[3][4] In 1878, Parrott and his gang murdered two law enforcement officers — Wyoming deputy sheriff Robert Widdowfield and Union Pacific detective Tip Vincent — after a bungled train robbery.

It was known around Milestown that a prosperous local merchant, Morris Cahn, would be taking money back east to buy stocks of merchandise.

George, Charlie Burris and two others carried out a daring daylight robbery despite Morris Cahn traveling with a military convoy containing 15 soldiers, two officers, an ambulance, and a wagon from Fort Keogh, which was tasked to collect the army payroll.

Approaching the coulee over a five-mile (8 km) plateau, the soldiers, ambulance and the wagon became "strung out", creating large gaps between party members.

[7][8] In 1880 following the robbery of Cahn, Big Nose George Parrott and his second, Charlie Burris or "Dutch Charley", were arrested in Miles City by two local deputies, Lem Wilson and Fred Schmalsle.

[9][11] Charlie Burris suffered a similar lynching not long after his capture;[6] having been transported by train to Rawlins, a group of locals found him hiding in a baggage compartment and proceeded to hang him on the crossbeam of another nearby telegraph pole.

[12] Doctors Thomas Maghee and John Eugene Osborne took possession of Parrott's body after his death, to study the outlaw's brain for clues to his criminality.

[17][18] Parrott's dismembered body was stored in a whiskey barrel filled with a salt solution for about a year, while the experiments continued, until he was buried in the yard behind Maghee's office.

Inside the barrel was a skull with the top sawed off, a bottle of vegetable compound, and the shoes said to have been made from Parrott's thigh flesh.

Today the shoes made from the skin of Big Nose George are on permanent display at the Carbon County Museum in Rawlins, together with the bottom part of his skull and his earless death mask.

His gang enjoyed a successful run of robbing pay wagons and stagecoaches of cash in the late 1870s, but a yearning for bigger profits led to the attempted train robbery and his hanging.