He was wrongfully imprisoned for a 1932 bank robbery in Fort Scott, Kansas and spent almost 40 years in prison before he was pardoned by Governor Robert Docking in 1969.
Sawyer was eventually thrown out and disowned by his parents after discovering stolen money from a then recent bank job.
He may have been connected to Al Spencer's gang, which robbed a large number of trains and banks during the early 1920s, but there is no conclusive evidence to support this claim.
Afterwards, Sawyer briefly returned to his hometown where he shot a local card dealer named Bleaker whom he accused of cheating.
Sawyer was arrested for the shooting in Dallas six months later and extradited back to Oklahoma where was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.
[1] It was shortly after this heist that he teamed with Jim Clark and Ed Davis for a planned robbery in Rich Hill, Missouri but called it off, supposedly due to a case of bad nerves, quietly leaving the bank before drawing their pistols.
They were arrested by police several hours later, caught in the dragnet searching for the men who robbed a bank in Fort Scott, Kansas that afternoon, and were taken in for questioning.
Sawyer and Davis were escapees from Oklahoma State Prison for murder and Jim Clark had been sent up for cattle rustling out of Texas.
All three were indicted and wrongly convicted of the Fort Scott bank heist, in actuality committed by the Barker Gang, and sent to the state prison in Lansing.
[1] At least one account claims Sawyer was one of four outlaws recruited to rob the bank, referred to as a member of the "St. Paul Outfit", which included Harvey Bailey, Jim Clark and Ed Davis.
He and the others forced their way out using pistols,[4] smuggled in by Frank Nash, and among whom included Harvey Bailey, Robert "Big Bob" Brady and Wilbur Underhill.
Sawyer was eventually confronted near Chickasaw by Sheriff Horace Crisp and a deputy, then investigating the string of car thefts in the area, who was disarmed then knocked unconsciousness.