Though bands of roving criminals were common in many parts of Illinois, the counties of Lee, DeKalb, Ogle, and Winnebago were especially plagued by them.

In 1841, the escalating pattern of house burglary, horse and cattle theft, stagecoach and highway robbery, counterfeiting and murder associated with the Banditti had come to a head in Ogle County.

Edward Bonney, an amateur detective who hunted down and brought to justice the killers, wrote of his exploits and alibi, which were recounted in his book Banditti of the Prairies, or the Murderer's Doom!!

The "Prairie Bandits" were active across northern Illinois, especially in Lee, Ogle, Winnebago, and DeKalb Counties, from 1835 until the events leading to their ultimate demise began on March 21, 1841.

The Banditti posed a far greater threat, for a much longer period, than the exaggerated paranoia of the two-month Native American conflict.

The connections the Banditti had around the county made illegal activities such as counterfeiting and dealing in and concealing stolen property easy to perpetrate.

In Ogle County, the crimes that occurred in March 1841 resulted in a kangaroo court, which culminated with the lynching of two Banditti near Oregon, Illinois.

[2] Beginning with the events on March 21, 1841, violence and retribution escalated in the area around the Ogle County seat of Oregon.

Ford, who sat as Ogle County circuit judge at the time, reconvened court at a new location, and the trial for the accused counterfeiters went on as planned.

The jury, as was common in Ogle County at the time, had been infiltrated by one of the Banditti, who subsequently refused to convict the accused.

During that month, a group of citizens, possibly acting under direct counsel from Ford, met at a schoolhouse in White Rock Township, and formed an organization aimed at driving the outlaws out of the county.

[1] Membership in the new group grew quickly, soon numbering in the hundreds, and copycat chapters sprang up all over the Rock River Valley.

At the head was John Driscoll, who had migrated from Ohio in 1835 with his four grown sons, William, David, Pierce, and Taylor.

A small group of Banditti had gathered at the Driscoll homestead, but seeing they were outnumbered, they fled, only to return with the DeKalb County sheriff and other authorities in tow.

The sheriff and his companions did not see the events as the outlaws had hoped; they sided with the vigilantes, and the Driscolls promised to leave within twenty days.

[1] Instead of leaving, the Driscolls and the other Banditti held a meeting in which they determined that Campbell and his fellow Regulator, Phineas Chaney, had to be murdered.

Once there, accompanied by Ogle County Sheriff William T. Ward, the angry group confronted John Driscoll.

[1] The Regulator court was convened at "Stephenson's Mill" in Washington Grove, Illinois, because of the courthouse fire in March, 1841.

[1] On June 29, 1841, the vigilante trial began, and William Driscoll admitted to telling his brother to kill Campbell, but only "in jest".

[1] Though the Banditti continued to plague areas of northern Illinois, they were largely eradicated from Ogle County following the lynching of the Driscolls.

[5] The offices were likely trashed in response to a scathing editorial published by the Express speaking out against the vigilante action taken by the Regulators.

Beaten and left for dead, he survived long enough to give a full description of the criminals before he died that night.

[7] On May 20, 1848, area resident Joshua Wingert, while searching through the grove 2 mi (3 km) west of town for his cattle, came upon a small log hut.

The robbers dragged a trunk of money out from underneath the sleeping Haskells' bed undetected, much of the noise they made probably drowned out by thunder.