There is a wide divergence of opinion as to what part Murrell played in the depredations and outrages which were committed by the band with which he was identified from this time until it was broken up in 1834-1835. Phelan says: Phelan's History of Tennessee. The distinguishing feature of his methods was their thoroughness. After the commission of an offense, nothing was stickled at to prevent detection. He knew no degrees in crime, and regarded murder as in no wise more heinous or repugnant than the theft of a watch. In article entitled John A. Murrell and Daniel Crenshaw in Tennessee Historical Magazine. Yet Mr. Park Marshall says: Murrell always positively denied that he or his gang ever committed a murder. No charge of murder in any definite form was ever brought to his door. Yet the prevailing belief in the minds of the people in many parts of the country, and to a great extent locally at the present time, is that Murrell and Crenshaw, particularly Murrell, were the leaders of the greatest band of highwaymen the country has ever known, and could with justice be described as the great land pirates of the Southwest. This mistaken notion had its origin in a highly fictional and long since discredited story contained in a small book published by one Vergil A. Stewart, which owing to its sensational character had a large sale and of course a very large number of readers.

Notwithstanding the divergence of the views with regard to Murrell personally and his methods and the character of his crimes, it is a certainty that he and his gang kept West Tennessee, North Mississippi and Eastern Arkansas in a ferment of alarm and distress for several years, especially with the favorite operations of horse-stealing and negro-running. While these hectic affairs were being carried on Murrell married and settled down, apparently at least, on a farm which he bought near Denmark in Madison County, Tenn. In reality it is supposed that he was carrying on the most extensive schemes of rapine and plunder through a sort of committee called the Grand Council of the Mystic Clan, including, it was thought, many men of standing and influence and the ramifications of which were widely spread. He was living at Denmark when, through the influence of Vergil A. Stewart, he was arrested. It is believed that Stewart was, at one time, associated with Murrell and that he endeavored to bring Murrell to justice to gratify his desire for revenge. Be that as it may, he failed to give the grand jury the name of any prominent man connected with Murrell. Nevertheless Murrell was convicted of negro-stealing in court at Jackson, and was sent to the penitentiary where he remained six years, at the end of which time he was pardoned on account of his failing health. He went to Pikeville and died near there not long afterward. In his Historic Blue Grass Line, Douglas Anderson tells of Murrell having been tried in Nashville on a change of venue, on May 25, 1825, on the charge of having stolen a horse from a widow in Williamson County. The verdict and judgment was that Murrell should serve twelve months' imprisonment; be given thirty lashes on his bare back at the public whipping post; that he should sit two hours in the pillory on each of three successive days; be branded on the left thumb with the letters H. T. in the presence of the Court, and be rendered infamous.

Mr. Anderson describes the branding from the statement of an eye-witness as follows: At the direction of the sheriff Murrell placed his hand on the railing around the judge's bench. With a piece of rope Horton then bound Murrell's hand to the railing. A negro brought a tinner's stove and placed it beside the sheriff. Horton took from the stove the branding iron, glanced at it, found it red hot, and put it on Murrell's thumb. The skin fried like meat. Horton held the iron on Murrell's hand until the smoke rose two feet. Then the iron was removed. Murrell stood the ordeal without flinching. When his hand was released he calmly tied a handkerchief around it and went back to the jail.

As a young man, Crenshaw was an associate of Murrell in Williamson County, and, contrary to the accepted belief, seems to have been the leader in the various escapades in which both, from time to time, were engaged. According to Park Marshall, in the article previously referred to, Crenshaw lived on land belonging to the mother of Thomas H. Benton and a large spring near one of the corners of this land was known as Crenshaw's Spring. Like Murrell, Crenshaw seems not to have practiced murder in carrying out his designs, either alone or in connection with Murrell. He was guilty of various offenses and crimes. In April, 1826, he was convicted of stealing a horse from R. C. Foster, of Williamson County, sentenced to imprisonment for six months and was branded. It is said that after Crenshaw was branded and was still standing on the block he bit the letters from his hand. John Bell, afterwards the eminent senator in Congress and candidate for President in 1860, was Crenshaw's attorney and, after his client had been convicted in the case spoken of, he withdrew his plea of not guilty in two other cases against Crenshaw and filed in each case a plea of benefit of clergy by which device Crenshaw secured immunity from the penalties in a case of forgery and in one of the horse-stealing cases.

Source: TENNESSEE THE VOLUNTEER STATE VOL 1

Don't know what is true and what isn't.. but accounts on the internet indicate he died about Nov. 1844 near Bledsoe Co TN. He was the son of Jeffrey & Zilpha (Andrews) Murrell who were from VA, moved to Williamson Co TN about 1806. His wife was Elizabeth Mangham. Said to have had a sister named Leanna, and two brothers, James Henry (lived in Louisiana) & William S. Murrell (of Cincinnati OH).

Wikipedia gives these observations:
Accepted claims - Here are some general facts that are accepted about his life:

1. He stole horses, and at least once was caught with a freed slave living on his property. He was sentenced to ten years in a Tennessee prison for horse-stealing.

2. Murrell was one of three brothers who were known to be petty thieves. Their father was a Methodist circuit preacher.

3. A young man named Virgil Stewart, in 1835, wrote a fictitious account of the history of John Murrell called "A History of the Detection, Conviction, Life And Designs of John A. Murel, The Great Western Land Pirate; Together With his System of Villany and Plan of Exciting a Negro Rebellion, and a Catalogue of the Names of Four Hundered and Forty Five of His Mystic Clan Fellows and Followers and Their Efforts for the Destruction of Mr. Virgil A. Stewart, The Young Man Who Detected Him, To Which is Added Biographical Sketch of Mr. Virgil A. Stewart."

4. Stewart wrote this so-called "confession of John Murrell" under the pseudonym of "Augustus Q. Walton, Esq.," for whom he invented a fictitious background and profession.

5. Historians generally believe that Stewart's pamphlet was largely fictional, and that Murrell (and his brothers) were at best inept thieves, having bankrupted their father over the years for bail money. (Proving that, far from being a criminal mastermind, Murrell was caught and jailed quite often.)

6. After Murrell died nine months after leaving prison, parts of him were dug up and stolen like icons. His skull is still missing, but one of his thumbs is still in the possession of the Tennessee State Museum.

Disputed claims
The following claims were originally derived from Stewart's "History of the Detection, Conviction, Life, and Designs of John A. Murel...." (see above):

1.He was known as a 'land-pirate,' using the Mississippi River as a base for his operations. He used a network of anywhere from 300 (Stewart estimate) to 1,000 (as quoted in Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi) to 2,500 (as some newspaper reports claimed) fellow bandits collectively known as the Mystic Clan to pull off his escapades. Many of these were members of cultural/ethnic groups such as the Melungeons and the Redbones. He was also known as a bushwhacker along the Natchez Trace.

2. To cover up his misdeeds, he played the persona of a traveling preacher. Twain's work and others say he would preach to a congregation while his gang stole the horses outside. However, the accounts are unanimous that Murrell's horse was always left behind.

3. Just before he was apprehended, he was about to spearhead a slave revolt in New Orleans in an attempt to take over the city and install himself as a sort of potentate of Louisiana.

4. The disputed details about Murrell are more numerous and controversial than the known facts. Even today, his place of birth is in question: Some sources claim Williamson County, Tennessee, others say Jackson, Tennessee. In any case, it is clear that he grew up in Williamson County, Tennessee, just south of Franklin.

5. Even more in debate is the location of his hideout and operations base. Once again, Jackson or Madison County are bandied about, but other places include Natchez, Mississippi in an odd depression on a bluff called Devil's Punch Bowl, Tunica County, Mississippi, the Neutral Ground in Louisiana, and even the tiny Island 37, part of Tipton County, Tennessee. One record, a genealogical note,[1] even places him as far east as Georgia; in fact Atlanta historian Franklin Garrett makes it clear there was a lawless district in that town named for him, "Murrell's Row" in the 1840s. Because Murrell has come to symbolize Natchez Trace lawlessness in the antebellum period, it's understandable that his "hideouts" (whether there were any hideouts or not) have been said to have been located at most of the well-known areas of particular lawlessness along the Natchez Trace.

6. Even the dates of his mythical escapades contradict themselves, a tell-tale sign that much, if not all of it, is hogwash. Some say he began to plot his takeover of New Orleans in 1841, which would be odd because he was in the sixth year of a ten year sentence in the prison at Nashville at the time, and Stewart had already published his account of Murrell's plot in 1835. Others say he was in operation from 1835 to 1857, which would be odder still because, again, he was in prison for ten of those years, and died of tuberculosis in 1845 shortly after leaving prison and taking up a quiet life as a born-again Christian and blacksmith.

7. A river feature in Chicot County, Arkansas called Whiskey Chute is named for his raid on a whiskey-carrying steamboat that was sunk after it was pillaged. It was named such in 1855. However, he is also claimed to have been born in 1791,[2] which would make him a very aged pirate. As with most of the dates associated with the mythical Murrell, this one is off the mark. We know from Record Group 25, "Prison Records for the Main Prison at Nashville, Tennessee, 1831-1922," that Murrell was born in 1806, most likely in Williamson County, Tennessee.
[NOTE: Please read Penick's book, and consult the records in the Tennessee State Archives and the county courthouse in Franklin, Tennessee, if you intend to edit this entry. It's important, I think, to distinguish between the mythical Murrell and the historical Murrell, if people are to use this entry with any confidence. The mythical Murrell is fascinating and well worth study, but he wasn't real. Or, more accurately, the man was real and the legend a figment of the imagination.]

Interesting note found on the internet: Daniel Crenshaw TN Franklin, Williamson County / Nancy Crenshaw, widow of. Pension suspended for further proof of service. (Excerpts from Rejected/Suspended Revolutionary War Pensions, 1852)

Not much to be found on Daniel - what I did find is not reliable - Born the son of Cornelius & Martisha (Winn) Crenshaw, about 1760 Lunenberg VA - died 15 Sep 1831 Williamson Co TN. Married twice. First to Nancy Depree in VA 1779 and she is credited as being the mother of his first 3 children who were Abner, Elizabeth & William. His second wife is shown as Nancy Jennings also of Lunenberg VA whom he married 2 Jul 1789. Seems to be one child named Joseph born to this marriage.

Lots of Rootsweb entries on both these men. If you are numbered among the descendants of either of them you'll need to verify any and all of what you find.