 bail in Alameda County. This supports BeBee’s claim of a criminal past spanning decades and states.
The Haircut and Beard Removal
Whether or not BeBee was the Sundance Kid, his story reflects the dislocation and mystery of America’s last living outlaws. He was forgotten, then rediscovered, his name and story resurfacing every few decades in newspaper columns and family stories. His forced haircut photo became an iconic image — a symbol of the dying Wild West being tamed by law and time.
By 1949, Hiram BeBee — Utah’s most notorious centenarian convict — had become more than just an inmate. He was a walking relic of the 19th century, cloaked in myth and marked by a long, wild beard that became his personal emblem. To BeBee, that beard wasn’t just facial hair — it was identity, rebellion, and protection.
So when prison officials at Utah State Prison ordered it removed for “sanitation reasons,” BeBee resisted with the fire of an old outlaw.
“This is the land of the free and the home of the brave… So this is what you do to me. Make me like a pig, like a dog.”
— Hiram BeBee, shouting during the forced haircut
A Fight Until the End
According to the press, it took five men to subdue the frail, elderly man, now reportedly over 80 years old. He kicked over the barber’s stool, spat in his captors’ faces, and swung wildly as they dragged him into the prison barber shop. He shouted defiantly that the “atoms” in his beard and hair had given him long life, and he fought to preserve it like a sacred artifact.
Warden Mason Hill insisted the shearing was necessary now that BeBee was no longer on death row, but serving a life sentence for the 1945 murder of Marshal Lon T. Larsen. Still, to BeBee, it was the final humiliation.
“This hair has been mine for centuries.”
Fellow prisoners reportedly shook their heads in pity. One said BeBee “would rather have been shot” than lose the beard he had worn through decades, disguises, trials, and legends. One inmate captured the sentiment best:
“That beard was his trademark.”
The photo of BeBee mid-shearing — head slumped, body held down — became an iconic image of defiance beaten by time. It marked not just the taming of one man, but the symbolic end of an era.
Some Believe he was ‘The Sundance Kid’
But the most compelling (and controversial) aspect of BeBee’s story is the persistent belief that he may have been none other than Harry Longabaugh — the Sundance Kid himself.
Multiple later articles, including a 1980 editorial from the Emery County Progress, document how BeBee told neighbors and jailers that he had once been called Sundance. Historian Edward M. Kirby, in his book The Rise & Fall of the Sundance Kid, asserts:
“He [BeBee] was known in Utah records as Hiram BeBee and was the oldest inmate of the prison. The name was one of three aliases Longabaugh used. The others were George Hanlon and Hiram Benion.”
Kirby claims BeBee died in prison in 1955 — not in Bolivia in 1908, as the official story goes. He further cites anecdotal evidence: stories from Wyoming, Utah, and even FBI records that BeBee had fought in the Mexican Revolution with Pancho Villa, and had traveled through Europe and South America, matching theories about Sundance’s post-outlaw years.
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