Wyoming, H-Y, 1892-1997, Undated

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tuckian made a decision that was
to prove disastrous — Kels con-
cluded that sheep ranching would
be more profitable. With the
courage of his convictions he
sold his entire herd of cattle at
Omaha, purchased a thousand
ewes and several rams, shipped
them to Iron Mountain, and drove
them up to the ranch. The arrival
of sheep in the Iron Mountain
country caused bitter resentment
on the part of the open-range
cattlemen. Homesteaders were
bad enough, but this was the last
straw. They hated the sheep, and
they hated Kels Nickell for bring-
ing them in. From that moment
he was constantly greeted with
grumbling, arguments, and veiled
threats. This tension continued
for nearly three years until that
morning in July 1901, when the
rifle shots rang out and fourteen-
year-old Willie died.

Willie’s body was barely cold in
his Cheyenne grave when, on
August 4, 1901, Kels was shot
from ambush in a field less than
half a mile from the ranch house.
An estimated dozen shots were
fired, and his arm was shattered.
He also received wounds in his
hip and side. Then, as he recov-
ered from the wounds in a Chey-
enne hospital, Kels learned that
several hundred of his sheep had
been clubbed and shot to death
by masked riders. When officers
of the law went to the ranch to
investigate, the terrified Mary

Author at the grave of Tom Horn — Columbia Cemetery, 9th Street and College Avenue, Boulder, Colorado.

Mahoney Nickell stood them off
at gunpoint for hours until they
finally convinced her that they
intended no harm to her and the
children.

So the cattlemen had their way.
Tom Horn had succeeded. As he
recovered in the hospital, Kels
decided to give up the fight. He
and Mary sold their Iron Mountain
ranch property during the period
October-December 1901 and
moved to Cheyenne with heavy
hearts and remorse over the
wreckage of their once promising
future. Kels followed each step of
Tom Horn’s arrest, trial, appeals,
and execution. He requested
permission to witness the hang-
ing, but the request was denied.
He could only wait outside. As
newspaperman John C. Thomp-
son, who had witnessed the exe-
cution, rushed toward the tele-
graph office, Kels stopped him
and asked, “Is the Son of a B----
dead?” He then nodded with grim
satisfaction as Thompson replied.

So the tears shed on that cold
November morning in 1903 were
for Tom Horn, convicted murder-
er. The family he destroyed was
ignored and all but forgotten — a
quirk of human behavior in the
Old West that has changed little
over the years and remains all too

' familiar in today’s events.

SUPPLEMENTAL NOTES:
1. The Nickell ranch house is
gone. The entrance to the root

cellar is all that remains of this
homestead. The barbed-wire
pasture fence and gate where
Willie was shot still stand. A ring
of stones which investigators
placed around the spot where
Willie’s body was found is still in
place, just as they left it.

2. Kels Nickell died of natural
causes in 1929. He and Mary are
buried beside Willie in the family
plot at Lakeview Cemetery, Chey-
enne, Wyoming.

3. The folks in the Laramie
County Clerk’s office in Chey-
enne can point out an elevator
shaft down the. hall, where. Tom
Horn’s gallows stood.

4. Tom Horn’s body was re-
leased to his brother Charles for
burial. The grave is located about
200 yards west of the intersection
of 9th Street and College Avenue
in Boulder, Colorado. The red-
stone monument at the grave
reads, “In Loving Memory of Tom
Horn 1861-1903.” RW

REFERENCE SOURCES:

Deed Book 107, Pages 223,
253, 293. Deed Book 105, Page
283. Deed Book 125, Page 186.
Laramie County, Wyoming.

Tom Horn file, History and
Archives Division, Wyoming State
Museum, Cheyenne.

Wyoming Magazine, issue of
October-November 1977. -

Krakel, Dean, The Saga Of
Tom Horn, Powder River Pub-
lishers.

TPXIN “*D dyUd

Mountain Station, some seven
miles from the ranch. All accounts
agree that he was riding his
father’s horse. Many say that he
was also wearing Kels Nickell’s
coat and hat. But the horse has
great significance, because that
was a primary means of recogni-
tion at great distances on the
range. Willie stopped to open the
barbed-wire pasture gate about a
mile from the Nickell ranch house
and was killed by two .30-30 rifle
slugs fired from a rock ledge at a
range of approximately two hun-
dred yards. His body was not
discovered until the following
morning.

Violent death was not a stranger
to the Kels P. Nickell family. Kels
was only eight years old when,
on February 7, 1863, his father,
John D. Nickell, was murdered
by asecond cousin (John Jackson
Nickell) near the family home in
Morgan County, Kentucky. The
killer was with a group of guer-
rillas sympathetic to the Con-
federate cause and, typical of
such bands operating throughout
that North-South border state,
dealing out harsh retribution to
people regarding their Civil War
politics. John Jackson Nickell
was tried by a military court and
sentenced to hang for the murder
of Kels’ father. He was executed
on Johnson’s Island in Lake Erie,
near Sandusky, Ohio, September
2, 1864, in compliance with a
court martial order signed by
Abraham Lincoln.

In November 1873, at age eigh-
teen, Kels married Ann Brown of
Greenup County, Kentucky. A
son born in 1874 was named
John D. Nickell II, in honor of his
grandfather. But Kels apparently
had some wild oats to sow and
decided to sow them as a Private
in Company K, Fifth United States
Cavalry, in which he enlisted at
Cincinnati, Ohio, on September
2, 1875. Kels was one of two
troopers dispatched to confirm
early reports of the Little Bighorn
battle. He reached the site of
Custer’s !ast stand on June 27,
1876, b-iore the dead had been
buried. !i was during his military
service in the West that Kels

decided not to return to Ken-
tucky, and by mutual agreement
he and his wife were divorced on
September 8, 1877. He was dis-
charged from the Cavalry in 1880
and opened a successful black-
smith and farm-machinery repair
shop in Cheyenne.

In Cheyenne Kels met sixteen-
year-old Mary Mahoney, who had
emigrated with her parents from
Cork County, Ireland. They were
married on December 27, 1881,
and their first two children were
born while they still lived in
Cheyenne. Then, in 1885 they

Kels P. Nickell family plot, Lakeview Cemetery, Cheyenne, Wyoming.

homesteaded 160 acres and pur-
chased 480 adjoining acres on the
Chugwater, seven miles north of
iron Mountain Stati »4. Wyoming.
Kels and Mary hac even more
children after they moved to ine
lron Mountain country, the oldest
of which was William (Willie).
Kels managed well, and his
cattle ranching enterprise in the
lron Mountain country was a
total success. By 1898 his herd
numbered in excess of 1,000 head,
and he was considered well-to-
do. But that year the stubborn,
red-headed, quarrelsome Ken-

z es

Kels, wife Mary, and Willie are buried here.

vere all under ar-
he had a warrant
and they replied
) without a war-
chat if they did
ise to him.”
zal proceedings
Cleve was dis-
statement that
present because
| her to hold a
-ed a law that “a
-uctions from and
husband, cannot
‘pon posting the
*f was released on
> because of her
ied that they had
iging to the Two
‘ that twenty-one
sre in the area.
.o the Laramie
er 17, 1898, “‘she

. any two-legged

uy.” Cleve and
500 bail, Louis

lip, said he had
cattle from one
‘ asked Louis to
Sybille country.
us brands, and
‘spose of the cat-
sturn the money

Author’s Collection

True West

Curiosity-seekers watch Tom Horn’s casket being c

The manager of Balch’s market stated
that he had bought some calves from
Louis Bath on October 31. At that time
he arranged to have four more delivered
in two weeks. Of those, the allegedly
stolen animals, some were branded
‘three shoes’? but others were not
branded at all. None of the defense
witnesses had included the three shoes
among the brands they named.

Prosecuting Attorney William
Bramel dropped the charges against
Cleve and Taylor for lack of evidence.
Two of Bath’s brothers, Phil and Alfred,
asked that the charges against him be
dropped, and his attorney, C.W. Bramel,
asked for an extension because the
defendant was without means to defray
expenses.

The trial went to the jury, and an
associated document indicates that
Bath was suddenly at large. In it, the
presiding judge stated his doubts that
the bail bond was sufficient and ordered
Bath’s arrest. He was taken back into
custody, and the jury convicted him on
January 17, 1894. They acquitted Eva
Langhoff,

The judge sentenced Bath to eighteen
months in the penitentiary in Laramie.
He was pardoned and released less than
April 1993

a year later. In 1895 he played on the
University of Wyoming’s ‘‘Never-
Defeated” football team whose athletes,
legend has it, were less scholars than
big, brawny cowboys recruited from the
range.

Evidently still unburdened by a con-
cern for the law, Eva Langhofi was
charged with larceny on October 10,
1895. Joseph E. Miller complained that
she had stolen property from him valued
at $9.35. The charges were dropped on
October 14 after the court decided no
criminal act had been proven.

THE LANGHOFF trials evidently
had a greater effect on Tom Horn.
Almost a decade later, during his own
trial for the murder of Willie Nickell,
Horn repeatedly referred to the Lang-
hoffs. He described them as ‘‘notorious
thieves’? and complained that all had
been set free except one who was par-
doned in less than a year.

Within months of Lou Bath’s pardon,
Tom Horn was implicated in the
murders of two suspected rustlers. In
August 1895, William Lewis, who had
been involved in a legal tangle with the
Swan, was gunned down near a wagon-
load of butchered beef. In September

Author's Collection

arried down the front steps of the Laramie County courthouse.

Fred Powell was murdered after being
warned to stop stealing or suffer the
consequences. Because he had alibis,
Horn was never charged with those
killings.

When William A. Richards was gover-
nor of Wyoming in the late 1890s, he
asked WSGA president Billy Irvine to
arrange a meeting with Tom Horn.
Richards needed help to deal with rus-
tling on his ranch in Big Horn County.
The meeting was held in the WSGA of-
fice, which was in the capitol. After
Richards outlined the problem, Horn
said he would take no money in advance
except for $350 to buy two horses and
tack. After he resolved the situation to
the governor’s satisfaction, his fee
would be $5,000. When Horn placed no
limit on the number of rustlers to be
eliminated, Irvine related, the governor
ended the meeting.

It was during that meeting that Horn
made his now infamous claim, ‘When
all else fails, I have a system which
never does”—a system upon which he
evidently resolved after watching the

Langhoffs go free.

om Horn, Government in-

terpreter, U.S. Cavalry

Scout, cattle detective, and
hired killer, died on the gallows at
the county jail in Cheyenne,
Wyoming, on the morning of
November 20, 1903, for the mur-
der of Willie Nickell, the fourteen-
year-old son of a prominent
ranchman. As the noose was
adjusted, Charles and Frank
Irwin, Horn’s cowboy friends,
sang the Baptist hymn, “Life's
Railway To Heaven.” They wept
as they sang, and with the words,
“Keep your hand upon the throt-
tle and your eye upon the rail,”
tears came to the eyes of all the
listeners. Thus, in a strange
pattern that prevails to this day,
many tears were shed for the

convicted murderer, but few were
wasted on his victims.

It had been a road with many
turns that brought Tom Horn to
his appointment with the hana-
man. Twenty-five years earlier A
could have achieved lasting fame
and a more honorable place i in
the history of the Old West, had
he been given all the credit due
him for his part in the Apache
Indian campaign along the Mex-
ico-Arizona border. Before he
was twenty, he was a near genius
with languages. He knew Ger-
man, was fluent in Spanish, and
spoke the Apache language like a
native. The great Apache leade
Geronimo, who called Horn‘ Tall
ing Boy,” had come to trust } i, ;
and this had much to do with

7 th

HORN , Tom, white, hanged Cheyenne, Wyoming, Nov. 20, 1903.

imo’s surrender to General
C ge C aoe But the surrender
such a feather in General
Crook’s i pith helmet that he
ininimized the key role of the
fOuUNG scout and thereby rele-
gated Horn to a minor niche in
tne pages of the history books.
Willie Nickell probably died by
mistake. The case has been an-
alyzed by dozens of writers and
historians over the years, and
most of them have concluded
that Horn’s intended target was
Willie's father, Kels Powers Nick-
ell. It happened at the Nickell
ranch on North Chugwater Creek,

G)
D ©
vd
= 9

aoout fifty miles north of Chey-
ene, on July 18, 1901. Willie
rode out very early that dreary

meormng on an errand to Iron
23

374 TRIGGERNOMETRy - *RAILROADED?’’ 375 fag

with the murder, there was none except that famoy “If Horn was bragging, then the ‘confession’ of | hae
“confession.” Stoll, the prosecuting attorney, had tri § Horn, one of the principal facts on which the state relies, |
to connect Horn with the killing at the time of jts o § falls to the ground, as there is insufficient other evidence to
currence, but had failed. Whether or not he had ig § qavict him of the killing of Willie Nickell."’

structed Lafors to try the trick Lafors did execute, I har So, apparently, Wyoming hardly believed Tom Horn
no means of knowing. Nor, Posey has anyone ¢lg guilty. But, one must remember the conditions in the
today except Lafors himself. For Stoll commited § sate at this time: Big cowman watring against little

le ee

suicide at the end of a prolonged spree in June, gil. § cowman, Cowman against rustler, had made for bitter |

mmitics, had forged strange and obscure alliances, Ge
STOLL WORKED hard to build a case against Horn, He § fnancial and political. Tom Horn and his employers had . Me
hunted up all the corroborative evidence he could. He @ many enemies. But, it is hard for me to understand how ae
brought in Frank Mulock and other Witnesses fron @ many honest men could be against Horn. He had always : Aes
Denver, to testify that in a Denver saloon they hij § been in the employ of cowmen, hired to protect their - | i '
heard Horn boast of the murder of the Nickel boy. property. What grievance could an honest man have, | Bee |
(After the trial Mulock repudiated his testimony, giving & against the watchdog of property?. A cowman said: nae ae
the weak excuse that he had seen a man who was Homs § “Show me a man who's against Horn and I'll show you at

double several times since the trial and was certain thn € arustler!"” :
Horn was innocent, that this ““double’’ was the man k + During the trial, Stoll pinned his hopes on that con- 7
had heard boasting in the saloon.) Testimony wa § fession. Horn on the witness stand made an excellent im-

heard concerning Horn’s movements at the time of the poste on the courtroom and, in many cases, even on r
killing. Horn’s own explanation of his Presence in tk § hostile newspapermen. They said of him, in effect, that
vicinity at the time of Willie Nickell’s killing was tha § he told a straightforward story that carried conviction
he was merely making his rounds in accordance with his | | twoall who heard it. |

habit. He had heard that Nickell’s: sheep were trespa @ He admitted the talk in the state house but denied, Wee ht
ing on John Coble’s range. He investigated, he said, and § in general and in particular, confessing Willie Nickell’s we Peli
found the report to be untrue. The sheep were on Jim # murder. For instance, he denied that he had made the fy Eleh
Miller's range, so he had no interest in them. But it wa assertion that he had left no trail because he went bare- fal
on the*’confession’’ that the prosecution pinned its hope § footed. He said that Lafors asked him how one could Ley
Apparently, Cheyenne in particular, Wyoming # § cover his trail and he replied: ‘*Go barefooted.”’ fee”
general, thought that Stoll was due to be beat. Bes He charged that the whole business was a ““ frame- ae
that Tom Horn would not be convicted found no takes ap’; accused Ohnhaus of changing such stenographic iAP
on the streets. The Cheyenne Leader, October 16, 19, # Ootes as he had really made ‘‘at the instigation of goon
summing up the evidence of five days of trial stated: somcone.”’ A oral §
‘The ‘confession’ standing alone would probably k He claimed that words were put into his mouth that - fed
given little credence.’’ And. again: he had never uttered, that other statements he had made ieee

‘Few people took his boasting seriously,” it § had been twisted to make them mean guilt, admission,

marked—referring to his well-known habit of telling f when they were really nothing but speculations con-
blood-curdling stories. And still again: cerning the case as it looked to an outsider. He said that

5 PORE ART EER yer NET Fe

ain it Be camer mene get ta bis

378 ___ TRIGGERNOMEThy,
Ts

The jury retired to consider the case. They began a!
ballot. Five times the score stood ten for murder in the
first degree, two for acquittal, the two Voting fy |
ee being Jurors Payne and Thomas. It look like
a deadlock. :

Those of us familiar with the jury System, by whid
the will of the stubborn minority is often imposed upoa
a more pliant (or more impatient) majority, can casih
picture the scene in that jury room. All were ANXIOUS ty
go home, to get this case off their minds, and the will
a majority was being blocked by two jurors. ;

One must believe that Payne and Thomas had »
much reason for voting for Tom Horn’s acquittal as th
other ten had for demanding his conviction. They had
heard the evidence, they had seen the witnesses.
must have made some decision concernin g the credibili
of the various men who testified, the worth of the eve
dence, pro and con. And here they sit, demanding tha
Tom Horn be set free, stating in effect that the state hal
not proved Tom Horn guilty of the murder of Wille
Nickell. Five ballots. . . .

A sixth ballot was preparing when one of the jurors
—Tolson by name—halted the procéeding. Tolson sad
that it might be advisable, before taking another ballor,
to hear from the two dissenting jurymen their reasons
for believing Tom Horn innocent. So, turning to the two
stubborn ones, he asked them if they refused to oe
the state’s case because they believed that Horn had only
been talking loosely and largely to Lafors at the timed
the famous *‘confession.”’

Both men replied that they did not take the s
called confession seriously, and for that reason believed
him to be innocent.

Tolson said Cin an affidavit) that the whole case was
then discussed and at the end of the discussion Payne and
Thomas talked together and announced themselva
ready to vote. When the sixth ballot was taken it stood
twelve for conviction!

“RAILROADED?’’ | 379
Consider this! Those two jurors sat in the courtroom
wod heard all the evidence. They were not convinced by
{oll's fervid oratory. They were not convinced by
Lifors’ manner, or that of Leslie Snow, the aes
sheriff who was Lafors’ corroborating witness. - vi-
dntly, they did mot believe that the famous ‘‘ confession
was in fact a confession! ie
They went off to the jury room, their minds made up
that Tom Horn was an innocent man. For five ballots
they proved that belicf. Then, they did an about-face!
ose who at this late date and often at a great dis-
unce—psychologically as well as geographically—
daim that the defense of Tom Horn was a matter of
ingenious quibbling, certainly should consider by what
sm cxhibition of weakness Tom Horn was convicted! —
In effect, we can say that Horn was not convicted in
that courtroom by anything that Stoll and his array of
witnesses had done. He was convicted in the jury room by the
aguments and the weight of dominating personalities, brought
we bear upon two (it seems to me) weak and uncertain jurors.
There can be no question that, left alone, Payne and

Thomas would have stood out for a verdict of not
guilty. But they were not so left alone!’ Around them
| pthered the other jurors, at close range, talking,

arguing, attempting, not to make these two jurors see

| the truth—for they had already seen the truth according

to their lights—but attempting to force upon them the
will of the majority.

Many other cases have been settled in the jury room
1 precisely the same fashion. I have heard a juryman in
another murder case tell how he was virtually forced by
the opinion of the majority to subscribe to a verdict with
nhich he did not agree. And so it appears to have been
a this case.

Carried to the ultimate, the case must have ended in
walemate; the jury must have returned to the judge, to
asnounce itself hopelessly dead-locked. Tom Horn
would have received a new trial. Granted that we cannot
lorcsee the outcome of that trial, had it been held, the

A Feel BATTS. ¥

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ae ES
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372 TRIGGERNOMETRY

Horn: ** Well, I do. For some times I go for some day
without a mouthful. Sometimes I have a little baggg
along.’’

Lafors: ‘‘ You must get terribly hungry, Tom.”

Horn: ‘* Yes, sometimes I get so hungry that I cou
kill my mother for some grub, but I never quit a job
until I get my man.”’

Lafors: ‘‘ What kind of a gun have you got?”

Horn: *‘I used a 30-30 Winchester.”

Lafors: *‘Tom, do you think that will hold ups
well as a 30-40?”’

Horn: ‘No, but I like to get close to my man. Th
closer the better.”’

Lafors:‘* How far was Willie Nickell killed?’’

Horn: ‘* About 300 yards. It was the best shot that]
ever made and the dirtiest trick I ever done. I though
at one time he would get away.”

Lafors: ‘* How about the shells? Did you carry then
away?”

Horn: ‘‘ You bet your life I did.”’

Lafors:‘*Tom, let us go down stairs and get a drink.
I could always see your work clear, but I want youm
tell me why you killed the kid. Was it a mistake?"

Horn: ‘* Well, I will tell you all about that wheal
come back from Montana. It is too new yet.”

Horn and Lafors then left the office, but they re
turned in the afternoon, when the conversation was coe
tinued (according to the ‘‘confession’’) as follows:

Horn: ‘*Joe, we have only been together about fiftecs
minutes, and I will bet there is some pee saying,
‘What are these —— planning now, and who are they

oing to kill next?’ We have come up here because ther
is no other place to go. If you go to the Inter Occaa
(Hotel) to sit down and talk a ae minutes, someox
comes in and says, ‘Let us have a drink,’ and before ym
know it you are standing up talking, and my feet get
tired it almost kills me. I am 44 years, 3 months
and 27 days old, and if I get killed now, I have the satr
faction of knowing I have lived about fifteen ordinary

f “RAILROADED?"’ 373

lives. I would like to have had somebody who saw my
past, and could picture it to the public. It would be the
most ——— interesting reading in the country; and if we
could describe to the author our feelings at different
times, it would be better still. The experience of my life,
or the first man I killed, was when I was only 26 years
old. He was a coarse me :

Lafors: ““How much did you get for killing these
fellows? In the Powell and Lewis case you got $600
apiece. You killed Lewis in the corral with a six-shooter.
Iwould like to have seen the expression on his face when
you shot him.’’

Horn:** He was the scaredest
did you come to know that, Joe?”’

ors: ‘'I have known everything you have done,

Tom, for a great many years. I know where you were
paid this money.’”’

Horn: “Yes, I was paid this money on the train be-
tween Cheyenne and Denver.” |

Lafors: ‘‘ Why did you put the rock under the kid’s

you ever saw. How

isn't it?”
Horn: “Yes, that 1s the way 1 hang out my sign to

| collect my money for a job of this kind.”

Lafors:‘‘ Have you got your mon t for the killi
of Nickell ?’’ e paitid en a

Horn: ‘‘I got that before I did the job.”

Lafors: “You got $500 for that. Why did you cut
the price?”’

Horn: *'I got $2,100.""

Lafors: ‘‘ How much is that a man?”’

Horn: ‘That is for three dead men, and one man shot
at five times. Killing men is my specialty. I look at it as
4 business proposition, and I think I have a corner on
the market.”’

This talk between Horn and Lafors occurred on

uary 12, 1902.

Horn was arrested the next day and charged with the
murder of Willie Nickell. Of evidence connecting him

eh IF PEPE a REO, age eg te tlt: —_ &

head after you killed him? That is one of your marks,

376 TRIGGERNOMETRY

the bulk of the ‘‘confession’’ had been written before h.
got to Cheyenne. ,

The jury listened, Wyoming waited for the verdig
During the trial the jury was taken out for its meals to,
public restaurant. They heard much heated talk abog
the case. They could not have helped hearing the diy
cussions of outsiders—and particularly the speculaticgs
as to whether or not the jury would find Horn guilty.

The head waitress of the hotel where the jury took
their meals during the trial, later deposed that remarks
were made by different people, to the effect that ther
would probably be a hung jury in the Horn case—thy
there were three men on the jury who were supposed to
be particular friends of the defendant who would ne
convict him, and that a man would be more apt to td
the truth when drunk than when sober; that the«
statements were made by persons sitting at’a table ad
joining the one occupied by the jury.

Juror Payne deposed that he overheard similar re
marks, and observed that he was pointed out as a fricod
of the defendant, which gave him the impression thu
people thought that he had been “‘ bought or fixed.” He
further deposed that, while the jury were deliberating
on their verdict, the argument was made in the jury rooa
that, if they made a mistake, the trial court or the
Supreme Court would grant defendant a new trial. 4
Denver newspaper reporter deposed to have heard te
marks, similar to those referred to at the hotel while tk
jury were there.

As remarked before, it would seem that observers d
the trial did not expect a conviction. Point by point, tk
defense seemed to score.

Stoll produced a .30-30 shell picked up in the vicininy
of the Willie Nickell murder. He could only assert thit
he believed it to have been dropped by Horn in flight. An!
this in a country where half the riders carried rifles
that caliber!

WRAILROADED?"'

when Stoll was attempting to es
| ballet which had killed Willie Nickell.

377

His own doctor-witness failed him on the stand,
ting to establish the caliber of

Mulock and the other Denver witness, testifying that
Horn had boasted of Willie's murder in a Denver saloon,
xem to have made a poor impression (and small wonder!
when one keeps in mind Mulack’s written retraction of

- his testimony as it applied to Horn). .

Horn made accusations against Lafors that—if be-
lved by the jury—must have thrown a mantle of
suspicion over, not merely the ‘‘confession,’’ but any-
thing that Lafors had ever touched.

On the stand, Horn told of several talks he had with
Lafors before that of January 12th in the state house.
He claimed that Lafors was anxious to fix various crimes
besides Willie Nickell’s murder on Iron Mountain
people. He charged that Lafors had attempted to gct him
‘to throw in with him”’ in order to ‘‘cinch that damned
outfit out there,’’ and that his conversations outside of
the state house with Lafors, were all along that line.
Lafors denied having any such conversations with Horn.

Stoll in summing up for the jury, said, in part:

“Gentlemen of the jury, you do not have the ordi-
airy man here to deal with; you have the criminal, a

| man of criminal mind and criminal instincts; an extra-

odinary man. . . . You need not fear imbruing your
hands in the blood of the defendant; after you is the
court, then the Supreme Court, and then the Governor.
... The people are very much in earnest in this case;
they have furnished the money necessary for the prose-
cution; the officers have done their duty, and now the
People demand a verdict at your hands.. . . Youdo not
wish to be placed in the position, and suffer the regrets,
which a jury trying a case in this court at one time have
sufered, where the nine who desired conviction yielded
to the wishes of the three and acquitted the defendant,
who shortly thereafter killed a whole family of six per-
sons, some of which jurors you are undoubtedly ac-
quainted with:and have heard them express their
fegrets. . . .””

i Wid 3

ak = sh Saree

be a Oe ea

phe cits,

a SGN I are eS

ES et ae Oe
i RS ae

= Py
eee

\
ag OS

bed

Tom Horn quit Pinkerton in the mid-1890s. Instead of settling
down, he worked as a tracker for cattle associations in Wyoming.
Trackers were supposed to stop rustling, but in truth most acted as
hired killers for cattle barons, settling old grudges and driving out
farmers and sheep ranchers.

Horn knew the reputation of trackers, and he did little to improve 2

it. He became greedy and charged a premium for his skills. Horn would
kill anyone if the price was right. And he stopped taking chances. He
would lie in ambush for his prey, shooting from afar with a long rifle.

In 1902, Horn crossed over the West's line of decency. He had
been hired to kill Kels Nickell, a sheep farmer whose death was de-
sired by several cattlemen. Horn set up an ambush for a distant rifle
shot and waited. However, at that distance Horn could not discern be-
tween the farmer and his 14-year-old son, Willie Nickell, whom Horn
shot and killed.

Most people knew that Horn had killed the boy, but their beliefs
were no good in court. U.S. Marshal Joe Lefors contrived to get Horn
drunk and obtain a confession. After a few drinks, Horn admitted to
killing the boy. However, he didn’t know that witnesses in the next
room were listening in and writing down his confession. :

After being convicted of murdering the youth, Horn was sen-
tenced to hang. In jail, Horn wrote his autobiography and shaved off
the large mustache that was his trademark. On November 20, 1903,
Horn was hanged from a rope that he braided himself.

CRIMES OF THE 20TH CENTURY

oie" ee a

Tom Horn was photographed braiding the noose that

was used to hang him for mistakenly slaying the 14-
year-old son of sheep farmer Kels Nickell. Prior to
mounting the gallows, Horn shaved off his trademark
mustache and jotted down a shamelessly glorified
account of his life.

at Sia ts - Pe ie
oe

388 ___TRIGGERNOMETRY

“‘confessed’’ that he was a worldly sinner. He had not
said that Willie Nickell’s death was by his hand.

Another tale that went the rounds was that Coble
and other bloody-handed cowmen had hired Horn to
commit so many atrocities that they dared not let him
talk. So they hired the state’s best lawyers, assured Tom
Horn that he would never hang. And at the last; even,
he believed that he wouldn’t die. :

But—if they ‘‘knew’’ that he would talk, why did he
not talk, at the last? Why did he shake hands with Coble
on the very day before his death, when Coble told him
that he had to die? Why would a man with that bitter
grievance against Coble write the letter that Horn did
write, speaking of friendship?

The truth of the matter is, I am afraid, that Tom
Horn was a dangerous man to certain ones, even after
his death. And certain newspapers have painstakingly
blackened his memory as much as possible. A hard man,
yes! But a kindly man and one well-liked by his friends.
A man who is remembered for many fleeds of bravery
and generosity. 7

My reader may not agree with me in my conclusions.
But I have tried to consider Tom Horn’s case as carefully
and impartially as if fate still rested in my hands—and
with no thought that, having formed my opinion, ten
Cor ten thousand) men coal argue me to the other
opinion and say, that would be ‘‘ my duty.”

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS:

BILL G. COX
BILL FRANCIS
WILLIAM J. HELMER
GARY C. KING
JULIE MALEAR
DAVID NEMEC
SAMUEL ROEN
BILLIE FRANCIS TAYLOR

Crescent Books
an

A HERO
TURNED BAD

Tom Horn was an ex-Pinkerton man and former
Indian scout who turned to killing for hire. Evidently,
he changed his ways when he grew convinced that his
heroic reputation would allow him, literally, to get
away with murder,

NOVEMBER 1903

GREED CHANGED TOM HORN FROM AN HONEST
LAWMAN TO A COLD-BLOODED KILLER

Tom Horn seemed destined to be a hero. His skills and bravery
marked him as a force for good in the wild West. Then, he trans-
formed himself into a greedy, unscrupulous gun-for-hire, eradicating
all the goodwill his heroic younger days had earned him.

Tom Horn was born in Memphis, Missouri, in 1861. Stories about
local legend Jesse James roused 14-year-old Horn to leave home to
join the pony express. He traveled to California and prospected for
gold without much luck. There he met Indian scout Al Sieber, who
taught him a lot about the Apaches. When the U.S. Army in Arizona
called for Indian scouts, Al and Tom went to join up. General Nelson
Miles was attempting to contain the Apaches who, led by the famous
warrior Geronimo, were looting ranches.

By August 1886, the army had trapped Geronimo’s men in the
mountains near Sonora, Mexico. Tom's tracking skill had kept the army
on clever Geronimo’s path, which earned him the Apaches’ respect. The
cornered Apaches signaled that they would negotiate with Horn. The
brave youngster strode into Geronimo’s camp alone and resolved the
details of their surrender. Tom headed for California again, this time
to try ranching. Horn was good at the work, but found it boring.

Seeking excitement, in 1889, Horn joined the Pinkerton Agency,
which was the closest thing to a national police force. Though a pri-
vate company, Pinkerton was often hired by railroads to catch train
robbers or by ranchers to investigate cattle rustling. Posted in Wyo-
ming, Horn mainly tracked rustlers. His most famous pursuit was the
single-handed capture of a train robber named Peg Leg Watson. Tom
approached Watson's cabin and walked straight to the door, Awestruck
by Horn’s bravery, Watson did not shoot. This amazing arrest sealed
Horn’s fame as a legendary lawman.

CRIMES OF THE 20TH CENTURY

ing gAV erat emes Utes .

wehing, talked to him ad:

da Firapped’ tts “artax” and;

‘Hess w the chair and ra ® hea: ¥
Mcheit around hie theak.: ‘
had “DONE LEAVE MES >:

Seige ie ‘ASKS! ¥ ai
Wind ad ah 1S) Qne- ounce: ‘cyanide ne

es Pes ah Ras &
Gand the "prison: ¢ Ee 2 « =
Th wasnt. w Picasa Cait 2 sek S Bon’ t a. mex aanere
pete ery pais. Wes ‘can ‘t. atte Lantuer said to the ministers, xd
ree leyerine” ‘eyiden>- "Don't feate me’) i.
hat dole tus ‘st eas § Spititual ot tie ye refertitie ty. those. who’ oaths They “assured him) they. were
vietin ns kept bon’ trom. ATackinn : been Canrerned.< wip “bis tare) stahdi hg. by. him spiritually, °

+¥ up? « Het Fert thrp “it: AS BBM Sp didnt understand oJ Serl} Then, as all preparations within |

ie any 2 man ud os S26 tapected, ¢ AD tas ik auad habpened a! home! the chambér were pmlc: they »”
ana 0 fice. A ee ee hs aE vette ses e to ie. per Bae fsaid, poodpye.” 2s

* map AT ha" the’ ateyis pren mABAry,.t on REIT. gee. Soak a eat > o'Kilss” me; Brother Young, * said
Pees age the exectition 160k. Onis abe Wigs es ee Be PN chtuers Young stepped ‘into the
owenvtist ot: 5 AIR ian des Mex relish care sgemed Oh ae ARS oe LS aghamiber “and: simees. Lanter
thes Hs R.) Crom weil Ui ired. 19 how oF TLantoer. 8) yeu C4 # the lips. oe ;
bes ninister to Canada. Priday,-t she Senteas’ inth ‘ ws E ae ma ‘AS ‘the minister lett: ‘the,
fa lly) announced tis eandidat ¥ death, wear ia bee ‘Vhureday,: Riter-" ! iber af)2:14 the-door w

atic “bomina tion noon while he wes-ealing, His: lasd: J amunute Sjatery Wa
“senator from: eels, E ; aay oe Lewtont ‘the Tever

somes
hopes eS fe ee SA as,
Sis Bt. OO seconds: after (12717 Dr, eee
a; ffery pronotinced Lantzer.dead.~ -*%
he body was: left slumped in the”
ip ou tfe- clamber until 12:30
3 to’ make death. certain, ©,
i a 30. ‘ammonia’ wass turned” “
i ‘ he tank \to® netitralize ANG 725 ag
SLeAS. Twenty minites, later, power=
at Petul fans’ @i@dred the ‘chamber of...
jist Sate sa innet Ble RBS: Ant the body was: removed ine
Raye ea. ‘A RAawkiNS ‘undertaking “estab-
OMA He iehment: wwhete i was. embalmed.
an Rea tha se line’ body. was_to ‘be* Shipped ©
Plait aes aoe “Friday afternoon ta’ Akron,: Colo.,.
y tegtahie. Su ‘Acggompanied hy. the” Revi Mr.) 2:
Tare « the Yong. bantze¥ts sister ‘and
Va ootred brothers, Myrs/:Vernice Lewis and.
eis bere: Lantzer, “bot sof) Akron,
ie. Pe bee Gited Roach, claiming the body, .
BPpPOy ed eaemnG bots’ "20, persons witnessed: the
eGiette: Te” SeCRHON, ” ‘including zone: woman, = 92.
: 7, “Ruth ; Conine ‘of Cheyenne, ? "=
‘attended as a. feature writer
PLHE:. TRIBUNE, Mrs. Conine«.;. «
the first woman “in> Wyoming's’
Fistory to Mitriess: an execution, aa
REDON'T WANTs 80500:

*Laritzey! sWarly Raye as Aoacaen
sine hy read: him/the death’. war-
five:<ninutes: ‘after ‘midnight
na asked, bint ithe had any: thing
say ‘before! heiwas execiited, :
portent. that? ; OL hack been. « : ae sWant to” :die:’ "he
was’ to” ‘come early, ory justien ¢ Tet HE ‘thatssome, Witinpered.” “Iv don't want to die.” -
f* those. false: forecasts? rges:: bee eived'. ftom: -The.Rev Mr. Young? whispered: |
or-which the rock? chucks” ATO’.NO=) Netes. Pcatise: ‘thee ethna something» ane» Lanitzer : ‘Tegained
= history. saith not Thae: ined such tradequate. intornt his ‘poises =.)
any, enh Bonar tion’: hes: Wad oasked: for sp ifice san The watderi then asked! ‘him to *
Bon Ss and: jek lial ie cu “Gress in the stockings and shorts: *
=e : 4 ae iwhich are. “worn during ‘a gas ey
, execiition,’ « : “s
t | out until ‘ E Mtew minutes ‘late ‘assisted by
sfternoon..“'mi Laat “observed! Guard’. William: Wise ‘and: the «
near ‘the- Head ot the Rap a couple} 2 - ; {Warden}: Lantzer “adjusted” the...
“| O8; “kee ties of bipeds, equipped pele nimot Mack over: his eyes. :
Sones Jeoked’: Hike: Sticks wie ’ t's *ée fewxminutes before midnight ;
i we Sti me f Lautzer told the death ‘watch
jetards<for the first time making
» tsueh . a) statement—that he. re<
*» , |grettéd slaying his: wife. ..
«7 >) ."V’m sorry. 1, took, her. life. :
‘OL didn’t -give: her ‘a: chance to find
F night’ gave. the her: Maker.”"he ‘said. a Fe
mier? Paul Rey- [LANEZERS. ele :
Of: “Continued on Page Twelve s
Fes. ie “Goiuma PIv9-2 te

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Ee ty sn

BAe eS

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args. 60%

A ey 22 AeaN °23*

Kae ts tg a AAs: “Cont OF Del! ate BN

Sar¥sier gs
, Fe} “ah te Pai... “9% &
‘eee 280"; Com solvents “akg 3

+61,"

opig atts! ary wa Cant <6 484 AB 3 46%
pont Mots: 277 3% (3*e,

tT @nrt” Wert. ecw Toate wee "10}2
oat Wrt re fae: 29 2B 27%]
2 Bp Deere Co ovary 23th. “22M 224

‘Dok Air. ivgas $0.4* 87; a9

“TriPonti es 488 aBsty. 185 he: 186

ep 1Gi—: 719" Re.

PR 3a

- > MS . — . ; ae gt
Bs Patt. Cash: Met “4. : ‘te
: iNat. Dist joe). = 25tat2 aie
ae ads) Sis mM Te

A Tei
123%,

vt Lanier

2 | forgiven: by’ God for the murder.

- (Continued from Page One}
“Ye said he believed he had been

‘His. prayers, the Rev.Mr, Mc-;

3 i Glothian: said, were ‘for the: wel~)

fare of‘ hits children.”
READ NEWSPAPERS,
RELIGIOUS BOOKS | j
j.He® is“ serene and cairn”: Raid!
ithe clergyman.:: oy Deneve he has,
| found: the: Lord.”
| read

dhe: “newspapers!

to: a
*the-high tribunal |
court's ‘Bibel

‘LETTERS —
; PROMSYMPATHIZERS.-

Lrg Fane moe? :

1940 LA

. Touring
Radio, h
white si

“115 E, 17th’
‘Phone 3355.

ithe ‘Rey, Mr. Young, the Rev. Mr.) eee

McGlothian:: and, other ministers,

tread: nis Biblé; prayed and: wrote,
jletters: te: members of. his: family |
j ands toe sympathizers from widely |
separated =: of ,the country,

$. | who ‘had: written him after read-}

fe a Sie newer Oe theca
“A& $230 p,m. he» ‘was. served : a)
dinner which : he: shared |

5-3 with: Mr McGlothian. ~ ..
2A, None of Lantzer’s relatives was j

ea present: Heé+had especially. asked |
>; the; Rev,“ Mr’ “Young: to visit ‘him |

gti, | AB
Fs Robert : Rhode, "Roy McPherson
: | and Bob: (COX: of Cheyenne.

a Gaines Geely of. Cragin and ;
Sheriff: Glen Penland ‘of: Rawlins;

Views: of News

Fae at: geakeh ser: however. EDT

rm, Rawlins; ‘Prank Kie-

and. Ernest - R.: Mai )
;. Morris’ Ger tz,

ts | {Continued from Page One)

1933" Ford: ¥-8~
Coach ..-..~s2-<200

‘1983S Ferd

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count. 202p.
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1 Train From
$10.95p

Sewowshaiieininces a

TRUE WEST

cf t i 1 V s/ # a
Lia UGA \ Cluy. WAAL UW / l |>2 [1 F 92

January 3, 1891) A trio of

escaped criminals, their limbs

shirts and pants, mushed by

toward the invisible line that divides

Wyoming’s high plain from that of
Nebraska.

William Kingen, a once brawny
and self-proclaimed rancher, pointed
the way, but ebony, ex-United States
Cavalry trooper Richard Johnson broke
trail for the struggling cowboy and
their lean, sixteen year old companion,
Charley Miller. Night turned to day as
Kingen’s pinched hat
ploughed the sharp wind
and sleet until his failing
feet sometimes resisted
calls from his mates. His
fatigue came as no surprise,

because of two strikes

end of his trail. Their

strength and wills flew

south like birds’ as they slumped
side by side into a small buffalo wal-
low. The warmth and weight of their
bodies pressed slowly through the icy
crust until the wiry grama grass
reached up through the thin layer of
snow and, like an old mattress, bent to
their shapes. Lying there, they tugged
their coats tightly and pressed close to
each other for protection against the
wind’s cruel teeth. Both immediately
fell asleep.

Sympathizing with their plight,
Johnson shuffled back over his faint
tracks to where his fellow fugitives

lay. But after suffering two more

hours in the night’s bitter cold,
he plunged alone into the wait-
ing darkness. Johnson feared

Author's Collection would find him on that God-

against him: a recent, undi- Charley Miller

agnosed illness, and weak-
ness brought on by fourteen months
spent in jail for cattle rustling.
Akhough Miller spent much of his brief
life riding shank’s mare, he, too, found
himself losing interest in their trek.
Only the round- shouldered Johnson,
with his comical, bewhiskered expres-
sion, wanted to continue. So he
pleaded. He cajoled. The convicted
moonshiner even tried unsuccessfully to
carry the heavier cowman on his bent
back.

Then, as day faded for the third

time since their terrible odyssey began, -

even Johnson’s threats failed at forcing
the cowboy across the brittle, brown
grass two hundred yards ahead of his
companions, with the last rays of sun
tap-dancing on the horizon, Johnson sat
down and waited for his plodding part-
ners. But Kingen lurched to a halt.
Charley, with numbed fingers and

gunny-wrapped toes, also reached the

forsaken plain.

thoughts crossed Charley

Miller’s mind before sleep
caught him, but perhaps memories
played in his dreams. Following his
birth in New York City on
November 21, 1874, a Spartan life
forced his reliance on siblings after
their German mother died of con-
sumption some four years later.
Their saloon-keeper father, also
from das Vaterland, took his life the

I: is not known what last lucid

By Larry K. Brown

m™,

a 1 ‘
J Tbe 4]
ofA - 2 a

{LL
be l ANAL. /

~Q\
~Q
a

M1 LLE rt ’

Charles,

hanged Cheyenne,

Ia BOY MURDERER

cae For. or Kilhng Two
_ Smpanions ina a Box

«ay hides

; Car. af

oP ig OR

Pas

JA New York Man Shoots itis
| Wite, Ch. My and Him

te relaiken 3 Fire Record.
An Unusual Number of -
. Immigrants. a

—.

Bey Hanged.

Deaver, April 22. —A epecial frow
Cheyenne, Wyoming, say Charles
Miller, the 18-year-old ‘poy, who, while
tramping across the country over & year
ago lo COM pany with Hoes Fisbugb snd
Waldo ,,Emereot, of Bt. Joe, Mo..

murdered bis companions io & box car
‘| for a fer Gollere, ve wae banged today st

|tempt wae og oy Miller's frietida “to
[have the se venos conmuted to life im:
wie atpat the governor refused:

eecaped, from Jail several months ago

but, wag, recaptured after a few days
liberty... He ‘showed the utmost in-
difference ‘during bis trial and at the
lime of execution.

fIelo-1 £0

(PD)

wyoming 22/1892
J 9 on 4/22/1892.

12:28 | o'clock. unsuccessful at-|

yn BUDYUERQUVE. “Dene Cer

ALB UOverk QUE, UM_.

PALMER, William P., white, hanged Wyoming State Prison (Natrona)
on August 11, 1916.

History of
NATRONA COUNTY
WYOMING
1888-1922

True Portrayal ofthe Yesterdays ofaNew
County and a Typical Frontier Town
ofthe Middle West. Fortunes and Mis-
fortunes, Tragedies and Comedies,
Strugglesand Triumphs ofthe Pioneers

Map and Illustrations

-ALFRED JAMES MOKLER

Publisher of the Natrona County Tribune from
June 1,1897, to October 15,1914

1923
R.R.DoNnNELLEY & Sons Company

Che Lakesive Press
CHICAGO

ME MBER OF THE ASSO CIA TEL D ae ESS S.

casren. Wrosaxa, Th ESDAY, APRIL 20, 101s os oS eo ee ae ee as _ NUMBER 280, a

: : : the: ‘prosecu- :
of Murder in thel tion and: defensere ‘of Wilmer E. Pal- whet Judge W
: first ‘degree tor ‘killing ae wite,. ast to the jury an
W. Longshare, ‘night attempted” suicide iy cel fourt § gel , Bo eaten e
ms R Healy, Barney, hacking... & ao : e passed. : br abe oN] ‘ ols ai hours,

. B. King: ‘and Patmer | paled <'pereeptahly whea
, | George W.. Ferguson. for the defen. e. gne. verdict was announced, but made
_Moesars. and Fergyson, a : ras

> Hepa 2 L was ae nee WOUIKERe Ce though | ‘the rarepends nee evi- :
> Viola Lee, an inmate of sible for him to. nit gui e were dence was against them, made a mas-

emoved, but it seems the razor blade | terful defense for thetr clio ttor-
and ee ife blade ney . Nichols ~ conducted a strong ; : int. Auloan-
idden away or passed to Prosecution whteb res It ue fo 0 he sen

: ee ‘tence: commuted > fe: imprisonment :
} © The. court room was. packed Hinstead of death: in view of the fact
{day duri trial ntere that the. evidence was whol! cireum.
ee stantial i

nerift
hy ae racket An. bis; cell.

THE CASPER RECORD, August 15, 1916, page 1

MURDER HUNG AT STATe PRISION

ae
Wilmer P. Palmer, who killed wife at Salt Criik, answers for crime
WSs

MEZTS DEATH GAMBLY

36563495434

Makes third attempt to end life on night before date of execution

SHR

Wilmer P. Palmer, who on January 8, 1915, murdered his wife at the boarding
house at Salt Creek, was hung at the state pentitentiary last Friday morning.
Although the murderer had shown signs of breaking down MKHXK during his long
incarceration, he braced up as the end approached and met his death calmly,
telling the Warden he had nothing to say before going to his death.

The previous morning he made his third attempt at self-destruction,,as he
boasted he would cheat the gallows, but like the other two, it was frustrated.
This time he used a broken button from his suit and slashed away at the wrist
until he had opened the artery. He could not restrain from showing signs of
distress and the death watch investigated and stopped the flow of blood in
time to defeat the purpose of the suicide.

The murder was one of the most cold-blooded in the history of the state.
Palmer and his wife, who was formerly of the red districts, secured work at
the hotel at Salt Creek, he acting as cook and his wife as waitress. Mrs.
Palmer, who was an attractive young woman of 28, became popular at the oil
camp and her husband, a surly brute, became insattely jealous of her, which
resulted in several family quarrels. On January &th, during one of these
quarrels which took place in their bed room at theXK hotel, Palmer cut his
wife's throat with a razor and then slashed his #&HX own. The woman died at
once, but Palmer was rushed to Casper and shortly recovered.

While in jail here and & on the night following the return of the jury's
verdict of guilty and placing the punishment at hanging, the prisoner slashed -
his wrist with a small safety razor blade which he had secured in some un-
accountable manner, and but for quick alarm of the other prisoners, he would
have bled to death.

The people at Salt Creek who knew the couple had no sympathy for the
murderer and feel he received a just punishment for his awful deed.

ET AIT ANS: Nee Sir aae? So bein TE td litt Maes soe eT de Dy oe ae “pe
ERRAND aN eae Poe SRE eS LP RR IONE ONE SSE

’ \
\

CUT HIS WIFE’S THROAT WITH A RAZOR 295

was acquitted. Edwards returned to his ranch with his wife and
children, but the killing of a man on account of her unfaithfulness did ~
not seem to cause a very deep or lasting impression upon Mrs.
Edwards, and on June 17, 1913, Edwards shot and killed Fred Ott,
the cause of this shooting being unfaithfulness of Mrs. Edwards, the
same as the one which had occurred less than five months previous.
The tragedy occurred at the Edwards ranch in Bates Park. Three
shots were fired by Edwards while the two men and the woman were
in the house, two of the bullets entering Ott’s back, the third missed.
Ott ran out of the house and made his way to the bunk house. The
woman rode to the nearest neighbors and telephoned to Casper for
a doctor and for the sheriff. After Mrs. Edwards had gone to the
neighbors, Edwards followed Ott to the bunk house and while the
prostrate man was pleading for his life Edwards deliberately shot him
in the back again, which ended his life. Edwards was brought to
Casper and jodged in the county jail, with a charge against him of
murder in the first degree. A change of venue was taken, and his
trial was had in Douglas, Converse county, in January, 1914, about
a year after his trial in Casper for the killing of Landers. A verdict of
manslaughter was returned by the jury and he was sentenced to
serve twenty years in the penitentiary. After he was sentenced Mrs.
Edwards took from her finger her wedding ring and handed it to the
“condemned man with the remark that she was through with him.
After serving several years in the penitentiary Edwards received a
pardon, and made a new start in life by taking a ranch and establish-
ing a home for his children in the southwestern part of the state.

See = ETS Ow

Cur His Wire’s THROAT WITH A Razor

While in their room at their boarding house in Salt Creek on
Friday afternoon, January 8, 1915, Wilmer P. Palmer murdered his
wife by cutting her throat with a razor. He then slashed his own
throat with the razor but the wound was slight. He was brought to
Casper and placed in the hospital and was fully recovered in a
week. Ata preliminary trial held upon his removal from the hospital
he was held to the district court for trial without bond upon the
charge of murder in the first degree. On April 19, 1915, he was
found guilty as charged and the next morning at about 2:30 he again
attempted to commit suicide by cutting the arteries of his left wrist
with a safety razor blade. Some of the other prisoners at once
notified the sheriff and a physician was called and prevented him
from bleeding to death. Within a week after he was found guilty
the court sentenced him to be hanged on Friday, August 6, 1915,

a ‘ a aa ares og ~ gir sae Ey Pa
Z “ ‘ nap . ¢ : ont wee oe wi
paatuartomtnreswrencet-wessteavenintinen iA antnerines So sresainnieanisarties Sa aS) . ; —
“a 2 Se ~~ <
| an a ts he oe a
nh rere Se Ieee Ment IRL etre” talent ‘

———

Pitt) ice | oS ss ame
Bre 7

THE NORTHERN WYOMING DAILY NEWS — WORLAND, WYOMING

conan H ling backwards and trying to get'that point said: “The state rests.”
--Pixley

‘under the bed. | Psychiatrist Testifies |
acasi Continued From Page 1— “It was too low for him to get} pr. William Karn Jr., medical |
P

his head i | under. I saw a potrion of his face| director of the Wyoming State Hos-
;

“easel Cece or ee or | — i eee eee the ath Sital at Evanston, testified for the
‘hold him!’ | “Y jumped over the children and}defense that Pixley was an incur-|

ected to ‘a 2 ; ‘but my knees in his back as hard|able “sociopath.” | Sse |
degrees I put my left knee on this male :as I could.” 1

Se Eine ale : Ent] ul Karn was asked by the defense |
normal. glare cae Be NE da iy lett She testified she told her hus-|if the girls likely were asleep when
through | 222

CAPE KENNEDY
scientists Wednesde

e 4 thing about the male person a .

. the be- any : | Robert, here he is. the presence of the parents of the :

: except he hada silver chain around | ’ ; . ib : :. | snooping observatory
ew light |; ak: Robert said,‘my God, it’s an In- deceased,” Karn said. “But it

: : bit where its eye
northern |**. —_ Masago meant a lot more to Pixley to kill | Of ;
"weeth- I then looked at Cynthia's bods dian. the girls while they were awake clear view of the

: ‘and endeavored to ascertain whe-; Mrs. McAuliffe said she got off ; ~ | both sustains and
igre om Ither there was any life. She did Pixley and her husband got on top ier than while they were sleep-| “4 “textbook” perf
. not move. I knew she was dead|of him. She said she left the room| At this point, Judge McAuliffe three-stage Delta roc
* |from looking at her. I knew peo-|and walked down the hall. She said| started for Pixley and had to be 545-pound satellite o
aeh the |>° would be coming in the room.|at first she did not want to scream. | restrained. ing from 343 to 393
‘z to 20- |T couldn't see her nose and I didn't; “But then I realized my husband! Karn said he examined Pixley well above the bla
*. Low want anyone to see her without her, and younger daughter, Susan, who| for 30 days at the State Hospital. | Phere that screens I

ty 15-25 nose — I looked around the room ,was unharmed. still were in thc! pixley had been declared sane endl {rom ground observa

he week |\for her nose.” it ‘room and there was danger all! triable at the end of that period. Tracking stations

sginning | “I felt a loud roaring noise In myjaround and I started screaminz.”| Karn described Pixley as a man|the spacecraft, An
ears — I felt I was going deat.” jshe said. “I ran to the top of the;ywho hates society. ‘Orbiting Solar Obs’

_ | “I tightened my hand on the de- i stairs and screamed and screamed.”' +A sociopath is sick in getting | Was working “very,
'fendant’s throat and then someon? she said. along with the outside world,” | had properly poin

d came in. A man saying he was a} Mrs. McAuliffe said she then re-| Karn said. “We hates the human | sensors and eyes to
| doctor came in. I tricd to taik and: turned to the death room and flung | rece — himself included.” | OSO-2, pieced to

released the pressure on the throat. herself across Suoan to try to keep; The psychiatrist described ore accident-damaged

el I couldn't talk.” a ithe little girl from secing any More |jey as “one of the sickest we've | ries instruments t
McAuliffe said a lawman finaily of the horror. lever seen sociopathically.” He id nn a ee

e Soviets stepped over and handeuffed Pix- “J grabbed her ‘Susan) and ran | chances to rehabilitate Pixley arank|

. ley. down the hall A priest offered ‘9! “apsolutely nil.”

st Ger- He said Pixley at that time said. help se Tguve her to him and rani The defense rested its case after |

ww power| ‘Ease up on my neci:.” ‘back to the dread children -- hop-' Karn’'s testimony. :

eunifica- McAuliffe said he did not reply ing they could be repaired — that; Also testifying for the defense

vas “no at that time. He said that. later, they were alive.” iwas C. F. Pixle:, Dallas, Ore.., Ase

; | while Pixley was under guard inthe! Mrs. MeAuliffe had been calm in: grew's step-father The elder Pix- &

between} bathroom, he had reached for aiher testimony until this point.'tey gave ‘the background of An-'=

owers. jlawman'’s sun, apparently to use, when sh» began crying. \drew's life, told of his family, in- §

» in the}on Pixley. but Was unsuccessful. “J tried to wire their faces with! cluding Andrew's ailing mother. if

t news- After his testimony Wednesday, towels — T saw it was too late ...-; Andrew Pixley himself was asked §

McAuliffe returned to his seat and I tried to taix to Deborah ... 1 to take the stand by his attorneys | Av
sobbed. ieovered them with a jacket.” | but he refused. }

ig needs, | When Mrs. McAuliffe took ‘he| She testified she then stood up j{ \f

—

remot nen

‘mates — ‘stand Pixley showed no emotion|and locked across the bodies at the | . - COME
iduring her testimony, put the by ‘hen hanc-cuffed Pixley. She 4 7 Ae .
____—| prief-filled story she told brouvnt caid there was bicod on the mans | Washakie Memorial . Will
tears to most eyes in the courtroom.! face and stomach. | s : n Be
‘including Defense Atty. Sperry. | =z enuid enly think one thing.” | Hospital Notes | Ca

| Mrs. McAunfie told of hrt shock | she testified -— “thats my babys

| whee she and her husband found | bloce | Feb. 3: |

| the battered bodies of their daugh- | Aspect to identify the man in the | Admitted: Donald Porter, Ba-'} }

, ters. \hotel 1com that night, Mrs. Mc-isin; Mrs. Wendell Lyman, Mrs. |

/ “Y saw this other person,” she Auliffe indicated Pixley seated at David Mercado. | 940 N 6th

| said. “He was between the beds in| the defendant's table. Dismissed: Leah Harrison, Syd- °

‘a position as though he was scoot-, Prosecuting Atty. Harold Joffe at: ney Harrison. NA gis gyre

There’s Extra Farm
Income For You Behir
These 2 New Tradema

in The Farm Field.

‘of the Situation alter Wal, With;

,diIC
jonly one’ amerciment adopted over | for building three miles of buried
fv serious objections. It would| Pipe drains near Worland.

require youths and others benefit-; x
E M ting from anti-poverty programs to; _ ;
,| sign non-subversive affidavits and)” -Wyoming
i—Continued from Page 1

,, bake loyalty oaths.
a broad-: have realized now how much it is

>| The bill would authorize
_!ranging, one-year program that in- | ‘ really worth to pay the price of

d $312.5 million for three new! preparedness.”
1 training and work plans;, Simpson said the Viet Nam cri-

~ guxv million to finance locally-ini- | sis was a place apart from domes-
eal

ro ie tic politics
s\tiated anti-poverty projects: and,
‘1 $295 million for a series of other, If the United States had res-

wv y

‘aid plans for farmers. migrani} |ponded to earlier challenges with
1 iworkers, small businessmen andj @!is as well as metaphors. Simp-
son said, the nation could have

3! jobless heads of families.

4: The bill is of vital importance to
j/the President because, unlike such
lmaijor measures as the civil rights
ajand the tax reduction bills, the
‘anti-poverty bill is not a legacy
si from the Kennedy administration.

struck a significant blow for free-
dom and independence.

U.S.

—Continued from Page 1

from the alleged action.” Stevenson
| said. “There is absolutely no foun-

- Washakie Memorial dation . .. in the claim that the
- willful and deliberate attack by

Uilabiim JVAUYGTUL PiVrsury, vs

ae Nevada eee

Gruening said the resolution’ ‘|
reference to assisting other South-
east Asian treaty nations meant:
than Congress would be “author-!
izing escalation of war’ beyond}
Viet Nam and possibly into Thai-
land, Cambodia and other lands. |

There were no negative votes |
in the House, but Rep. Eugene!
Siler, R-Ky., who was absent, was)
recorded as “paired’’ against the|
resolution.

Lodge told newsmen at the;
White House that Johnson and’
Secretary of tSate Dean Rusk’
“asked me to make a visit to a
number of allied capitals to ac-
quaint our ambassadors and our
allies with the situation in South-
east Asia as we understand it,
and the position and purpose of:
our government in Washington.”

--Crash

—Continued from Page 1
|body. less than 100 feet from the

| owned and operated the Irma hotel

‘the BPOE Does in Cody and Pte-
;neers of the Cody Country.

Ville, W1O., Wiley 24, 1604, Gtlgiiter

of Mr. and Mrs. Frank Houx. Her «1%
was secretary of state of

' father
Wyoming for two terms and acting
governor in 1917. He also was the
‘first mayor of Cody.

She was married to Henry K. ae

Newell in Junction City, Mont., in
1892. He died in 1939. The couple

from 1926 until their deaths. ‘The
‘hotel first was built by Buffale. ae
‘and was the gathering pisse of i
famous personalities. :

Surviving is a sister, Mra. Flor-
ence O. Marlow, Redding, Calif,’ .
who has been caring for Mrs. New- .
ell in Cody for the past year. A
son, Joe Newell, died in 1960.

Mrs. Newell was a member of

Funeral services will be held at
2:30 p.m. today at the Presby-
terian church with the Rev. R. N.
Buswell officiating. Burial will be -
in Riverside cemetery with Ballard

-| Hosvital North Viet Nam on August second, | Wreck. funeral home in charge of arrange-
i which has been admitted by North| Beside the wreckage in an area Ments.
ti Viet Nam, was nothing more than) which had been burned by fire|

yiAug. 6: a natural reply to alleged provoca-) fom the crash lay a spinal column!

. THE YEAR ENDING

Terry Eckhardt; tive acts by the United States.”

| Stevenson said the attack by,
North Vietnamese torpedo boats on:
Aug. 2 took place 65 miles from
the shore.

8! Admitted: Mrs.

lof Thermopolis.

fei Aug. 7:

8 Admitted: Mrs. Charles Hubbard.

e' Cynthia Schuti. Cheralyn Ervin!
Barbara Lass. |

Ss Dismissed: Frank Greet of Ten:

Yr. Sleep, Valerie Short. Mrs. Lloyd |
|
TV Schedule

nN: Upton.
'—Continued from Page 8

' (9:00-—Report at Teo (news

* PUBLICATION 10°15--Outer Limits
11:05--

4 COMMISSIONER ne ec > caine
: ymiug ; 6 58 News

F 700—S { Semeste
insurance Corporation | tmeuet, Sanat.

Dine R00— Mike Wallace Nowa
waukea, Wisconsin $9202 830-1 Love Lucy

Tire wo . 9 00—Reaal McCoys
THE YEAR ENDING | Stet mee ahora

| 10'00— Love of Life

$ 10°25—News
nein a aS oe : 10:30--anae.see Frote fod
2
oe OF A ee me en mm ee comm ee em $ 17,237 31 li-Udg—Fe her Knows Bast
ee, C.F eee a $ / ):30—As the World Turvea
_ (2 00—Password
aiemiai oy a nee) oneal ne $ 6,174 00 12:30—House Party

i i:00—Gereral Hospital
1:30—Edge of Night
2:93—Secret Storm
2.30—Price is Rght
3:90—Search for Tomorrow
3°15—Guiding Uight
3:30— Missing Links
4°09—TraiImaster

5.90—The Funny Compaay
5.30--Great Adventure
6:30 —-News, Weather.
7:00 Wagon Train

ember 3ist, 1963 ear
ecember 31st, 1963 .-_-$ 2,924,614 12) 8°30--Hennesev
| 9:00-- Boxing

are ohio sae | 9:45--News

$16,495,754 93.
$ 1,738.369.00,
$ 9.845, 171.98!

’ $28,079.295.91 $28,079,295.91|

Bpocts

10 00--Detectives
10:30—News
H 10:40—Pocatelio Plaznouss
ance Commissioner of the State of;
.t the above and foregoing is a con-|
i statement of the above named In-'

ffice, as required by Section 52-1022, |

83.
“The Burglat”’

KTWO

6-30--Summie? Semestet
7.:00—Today

8:90—Make Room for Daddy
8:30—Word for Word, color

145. 8:55—NBC News
hereunto set my hand and affixed my 9:00—Concentratloeo
une, A.D., 1964. 9:30—Jeopardy

10:00--Say When - color
10:°30—Truth or Consequences — colee
16:55—News

11:00—Tenessee Ernie Ford

11:30—As the World Turas
12:00—Password

123:30—House Party

1:00—Another World

Mark Duncan,
Insurance Commissioner

R PUBLICATION
I COMMISSIONER

1:30—You Don’t Say, oolor
‘ 2:00—Secret Storm
1 oming 2:30—Father Knows Best

3:00—Trailmaster

4:00—K-2 Fun Ranch

5:00—News, Sports

5:15—Game and Fish Report
5:20—Tv-Tonite, Weather
5:30—Huntley-Brinkley News
6:00--Candid Carnera
&°30--International Beauty Pageant

1 Lite Insurance Company
Yewark. New Jersey 07107

woe n nnn nnn reese nr eee- $ None 7:30—Beverly Hillibillies
lj el as ih ay ies ines aw bs wenn een w'ew we one $ None 8.00- Greatest Show on Karth
Bi a ee aeedoonee $ None 9:00 --Fight of the Week

z Noane ; 10:0 ~News. WwW eather, , Baers

and hip bones. Day could not say

for sure what type of bones they;
were but Big Horn county coroner ;
J. C. Hitchcock, although he was,
not on the scene, presumed they
|w were the remains of a deer which
;the two hunters had bagged and
were taking home with them.

Hitchcock said the flight plan filed!
by the Indiana men just before the
crash showed there were only the
two of therm aboard.

Hitchcock said he is sending a
man this weekend to the crash
scene to investigate and will be
able to give a full report the first:
of the week.

At the time of tine crash last Oc-
jtober, Wyekoff and Weimer had’
taken off from “iving..ton. Mont...
‘and planned to land in Sheridan,
to refuel. From Sheridan the next:
‘leg of their return trip vw Indiana:
| would have landed Daera ta Por:

S.D.

State Aeronautics Commissioner!
Marvin Stevenson, Cheyenne, who}

investigated the accident, said at |
the time Wyekoff either became
lost or simply swerved from. his!

flight path to view the spectacujar'!
area, accounting for the wreckage:
being souch of where i should;
have been, e

Cloud Peak is 13.165 feet high
and is located about 25 miles south-
west of Sheridan.

Your General

PUES,

‘First Baptist church, will officiate:
‘at the services.

'--Two

‘ sunimer,
lare grayish brown.

Specialist says:

NEW ‘GS
CARS!

900 SETS OF 4 ;

GENERAL MAI ON TIRES

Graveside Rites Set
For Upton infant Here

Graveside services will be held at
10 a.m. today at Riverview Memo-
rial Gardens for Christopher Mark
Upton. 3-day-vld son of Mr. and
Mrs. Lloyd Upton, 717 8. Lith St.

The infant was born Aug. 3 and
died at Washakie Memorial hospi-
tal Thursday night.

Dr. Emmett Dosier, pastor of the

The Veile Mortu-
ary is in charge of arrangemnets.

—Continued from Page t

lilinois lawver before becoming
village court judge in -suburban
Mavwood in 1959. All village court
judges became part of the Cook
Caceuty Cireutt Court under a 19-
03 Ulnois in« Tne MeAuiiffes
i had beet vacationing in the
mountains —just 30 miles north
of Jackson Lake where Mrs. Lyn-
don B. Johnson plans to stay on
a Western trip Aug. 14-17.

The ptarmigan’s color changes
with the seasons. In winter they-
re white, except for eyes, bills
and claws. which are black. In
their backs and wings

Tire
GENERAL

first! Grow Pixley for this most brutal about 19-99
2€N ‘and vicious crime,’
McAuliffes Testify | Deborah,
in the day the brosecy- | 11:4:
its ca ONowj the
of Mr, ; 1 S. Mc-!}
s
uliffe told how the family
icago by automobile July 24
ITlved at Jackson Aug. 5, |
He Said they Stay —?
a an)

> tn.

Doctor 5S; ys G

| Aulitfe Went to g

slits a x ¥ rn
He said they ler, the guris’ Toom | ing

we were wa
€&S I stopped.

; ntinued np 7
‘a ed o age

By MARTIYV STUART-FOX
Uniteg Prose International

(UPI)

; apa i 2;
ednesday jn the | am

f.
Cuba Tues- of Luang Prabaimg

50-caliber |
io re.|

/ €ar th
his wife Villas
OT am”

Tn gee

between Tiva
for contro! of th
Capitol of Laos
both Sides 1G
the Civili Population
Were belieyeq Hesavy,
€n night fev. ithe
emmment army tue UPS oO
Prasith Abhay Were

n f

The battle for «co

. #4

nee OF RIT ee
RY CAmelting . second /p),
| Veta wey cel rena
ey Pie ig. ’ +

ve saa P34 SESS :
Tecate eddie

> speending him to

allied | Sleep, Buifalo and Sulinss ih)

pe. 5 8. posi-| share the speaker's stand atop|
a crisis. | tne switchback on U. 8. Highway

yin 3 oe By ED MARTLEY
| we “Pleased” 116 in Ten Sleep canyon Sunds7

Daily News Staff Writer
“A body believed to be that of an Indiana hunter whojd
| died in a plane crash on Cloud Peak last Oct. 29 was founds:
Thursday by Curtis Chambers, a sheep herder for Taylor ¥
Brothers of Ten Sleep.

he had telephoned! for the fourth annual Ten Sleep
’ President Dwight D. Eis-| canyon sports car hill climb.
er to tell him of the plan. The Billings mayor will count
as yery pleased” Lodge said.; down the first official time of the)
@tate Depar t Friday race, officials said.
~ — haven : The dead man, tentatively identi- |
' fied as Leslie Weimer, Valparaiso, | _

Ind., was killed when the plane in! t
which he was riding smashed into) ~
a sheer cliff on Cloud Peak. Also ;
killed in the crash was the pilot,

L. K. Wyckoff of Valparaiso. | ¢

Wyckoff’s body was recovered
several days after the accident but! ‘
Weimer’s body, according to Wyo-| |
ming Aeronautics Commission of-)
ficials, was not found. |

When Chambers found the body |
he left the crash site to sunimon
three other men, Cameron Taylor |
land Chester Pearce, both of Ten'
Sleep, and Jim Day of Northridge.
Calif. Day was visiting in the area..

The party was returning to the’
area and as they neared the wreck- ,
age of the Cessna 182, Day sat down |
‘to rest. He said he sat on a rock |
|and upon looking on the other side,
isaw the crumpled, decomposing

|__Crash

|—Continued on Page 10

U.S. Violat
Waters, C

UNITED NATIONS, N.Y. ‘UPI
Communist Czechoslovakia charge¢

ecina etd tedbe Satta Pane cattiie} Case Caaf a ne % ORS silane Ras oa wT a0 8 BOTA AI, CAR CM Ste TERS SET SEE ES eee

vetse, driving a 1964 Corvette Stingray.
“on, Will be entered in either Class A or B. May,
ear, will be driving his sec
se event will start Sunday morning.

;ACKSON, Wyo.
raugnters of a Chicago judge were. 1n the room a
aped and slain in a
ig northwest Wyoming resort;

fied against a 19-year-old youth:

‘aught in the room with them.
‘seen,” King said.

Associate Circuit Court Judge
Robert McAuliffe of Cook County,| He said there
Ml., discovered the
Deborah and 8-year-old, é
McAuliffe. He also found: to the room by
Pixley of The Dalles, screen from a window.
Ore.. lying on the floor of the:
room, drunk or pretending to be Elmore conducted
drunk.

One of the girls apparently was|
etrangied and the other bludgeon- |
ed wtih a large rock.

f+ton County Atty.
sait another daughter, Susan,

court order was issued.

6, said.

READY FOR THE TEN SLEEP hill ciimmb today and Sunday
The car,

ond time on the tortuous canyon

(UPI) — Two was not harmed although she was;
t the time. She did)

McAuliffe and his wife were in|
varly Friday. Murder charses were|the hotel lounge and returned to
the room to find the bodies.
‘the most horrible thing I've sik hao wounds.”

Robert A. Hufsmith of Jackson
was appointed attorney for Pixley
at a preliminary hearing several
hours after the slaying. No bail

was no apparent,

bodies of 12-| robbery motive. The intruder was|
believed to have gained entrance
removing the| was set.

County Health Officer
a preliminary | Jackson

investigation but said he would
not conduct an autopsy u

“Medical indications are they!
Floyd King; have both been raped,”

is Ernest R. May, Me-
powered by a 365 horsepower en-
a trophy winner in the race last
course. The finals of

(Daily News Photo)

Two Chicago Girls Are Slain’
In Jackson Hotel Room Friday 22235".

and by bludgeoning with
ee. of some king.
}

“Tt’s

King said Pixley might
W. W.|ferred to another jail.

place.”
McAuliffe, 39,

Elmore :—Two
—Continued on gage 10

_____ | Stevenson promptly

“We can't give you the definite
legal cause of death. These younsg-

'sters were killed by strangulation
a blunt Soviets had indicated they wou

“J don’t think there were any

be trans- ing the efforts
He said! noi to. .
“townspeople are aS UDP-| to
set as any small town would be}

nless aj when an event like this takes 30, American ships had shelled |

was @ prominent: Nam.

Friday that the United States vio
\ lated the territorial waters of Nort.
| Viet Nam three days before th
naval battles which brought on th
‘current Southeast Asian crisis.
American Ambassador Adlai F
denicd th
charge. He said no U.S. warsm
was nearer than 70 miles to tr
coast of North Viet Nam at th
time the Czechs claimed.
The exchange took place whe
the Security Council met to resun
discussion of the current cris!
Earlier, council president Sivert .
Nielsen of Norway had invited bo'
and South Viet Nam to t

By phrasing the invitation in tr
way, Nielsen side-stepped a threa
ened procedural argument over t
seating of both Viet Nams. T

protest the seating of South Vv)
Nam and there had been indic
tions the North Vietnamese WOL
in any case refuse to come here

Stevenson and Czechoslovaki

cil had disposed
matter of the invitations. Steve
'son accused the Czech of “ec!
of Peking and F
ll the United Sta

. Ca

court.”
Hajek had charged that on J

islands off the coast ot North *

On Aug. 1 and = bo
the first recorded clash bet.
North Vietredinicse -torpedo b

A 4own’ stairs BD

“4¢ ont and’ Joad
) 4. saw Yoe
sanding with bis hands in:
and. stagge ng as if be
hit; but. saw nO one “pit: bims He
looked Jike' a man laboring: upéét
Pte nthe RCS PAR. & $295

desperation." maar Goa det Cae Gs

OG. Tsk
ea)

ie Wee’, Bien
pawas:

cand that tbe:

9, "
Adin.

9a
| A
mY

Qeow at the Cily
ty: of: Laramie

« Roetatives of the dead

ee ME :
lance, ‘tate ‘whick
with @itfice

Retessary Orecautions for the pro-
tection of the prisoner were taken
early in the evening. 9.0 pf
-' Inaemech as the murder of Fe-
,derpen occurred within, less: than
30 days of the date for the Open-.
died enroxte, ing of the fall-term of the dle-:
Of ‘ascertained trict court it will act be necessary |
had been catried -to'give the prisoner a preliminary:
hearing Wnless the prosecuting at-’
r-bearege g tornes desires that ae shall eae
ph dt ard) . yegtre te" do i and ‘it is considered pre a,
ng the wounded ‘Gtter of ‘De that a. Afreet: {aformatioa -
». | fact, Che’ Ciinese’s revolver car- ‘charging murder ia the first de
Tied only six cartridges and there ‘gree will be filed and > that’ the
is Bo evidence that he reloaded af- prisoner first will be arraigued in:
Y on Hollacd. ‘che @istriet Courts) 2
\'Geow. te eo alight of. physique:
aod 00 mild of manner; that of-:
ficers : interrogating «him +: last:
night “had - difficulty: tn - associat="
ing a man of sued appearance.
With the crime be had committed
hetrating “one ‘Joop ‘and with
tines a¢d the bladder 5
ag just benaath the skin
-COEN On the buttocks.
other bdaillet’ passed. throu
calf of the officer's . glars
weund whie a M
faconseguen
with thet

onthe
mately

£. feller

iy
a ees

or.

‘

| ey i
wt Lh
ie GR {fo
THE STATE OF WYOMING, )
BS.
County of Laramie,
IN THE DISTRICT COURT
FIRST JUDICIAL DISTRICT.
THE STATE OF WYOMING :
VBe Docket 5. No. 538. —
YEE GEOW
, a
JUDGMENT

BE IT REMEMBERED, That Charles E.Lene, Esq, County and
Prosecuting Attorney of Laramie county, did, on the 25th day of
September, A.D.1920, file in the office of the Clerk of the above
entitled Court an information charging therein that "the defendant,
Yee Geow, did, on the 17th day of September, A.D.19380, in the county
of Laremie and State of Wyoming, unlawfully, feloniously, purposely
and with premeditated malice, kill and murder one Thomas Holland, a
human being, contrary to the statutes in such case made and provided;

| AND BE IT FURTHER REMEMPERED, That on the 4th day of October.

A.D.1920, the defendant was brought into open court and stated that he
had no counsel and was unable to employ counsel, whereupon it was ore
dered by the Court that T.Peul Wilcox, Esq, a practieliic attorney,
be and was then appointed as counsel for the said defendant ;

AND BE IT FURTHER REMEMBERED, that thereafter, on the 9th
tay of October, A.D.1920, the defendant was again Lepight into open
court, and appeared therein in person and by hig said counsel, and >

Stated that he was ready to plead to the aforesaid information, The

%
defendant was thereupon duly arraigned on eaid information and enter-

ed &@ plea of not guilty. Said cause was duly assigned for trial to

a set to be begun and held on the 7th day of December, A.D.1920.

Tom Horn, the Langhoffs, and the

“Sys

American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming

tem That Never

By CHIP CARLSON

Failed”

I n his memoirs, Gus Rosentreter

recalls being an unwilling “deputy”

at Tom Horn’s arrest of the
Langhoff gang of cattle rustlers. “One
day when I rode into the Plaga Ranch,
I found the Two Bar manager, Al
Bowie, and Tom Horn there. They were
watching a neighbor who had been
butchering Two Bar cattle, and they
wanted me to go with them.

“I told them I did not care about
going, but Raymond Henke spoke up
and said, ‘You had about as well make
up your mind to go as Tom Horn will
deputize you anyway.’

“I went, and when we got to the place,
they had several beef hanging up in a
shed. One man had a big butcher knife
in his hand and talked big. Tom Horn
told him, ‘Drop that knife or I'll put a
bullet through your head.’ The knife
dropped and the show was over... .I
heard later that one of the prisoners was
sent to the penitentiary for a year, and
the rest of the guilty ones left the
country.”’

ROSENTRETER’S accounts of the
arrest, along with legal papers and
newspaper stories document the soon-
to-be-notorious stock detective’s earliest
known presence in Wyoming. After a
lenient judicial system failed to convict
and punish the rustlers to his satisfac-
tion, Tom Horn decided to take future
matters into his own hands. Ten years
later, he strangled to death in a
hangman’s noose the day before his
forty-third birthday. He was as much a
victim of his own alleged methods as of
a questionable legal system and a
society that wanted to be rid of him.

Following a one-year stint as a Pinker-
ton’s man in Colorado, in 1892 Tom
Horn was hired by John Clay, manager
of the Swan Land and Cattle Company’s
holdings. Clay was also president of the
Wyoming Stock Growers Association.
While the precise date of Horn’s entry
into the Wyoming cattle industry can-
not be fixed, C.W. ‘“Doc’”’ Shores, who
worked with him at Pinkerton’s, stated

that Clay had hired him in 1892. Shores
True West

contended that
purportedly as a
Two Bar, one of

operations. Shc

reputation precec
his real function
tive and surreptit
of. rustling, a
industry.

“In reality, th
dustry as the “‘
had been in decli
management, le
head counts, anc
pointed to a fi

* making. The s:

and the devast
lowed drove on:
fin of the large
But the big
tirely mistaken
rustling posec
threat. The inf!
lowed the Hom:
duing of the In:
that inevitably
many of the sei
best bottom lai
per on small «
arid, cool clime
head of beef
homesteader w
160 acres coulc
rustling the W.
Association an
choice but to en
Most operat
their commissic
mid-1880s, a de
WSGA wrote t«
tary, an offic:
about a situat'
thieves were rc
they could and
mate cattleme
detective thou;
idea to kill th:
replied that he
situation. The a:
ple of men to he
yes, it would
thieves before
While such
barons had di:
Tom Horn’s a
lem and lawles:
a factor to con
remote Sybill:
Cheyenne.
» Fred Langh:
Main Sybille Cr:
was married +
daughter of par:
Colorado and
Laramie River «

the law was fir:
April 1993

Illinois:
SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS DEATH SENTENCE IN 'ARYAN SLAYING' CASE

By SANDRA SKOWRON, Associated Press (Ill. service), Oct. 25, 1996

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) -- A Nazi sympathizer has failed to get the
Illinois Supreme Court to overturn his death sentence for killing a
plastic surgeon in his war against "fake Aryan beauty." Jonathan
Haynes, a former chemist with the Federal Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco and Firearms, was convicted in 1994 of burglary and three
counts of murder in the death of Dr. Martin Sullivan of Wilmette.

The state's highest court on Friday, however, dismissed two murder
counts, agreeing with Haynes that one killing should not have resulted
in three murder convictions. The justices let stand his conviction for
intentional murder and burglary, and they affirmed his death sentence.
Among his arguments, Haynes said he did not receive a hearing to
determine if he was eligible for the death penalty, which was
improper. The justices said that although the hearing was not
conducted, Haynes never demanded one nor objected when he did not
receive one.

"The defendant represented himself throughout the trial and
sentencing proceedings. In the course of that representation, the
defendant chose to present no evidence to challenge either his guilt
or the death penalty, save for his own inflammatory comments in which
he admitted his guilt and espoused his racist philosophy," Chief
Justice Michael Bilandic wrote for the majority.

But Justice Charles Freeman dissented in part, saying the failure to
conduct an eligibility hearing on the death penalty was cause to
overturn his sentence. Freeman said the trial judge rushed to make
the eligibility judgment, and Justices Benjamin Miller and Mary Ann
McMorrow concurred.

Haynes, who called no witnesses and presented no evidence, admitted
murdering Suilivan. In his opening statements, he condemned "fake
Aryan cosmetics," in particular bleached blond hair, blue tinted
contact lenses and plastic surgery.

He was convicted in a 1994 jury trial. State law requires all death
penalty convictions automatically go to the Supreme Court for appeal.
Haynes told police he came to the Chicago area to kill Charles Stroupe
of Lake Forest, the president of Wesley Jensen Corp., a manufacturer
of tinted contact lenses. When that was unsuccessful, he picked
Sullivan's name out of a phone book.

Haynes had made an appointment with Sullivan on Aug. 6, 1993, to
discuss undergoing a nose operation. Shortly after the surgeon entered
an examining room, Haynes shot him. Haynes also told police after

his arrest that he had murdered Frank Ringi, a San Francisco hair
colorist, in 1987.

{
‘
€
4

Wuat To Reap

THE LIFE OF TOM Horn, BY TOM Horn.
(UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS, $10.95 PAPERBOUND. }

TOM Horn: “KILLING IS MY SPECIALTY,” BY CHIP CARLSON.
( BEARTOOTH Corral BooKS, $16.95 PAPERBOUND.)

a of JoE LeFors “I sLicKerED Tom Horn”, BY CHIP CARLSON.
(BEARTOOTH CorRAL Books, $18.95 CLOTHBOUND.)

tain, Wyoming. The assassin, gunning for the: bay-sifatl
“attends to the dvi boy’s body and flees is e foothi
on a rock by his broces Fred the next dag

rime heyenne, Wyoming. On January
Ka! ain for Cheyenne. LeFors i is to meet

“two men get into a boasting contest, which
“ LeFors gets Horn to admit to killing William
tly-drrests him for the murder.

“his drunken state Le he confessed to LeFors, but the jury
to death by hanging, January 9, 1903.

numerous appeals, Horn is again sentenced to death, this

time the date being November 20, one day

WHERE To Go before his birthday.

NOVEMBER 20, 1903-—After a breakfast and a
| CHEYENNE, WYOMING: THE SITE OF HORN’S TRIAL FOR morning of writing letters, Tom Horn is walked

THE MURDER OF WILLIE NICKEL IS LOCATED AT THE », to the gallows, a contraption designed to elimi-
CORNER OF 19TH AND CAREY, THE CHEYENNE CHAM- mate the need for an executioner, instead using | a
BER OF COMMERCE, LOCATED AT 500 N, CENTRALCAN ‘|. Water-fed counter weight. After the hood is

"a placed over Horn’s head, those in attendance
LEAD YOU IN THE DIRECTION OF OTHER HORN RELATED ESB At thirey-two seconds while the grotesque

SITES. A REENACTMENT OF THE HORN TRIAL IS HELD 4 fachi ine performs its function. The trapdoor
EVERY YEAR, CALL THE CHEYENNE FRONTIER DAYS * SHiifigs\ open and Horn drops four feet to his
MUSEUM AT (307) 778-7290 FOR MORE INFORMATION. _}." deathagde is Petes | in Boulder, Colorado.

BOULDER, COLORADO: THE GRAVE SITE OF TOM HorN
IS LOCATED IN THE COLUMBIA CEMETERY NEXT TO THE
GRAVE OF HIS BROTHER, CHARLES. BUFFALO BILL Is
BURIED IN NEARBY GOLDEN.

ey } : NE re Las
34 Ap, Saat

Nickell is ambushed and shot in the back as hevope ns*thi€

66 hirty \
did no
the In

not be with
artist Grace H
in the early |
the 1800s the
woman who \
see her rare
acknowledg«
critics and 1)
large chos«
career on
unusual subj:
Growing |
California.
developed a
the Indians—
the Pomo Inc

SEPTEMBER 190,

y of the Old Cowboy
p. Univ. of Okla.Press.
$9.95p
Bryan. Tales of Las
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in Girls. By Stratton.
Neb. Press. $11.95p
jennett. Great history
Neb. Press. $9.95p
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ka Press. $11.95p
\ Trip to Hell and
firsthand account.
$22.95¢
« Story of a Unique
& Hafen. 336p.
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$32p. Nebraska.
$12.95p
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By Dobie. Dobie
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Fr PRUE WES‘

: F trail of coons and ‘possums. His

shound named Shedrick.

off the two, but as they are leaving, one of the-boysshoots

home and his father chases down the pion kact some

ater, bloody and defeated. Tom will admit Taserin ife that this

‘orrow.
/nccasip”

red of life on the farm and the “conse beatings at the hand

With his father lands him i m ip eek, Tom sells his hunt-
| heads west.

551 (deerieinis and a pocketful of money, enters Sante
d Mail Company. His route is from the New Mexico

the Army, Tom becomes fluent in the Spanish language and
@terpreter. Tom works directly with Al Sieber, the tough chief of
the gun. Horn learns from Sieber and polishes his farm boy
ftise later.

‘ody episodes with the Apaches, and service under General
for a pursuit of Geronimo. After the surrender of the

ice with the Army.

“work for the next several years as occasional lawman
equal ease. Tom, now in his late 20’s, also garners a
fitests in various Arizona arenas. His time of 49.5 sec-

reputatic
(Charlie Meadows, who later went on to rope for

onds i uF A

Palo

a stock detective. Around this
n-for-hire. He would later
admit to erage is motto at this time is,

“No cure, no pays

sas.

SEPTEMBER 1996 he }

when he encounters two boys traveling west with* cher filly.

384 TRIGGERNOMETRy &

ra,

When Horn was returned to jail much was made ty

his enemies of his attempt to escape. It was said thi
only his inability to work the then-new automaty 4

pistol prevented his doing wholesale killing on th

streets of Cheyenne. Speaking as something of a ges |

crank, this seems to me a weak tale. A man accustomad

~ all his life to the use of firearms would have little ey :

in solving the simple mechanism of an automatic pist
It seems to me that had Horn wished to shoot, he coal
have made that automatic a deadly weapon.

On the day before Horn’s execution was to tale
place, the town was picketed with militia. The authon.
ties were guarding against any attempt at rescue by the
cowboys—who were outspoken in their liking for Hom

Courthouse Square was p aced under martial law. Only |

those persons who lived on the square were permitted
within the lines of sentries.
The town was crowded with people come to see th:

hanging. The jail itself was heavily-guarded. Some d |

the greatest gunfighters of that particular neighborhoo!
and day had been drafted for the work. A man wa
posted over Horn’s cot in the death cell. Tradition has:
that he was ordered to kill Horn, in case the cowboys did
break into the jail.

The day of the hanging dawned. Six o'clock came-
November 20th, 1903. . . . Governor Chatterton re
fused for the last time to interfere. Horn wrote a lettc
to John Coble in which, for the last time, he described
his movements on the day of Willie Nickell’s killing
sipaaee his innocence, spoke again of his friendship

or Coble.

‘This is the truth,’’ he finished, ‘‘as I am to die is
ten minutes.”’

Thereafter, he was the calmest man in the jail. He
smoked a cigar. Most of his good-byes had been said
He had seen John Coble the day before. Charles an!
Frank Irwin were already in waiting. The time came fo
the death march. Horn was physically shaky from coe
finement. The procession moved slowly from jail

B -RAILROADED?”’ __ | 385

yard. The militiamen held back the crowds of morbidly
curious congregated in streets nearby. Only the half-
hundred invited witnesses were near the scaffold.

Horn stopped to shake hands with the Irwin brothers,
old friends fam the Iron Mountain region. They began
shakily to sing, after a prayer had been said by a min-
ister. The song was a favorite of Horn’s—Life’s Railway

te Heaven.

The grim business on the scaffold platform went on »

without hitch, an undersheriff and assistant working

under the eyes of Sheriff Ed Smalley. Horn said to

Smalley as he looked over the witnesses—many of them
ce officers from adjacent counties and states:

“Ed that’s the sickest looking bunch of sheriffs I ever
saw!" '

Horn stood quietly while the straps, the noose, the
black hood were adjusted. Before the hood was drawn
over his head he smiled. He stood on the semi-auto-
matic trap, that was sprung by letting water run from a
vessel on a balanced beam. He stood very calmly. The
seconds ticked off after his weight on the trap had
opened a faucet. To the witnesses the interval seemed

endless, before the water running out of the faucet .

tripped the beam, jerked the trap support from under

| the hinged doors, let Horn drop. It was only eleven

seconds.

AND SO Tom Horn died. But his death only marked the
beginning of a controversy that rages to this day. Was
he guilty? Or was he innocent? Was Joe Lafors—anxious
for a share of that thousand dollar reward offered in the
Nickell case—merely the typical detective trying to
break a murder mystery? Or was he so anxious for the
reward that he—with the help of two tools, Leslie
Saow and Ohnhaus—knowingly ‘‘framed’’ an innocent
man, “‘railroaded’’ Tom Horn to the gallows?
There is no way of proving Horn’s guilt. His in-
sxence might be proved, if that Victor Miller who is

see eat on earad tase 73
; SS a 2
an ae a

eisRa set aig een

fe ETI

—_—__|

fact remains that for all practical purposes, Jurors ee |

and Thomas might just as well have been omitted from

the trial. They served the purpose of a Greek Chora
and only the purpose of a Gree Chorus—to reflect the if

will of the other, stronger, ten.
It has been charged that on that jury sat men frog
whom Horn had recovered stolen stock. | have heard

that story for years. This seems to me doubtful. It sem

incredible that Horn’s counsel would have Permitted
avowed enemies of Horn to sit on that jury. But thariy
one story that t selweder even to this day.

But the verdict returned was ‘‘ guilty of murder in th
first degree.’’ A Denver Newspaper reporter, that sam
one who testified as to ‘undue and improper influence
being exercised upon the jury in the hotel ining room,
wrote later that he talked over the verdict with Juror
Payne. One gathers that Payne did not tell of the Scone
in the jury room at that time, that he gave an impressice

of civic virtue quite at variance with the facts as m |

know them. For he said to this reporter:

‘It was hard to go against a man I have known and
liked. But what could I do? The question was too hand
to be dodged. I did my duty.”’

One George F. Walker also told of a conversatioa
with Juror Payne, in which the latter said Cin effect)
that he had known Horn a long time, that he felt sory
for him, but he thought he was guilty and he had to
bring in a guilty verdict. ,

Certainly, this hardly jibes with the affidavit o
Juror Tolson, that Payne did not believe Horn guilty—
until he learned in the jury room what he did believe!

Counsel for Horn immediately took ana peal, citing
thirty-odd points of error. Months passed, during which

Horn lay in Cheyenne jail, spending his time makisg |

rawhide and hair bridles and other odds and ends, in th
fashion he had Icarned years before, down in the Apach
country. He scems never to have believed that he wou
be hung. His letters were uniformly cheerful. Even whe
he remarked sardonically that if ic would do anyone any

ta
7 he BRS. ghee a‘
: eee

io OADED?"" oe ge
380 TRIGGERNOMETaygpe RATES 381

to see him hung, he would hate to disappoint

~ them, still he could govern himself, cheer those friends

who were not so optimistic.

And what of the little school teacher who, by her
own testimony, knew very well that Horn was innocent,
that Victor Miller had really killed the boy?

During the trial (she says) Horn’s counsel haa not
admitted for a moment that there could be any doubt of
his acquittal. She had written them, asking leading
questions, but apparently ot (one gathers) actually tell-
ing them what she had in the way of direct evidence in
Horn’s defense. She still hesitated to charge the boy
whom she could not regard as more than technically

ilty of murder, with the crime. She kept silence, hop-

‘ ing that it would not be necessary to incriminate Victor

Miller in order to save Horn.
When the guilty verdict came in, she was aetermined

to go to the probes authorities with what she knew. But, .

owing to a legal technicality, Horn’s lawyers could not
use her affidavit until the case was finally decided by the
Supreme Court and placed in the Governor’s hands.

In September, 1903, the Supreme Court of Wyoming
ruled against Horn, sometimes—a layman thinks—
father straining themselves to justify everything done
by the prosecution. Friday, November 20, 1903, was set
by the Supreme Court for the execution of the death
seatence pronounced by the trial court upon Tom Horn.

The Supreme Court pointed out that it was not
authorized to pass upon the guilt or innocence of Horn,

but only to say that he had or had not been given a fair

trial, and if there had been sufficient evidence to war-
fant a verdict on the part of the jury. |

Miss Kimmell’s evidence, in the form of an affidavit,
was placed before Governor Chatterton. Other evi-
dence, including letters from Frank Mulock, one of the
“aver witnesses, desirous of retracting his testimony
insofar as it definitely connected Horn with the boastful
man in the Denver saloon, was also given the Governor,

ae et,

a g- te ee

ro ae

Chatterton was a politician. Apparently, he wasy
anxious to know the will of the majority in this Case
He withheld his decision for a time.

Horn, meanwhile, steadfastly asserted his Innocence.
and wrote a letter to Ohnhaus, the re Orter, which
seems to me a model of Riglolitforwant and fearley
pleading for a square deal. He po OUt Vario
places in the alleged confession where statements wer
credited to him in the stenographic notes which wer
Che said) false. He accused Ohnhaus of altering the nota
and begged him to make redress before it was too late
He spoke of ‘‘blood money’’ and of Ohnhaus’s repute
tion as a ‘‘ model, Christian young man.”’

Here is a ae where one must believe Tom Horn, «
believe Ohnhaus. I must admit that my leaning is to
ward Horn. If I am an authority on the written word,
that letter could have heen written only by an expert is
literary construction—or by an innocent man. Nothing
in Horn’s record inclines me to believe that he wa
possessed of the literary skill to say enough to express
Innocence, and never a word too much; to voice his ap
peal in a manner that wakes in an unprejudiced reada
the conviction that an innocent man speaks.

I have written and published some millions of words
of calculated, planned fiction, in my day. Paine the
task of composing such a letter as that—one intended to
create the effect of innocence—I should expect trouble ia
doing the work. Yet we must believe that Horn, a self:
educated cowboy, a man of action, not words, could sit
down and do a job that would give a professional writa

ause. We must believe it, if we are to consider that
ee to Ohnhaus a studied composition intended to
rouse sympathy for Horn. I cannot believe it.

Miss Kimmel] had several conferences with Governor
Chatterton. Also, she discussed Horn’s case with mem
bers of the State Supreme Court. She tells us that Chid
Justice Corn admitted to her that, even after the appell
had been refused, he had not made up his mind concert
ing Horn’s guilt or innocence.

382 TRIGGERNOMETRy #.

fs RAILROADED?"? Soa

‘In fact,’’ he told her (by her account), “I am
ualified to sit on a jury to try Tom Horn for murder.”’
Justice Knight told her that he had paid no attention

F go the case since its consideration by the Supreme Court.

“I might have,’’ Miss Kimmell reports him as say-

ing, “if they had not attacked my good friend Joe

~ Lafors.””

Which, as Miss Kimmell remarked aptly, is a state-
ment rather hard to understand. It is difficult to see how
counsel for Horn could make out a case for him without
attacking Joe Lafors, whom they accused of writing the
confession beforehand, of having it ready for Horn’s

arance in Cheyenne on January 12th. They con-

-a
sidered Lafors a shady and unscrupulous person, Leslie

Snow the deputy and Ohnhaus the reporter creatures
willing to perjure themselves, hang an innocent man, for
$333 each. This is not to say that the defense counsel's
accusations were true, but that they had to ‘“‘attack
Lafors."’

Governor Chatterton refused to accept Miss Kim-
mell’s statement as reason for interference with the
sntence. Even the fact that Mulock, the Denver man,
had obviously been a mistaken, if not a perjured, wit-

| acss, did not matter, so far as Chatterton was concerned.

HORN’S TIME in Cheyenne jail was uneventful except
for one incident. On August 6th he and a train robber
imprisoned there escaped. They aureponcied one of the
guards and got out, snatching the sheriff’s rifle and an
automatic pistol. McCloud—the train robber—found
him a horse when they got outside the jail. Hotn tried
to get away on foot. McCloud was carrying the rifle;
Horn had the automatic pistol. Horn, weakened by his
long imprisonment, was soon overtaken. After he had
halted, surrounded by townsmen, Deputy Leslie Snow
(Lafors’ friend) ran up. He struck at Horn with his rifle.

A policeman standing there jumped in between, throw-

ing up his arm. So vicious was the blow that Snow aimed
at Horn’s head that the policeman’s arm was broken.

Se
Ne Se GN Ta 7 ee A MS wae
= ie eer - +
"y REIT ET ea er ee
se Bh for ety *, * ae

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Se es ESE
= FONTS

> ap mg
rao

Tae
ed

vem
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ayaa are ete

pyre ce a

2 SoS. eepers ge ee nee
wt = =

eer ged eninzes

to confess today.

as at we tirntd as may be, then form his own Opinion
own belief is that Horn was not guilty. There are fr
too many discrepancies in the state’s case! Going org
the trial records carefully, with no bias in either ditex-
tion, it seems to me that at least equal weight must k
given to the testimony of Horn himself and his wit.
nesses, concerning his movements on July 18th, 1

day of Willie Nickell’s murder, as is given to ca 4

mony of the state’s witnesses

Horn said that on the murder-day he was neve
closer than seven miles to the ranch of Kels Nickell. The
pesecarion attempted to show him on the ground very
closely.

There is also the vol poreane question of motive. Hom
hardly knew the Nickell boy. He had no grievane
against any of the Nickell family—they were no
bothering his employers. The only possible motive thar
could be assigned him would be one of financial gain—a
pe to be earned for the killing, not of Willie Nickell,

ut of Kels Nickell, the father.

The prosecution insinuated that Horn had killed
Willie Nickell by mistake for Kels; implying that the
boy was wearing his father’s clothes. Willie's mother
testified that the boy wore his own clothes, that day.
Horn’s eyesight was like an Indian’s.

Stoll, the prosecuting attorney, dragged in test:
mony about the shooting of Kels Nickell after Willie's
death. But the established circumstances of this at-
tempted assassination do not fit what we know of Hom.
He was—as I have said before—Indian-like in his
solitary riding over the range. And, if he had intended
to murder Nickell, it seems odd to incredible that he
should go with another man when he could more easily,
quietly, surely, do the killing by himself and have no
witness. There was the poor shooting, too. Thirteen to
seventeen shots fired (witnesses vary as to the numbt)

All that one can do is look at the evidence cel, % editor, bitterly assailing Horn, Coble, and all that the

Y @ qwmen of the day stood for. .

; 4 . >? 8
386 | TRIGGERNOMETRy “*RAILROADED? 387

| nent
alleged to have confessed the murder Cf still alive) wo

snd only two hits scored, neither in a fatal place! It is

pot like Horn. + ;
I have seen the statement of a prominent Wyoming

“Stock-detective! Horn was a stock-detective!’’ says

} this editor. ‘Infamous outlaws on salary were these
| stock-detectives! Eschewed by all decent people. . . .

He then goes on to commend Joe Lafors—who had
also been a stock-detective, one of the loathsome
creatures he so despises! It is all very confusing to me.

. The“‘confession”’ business I have pondered over many
and many a time. I keep remembering how drunk Horn
was. And I cannot forget that Ohnhaus and Snow only
“peeped through a keyhole,”’ but thereafter could state
with certainty that-his manner was that of a man in-
tcnding to be believed. I sce the stilted style of it, so
unlike that of two men talking—yet it is called ver-
batim.

And the statements in the confession—so-called, do
not jibe with the testimony of Mulock and the other
Denver witnesses as to Horn’s alleged statements in a
Denver saloon. (Even without considering Mulock’s
ktter of retraction, his feeling that Horn’s “double
made those statements, I cannot take much stock in
Mulock.)

In a sense, I have sat on that jury, listening to the
testimony for the state ‘and for the defense. I have con-
sidered the warring factions of Wyoming in that day,
the hysteria that surrounded the trial. Like Payne and
Thomas (before they blew about like weathervanes and
reversed themselves), I have to vote ‘‘Not Guilty.”’

After Horn’s death, a tale went the rounds in
Cheyenne that a certain minister was saying that Horn
had confessed to him. The knowing nodded wisely,
triumphantly. So Horn had killed Willie Nickell. But
when this preacher was run to earth, he admitted that he
had spoken only in the most general sense—Horn had

LANTZER, Stanley S., white, asphyxiated Wyoming (Laramie County) on April 19, 190.

dul Santer, We Sorat ed
‘thre secondache was,
ok ee ee = oes aA ; accarding. to Dr °C.
9 yw bs a. 4 . 4 F P% 4 * ae = (stir $ a
a mS = ; = Bw? £29 6. eit Setircy of Hew tits, $e prison

feo G8. Bee 2 Bi x eee 3 “thik utes “gad a) preondde

‘Death, Says W, man: 7+ ee he mas Gena, Di. cJeltery

; S Hes atorade & “indroad: Worker,

4 Who Witnessed Tse ation : ee ws ates atte ao a

ih
; bee «foot: match ‘to. the gas chamber
“Mire Bath Coufne: ce Bbeverr., > mpllat tons THE TRIRUNES: Age 1 fotnites after midnight:

rae
Thtiraday afternoon Interviewed Stanicy Lantzer in. his teil at the, N NED M
*. state: penitentiary and Eriday morning: witnessed: the: exteuthing Sagettee my Rete 2 PES) ie an aes ha SA
. ‘the titst Wyoaring woman to, athena an’ eh She eagerly f ‘The: Rev. ‘Wiliam Young “of
As tom: Nate Oe Pie Pie ewe oe Akl Brusti Colo, pastor of the Cmnirch
Sf in Ad Stat ‘ ee 22 mS <B a fot God and a close friend of the ..
Bg BY RUTH. COS Saber: ee doomed «= rg gle ‘Rev, Clifton «_
hte te ate Rog at, 2 Fee McGlothian wins Baptist -+%
oRaWh! €s° Wye Bante oy iar yee must ha "minister, Warden: Roach and..
hie Mis purishment® in the: hour rt and, ores ruts past t hohe nis: prison rds walked. with: him,
exectition rathet than in his actualdying.<. .°) Py. 2a8 o)~ Bilndiéided,” Lantzer.. stumbled

ye “Onde the: himes’ a4 évanide gas. j Lanta “a th hen sid : XK, gel - las he neared. the doar and -stag-

ecw top 8 Byens caonae erie: s -lgered’> slightly, He was” deathly;

nage 2 = Neg

in) stepped: into. the chamber and’ sat
4 ie pans 40° down at 1144 minutes: after’ 12.
De edie. f am: aisaatien ee ib. Thestwo ministers,..whose
Ap De wes, afraid, he said - + piritual..solace. had saved him... °; -
2 ge Aid now, but I ‘dott't from: cracking several | {ames dur-"

Higarp in Augusi. 1998, started they) 3)

15 pale,Without further trouble,.ne =,

eel later." lraisure ing’ the evening, talked to him‘as.- eS

pve ime the strength botguards strapped © his arms and =

un See 3: legs to the chair and ran a heavy ae

is ¥
waco tains: “ea par a iene wanted to: thank, thé! bee around’ his’ chest,
re dersey fete ag tbren aohbielt 3: wore; 2 a ministers) whoy had;"DO DON’T. LEAVE ME,” —
; been Gotibie?i e: Arest in: mis cabo ‘.\LANTZER ASKS» <. Wee
1 2 “the; As’ the 15 onesounce cyanide;
ers: “hoe Rave: “eygs were hung from a hook .~
Wt onie, (h don't peneath the. ¢hair and. the,
peOuld nave done: sulphuric’ acid. was placed in a ~
ares he ip: the: mins jorock: directly ‘below the “eggs,”

hoe <3 iteiy-me Lo hay e faith: tthe ‘ghuyehmen gripped I teer’s’ a “

os fe eth sry ay et e. a i Anat. Ma Re -arTs., bate
fiber wee aes ‘yas ae at sg ey mind.” : “Dont leave me, brothers,"
ree ae the. ; &y;, SAS VET" cans } plane Lanizer Said. to’ the ministers.

phat, east fg? aren vee ig. jar : Unose * soy “They; assitred’ him. they, were

rae &. pit Sh at hake? by: him “spiritually. -

,7un, He- Wen! tora as i aie
yee MS tet oe 3 Then, as all préparations within: «. ¢
extol 4 man: soit od ete ¥. Ah: “sbappened at home. the chamber were completed, they «35

fe.tn die,” i saids “poodbye.”.; 9
ey: Aei9.% raters iptet: aie TK bene
z 3 aes Bae nea rs iss meé,; Brother “Young.” said« B,
oe Breese 200K. only base. aye Ee te Bar pats ak tzer’, Young .stepped “into ‘the >”

ates. they: niust’: fate’: a Lf Se a ame
pee: 4, Chamber and: kissed), Lanwer fe)
ura sfor Lanier Ee Saoeee Ni Ore ips, sent

ae ‘teikéd” with -Lantzer. tn the? fhe Ae ;
‘ auy'anngunced 1 hus aber ope ybe Re ed qate, ‘Phurs@ay. afters a i, AE Teme a AS: the minister. Tet: the
the +) cra, nomination! noon white: pe: iwas. tating His ik ie diem (cm Ese eee fminute ® |
ator’: from 'méafien 4 RE Ty fe ey. a ts ri. atjed th
imseif/te Hee Was’ ‘calre, mith: Sear” : Goaders
Gawonal than 1. ite ey bf fr es astape:
Ite ei. T asked him if he "wduidl rather To egies

sin Canada as the die than apend: bs Fests if ches 8 : A ee os oe
marca, expected !in: prison. i ‘ ma seconds after’ ate 17: ‘Dr,
leacters endorsed! “Weil :T don't Arid” yr said: i eee ee ae ‘{lery pronounced Lantzer dead,
: er. ago, was. made!" ‘While tile .is “dear.” if. me ‘had: tow pie : stim Z : een AL MeN fe ewe eat ee aah
; *home here. thru - Btate spend all the rest ofemy “life: in: AS} INGTON “IKE sen. Pca ne eat ane

ane James L: ‘Bowers.’ o he re <td rather. die. But then? Ate can po investigating: ‘coms; < ye
jiget , aS “at “is perhape if}my sentenee werecmitier rae worcired an-danvesti=) sia ier Tanke abe Rieu
“Yibshchanged ta. fite P wouldn't, néedication af chmipia as that vexces= as. Twenty m rotate ei e
conompist ito Serve all ‘of it A in Pe pees aumss'of mene? wepe- Dem sac ut! ton aie aerhe h ¥ Se “OF
“ cote real: ioHé Jooked ‘out. o ‘winger “in? the! Spent iy ae half af ere or mp ey eae Aig bod ty amber, «
and*the disband! qeatit. ose wall and wazed at the for,.he presi ierGrys is tio) Ae Raw 4 < ee piri wath ty
Sine reheat gurl In:iiis west af Pawling, hen!/sb-)c Senaign Ciliette o’,, devas, (0) .PaWins undertaking estab-
himise -the!parentiy talking: 40° himself,” * he commitice ” shaicoan, | Sail hats Me The: body was sto be, shipped)
ag said: Bt PH. ida “othe complaints, baa been ” feces Friday Tiny fternoon- to: Akron, Colo. =
ee cane ‘see "thes hits: ‘trom chete front, Apparently “seria bie SONS arehmianied: by the Rev. Mr.
ro id eR Biniy: of my Tamily, ae “declined th? mame they ;
and By 4 ontthe ‘pares: th ialeed Young. Lantzer*s. sister ands
¥, ani % r
at eB aoe “Ens fat. charees af- poke bbs iSight ese
aa of pee ES ntzer,: both of: Akron,
ve BAGS <!lowired: Roach,-claiming, the body.

: upprored. ® ano- * “About 20/persons# Witnessed ‘the
Bites ette 10 “as-" execution: - including “one: woman,

he. sou rts as Pes Ee “attended a8 a feature writer
Vo hoe for. THE "TRIBUNES Mts. Conine 3) ¢ is"
a3 acted, citfette® is the. first, woman in Wyoming's
jut: will act,” *)/history teywitness an Atego ef
¥ IRS Of:lArRe ‘exp (“T DON'T WANT!
res’ in ecent ; ‘seria torial a5 elk TO: DIE” HE SAYS

“Study” the? eM Y¥S&, Ruth; ‘Conine’ of Cheyenne, ~~

Author’s Photograph

The hangman’s knot is displayed at the Pioneer Museum.

that the sentence was to be carried out
on September 25.
A scaffold was designed and built by

Sheriff Stough. Standing against a cor-

ner of the handsome brick courthouse
that had been built in 1886, the scaffold
cost $100. It was constructed so that it
could be dismantled easily and used
again. Some fifty years later, it was still
stored in the courthouse basement.
Sheriff Stough issued invitations to
the hanging, and several county officials
and prominent Landerites attended.
The gallows was surrounded by a high

ty James Couch kept the death watch.

Keffer spent the morning before his
hanging talking with his “‘spiritual ad-
visor,’’ the Reverend James Leonard of
the Methodist Episcopal church.

The Fremont Clipper described: Kef-
fer’s walk to the scaffold as being
‘“weak’’—chances are he would have
liked to walk in the opposite direction.
However, as the rope was being ad-
justed around his neck, he greeted the
audience with a cheery “Good morning,
boys! I have no ill feelings for any man
in town, but do not think much of the

Evidence at a coroner's inquest suggested that
Warren had been shot in bed and his body
dragged across the\room and propped up with
the rifle. Keffer had then rifled the place and
found only $5 in cash. Being in checks, the rest
of the money was of no use to him.

fence that obstructed the public’s view;
J.B. Houghton served as_ the
gatekeeper. -

Keffer had been treated well enough,

having a hearty breakfast and a cigar
for dessert. He had requested a lady
“companion” the night before. When
the request was turned down, he had
gone to bed at about nine o’clock. Depu-
April 1987

judge, supreme court or the governor. ‘i
Keffer’s ankles, knees, and thighs
were strapped, and his hands were
bound by the thigh straps. He wore
overalls, a flannel shirt, and as one
newspaper commented, ‘“‘the only
necktie appears to be the rope.”’
After a black hood had been put over
his face, Keffer was asked if he was

ready. “Yes,” was the reply, and the
killer’s body swung out into space.
Three physicians pronounced life “‘ex- -
tinct’’ at 10:27 a.m., and the body was
placed in a coffin. =.
Before Keffer was buried, an autopsy
was conducted. It revealed no brain or
skull damage of the sort of which Kef-
fer had claimed to be the victim. He was
finally buried in potter’s field at the
local cemetery without ceremony and
without delay. His grave remains.
unmarked.
The Clipperenthusiastically reported
the aplomb of Sheriff Stough, who
‘‘never for a moment lost control of the
splendid coolness and nerve that
characterized the proceedings which is
all the more wonderful on account of
this being his first hanging.” Strange—
it was Keffer’s first hanging, too. The
paper continued, “It can safely be said

that the first (legal) hanging in Fremont

County was a success, not a harrowing
detail having presented itself to the 5
spectators.”’

Although he is now just a footnote in
Lander’s history, Keffer shared much in
common with two more notorious
Wyoming outlaws. He was hanged less
than two months before Tom Horn
would be executed on November 20,
1903, at the Laramie County Jail in
Cheyenne. Horn’s would be the last
hanging to be held at a county seat in
Wyoming. Keffer also shared the same
sheriff, the same defense attorney, and
the same jail with Butch Cassidy, who
had been incarcerated at Lander for a
time in 1893.

Orson Grimmett, a former sheriff,
kept the knot and noose from Keffer’s
hanging as a grim souvenir. For a long
time visitors to his Arcade Saloon on
Main Street could see the “knot from
Keffer’s necktie.” Nowadays it has been ~
granted a place of honor at the Pioneer
Museum in Lander as a reminder of the
killer and the sheriff who attended the
first and final legal hanging in Fremont |
County.

‘SOURCES

In addition’ to contemporary
newspaper accounts, Crossroads of the —
West: A Pictorial History of Fremont
County, by Arthur F. Duntsch (River-
ton, WY: Crossroads of the West, 1965)
was used in the preparation of ‘this
article. :

Prarts
conte bi!

woke

eres
or

Pioneer Museum, Lander, Wyoming

The Fremont County Courthouse was built

_ in 1886, then torn down and replaced in

1958.

got to drinking at a freighter’s camp
nearby, and both were drunk by the
time they returned to the station. When
Warren confided that he had a large
sum of hidden money, Keffer decided
the kindly thing to do would be to
relieve the old man of his burden. He
enabled himself:to do so by shooting
Warren in the head with a shotgun.
Keffer later appeared at the
roadhouse at Bruce, four miles away.
There he told two men named Gatlin
and Matthews of the killing, claiming
that it was self-defense—that Warren
had tried to shoot him. But Gatlin and
Matthews doubted the tale and rode
over to Derby to investigate. They
found Warren with half of his head
blown away and a cocked rifle lying
across his outstretched hand. The men
returned to Bruce and took Keffer to the
sheriff at Lander. .
Evidence at a coroner's inquest sug-
gested that Warren had been shot in bed
and his body dragged across the room
and propped up with the rifle. Keffer
had then rifled the place and found only
$5 in cash. Being in checks, the rest of
the money was of no. use to him.
Keffer was brought into district court
on December 26. Since he had no at-
torney, the court appointed E.H. Fourt
and D.A. Preston, and the case was con-
tinued to the next term. The trial con-
vened June 24, 1902. Much of the trial
was taken up simply in trying to find
twelve jurors who were not
prejudiced—the case was notorious and

feelings were running high, for Warren

had been well liked and respected.

Finally a jury was selected, and the
trial was held. Keffer pleaded that he
was insane at the time of the killing. He
claimed that his head had been injured
several times and that four times in his
life he had gone crazy. But a verdict of
guilty of murder in the first degree was
returned. On July 2, 1902, the judge
sentenced Keffer to be hanged by the
neck until dead on September 5, 1902, -
and “may. God have mercy on your
soul!” . '

An appeal was filed and the Wyom-
ing supreme court issued a stay of ex-

-ecution. Over a year later the court

issued a notice on September 14, 1903,

The hangman placed the hood on Keffer
just prior to his being hanged at.10:09 a.m.
True West

them back on their feet. As day
again turned to night, the disori-
ented trio looked back in confusion
at Cheyenne’s electric lights in the
distance until Charley’s instinct led
them across some railroad tracks a
few hundred yards below Archer
Station. As they struggled down a
glassy draw, Kingen and his friends
fought for footing in the smooth-
soled jail shoes. Each awkward step
on that frozen field, where “King
Cow” reigned, sapped their failing
strength and left them gasping thin,
frosted air until Kingen and Miller
collapsed for the last time. But nei-
ther manure nor the law brought
them down. Ice proved their undo-
ing—just ice.

Only God knew Charley lived even
though the cold so chilled his blood his
pulse barely kept pace with his labor.
ing lungs. In fact, a mirror held near
his mouth might not find a breath, But
the spark of life is so strong and the
spirit of survival so great that even his
deep sleep responded to the fear of
death. CRACK!

“For Christ’s sake,” Charley cried
as he rolled up on his elbow; “don’t
kill me!” The warning pistol shot
from Al Lovell, a Hillsdale Land and
Cattle Company wrangler, got the
young killer’s attention before
“Captain” E.S. Smith—with two oth-
ers of R.S. Van Tassell’s hired
hands—cautiously approached the
boy and his dead companion.
Helping Charley to his feet, Cuba
Godfrey said, “You’re pretty nearly a
goner.”

The boy replied, “I wish I was a
goner,” as Godfrey and another
cowboy walked the boy in a circle to
stimulate his circulation. But
Charley collapsed again.

Lovell first found the boy about
3:15 pm that Sunday while checking
and oiling the windmills, but, fear-
ing for his safety, he raced back to
the ranch for help. Captain Smith,
searching that area for the outlaws,
learned of Lovell’s discovery and
offered assistance.

Believing the boy might not sur-
vive the trip back to the ranch
unless they hurried, Smith, with

Godfrey and Frank Peterson, loaded
the boy into their cart before turn-
ing their attention to Kingen. After
covering the dead man’s head with
a horse blanket, they tossed several
spent cartridges near the corpse.
The “wolf insurance,” they believed,
prevented predators from going
near the smell of gunpowder until
they returned for the body.

Upon reaching Van Tassell’s
ranch, they carried limp Charley to
the house and tucked him into a
bunk. The ranch cook’s tea, soup,
and other liquid stimulants revived
the boy’s faint heart beat while a
fresh fire warmed his body.

Early the next morning, follow-
ing the proceedings at the ranch
that confirmed Kingen’s death by
exposure, the sheriff and his men
hustled Charley and the corpse to
Hillsdale and through the crowd
gathered at the railway station. After
taking Kingen’s body into the depot
storeroom, they sewed it up in a tar-
paulin for transit. Then, after board-
ing the train, the posse returned
that evening to Cheyenne where
they took Charley to the county hos-
pital and turned Kingen’s body over
to the undertaker.

Late the next morning, a
reporter from The Daily Leader called
on Charley and found him lying on
a simple bed. The boy’s eyes, he
said, “glared with a sort of vacant
stare and he breathed apparently
with great difficulty. His lips were
blistered, his face and hands were
chapped and tanned by the winds,
and his feet were as black as a black
cat in a dark alley on a foggy night.”
Despite continued good care, frost
bite took its toll and flesh died, so
the following week, Doctor Wyman
amputated the toes of Charley’s
right foot.

Finally, by February 18, he recov-
ered sufficiently that he appeared
before the Wyoming State Supreme
Court. Standing with the aid of a
chair, he listened stoically as Chief
Justice Herman V.S. Groesbeck
refused further delay of the boy’s
execution. Without showing emo-
tion, Charley resumed his seat.

During his final month, the con-
demned youth wrote a bit about his

Wyoming Division of Cultural Resources
Rancher R.S. Van Tassell’s men found
Charley Miller unconscious, freezing,
and near death in a snowy field.

misadventures and penned some
bad, maudlin poetry, including an
obscene rhyme on the fly leaf of his
Bible. Jail officials grew concerned,
however, because people “flock to
the jail nearly every hour in the day”
for a glimpse at the prisoner. The
crowd included “a great many
women [who] persist in seeing
Miller, much to that individual’s dis-

. comfort.” Despite the noise of at

least 150 curious visitors passing
through the jail, Charley undoubt-
edly heard the carpenter’s hammer
erecting his scaffold inside the
stockade at the west side of the jail.
Although the public attention invig-
orated him earlier, the boy failed
physically and emotionally during
the last week of his life as a haggard,
haunted stare replaced his rare,

TRUE WEsT

forced smile.

During the |
Sheriff A.D.
unusual self-har
before used in \
to witnesses, “
trivance works °
plied the valves
adjunct. In tr
block of wood u
to sixty second
on the trap. M
contrivance b
patent. The dro
inches.”

That afterno
lubricated the
the restrainin
evening, an ar
stopped by
Charley’s pictu
copy.

The followi
restaurant fare
played seven-\
midnight wit
Depuly Sharp

Wy
Chief Justice o
Court Herman
to delay Miller's

JUNE 1997

Wyoming Division of Cultural Resources

Dr. W.A. Wyman.

brated his unexpected financial
gain with a $1.65 shave and a hair-
cut with a spritz of tonic. He also
bought a $2.25 shirt and polished
off a two-bit meal with a dessert of
doughnuts. That afternoon, he met
Henry Bowland at Herman Kimme’s
Lakeside Saloon. Bowland, a handy-
man, befriended the boy and shared
his accommodations with him that
night. The next morning, Charley
hired on with some herders and
helped them drive their sheep south
to Grover, Colorado. Apparently
overcome with guilt or fear he
might get caught on the Sabbath
with stolen goods, he ditched
Emerson’s watch in a gopher hole.
Three day’s later, when the flock
arrived at its destination, Charley
bought a Burlington train ticket to
Concordia, Kansas, and, from there,
he made his way to his brothers’
home in Leonardville.

As lawmen elsewhere spun theo-
ries and chased suspects, Laramie
County Sheriff John A. Martin inves-
tigated the case in his own quiet
way. Despite an early conclusion by
a Saint Joseph detective that a
known long-time enemy of the boys

murdered them, Martin proved no
such person traveled into
Wyoming with Fishbaugh and
Emerson. Witnesses, in fact,
described another youth
thrown off the victims’
train just west of Sidney.
According to Martin,
that same young man

not only rode into

Hillsdale on the dead

men’s freight, but he

also asked the fare to

Manhattan, Kansas.

With evidence gained by

interviewing the train-
men and other eyewit-
nesses at Pine Bluffs and
Hillsdale, the lawman
shared the suspect’s descrip-
tion with officials throughout
the Rocky Mountains and
Great Plains, most particulary,
with Sheriff Joseph M. Meyers of
Riley County, Kansas.

October 12, 1890, dawned at
Leonardville, as Charley sat in the
privy near Loofbourrow’s farm-
house. While reading the newspa-
per, a story about his crime caught
his eye. Leaving the outhouse, he
called brother Fred from the cabin
and told him, “I was the boy who
murdered Emerson and Fish-
baugh.” He did it, he said, for their
money. “I was penniless, hungry,
and desperate.” As the boys slowly
realized the magnitude of those
vicious acts, they cried so loudly that
old man Loofbourrow responded to
the noise. Upon learning the terri-
ble truth, the printer and his ward
encouraged Charley’s surrender.
Three days later he turned himself
in to the startled Riley County sher-
iff at nearby Manhattan, Kansas.
Soon thereafter, Sheriff Meyers
wired his counterpart in Cheyenne
that the person sought for the
deaths of the Saint Joseph boys had
confessed his crimes. Charley
remained in his cell as Martin
boarded a train and rushed to
Kansas with a requisition. The
Wyoming lawman took Charley into
custody upon his arrival in
Manhattan and, with hardly more
than a meal and a few hours’ rest,
Martin and his prisoner boarded a

return passenger car to Wyoming
on October 17. A curious crowd of
2,000 welcomed their arrival in
Cheyenne the next afternoon.

That November, district court
officials assigned the firm of
Armstrong, Breckons, and Taggatt
to defend the boy against the felony
charges. Frank D. Taggart, however,
drew the short straw and became
Charley’s principal defense attor-
ney. On November 10, 1890, a
grand jury met and found the sus-
pect guilty of four counts of mur-
der, two per victim. Upon his
arraignment fifteen days later, the
accused killer decided, upon advice
of counsel, to plead not guilty to ail
charges.

The trial for his life began on
December 7 when Charley, weak
and pale from imprisonment,
appeared in court. Upon discover-
ing the large crowd assembled in
the room, he seemed stunned by
the attention but quickly regained
his composure. Many ladies in the
sea of spectators strained to hear
each word of evidence because for
the first time in a Wyoming capital
punishment suit—and, perhaps, for
the first ime in any criminal trial in
the state—both the defense and the
prosecution used masturbation to
support their respective cases.
Attorney Taggart’s witnesses as-
serted that, because Charley abused
himself so habitually since the age
of nine, “sometimes three or four
times a day,” he lacked the energy,
vitality, and, in fact, emotion
needed. for committing such a
heinous*crime.

According to Dr. W.W. Crook,
“The general effect of this act is to
affect the nervous sensibility, the
nervous power; the tendency is to
reduce the nervous force, to lessen
mental activity to impair the brain
power, a general disposition to
reduce the forces of life in the sense
of physology [sic].”

Laramie County Attorney and
Prosecutor Walter R. Stoll coun-
tered through his own witnesses that
Miller’s psychosis and chronic self-
abuse evidenced a perverse and
criminal mind. But when chal-
lenged as to whether excessive mas-

TRUE WEST

DE!
acknowle

can.”

At leas
stood an<
prurient

Some of t
mony cla
lips and
looked im
According
and thic

forehead

ture is hi
hooked, <
later, Dec
sent the
Incredib)
fifteen n
the cour!
exceptio!
officials

Charley’s
nounced

der in the

The si
glowed th
Miller au
glazed, bl:
so cabtivc
no
ne
mentally
cold, took
his frien
claimed
Cracked 1:
droopy, -
Ss $C
weeks’ be
man’s pin
whiskers!
something
bering wh
guise of s
drifted sr

The D
long, lay
street an
windows
as Depu
alone in
pared fc
opening
tier of ce

JUNE 1997

{ Cultural Resources

s men found
us, freezing,
field.

nned some
ncluding an
fly leaf of his
’ concerned,
le “flock to
rin the day”
risoner. The
great many
t in seeing
lividual’s dis-
noise of at
ors passing
ey undoubt-
er’s hammer
inside the
ie of the jail.
ention invig-
e boy failed

wally during
@ haggard,
Pd his rare,

TRUE WEST

forced smile.

During the last of Charley’s life,
Sheriff A.D. Kelley tested an
unusual self-hanging machine never
before used in Wyoming. According
to witnesses, “The automatic con-
trivance works well. Ed Lawler sup-
plied the valves for the water weight
adjunct. In trial the 100-pound
block of wood used dropped in forty
to sixty seconds after being placed
on the trap. Mr. Kelley thinks his
contrivance beats the Colorado
patent. The drop will be five feet, six
inches.”

That afternoon, the sheriff's men
lubricated the rope and prefitted
the restraining straps. And, that
evening, an amateur photographer
stopped by the jail and took
Charley’s picture, promising him a
copy.

The following day, Charley ate
restaurant fare and that evening he
played seven-up and chatted until
midnight with his death watch,
Deputy Sharpless. With less than

Wyoming Division of Cultural Resources
Chief Justice of the Wyoming Supreme
Court Herman V.S. Groesbeck refused
to delay Miller’s execution.

JUNE 1997

twelve hours of life left, the boy
went to bed and slept soundly until
6:20 am of his final day—April 22,
1892.

About two hours later, Deputy
Griffith brought a breakfast basket
from the Capital Restaurant that
consisted of eggs and coffee for the
murderer. Father J.C. McCormack
arrived about 9:15 am with news the
governor refused his clemency for
the second time. With all hope
gone, the young man asked the
priest for acceptance into the
Catholic faith. The padre refused
his previous request for fear that, if
the boy later received a reprieve, he
might change his mind and
reriounce his new creed. This time
Father McCormack agreed and
heard his confession before baptiz-
ing him. Suddenly courageous with
his new-found faith, Charley
repented for the first time since his
capital crimes and, as he caressed a
crucifix, prayed with the priest. In
the meantime, Deputy Sharpless
returned to the cell with a cutaway
suit of free, black cloth, a pair of
new shoes, a dark blue woolen shirt,
and a black tie. The somber attire
pleased Charley.

Attorney and Mrs. Taggart
arrived at Charley’s cell at
10:05 am. For the first
time, the boy expressed
gratitude for the

lawyer’s past aid. With

tears in his eyes, he
also thanked Mrs.

Taggart for her

efforts on his behalf.

He told her he “did

not know there were

such good women.”

In response, she

offered escort to the
scaffold, but Mr.
Taggart dissuaded her.

As the countdown

began, the halls of the jail
filled. Outside, the police
and guards controlled the
growing crowd of roughy 1,500
people, including some who assem-
bled on the roof of nearby Castle
Dare. Others climbed telegraph
poles for peeks over the high fence
at authorities as they concluded

their tests of the mechanized death
machine.

As the clock on the jailhouse wall
tolled 10:30 AM Charley again felt
the strain, but Mrs. Taggart and the
priest calmed him temporarily by
asking if he wished to confess any-
thing else. “No,” he responded.
Although he claimed remorse for
his crimes against the St. Joe boys,
he added nothing to his confession
or courtroom testimony.

The tension mounted. At 10:55
AM the huge crowd in and about the
courthouse became _ restless.
Charley, his face flushed, visibly
wilted under the mounting pres-
sure, so Mrs. Taggart and Father
McCormack again tried distracting
his agitation by having Miller repeat
a litany of prayers. Ten minutes
later Sheriff Kelley arrived and
reminded everyone of their mission.

Finally, at 11:23 am, the small
procession took the condemned boy
to the foot of the gallows stairway.
Sheriff Kelly led the way up the
steps. Pale Charley clasped a large
cross in both hands, but, en route to
the noose, his face reddened and he
clutched Father McCormack’s arm
for support. Deputies Wilkes and
Griffith followed with Attorney
Taggart, bringing up the rear, as the
group ascended the stairs. With all
participants in place, the sheriff and
Deputy Wilkes applied the straps as
Charley again prayed in a Clear,
strong voice, “God have mercy on
me. Jesus save me.” Leather
bracelets bound Charley’s wrists. A
thong went under his elbows. Still
another firmly held his knees. The
boy’s eyes fixed upon the crucifix he
carried and he moaned, “God have
mercy on my soul.” Repeating that
prayer, he cocked his head slightly
as if to checking the braces of the
upright wooden support near his
elbow. As his wandering gaze met
the noose before his face, he
implored God, “Please be quick.”
Observers, who closely followed the
boy’s trial and incarceration,
observed, even under the stress, that
he appeared unusually pale and
healthy with a clear complexion.
And his eyes, glistening in the sun’s
light, turned from jail house grey to

pming
owd of
ival in

t court
irm of
Taggatt
felony
ywever,
yecame
» attor-
890, a
the sus-
of mur-
pon his
iter, the
, advice
ilty to ail

gan on

y, weak
sonment,
discover-
mbled in
ined by
egained

s in the

to hear
ause for
ag capital
erhaps,aor
inal trial in
se and the
irbation to
cases.
nesses as-
irley abused
ce the age
e or four
ihe energy,
emotion
ng such a

y.W. Crook,
this act is to
isibility, the
ndency 1s to
-e, to lessen
air the brain
sposition to
in the sense

ttorney and
Stoll coun-
witnesses that
chronic self
rverse and
when chal-
-cessive mas-

TRUE WEST

turbation produces homicidal
mania, even Dr. W.A.Wyman, the
prosecutor’s key medical authority,
acknowledged, “I don’t think it
can.”

At least a score of spectators
stood and craned their necks for
prurient peeks at the defendant.
Some of those witnesses to his testi-
mony claimed, that with his limp
lips and sallow complexion, he
looked immature and undeveloped.
According to one, “His hair is light
and thick and almost covers the
forehead. His most prominent fea-
ture is his nose...large, somewhat
hooked, and very thin.” Three days
later, December 11, 1890, the judge
sent the jurors from the room.
Incredibly, after deliberating only
fifteen minutes, they returned to
the court. All eyes there, with the
exception of those of the hushed
officials, turned and fixed on
Charley’s face as the foreman pro-
nounced the verdict: “Guilty of mur-
der in the first degree.”

The sun, with its frosted halo,
glowed through the noontime sky as
Miller awoke to the stare of Kingen’s
glazed, blood-shot right eye. That sight
so captivated him he almost failed to
notice that the cowboy’s slack left lid
nearly hid a dark-hued iris. Charley,
mentally and physically numbed by
cold, took a moment before he realized
his friend’s deep purple skin pro-
claimed that death had arrived.
Cracked lips, the lower one swollen and
droopy, framed dull teeth. Long,
shaggy, sandy-colored hair and a three-
weeks’ beard accentuated the dead
man’s pinched and ghastly gaze. Those
whiskers! They reminded Charley of
something...someone. He tried remem-
bering who, or what, as death, in the
guise of sleep, lurked in the shade of

The December day’s last rays cast
long, lavender shadows across the
street and through the barred west
windows of the Laramie County jail
as Deputy Harry W. Griffith went
alone into the cell area and pre-
pared for the nightly lock-up by
opening an aisle door to the lower
tier of cells. His routine called for

JUNE 1997

the removal of supper dishes about
five o'clock each afternoon. But, in
the absence of a fellow deputy,
Griffith called for prisoner
William Parker’s help. The jail
trustee immediately responded
by retrieving cups, plates, and
utensils at each cell, placing
them in a huge tray near the
guard at his post near the
door. Before Parker exited
with his load of dishes,
Grifffith removed the huge,
iron padlock and held it in his
fist while swinging open the
grated door with his other
hand. As the trustee passed
through the opening, prisoners
Kingen, Johnson, and Miller came
with a rush from around the corner
driving Parker back to his cell
before pinioning Griffith to the
floor where they bound him hand
and foot with rope.

The three prisoners then re-
turned to their cells and donned
additional clothing, stashed for
their well-planned flight. Beneath
his jacket and greatcoat, the cowboy
wore two heavy overshirts, good
underclothes, “two pairs of warm
breeches beneath overalls and three

irs of socks.” Preventing the cruel
wind’s icy fingers from touching his
tender parts, he also wrapped a
black silk scarf about his neck and
ears. He tied his leather, firm-soled
slippers to his feet with strings. Like
Kingen, the boy and ex-soldier
wore soft, low-cut, slip-on
footwear over several layers of
socks. After struggling without
success for about a minute
with a stubborn lock in the
jail door, they hurried to the
front entry and made their
way into the large hall of the
courthouse. At the outer
door, Miller threw down the
cumbersome bundles of blan-
kets and extra clothes he
brought from their cells. But he
kept their vital sack of food saved
from past meals and grasped it
tightly as he raced off into the dark-
ness.

All through the night of January
2, 1891, the fugitives pressed on
except when they halted every few

Wyoming Division of Cultural Resources
Deputy Harry Griffith.

minutes for the exhausted, gasping
Kingen. By the second day on the
lam, Miller, too, struggled, laying
down beside Kingen and almost
immediately fell asleep each time
the cowboy took a break. But

Johnson's constant nagging and

their fear of the law’s pursuit put

Wyorning Division of Cutural Resources
Laramie County Sheriff A.D. Kelley.

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HISTORY OF NATRONA COUNTY

and he was taken to the penitentiary at Rawlins where the sentence
of the court was obeyed on the above date by the warden of the
state penitentiary.

Tue Bess FisHer TRacepy

» Bess Fisher, a woman of the underworld, on October 26, 1917,
shot and killed Lawrence Barrett in the Rhinoceros restaurant at
Casper. The woman alleged that Barrett had squandered consider-
able of her money while they lived at Anchorage, Alaska, and when
her money was gone he would have nothing more to do with her and
soon left Alaska. She followed him to Casper, hoping to win back his
affections or have her money returned. After arriving in Casper she
had several unsatisfactory conferences with him and on the above
date, while she was sitting at a table in the restaurant, Barrett and
his wife came in. As Barrett was about to sit down at a table the

. Fisher woman arose from her chair with such haste and excitement

that she turned the table over and spilled the dishes on the floor, but
before Barrett had taken his seat she drew a gun from her pocket and
fired. The bullet entered Barrett’s right arm, passed through his
heart and through his body and came out under his left arm above
the elbow. After Barrett had fallen to the floor the Fisher woman
held the smoking gun in her hand, and with a sneer on her face

looked at Mrs. Barrett as if to say that if she could not have him no

other woman could. She then went to the counter and gave up her
gun. She was taken to jail and her trial was had at the March term
of court in 1918. Before the jury she pretended to be sick, almost
fainting several times, and when she talked she would speak scarcely
above a whisper. She acted the part so well that some of the jurors

no doubt were to a considerable extent influenced in favor of returning

a verdict that they would not have returned for Barrett had the
situations been reversed. She testified in her own behalf, claiming
that she shot the man in self-defense; that when Barrett entered the
restaurant he said to her: “I’ll get you yet.” She then stepped back
from her chair and fired. This was her strongest argument for shoot-
ing and killing the man she pretended to love; the man who had
squandered her money and deserted her; the man who was married
to another woman, but it was enough to satisfy eleven jurors, and after
deliberating sixty-three hours, a verdict was not reached, one juror:

holding out for conviction, against eleven who favored acquittal. »*%

The jury was discharged. Court adjourned without a re-trial, and in.
June the woman was released from the county jail under bonds of:
$5,000, and at the September term of the district court the case was

: to
“, font, Poraday in the city of Nha
“OSE payae Aa ge

_ Mf

ee ee

"OAY WOH

Accused Tells Life Story

By ED MARTLEY
DAILY NEWS Staff Writer

What sort of person is Andrew
Pixley, accused of the rape-murder

f two young girls? What type of
peck erGune could be a cause of
this young man being on trial for
his life?

A personal interview Tuesday
with Andrew Pixley might help
shed some light on the matter.

Pixley, who was named Arman-
do Benavidez at his birth in Las
Cruces, N.M., nearly 22 years ago,
lived in foster homes most of his
ch'tdhood.

A Talk With

When he was about two years
old his mother abandoned Andrew,
his sister, Gapita, and his father.
“Mother didn't want us, I guess,”
said Andrew.

About this time Andrew’s fa-
ther, Armando Benevidez Sr., con-
tracted tuberculosis and died
when Andrew was about four years
old. Andrew was present when his
father died. At this time, said
Andrew, “our neighbors used to
take care of us a lot, feed us and
things.”

Following his father’s death,

31g £EL

ixley

in a series of foster homes by the
New Mexico welfare department.
The homes were all Mexican-
American families, as were the
Benevidez, and all in the lower
economic strata. Recalling his fos-
ter homes, Andrew said, “Some
were good, some were bad. Their
own kids were always favored.”
In one of his foster homes, An-
drew told of his “pride and joy,”
a Black Labrador dog, “Pooch.”
When Andrew was beaten, which

occurred more than seldom, he
Pixley

Andrew and his sister were Placed

—-Continued on Page 7

THE NORTHERN WYOMING

ATELY NEY

A NEWSPAPER FOR THE ENTIRE BIG HORN BASIN
w

Volume 59

Worland, Wyoming, 82401, Wednesday, January 27, 1963

Number 19

AER SKN BERNER

ACCUSED of the

slaying of two Chicago area girls in

Jackson last Aug. 7, Andrew Pixley will go on trial for

his life here on Feb. 1.

— Buddhist

By MICHAEL T. MALLOY
- United Press International

sirl

Romirrh the

Vietnamese paratroopers appar-

suburb of Gia Dinh |

pe
S. library there) ently prevented a4 ritual suicide in | be

the Saigon
In Salgon two terriovist bombs;early Tuesday, They found Ww
exploded in a heavily protecteq | monks and nuns assembled in a

smith),

(Photo courtesy Robert A. Huf-

rsons in Saigon since the rioting through the streets but there was

gan.
It was the second outbreak in

Gia Dinh. In another disturbance
rioters hurled rocks at Vietnam.

no violence,

rotests on Increase

Premier Tran Van Huong resigns.
Mobs sacked a U.
N (UPI)—A 17-year-old Saturday.

burned herself

Despite the widespread violence,

the war against the Vie

CON Ded A KAM KUt Preece

t Cong

+ €
*96T-OT=2T uo (eTHeYSeM) SuTUoAN poZuey foqTyM SMezpuy *AHIXTd

& tee oe

Jivuec BmuavyEoCU ail

Aras Adee y vase

~Pixley
Continued From Page 1—

would sleep with the dog in the
dog house. “When anything went
wrong I was out there.”

During the foster home period,
Andrew and his sister who was
about a year older got their first
real taste of “not belonging.”

“When they had PTA meetings
and all the parents came, I didn't
have any, I didn’t know even who
they were.”

He said the other students used
to tease him and he was in many
fights. “School was the roughest
Place there was. I wasn’t well
liked because I had no folks. My
foster mother was pretty fat and
the kids would make fun of her
and I would fight for her. They
also picked on my (older) sister
and I would fight for her. I got
beat pretty bad a lot.”

Also while in the foster home

period, Andy became acquainted
with the Catholic religion, He said:
he liked it and eventually became
an altar boy.
At about this time. when An-.
drew was 13, the welfare depart-'
ment informed him that his mo-
ther, whom he couldn't remember |
ever having seen, wanted him}
back. ‘Naturally T wanted to go,” :
he said.

So his mother, who by this time:
was married to a C. F. Pixley, took
the boy and his sister ve Oregon.

After their arrivalythere, the!
children saw they had made a,
mistake. Their mother and step-:
father drank heavily and “were:

Davis, R-Campbell, who calleq of
amended version of the bil
nasty bit of confusion.”

He said he was not necessarily |
opposed to Hufsmith’s amendment |
and probably would support it in a}
different form. But he said he felt

the amendments had to be taken |

out “because I didn’t want to lose
the entire bill.”

In other activity, House Speaker |P%
Walter Phelan signed several en-|ia
grossed bills to make up the first /f3

package of legisaltion to go down

for the governor's signature since |is
the Legislature feed bill was signed =

—A joint resolution proposing an |&
amendment to the State Constitu- |i
tion which would abolish the re-|=
quirement for justice of the peace|f
courts in the state and give the/'@
legislature authority to establish a/i@

early in the session.
The bills approved by
houses:

subordinate court system.

—To modernize the state relat-/|f@
ing to construction of county jails, |p
raising the ceiling |

—A measur’ striking out restric- | i
tions on interracial marriages in'®
the state. 1”

—A law making it unlawful to'&
discharge a projectile at an occu-'#

pied conveyance.

—To provide that the natural a
parents in an adoption proceeding ' fa

need not appear.

the resignation documents signed’

by each of the cadets provided that a:
— even &

if they talk to anyone

!
1:
if

--6 More k

Continued From Page 1— 1

bawling all the time," said An-’ their parents -- about the matter fi
drew. When asked why his mother before their «ischarges are pro-
reclaimed him. Andrew said, “It! cessed they face courts-martial and

wasn’t her idea, it wa: my step-; Possible dishonorable discharges.

father’s as far as I understood. |
ther used to say, ‘It was all vour!

was hurt. -100 cadets, including 30 football:
“They treated my sister real, players. This would riddle the Fal- |,

bad. My step-father used to make con squad. A

passes at my sister ‘Gapita was; Basketball Coach Bob Spear said.

now 18). At first I didn't believe: his squad was untouched but “I'll Be

it but then I seen it.” Gapita suit up myself if I have to.” The &
eventually ran away. : Falcon cage squad, with a 5-7 re-'
School in Dallas. Ore., was the cord, meets Brigham Young univer-

Tt is expected to take from 30 to Be
“When they were fighting, Mo-! 60 days to process the discharges. if

Zuckert has said that the cheat- |
idea to bring him back.’ Sure I ing scandal ultimately may involve S

}

- ae
a TT TN TT TE TT ET Se

same old story to Andrew. “I had!
a lot of trouble in Dallas. The kids
used to call me Mexican, nigger
and Indian. I would fight.”

By this time, through much ex-
perience, if nothing else, Andrew
got so he could hold his own and
even win most of his fights. He
also did well in most sports, even
lettering.

Andrew said he had only one
brush with the law before the
Jackson incident. He wrote and
cashed a bad check for $30. He
said he voluntarily turned him-
self in and to resolve the trouble
joined the Army. He spent 18
months overseas and received an
honorable discharge.

This is just a brief personal
biography of the young man
whose future will be determined
by proceedings starting Feb. 1
heb the picking of a jury for his
trial.

The only real question in the
trial, according to Andrew’s law-
yers is not his guilt or innocence,
but if he deserves to die in the
gas chamber.

Continued From Page 1—
ment charged that Mississippi’s
voter registration Jaws are used “to

sity of Provo, Utah, Friday night
and the University of Wyoming
Saturday.

If any basketball players resign | :

before that time, it would be ap- -
parent when they fail to show up/—
for the game. ;

Sen. Gordon Allott, R-Colo., alk

former member of the academy
Board of Visitors, said in Washing- |
ton Tuesday the scandal raises the!
question of “administrative laxity.”

Johnson Returns
To White House
From Hospital

WASHINGTON (UPI) — Prest-

dent Johnson returned to the|iy

White House Tuesday, fit, rested
and fully expecting to attend Sir
Winston Churchill’s funeral in
London on Saturday.

The Chief Executive left Bethes- 'f
da Naval Hospital in a hurry with:

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Eight Men, Four Women
Return Verdict in 3 Hours

By ED MARTLEY
Daily News Staff Writer

Andrew Pixley, 22, was sentenced to death Wednesday

at 8 p.m. for the murder of 12-year-old Deborah McAuliff. .

: The jury of eight men and four women returned the: .
verdict after less than three hours of deliberation.
-: The death sentence was passed by Fifth Judicial District
Judge Donald J. Harkins after he received a verdict of:
“guilty” without qualifications. The jury, since Pixley had
pleaded guilty to the charge, had only to decide whether’
he was sentenced to life in prison or death in the Wyoming}
penitentiary gas chamber at Rawlins.

Defense attorney James Sperry of Worland asked Pixley!
in open court if he wished to lodge an appeal to the death!
sentence. Pixley answered he did not. Sperry said Pixley
had previously said that he respected the jury and its ver-
dict and wished no appeal. |

In passing sentence, Judge Harkins quoted a passage from
the Bible, ’Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his
blood shed”—Gen.: 9-6.

The judge set execution for May 3, before sunrise.

After the reading of the verdict, Pixley showed his first
emotion during the trial—he smiled and later laughed. When
he laughed, an unidentified voice from Judge Robert Mc-!
Auliffe’s party yelled, “Laugh some more, you animal,”) |
McAuliffe was the father of Deborah aud Deborah's sister,
Cynthia, who were raped and gnurdered by Pixley in a Jack-
son hoiel room Aug. 7.

Pixley will not be tried for the death of Cynthic. If the
jury had failed to render the death penalty for Dek-rah’s
murder, the prosecution had indicated it would try Pixley,
again tor Cyntha’x i

The Trial
“Just prior to the jui~v'’s leav
the courtroom the prosecution and
defense presented their final arju-:
ments.
Special prosecutor Harold Jofie
reviewed the testimony which h
been given in the case and also}
asked the jury if they remembered! i it 7
one of the questions hat ed capital pun
when jury member. ere bein ved ¢ eter
lected. He had asked, “Do vo - d
lieve there could ever be a crime! prompt more ©
vicious, heinous, cruel or. sever Hfuismith quote
enough to justify the death pen-!which said there
alty?” All jurors selected had ans-|of persons wi
wered in the affirmative. In his} commit m
summation, Joffe asked, “Do you!a murde
think there could any crime! The f
more vicious than this.”
In the final argument for thei cidal tendencics —
defense, James Sperry said, “I’m|commit a mur
not trying to justify tius unspeak- | will be put to ¢ h.
able indecency against the human} The second group are those
race. It’s up to your consciences to} whom the lure of danger has ap-
decide what the penalty should be.”| peal. The third group is made up,
Sperry told the jury that Pixley,|of the exhibitionalists — those who| The
Previously described as a “socio-| enjoy outsmarting the law but) psychiatrist

' Deborah
Caug
and

ktoom ol

OL BC

roup consists of those |
funbalanced persons who have sui-|

they feel if th
they themsclv
“nk ins
ked

path,” was a victim of society. As| those who, if caught, enjoy being! Rules Committee Thursday to re-
jport his chent in no condition to
Joffe had the final, closing argu-| be questioned.

Jenkins underwent

testimony had stated there is no| the center of attraction.
hopeof rehabilitating him. Sperry
Suggested to the jury that Pixley’s
life should be spared in order that
he could be
the future society would learn
fnough to prevent this type of

nersaonality

ment of the trial. He said, “I im-

plore you to write your verdict in after he

happen again.

drew Pixley for this most brutal about 10:20 p.m.
and vicious crime.”
MeAuliffes Testify

OSs the hall.

Dector Says Client Not in

WASHINGTON
sisned White
will decline
before

er hearing Thursday, a Rules| leading,
onunittee source said Wednesday. |
source

resigned as President
studied and maybe in!such a manner that this will never! Johnson’s assistant last fall in the

sala ial bhi aml
EW PIXLEY

\
and Mrs. Mc-
Auliffe went to get a sandwich for
}Deborah, but when she got back at
y the proseey-/11:40 pm. Deborah was asleep,
follo

He said he returned with his wife!
ue | to Room 52 at “exactly 1:07 a m.”!
* ony; and opened the door’ to the scene

ght inlof horror.
uro the Wort! “I unlocked the door, entere th:
1.4 he checked}room and walked several feet Int
Nthia ant -encthsthe reo and the Ter ce 2 xs
6. int Room Wis Debs g! mo £8 were :
MeAuliffe into;in their beds, ang at nearly ine!
|same instant, I saw the boos ly-|
left the girls’ roomiing on the fl I said some-|

= 4

wlio

(UPI) — Re-,not appear as subpoenard later was

House aide Walter, denied by Rules Commitee Chair- 1:
to appear as|man B. Everett Jordan, D-N.C.!
iate’s Bobby! He described it as “completely mis-|:
erroneous and wrong.” F

Jordan added that he expected/|
Jenkins to appear as any other
witness would under subpoena, and /|!
that such a subpoena has been is«|)
sued. But Jordan added that he}!
had not had any word from Jen-
kins, his lawyer, or his psychiatrist. |”

One of the senator’s aides, how-
ever, said that lest week Jordan
received a letter “from one of the '
attornevs for Tanteine wtvinh nent al

the

said that Jenkins’
would go before the

treatment

WHITE, 0, W., hanged Wyoming (Natrona) 10-20-1916.

NATRONA COUNTY TRIBUNE, August 21, 1913, page 1

(eee Van Oe
Ar aaa om 2)

on wednesday night last week at about 11 o'clock at the Powder
siver station on the burlington road, a negro named Anderson
soffee was murdered by another negro named O. W. White.

“othe men were employed by the Burlington as track layers, and both of them

were considered expert crap shooters, and this is what started them to quarreling,
wnich resulted in the murder. The men had been shooting craps in the evening
after super and when the game ended, Coffee(sic) was indebted fifteen cents to
White, but he did not square the account, and in due time went to bed in a box

car which is used as a bunk house. Shortly after Coffee retired, White came

in and reminded him that he B¥H&M owed him fifteen cents, and Coffee acknowledged
the debt and said he would pay it in the morning, but White insisted upon

being paid at once, and Coffee got up out of his bunk, took a fifty cent

piece out of his pocket and gave ti to White and received 35 cents in change.
soffee then got back into his bunk and complained to White that he had not been
treated right, because White gave the money back to the other negroes when he

won it from them, but he never gave any back to Coffee. The two men W& kept

up a jangle for a short time and finally White said that Coffee must get up and
Tight, but Coffee would not get up. White kicked him, then pulled out his

<nife and jabbed him in the legs a couple of times. White then told Coffee

that he would rather be in the penitentiary all his life than be compelled to
associate with such a negro, and after cursing Coffee , he left the car. In

a short time Coffee also got up and went out. White evidently was expecting him,
for he said: "You came out to fight, did you," and with this greeting started

for him with his knife, and Coffee ran around the car and got inside as quickly

as possible and crawled back into another berth, but White followed him and While
coffee was in the bed White slashed and jabbed him with his knife, cutting
him about the legs and hands in a dozen places, severing the arteries. He

also jabbed him once inthe abdomen. White then fled from the car and went to another
car where he had a pal whom he told to have what money was coming to him sent

to his wife in Kansas City, and then he faded away in the dark and has not

since been seen.

Attorney Wilson, Sheriff Sheflner and Coroner Foshay went up to the scene

of the murder on Thursday morning, and after making an examination of the body

and &x gathering all the evideance they could, ordered the body buried, and
returned home. Virculars describing the murderer are now being sent throughout
the country in hopes that he may be apprehended.

‘onececumer ns ealaaidaiaaeaee
. «

; ‘Clean, “Wholesome Cooking. and -
uxcellent by ting Service .

mee

RH I NO CEROS

R DIN

| | REGULA

: They will
‘soon ‘As ee

me get authority from Con
ission to observe the results

justice mey:t be. done oe rail- ;
B ‘Chapman, Glen Howland

| the trial was held im this-elty..,../aald. hé chad done. wrong. and. was | Se Hs la.
{ oTt was to this case that the attor-| willing to pay the penalty. : loyd Brodus, Cie Sule Re

“which: they’.
aw,a proposal which I made
: with i, which Purged a

‘eccepted T
act. I did riot ask either sid

of the: janner r in. wh:

Fe rious ‘matter and should not be tte,
fed with “as some

r " plan
a vote orhich included sev~

» this ‘sem:
: ¥ : for many.
years. and ‘hasan established ‘reputi
tion, =.

5 &

"YEE GEOW, Chinese, hang$a)at Wyoming State Prison (Laran@@) County) on 3=11-1921 °

"Kemmerer Republican,News Paper, March 18,1921"
"EXECUTION of CHINAMAN SHOWS HANGING RELIC of DARK AGES"

Apponents of capitol punishment, particularly hanging, which as a

2 tele el Scee aallesiOt a o>

relic of the dark ages, and ought not to be tolerated in a civilized
state, may find in the ghastly details of the hanging of Yee Gow,the
Chinese Murderer, at the Rawlins penitentiary last week, additional

material for making their argument effective. Something must have been

ee en ee eS
“? ae aes

-) | overlooked in the arrangement of the scaffold, for a story is told of
~ uneanny horror, which occured in the death chamber; within the grim
walls of the state prison. The drop was the usual length, about six feet,

notwithstanding which the victim of the law's vengiance dangled in mid

air at the end of the rope for the space of 13 minutes, death coming

a _ to his aid by strangulation instead of his neck being broken as is

ay contemplated when execution of this kind takes place.

: Rev. Gerard Schellenger, who was formerly Santor of St. Patrick's
church here, and who is now one of the Chaplains at the penitentiary,
ministered spiritually to the convicted murderer in his last hours,
and has written to some of his former parishioners in Kemmerer that
“ghail _ Yee Gow, at the last, renounced the faith of his forefathers and

Bee became a Christian and was baptized into the Catholic faith.

eee ee eee ae =.
$8 *
; ae Ke oe

—s

YE pil

GEON Chinese, hanged WyomingsfLaramie )
and ae ne or

- partment of: justice: ‘as’ ta: ‘dons
Dertodfrally,’ made the. rounds of
Joral ‘Chinese establishments ifor
‘the purpose of checking ‘up. the
inmates Ati a. Chinese. Jauntiry
‘on Pioneer ‘avenie,. near Lincoln
Way, they found -Geow,’ a: youth:
ful Chinese of such: slight propor-
>, Gons that they axsumed him to he
Pot Werely.a boy, and Mansfield made
|. nquirier regarding: him -: of). the
other: Chinese present: ‘One of
othene "informed | him” that the
Stranger. wana cousin. of. Yee
Dow, wht faa kind of head man
of the ‘local Chinese colony.)
While the inquiries were being
made Geow,. who’ previously “had
_&iven no intimation that he ‘un:
derstood what *.Manafield’® was
talking about, suddenly: leaped to
his feet und fled: into an adjoin-
ing room: Mansfield’ gave. chase
and after: paasing ‘through = two
rooms cornered the’ Chinese’ in a
toilet. :; Geow: for a time ‘declined
fo leave the toilet, but eventually
eid so, Dea eRe UU ah Hae aA
. In:the’ meantime ‘Yee Dow a
; Pedred on the scene, denied . that
\ Geow was related to him and In-
» formed Mansftetd that the youth
> Sas without papers showisg Aim
Mm. 'to be entitled to be in the United
* States. Dow ezpressed the opin-
-sfon that Geow was fn this ‘country
| MMogallye i Pe
+. Goeow a® this ‘manifested “a
- knowledge of English end as-
“ecrted that he ughtfully was jn
“the United States... Ha made ‘no
Protest’ when. rmcd that he
“Mast accompany the officers to
the: sheriff'n office: for investizs-
tic). His) appearance «was 69
youthful end. hie’ Jemeapor | so
‘uieek: that It does appear to bave
oceutred ‘to either .Nansfield or
y Noland to. scarch bin for. weap-
A a ODBY 557 Mama HC a defatted Ve wi

i Mansfleld.’: Holtend ‘and. the bod
brisoner started for the sheriff‘s!:

+o Office, : Dow accompanying them.
“i Holland * walked: ahead: with “the
F.\ Drisoner und. Mansfield; who vas

sag (ate Pollan - bihognt

9-19 204!)

3-11-1921

conversing with Dow. ‘regarding

Geow and local Chinese. matters,
Rradually fell back: Until} he and
Dow perhaps were thirty fret he-
hind: Holland and::: the brisoner,
when’ the Pioneer; avenue. ‘fire

station’ was reached. i§ hit
“Just north of, the station, Wans-
field: stated. he was startled by
the sound © of a‘ “shot, Looking
ahead, he saw: Holland {ae baltf-
stooping | position. with one band
preased against: his leg. and the
Chinese backing away, revotver inj
hand: At that ‘moment’ Hoftand!
made. aJunge at: the Chinese and|
the latter fired a second shot then
turned and. made:: straight fer
Mansfield, firing-- at: the latter.
Tye’ bullet misred ‘Mansfield: and
td, officer, who”. was’ ubarmed,
leaped into the open‘ donr ‘of the}
fire station and ran: toward. thet
reat. .Geow pursued and Mans-'
field’ ran past the! ffre-fightineg *
machinery and into’ 2’ lounging”
room. where | Federhen:® and:
Charles Kinselback,: ménibers- of}
the fire department,: wera ‘playing
cards while Jamer Cale.” ‘also

fireman, looked on} *: ns

«Mansfield states that ua he rant:

through ‘the room ‘he shouted: 9:

D-| warning that he waa puraued by!

® Man who was. attempting. to}
shoot him. The thrae firemen, tf
Sppears fromthe somewhat con.!
flleting accounts of: what. took}
place, attempted to*get through,
one door, into the main room of
the fire station. while Mansfield!
took -refure io a amail room ad-}
Jacent to that in whieb the card}
game had been 16 progress, alam:
ming the. deor Bbebind © bim.|
Geow. ran through

revolver -in;
past the: pros.)
trate Federhen pnd. toward ‘the
front. doors. ‘of the." building: |

heed Holister’s: motorcycle

a! fponded,* and

conscious and

awaited the arriva)

him eye
°)Wirrat’s

ged. the w > Ske - Beltet
entering the floor at. hig feet: He
then; threw bis: arms above’ his
head, casting the Tevolver. aside.
und did: not resist when grasped
by Bele osoe syne est
7 At. that moment Fire _Tieuten-
ant Charles Kammerer. who ‘alao}
had been at the rear of the butid
ing. atrived on the run and: also
grasped. the Chinase::’ Mansfield
emerged from the room -in.whicn
he had taken refuge. and he-and
Kamtherer’ immediately * rushed
the prisoner to the sheriff's office.
two! blocks. ‘distant... this prompt
action. possibly: , preventing:. the
murderer. mecting sammary. ven-
Keance from. friends of the slain
fireman and wounded officer. .

_/: Ag: Kammerer.” ang: Mansfield

With “the ® prisoner: between them
Pareed Holland: the. latter,” who
tad not’ fallen: when < wounded,
Was easing himself into. a prone
position on: the slanting approach
leading - frpm: the’ sidewalk into
‘ shop.
Tom?" asked

. ;

““Did. he get you,::
Mansfield; ©: pees vay th se
«~ “Vea, he got mé,’* Holland: re-
collapsed ‘until be
lay on hie side in the doorway...
Hundreds of persons were with-
in @ block of the acene when’ the
shots sounded und a large crowd
Quickly gathered, clustering about

tbe. wounded officer and crowding

nto the fire station where Feder-
hen lay. Excitement * became
high as exaggerated reports. of
what bad taken place flew from
mouth ‘to mosth and. Quickly
there. were suggestions that: he
Chinese should be lynched. The
murderer, however, because of
the prompt action of Kammerer
and Mansfield, wae beyond reach.

trampleu
i! HcHend,: who was
suffering: keenly,
made: no’: sonid
of the ambu-

and: patiently if

!
i
i
i
i
{

if
fi

total net assets were

ied, the defense in-
ove the Langhoffs
anocent by obtain-
om William Owens
aed the horse pur-
.n the Royal Horse
.d sold it to a party

sold it to Fred.
so called for William
y that on or about
ies Moore was the
.e eight horses that
1 to Coble and Hoff-
ore was said to have
‘or sale to Atkinson
an interesting con-
‘acts that Langhoff
med to be the owner
he shipped them and
1 trial from May 31
for stealing a saddle
im Rainsford, owner

orse ranch.

‘icted and sentenced
' hard labor in:‘the
Laramie. Governor
- pardoned him ‘on
True West

TIT

January 10, 1893, the result of a peti-
tion signed in mid-December 1892 by
such major Wyoming figures (many
prominent in the cattle business) as
Henry G. Hay, I.C. Whipple, William
Sturgis, Walter R. Stoll (who later suc-
cessfully prosecuted Tom Horn), Samuel
Corson, T.F. Burke (one of Horn’s
defense lawyers), C.H. Riner, and
others. The thrust of the petition was
that Moore had been instrumental in
gathering evidence of horse thievery
and illegal shipments by unnamed par-
ties who were then in jail pending
litigation.

Ironically, at the time of Langhoff’s
request for the Moore subpoena, Moore
was on trial for cattle theft. He escaped
and disappeared, and it was noted he
had been wanted for murder in Texas for
twelve years.

THE PROSECUTION was also
ready to counter the allegation that
Fred Langhoff never stated he owned
the horses. It subpoenaed the consignee
to produce the bill of lading that would
show Fred was the shipper and appar-
ently claimed ownership.

When the matter finally came to trial,
Fred had jumped bail and was never
seen in the area again. The jury ac-
quitted Eva, Lou Bath, and Thomas
Boucher. A final document in the file in-
dicated that the prosecution moved to
drop the charges against Fred because
of his long absence.

Leslie Sommer, a neighbor on an ad-
jacent ranch on the Sybille, commented
years later that there were interesting
goings-on on the Langhoff spread. Som-
mer described Fred as a good cattleman
but a better horse trader. There were
many visitors, and Eva Langhoff’s
charms were so irresistible that the
traders felt they had been dealt with
fairly even if the financial rewards of
their negotiations were lower than ex-
pected. One party named only as
‘‘Suzette,’”? had made a deal he soon
regretted with the Langhoffs, because
they had possession of his horses. He
complained to the authorities about the
deal, but before they could investigate,
Suzette was found hanging from a tree.
Sommer mentioned that after that inci-
dent Fred was never seen in the area
again.

Eva Langhoff and Lou Bath did not
stay out of trouble long. Their next ar-
rest marked Tom Horn’s fateful ap-
pearance in Wyoming. On November 14,
1893, the Laramie Boomerang reported,
‘Deputy Sheriff Horn arrived in the city

‘this afternoon from the Sybille with five

prisoners whom he had arrested [on
April 1993

Al Bowie.

November 12] in the Sybille country and
taken across to Iron Mountain, where
he boarded the train. The prisoners were
Wn. Taylor, L. Bath, L. Cleve and wife
and Mrs, Langhoff. All are charged with
stealing cattle and killing beef” from the
Swan and others. The Boomerang said
foreman Al Bowie had Horn deputized
and had put him to work watching the
suspects. It further said that one of the
defendants had sold a number of calves
in Laramie two weeks before and had
contracted to deliver more.

The next day the paper reported that
the preliminary hearing was to be
November 16 and that Mrs. Langhoff
had her three children with her. Bond

Wyoming State Museum

was set at $500 each, and the accused
were remanded to the care of the sheriff
until bond was secured.

Tom Horn told the paper that Sheriff
Friedendall of Laramie County had
deputized him in mid-October because
the Swan had “long suspected that cat-
tle were being illegitimately killed by
the parties arrested.”’ He added that the
suspects did not have any cattle of their
own, and that on the last day of October
he saw them load three calves in a
wagon, bring them to town, and deliver
them to Balch’s market. After inspect-
ing Langhoff’s barn, he determined he
had enough evidence to make an arrest

and noted unbranded calves were follow-
19

id the
ver,
ied

oirs, Gus Rosentreter
> an unwilling “deputy”
jorn’s arrest of the
of cattle rustlers. “One
2 into the Plaga Ranch,
wo Bar manager, Al
. Horn there. They were
ighbor who had been
) Bar cattle, and they
-o with them.

I did not care: about
ond Henke spoke up
.ad about as well make
» go as Tom Horn will
iyway..
hen we got to the place,
| beef hanging up in a
.ad a big butcher knife
talked big. Tom Horn
that knife or I'll put a

‘our head.’ The knife

show was over....I

ne of the prisoners was
entiary for a year, and
guilty ones left the

‘ER’S accounts of the
vith legal papers and

‘es document the soon- .

tock detective’s earliest
» in Wyoming. After a
system failed to convict
rustlers to his satisfac-
1 decided to take future
3 own hands. Ten years
ngled to death in a
»se the day before his
aday. He was as much a

vn alleged methods as of
. legal system and a

cated to be rid of him.
c-year stint as a Pinker-
‘olorado, in 1892 Tom
by John Clay, manager
1 and Cattle Company’s
as also president of the
Growers Association.
e date of Horn’s entry
ing cattle industry can-
W. “Doc’’ Shores, who
1 at Pinkerton’s, stated
‘red him in 1892. Shores

True West

contended that Clay had hired Horn
purportedly as a horse breaker for the
Two Bar, one of the Swan’s principal
operations. Shore believed Horn’s
reputation preceded him, however, and
his real function was to act as a detec-
tive and surreptitiously gather evidence
of rustling, a major threat to the
industry.

In reality, the Wyoming cattle in-
dustry as the “barons” had known it
had been in decline for years. Absentee
management, leveraged debt, inflated
head counts, and overstocked ranges all
pointed to a financial disaster in the
making. The searing drought of 1886
and the devastating winters that fol-
lowed drove one more nail into the cof-
fin of the large cattle outfits.

But the big operators were not en-
tirely mistaken in their contention that
rustling posed a serious economic
threat. The influx of settlers that fol-
lowed the Homestead Act and the sub-
duing of the Indians created conditions
that inevitably led to conflict. Although
many of the settlers filed claims on the
best bottom lands, they could not pros-
per on small acreages in Wyoming’s
arid, cool climate. An occasional stray
head of beef was a temptation the
homesteader with a growing family on
160 acres could not ignore. To control
rustling the Wyoming Stock Growers
Association and major outfits had no
choice but to employ private detectives.

Most operated within the limits of
their commissions; others did not. In the
mid-1880s, a detective employed by the
WSGA wrote to the association’s secre-
tary, an officer of the organization,
about a situation in which a gang of
thieves were rounding up all the cattle
they could and would not allow legiti-
mate cattlemen near the herd. The
detective thought it would be a good
idea to kill them first. The secretary
replied that he could understand the
situation. The detective could hire a cou-
ple of men to help him if necessary and,
yes, it would be all right to kill the
thieves before he arrested them.

While such arrogance among the
barons had diminished by the time of
Tom Horn’s arrival, the rustling prob-
lem and lawlessness in general remained
a factor to contend with in the rugged,
remote Sybille country northwest of
Cheyenne.

Fred Langhoff had settled on the
Main Sybille Creek in the mid-1880s. He
was married to Evaline Farrell, the
daughter of parents who had come from
Colorado and settled in the Little
Laramie River area. Fred’s disregard of

the law was first documented in 1886
April 1993

John Clay.

when John Quarms sued him for $81.17.
Fred had failed to pay that amount for
goods he had purchased from Quarms
on credit, The matter was settled out of
court.

On August 2, 1892, the state issued
a bench warrant for Fred’s arrest on
charges of horse stealing. The specifics
in the grand larceny, Case 381 of Docket
3, indicate that on June 10 Fred stole
eight horses valued at seventy dollars
each from John C. Coble, seventeen
horses valued at fifty dollars each from
the Laramie River Cattle Company, and
one horse valued at fifty dollars from
the Inter Ocean Hereford Association.
(Coble would become Tom Horn’s close
friend and paid a major part of his legal
fees ten years later.)

Wyoming State Museum

Case 382 concurrently stated that
Eva Langhoff, Lewis (sic, Louis) Bath,
and Thomas Boucher “‘feloniously did
steal, take and carry away, lead away,
ride away and drive away” the same
horseflesh. A second count charged the
three had bought, received, and con-
cealed the stock knowing it was stolen.

For reasons that are unclear, the cases
were dismissed November 22. A third
charge outlined in Case 397, however,
accused Fred, Eva, Bath, and Boucher
of stealing eight horses from John C.
Coble and Victor Coffman, partners
doing business as Coble and Coffman,
and of stealing one horse belonging to
the Royal Horse Association. A second
count accused the four of buying and

receiving the horses from a “‘certain evil
: 17

far right.

ing the Swan’s Two Bar cows at the
Langhoff place. He had lain in the hills
for almost three weeks, watching the
suspects “night and day,” and then ob-
tained third-party witnesses who could
identify the calves.

When Horn saw Mrs. Langhoff and
Louis Bath drive five calves and a cow
toward their spread, he was convinced
they were going to butcher the animals.

American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming
The “’Never-Defeated” University of Wyoming football team. Lou Bath is seated at the

He went to get Al Bowie, “two Henke
boys and a German friend,”’ the sixteen-
year-old Gus Rosentreter. That night
they approached a stable where a light
was shining and found the defendants
dressing six head of cattle.

The Boomerang reported, ‘These
were the calves [Horn] said that he had
the witnesses inspect previously and he
knew all the stock himself. Mr. Horn

The Wyoming State Militia lined up the morning of Tom Horn’s hanging.
20 ,

said he told them they were all under ar-
rest. They asked him if he had a warrant
and he told them no, and they replied
that they would not go without a war-
rant....he told them that if they did
not it would be a surpise to him.”

In the preliminary legal proceedings
that followed, Nellie Cleve was dis-
missed because of her statement that
she only happened to be present because
her husband had told her to hold a
lantern. Her lawyer cited a law that “‘a
wife, acting under instructions from and
in the presence of her husband, cannot
be held responsible.’’ Upon posting the
$500 bail, Eva Langhoff was released on
her own recognizance because of her
small children. She denied that they had
killed any cattle belonging to the Two
Bar and further stated that twenty-one
large gray wolves were in the area.
However, according to ‘the Laramie
Boomerang of November 17, 1893, “she
said she had not seen any two-legged
wolves in that country.” Cleve and
Taylor each posted $500 bail, Louis
Bath $1,000.

Bath’s brother, Phillip, said he had
bought 107 head of cattle from one
James Moore and had asked Louis to
take the animals to the Sybille country.
The beef carried various brands, and
Phillip told Louis to dispose of the cat-
tle as he wished and return the money
to him.

Author’s Collection

True West

Curiosity-seekers

The manager «
that he had bov
Louis Bath on O
he arranged to h:
in two weeks. O

stolen ‘animals,
“three shoes” |

‘branded at all.

witnesses had inc
among the brand
-Prosecuting
Bramel dropped
Cleve and Taylo:
Two of Bath’s bro
asked that the c}
dropped, and his «
asked for an e>
defendant was wi
expenses.

The trial wen
associated doci
Bath was sudd
presiding judg:
the bail bond w
Bath’s arrest. 1
custody, and th
January 17, 18°
Langhoff,

The judge sen’
months in the p:

He was pardone’
April 1993

disposed person or evil disposed per-
sons” unknown to the county and pros-
ecuting attorney, John M. Davidson.

While the authorities apparently felt
they had a solid case and were prepared
to throw the book at the four perpe-
trators, the defendants were equally
determined. Both sides prepared affi-
davits and subpoenaed a full slate of
witnesses for the trial, which was first
set: for December 15 but then continued
until June 2 and subsequently June 15,
1893.

The prosecution indicated it intended
to call such prominent cattle owners and
their cohorts as Coble, Al Bowie, Mrs.
J. Steele, Mr. and Mrs. William Radicle,
and John Clay. Two other prosecution
witnessess from a less elite social level
were William Owens and James Moore;
they were also subpoenaed by the
defense. Further, the defense sub-
poenaed C.C. Randel on May 23, 1893,
to provide a copy of the bill of lading
reflecting that on June 10 Langhoff
shipped allegedly stolen horses to
McErwin and Kellogg in Owensboro,
Kentucky.

Besides Owens and Moore, defense at-
18

torney Hugo Donzelmann indicated he
would call Ed, George, and Thomas
Moore; Raymond and Rudolf Henke;
Lou Bath’s brother, Phil; and William
Atkinson. After the case was continued
until June, Fred Langhoff petitioned for
a reduction in bail from $2,500 to
$1,500. He said he had never intimated
that he would attempt to “fly from the
jurisdiction of this Court” and had not
done so while out on bail, and that the
prosecution’s statements that he would
were false,

PLEADING POVERTY, Fred also
stated that his only assets were 160
acres of land valued at $800 and another
160 acres on which he had filed but did
not have title. He further stated that
Eva owned 200 acres with some im-
provements, 130 cattle, and 45 horses,
all of which was valued at $4,170. Eva’s
assets, however, were mortgaged to a
party by the name of Suggette in the
amount of $2,150 and to the Laramie
National Bank ‘and others” in the
amount of $1,340. He said further that
Eva's herd of cattle had dropped from
an original 200 head because of death,

Both: Wyoming State Museum

so that the couple's total net assets were
no more than $500.

As matters proceeded, the defense in-
dictated it would prove the Langhoffs
and their partners innocent by obtain-
ing a statement from William Owens
that he legally owned the horse pur-
portedly stolen from the Royal Horse
Association and had sold it to a party
named Drake, who sold it to Fred.

Fred’s affidavit also called for William
Atkinson to testify that on or about
June 1, 1892, James Moore was the
rightful owner of the eight horses that
supposedly belonged to Coble and Hoff-
man. Moreover, Moore was said to have
offered the horses for sale to Atkinson
on the same date, an interesting con-
tradiction to the facts that Langhoff
said he'd never claimed to be the owner
of the horses when he shipped them and
that Moore was on trial from May 81
until June 1, 1892, for stealing a saddle
belonging to William Rainsford, owner
of the Diamond horse ranch.

Moore was convicted and sentenced
to three years at hard labor in the
penitentiary in Laramie. Governor
Amos W. Barber pardoned him on

True West

January 10, 1892
tion signed in m’
such major Wyc
prominent in th:
Henry G. Hay, |
Sturgis, Walter FP
cessfully prosecu!
Corson, T.F. Bu
defense lawyers)
others. The thrus
that Moore had |
gathering evider
and illegal shipm
ties who were |
litigation.
-‘ Ironically, at t:
request for the M:
was on trial for ca
and disappeared,
had been wanted {.
twelve years.
THE PROSE
reddy to counter
Fred Langhoff n«
the horses. It sub;
to produce the bil!
show Fred was th
ently claimed owr

When the matte

‘Fred had jumped
seen in the area
quitted Eva, Lov
Boucher. A final d
dicated that the rp
drop the charges :
of his long absen:

Leslie Sommer
jacent ranch on t}
years later that t!
goings-on on the L
mer described Fre
but a better hor:
many visitors,
charms were so
traders felt they
fairly even if th:
their negotiation.
pected. One pa
“Suzette,” had :
regretted with th
they had posses:
complained to th«
deal, but before t!
Suzette was founc
Sommer mention:
dent Fred was ne
again.

Eva Langhoff a
stay out of troubi:
rest marked Tom
pearance in Wyomi.
1893, the Laramie
‘Deputy Sheriff H:
this afternoon fron:

prisoners whom |
April 1993

a Oe a

thought that on the shoulders of Jim Miller and
Nickell rested the real

death, Victor Miller's criminality.

Too, there was a personal an gle: She had lived ing
house, known Victor intimately, It was very hard
consider going to the authorities, to make a char;
murder against the boy. Apparently, she salved }
conscience by telling Victor that she would not b
him, so long as Horn or any other innocent person wit
not charged with the crime.

In spite of the state-wide indignation, the sun
passed, autumn came, then winter, without defirs

charge being lodged against anyone in the Wy
‘Nickell case.

case—Joe Lafors, who had been a stock-detective, lu &
Horn, but who at this time was a deputy United Suz ff
marshal, headquartering in Cheyenne. For some rest
or other, Joe Lafors was bent on ‘‘ breaking”’ the Wil:
Nickell case. :
I pass no judgment on Lafors’ motives, nor dol
tempt any explanation of his great interest in a as
which might be said to be none of his real business. Tk
fact remains that Lafors intended to solve this mysten,
and that he had his suspect very clearly in min-
Tom Horn.

Lafors and Horn knew each other well enoug'
though they had never worked together. They we
what might be called “friendly acquaintances.” &
when Lafors came to John Coble of the Tron Mounus
Ranch and told Coble that he knew of a job Her:
could fill, working for some Montana cowmen, bot

Coble and Horn regarded this as a very ordinary geste:
of friendliness.

68 TRIGGERNOMenk | , :
3 aE. RAILROADED? 369

responsibility for Willie Nica

e 8 . ° . he
ted, writing a letter to Lafors in which
ia ‘that fe felt perfectly qualified to handle any

P mstler situation that might exist. He referred to cases

, ruse

‘be had worked on in the past, writing what amounted

: ” letter.’
” + an left to take the job. On the way he stopped at

Omaha where he went on one of his ‘‘celebrations.’’ No

estimate of the man, or of the possibilities in any case in

} which he figured, can be made without sSpenening
+ that at intervals he drank heavily. Nor was it an iri
b common weakness in that day and place, ons 7
i cowboys and their employers. At bee .
; temperate. But between jobs he drank heavi ei no in

t characteristic must be noted and remembered—sober,

Horn was noted for his taciturnity. Drunk, he—like

ther-+became very talkative, very boastful.
He had the cowboy’s keen, if crude, sense of humor.
When under the influence of liquor it was his delight to
tcll the most outrageous stories that his vivid imagina-
tion could concoct and enjoy the reaction of his arse
Every lurid deed that he had ever heard of, he Gaines to
have done. As an acquaintance said: ‘Drunk, Tom
Horn would not have see that he shot Lincoln. He

have sworn that he did!’’

well at Omaha, he got very drunk—so drunk that
he lost his outfit. He had to go back to Coble’s for an-
other. While at Iron Mountain he had‘a letter from
Lafors, asking him to come to Cheyenne. Lafors said

that one of the Montana cowmen for whom Horn was -

tk would be in Cheyenne, to personally confer
ait he new detective. Als: Lafors added, he had a
letter from Montana and he wanted Horn to read it.
Horn started for Cheyenne to mect Lafors, but at
Laramie he got drunk again. When finally he arrived at
Cheyenne he was ‘‘on a jag.’’ He had been drinking so
scadily that he must have “‘tapered off’’ gradually in
any case. He continued to drink, in Cheyenne. thi
There is no questioning Lafors’ intentions at this
time. Ic seems obvious that he had used the Montana

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2 ay

45 TRIGGERNOMETRY

A GALLERY OF GUNFIGHTERS

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370 TRIGGERNOMETRy

job merely to get into Horn’s confidence. Now
Horn in Cheyenne—had him there for one ab
alone. He wanted to get from him (to give Lafors cred
for complete honesty, even) admission that he had kill
Willie Nickell. The facts of the case permit no othe
interpretation—not that I have ever encountered ap
denial of Lafors’ that this was the purpose of the ince

Well—it seems that Horn was drunk enough to
The trouble was, he was almost too drunk 2 ae
purpose—almost too drunk to talk to the point Lafoy
aimed at!

Horn was found in a saloon, very much intoxicate,
Lafors drew him out and to the Office of the United
States marshal. Lafors had set the stage for what k
hoped would be a successful Last Act. Leslie Snow, s
deputy sheriff, and one Ohnhaus, a shorthand reporta,
were waiting for the men’s arrival, concealed in an ad.
joining room. Lafors and Horn shut themselves in the
office. The reporter and Snow eavesdropped outside. The

stage was set. The famous ‘‘confession’’ was about to
be made!

THE PRIME essential was to get Horn to talking. %
Lafors began to yarn with Horn. They swapped gor
reminiscences. Then Lafors began to discuss the Montan
job. Horn was at pains, even in his drunken condition,
fo assure Lafors that he need have no worry about his
ability to handle the job.

The deputy, Leslie Snow, with the reporter, Ohnhau
were listening. Ohnhaus was taking down the converss-
tion in shorthand. But not a// the conversation, he a¢-
mitted later on the witness stand.

Finally, Lafors said to Horn: |

‘Tom, I know you are a good man for the place.
You are the best man to cover your trail I ever saw. ln
the Willie Nickell killing I could never find your tral
and I pride myself on being a trailer.”’

To which, Horn is reported to have replied:

: —— long ways off."’ La leave
® ny horse so far away, ve: might get cut off from him:

To which Horn replied ;*

These people are unorganized, and, anyway, I depend on
this gun of mine. The ven thing I was ever afraid of
} was that I would be compe

} Ididn't want to. I would do everything to keep from
| being seen, but if he kept after me I would certainly

| P-RAILROADED?”" 371

“No, I left no trail. The only way to cover your trail

is to go barefooted.”’ \

Lafors: ‘‘ Where was your horse?’’ Horn: ‘‘He was a
bors: ‘“‘T would be afraid to leave

“You don’t take much chances.

led to kill an officer or a man

kill him.”
_ The conversation then continued as follows: _
Lafors: *‘I never knew why Willie Nickell’ was

| killed. Was it because he was one of the victims named,
| of was it compulsory?”’

Horn: ‘'I think it was this way: Suppose a man was

in the big draw to the right of the gate—you know

where it is—the draw that comes into the creek below
Nickell’s house, where Nickell was shot. Well, suppose

} aman was in that and the kid came riding up on him

from this way, and suppose the kid started to run for the

| house, and the fellow headed him off at the gate and

killed him to keep him from going to the house and

/ mising a hell of commotion. This is the way I think

it occurred.”
' Lafors: ‘Tom, you had your boots on when you ran

across there to cut the kid off, didn’t you?”’

Horn: No, I was barefooted.”

Lafors: ‘You didn’t run across there barefooted?”
Horn: ‘“* Yes, I did.”’

Lafors: ‘How did you get your boots on after

| Cutting up your feet?’’

Horn: ‘I generally have ten days to rest, after a job
of that kind.”

Lafors:**Tom, didn’t Jim Dixon carry you grube”’

Horn: “No; no one carried me grub.”

lafors: ‘Tom, how can a man that weighs 204
pounds go without eating anything so long?’’

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366, TRIGGERNOMETRY #

rrr 3

In carly August the excitement caused by Willie
Nickell’s murder was given a new fillip by a fresh quamd
between Miller uf Nickell. Several hundreds
Nickell’s sheep were driven across public land and int
the pasture of Miller, the cowman. A shooting was ¢.

' pected, but the sheep were driven out and nothi

happened—that day. The followin day—August 4th~
two men fired thirteen shots at Kels Nickell, wounding
him twice.

Poor shooting! Those who in later days charged
Horn with this bushwhacking overlooked his deadly ag
curacy with either Colt or long gun! He could hardly
have fired a dozen times at any target and scored only
two hits.

There was another peculiarity about this attempted
assassination of Kels Nickell—the fact that two ma
were shooting-at him. Horn was notorious for “log
wolfing it.”’

If we may trust the statements of Nickell's conten
poraries, Nickell did not believe that Horn was the bush
whacker. He is reported to have said to his wife that he
had recognized Jim Miller and one of the Miller boys.
Later, when he and his wife were discussing the shoot:
ing with neighbors (a Mr. and Mrs. Joe Reid) he is
alleged to have said:

“They will try to lay this on Tom Horn, but he
never done it. It was the Millers!”’

The coroner's inquest, meeting for its second sessioa
August 9th, brought out testimony (in connection with
Kels Nickell’s escape from death) of the younger
Nickell children that they had seen two men ride off
the direction of the Millers’, one riding a bay, the otha
a gray, horse. Miss Kimmell tells us, out of her intimate
knowledge of the Miller household of which she was
temporarily a member, that of the three Miller saddk
horses, one was a bay, another a gray. Soon after ths

attempt at assassination, masked men came up to the
Nickell sheep, ran off the herder and clubbed a bunch of

_ the animals.

. Nicke

| twice acknowledged to her that Victor ha
| Willie Nickell’s murder. And she makes the definite

| «lf confessed to her that he ha

“RAILROADED?”' 367

Apparently, this train of violent events broke
I's nerve. He was in the hospital at Cheyenne,
recovering from the two gun-shot wounds. He wrote his

| family to come to him there. Then he advertised his

moch for sale.

All over Wyoming, complaints were being made
sbout the authorities’ failure to capture the murderer of
Willie Nickell. Coming as it did at the tail-end of a long
succession of unsolved killings, the murder of a young

boy aroused popular indignation.

WE HAVE NOW to look very carefully at ‘‘the Peny ,

xhool teacher’ living in the Miller house. Glendolene

Kimmell was a figure of extreme importance in subse- °

quent events and, because her testimony was startling,

her credibility becomes of vital importance to any in-—

uiry into Horn’s actions. That she was a close friend of

edetective there is no doubt. Nor is there any doubt of
her courage! Voluntarily, she came forward later on to
wage battle with some of the most prominent men of the
wate and she told her story without (it seems to’ me)
any thought of self. And I cannot find in her straight-
forward statement, any appearance of falsehood.

In a sworn statement, she asserts that shortly after

| the second inquest she overheard discussions between —

Victor Miller and his father. The tenor of the conversa-
tons she heard made it certain that Victor Miller had

killed Willie Nickell. She states that, “ater, Sy Miller
confessed

assertion that, on October 10, 1901, Victor Miller him-
{ murdered the boy.

She confesses that this admission put her in a quan-

. On one hand, she was afraid that Horn or some

ef innocent person would be charged with the

marder. On the other hand, it seems to her that both

Victor Miller and little Willie Nickell were in large de- |

gre creatures of environment, hardly blamable for the
Mvagc, unjuvenile viewpoint both boys owned. She

Hovensaniaiavites aaamplann gbiriieds eis soi ; Asa bate "

A REAL NEAT HANGING
Continued from page 17

missed. It was pure self defense an’
that’s the law of the land an’ I ain’t
givin’ a damn what you or anybody
else says!”

“You’re right about the law, Jim,”
Stough said, ‘‘so if you can make a
Jury believe such tripe it’s Jake with
me ”

When the District Court was in
session during the late days of Decem-
ber, 1901, James Keffer appeared and
being without funds, Ed Fort was ap-
pointed to defend him. But time being

‘too short to prepare his case, Fort

asked for a continuance until the June
term which was granted by Judge
Brammel.

“Now ‘if that ain’t one hell of a.

note!” Bill Lannigan fumed. “Here
they could have disposed of his case in
a couple days and now he'll be eating
on the County for six months!”
“Eating is right,’ Ed Amoretti said.
“‘He’ll be eating high on the hog, too.
And, at our expense. Mrs. Stough
feeds them prisoners fancier grub at
two bits a throw than we can get at

the Chinaman’s or any other feed joint

in town for thirty five cents.”

But if the citizens complained over
this delay in bringing Keffer to trial,
they really howled and cussed when
Court convened the next June and

Keffer’s Counsel asked for another

continuance. Dave Preston had joined
Lawyer Fort in the defense and an
outsider said “That Preston’s a slick
bastard. I knew him down in Rock
Springs, so you better be prepared to
see your murderer walk out Scot
free.”

But Keffer’s lawyers were out
talked by Prosecuting Attorney Hardin
and Keffer’s plea was denied and on
June 24, 1902 his trial began. But
securing a Jury was no easy matter.
From the talk in saloons and in the
street it was the opinion of everyone
that Keffer would hang without too
much deliberation by any Jury.

But the problem was to get twelve
men who hadn’t already formed an
opinion. As the days dragged on doz-
ens were excused for ‘‘cause.’’ Too
damn bad it ain’t like it used to be
when I first come to this Valley,” Old
Joe Wagner said. ‘Keffer would have
been hung and forgotten by now, and
if some lawyer stuck his snout in our
business, by God we’d of strung him
up too!”

This being the general attitude it
began to appear that if an impartial
Jury was to be found, it would have to
be from some place other than Fre-
mont County. ‘“‘“Maybe Timbuktu,” as
one joker opined.

But after impaneling most every
eligible venireman in the County, the

Jury box was finally filled and the:

lawyers got down to calling their wit-
nesses, which was so much wasted talk
since everyone, including the Jury, al-
ready knew the circumstances to the
last detail.

Lawyer Preston put up an elaborate

defense and pictured Keffer as a hard 7

working, honest man, loved and re-
spected by all with the exception of
those who bore his client a personal
grudge. “The State hasn’t presented a
single bit of evidence,” he declared,
“except the flimsy web of circum-
stances this poor man had the misfor-
tune to get caught up in. Our Constitu-
tion gives to every human the right to
defend himself when his life is endan-
gered,” he told the Jury in an impas-
sioned voice as tears runneled down
his cheeks.

When the Jury retired for delibera-
tion it was easy to see it could just as
well voiced its findings of ‘Murder in
the first degree’? without leaving their
seats. On the third of July, 1902 Kef-
fer’s Attorneys filed for a new trial
which was promptly denied and the
defendant was sentenced by Judge
Brammel ‘‘to be hanged by the neck
until you are dead.’’ The execution
date being September 5th of that year.

Notice of Appeal to the Supreme
Court was immediately filed and in

August that body ordered a stay of °

execution. This really caused a furor
among Lander’s male population and
many were for taking the law in their
own hands and “save the expense of
feeding that louse for another year or
two!”

Although the Appeal sharpened the
howls for revenge, it was at long last
denied and Keffer’s execution was or-
dered carried out on September 25th,
1908.

During all these delays Keffer had
felt sure he would at least escape the
noosé and instead of vilifying everyone
except a couple of his jail-mates he

~ became a model prisoner. But when he

could plainly hear carpenters erecting
the scaffold, then hearing through a
new prisoner how Sheriff Stough was
testing various ropes with a dropped
log, his assurance faded.

When his supper was brought in by
Sheriff Stough the evening before he
was to hang, he surprised Stough with
an unusual request.

“Charlie,” he said, ‘‘will you do me
a last favor?”’

“Well, Jim,” Sheriff Stough said,
laughing, if it isn’t to just accidentally
leave your cell door open and have a
fast horse saddled out back, I might
just grant it.”

‘‘Now, Charlie, you know I
wouldn’t let you get yourself in bad in
any such manner as that!” Keffer
snapped. ‘‘No, all I ask is that you go
across the river and bring a certain girl
named Goldie and let me have her here
for the night. Will you do that, Char-
lie?”

Stough gave this some deep
thought. It wasn’t exactly a world-
shaking request to grant even a mur-
derer on his last night on earth. But he
knew he’d never hear the last of the
angry howls if he granted Keffer an
ounce of pleasure. Also, and more
important, taxpayers were already rais-
ing hell over the cost of the trial. And
Keffer being penniless, the tariff on an
all night’s liaison with one of Ollie

Day’s favorite girls would come out of
the County coffers. Wow. He’d catch
double hell for that.

“‘No, Jim, he solemnly said, “I’m
afraid Ill have to turn you down.”
Keffer was still pleading with him
when he bade his charge good night.

As Keffer was being led to the
scaffold the next morning he paused at
the steps, shuddered, then clamped his
teeth tight.

“Take it like a man, now, Jim,”
Stough said, “‘so things will go off
smoothly.”

“Don’t worry, Charlie, I will,”
Keffer managed as he climbed to the
platform. Once his legs and arms were
strapped and the black cap on and the
noose being adjusted Keffer said
“Christ, Charlie, loosen that damn
thing! You’re choking hell out of me.”

“Oh, excuse me, Jim,” Stough said
and loosened the knot. “Have you
anything to tell us now, Jim?” he

. asked.

“All I gotta say is, you’re hangin’
an innocent man, Charlie, an’ may the
Lord forgive you an’ all these damned
gawkers.””

““You’re ready, then, are you Jim?”
Stough asked.

“‘Ready,”’ Keffer all but whispered.
Then his knees jack-knifed just as the
Sheriff cut the rope holding the trap
and even though Deputy Axe tried to
catch him, Keffer pitched head first
through the hole with the rope caught
between his feet.

“‘Turn him over somebody!”
Stough yelled at the crowd below.
“Untangle him!’”’ My brother was in

tangled, choking Keffer end for end —
as two souvenir grabbers staged a fist
fight over Keffer’s slippers that had
been flung among the crowd in the
mixup.

Deputy Axe ran down the steps
yelling “Grab his legs! Jerk down on
his legs!’ Several, including Axe and
my brother, grabbed the whirling
form’s legs and began jerking down
with all their might and telling Keffer
it damn well served him right for
caving in like he had which had pre-
vented his neck being broken.

It took all of fifteen minutes for
life to cease, yet a Cheyenne paper of
the day stated, in effect, ‘‘It was a real
neat hanging and went off on schedule
and with very little difficulty.” But
the spectators thought otherwise. My
brother said “To hell with what the
paper said! We could have done a
damnsite better job with a lariat rope
and a cottonwood tree! But I’m glad I
got to help choke that bastard. Old
man Warren staked me to five dollars
when I first came to Lander an’ hadn’t
a dime to eat on.”

Forty-four years later Charlie and I
were reminiscing our old experiences
and I found my brother had mellowed
a lot with age. In talking about the
hanging of Jim Keffer he said ‘““That
was the God Awfulest thing I ever had
a hand in and I hope I never see
another hangin’!”’

KEFFER, James, white, hanged at Lander, Wyoming, on September 25, 1903.6
: (WESTERNER MAGAZINE, July/#ug., 1973.)

-by Edgar Web

It was “just by the skin of my
teeth,” so to speak, that I lost out on
witnessing the most publicized hanging
Lander, Wyo. has ever had. That is, I
missed it by a month and a few days,
but it was so fresh in everyone’s mind
it was still the topic of the day and
even my older brother, Charley, got in

_on the performance.

First I heard of the notorious affair
was when somebody said to Bill Lanni-
gan: “You might call it a real nice
hanging, Bill, but I say it was a dis-
grace to our town when Sheriff Stough
balled things up by cutting the rope
too soon.”’

“Only for that;” Lannigan replied,
“it wouldn’t of been worth watching.
I’ve seen other varmints dance on air
but Jim Keffer put on the best per-
formance yet. That was a real stem-
winder.” Several bar patrons laughed
with Lannigan and agreed that “It sure
was!” °

“Now,” I thought (from where my
first day’s job in Lander was washing
whiskey bottles at fifty cents a day in
Lannigan’s Saloon), ‘‘what could be so
special about hanging some poor devil?
And why are so many gloating over
it?” That winter I was to hear a lot
about Keffer’s deluxe hanging and in
the spring, when my brother showed
up, he gave me the story from start to
finish.

Jim Keffer was no ordinary killer.
Lots of men around Lander (who
needed to be killed) had got “lead
poisoning”’ and little had been done
about it. But this Keffer was a bad
actor, it seemed. Not a ‘‘gun man” by
the standards of that time, but just

‘plain BAD. At least that was what

everybody said, so I guess he was all
folks called him and then some.

He liked to brag that he was born
on Skull Creek in Franklin Co. Kansas
where a man had to be tough or his
skull would be bleaching like those
that had given the Creek its name.

Those he worked with along the

Sweet Water, then up around Lost
Cabin and finally Lander, put him
down as a lying braggart when he
boasted of his victims: ‘Killed a man
in nigh twenty states,” he often
spouted, as if chanting a littany,‘‘an’
afore I leave Wyoming I might just git
me another one or two if they cross
me.”’
When Keffer either got fired or left
of his own accord, his co-workers and
saloon acquaintances felt they were
well shed of him. When he left the job
of driving team on a “‘Fresno”’ scraper
for Jim Oakey in building a reservoir
near Lost Cabin, Old ‘‘Shorty”
McDougall said “Ei Mon, we’re well
divorced from that mickle mouth!”
And Paddy Monahan called down a
good old Irish curse on the departee
with “Bad cess t’ him. I’m tillin’ ye
he’d stale the coppers off his dead
mither’s eyelids! Sure an’ he would
that.”

Such was Jim Keffer’s unpopularity

16 WESTERNER /July-August, 1973

wherever he worked and he worked
many places, for his tenure on any job
was of short duration; in most cases
even shorter than his whiskey binges.
But, even though estimates of his char-
acter varied from a “bad hombre to
the biggest liar in the State,” his ac-
quaintances hadn’t heard anything yet,
and their divided opinions were soon
to coalesce.

Keffer finally showed up at the
Rawlins-Lander Stage Station, known
as the “Derby Stage Stop” some fif-
teen miles southeast of Lander. He was
red-eyed from a drinking bout in
Lander and “broke flatter® than a
starved woodtick’”’ as some were to
later testify.

Naturally, there were no jobs run-
ning loose around the Stage Station
but Old C. J. Warren, who tended to
things there, told Keffer he could hang
out with him until some work was to
start up on a nearby dyke and ditch
job some Lander men were going to
put in.

Warren, living alone, was glad of the

Sheriff Charlie Stough about to make an error in judgment by not adjusti

other’s company and when the work
finally started up, Keffer joined several
others on the job. But it wasn’t long
until members of the crew tired of
Keffer’s continual -harping and brag-
ging, and wanted the foreman to get
rid of him. ‘‘There’s something fishy
about that big mouth,” they said.
“Well,” the foreman replied, ‘just
try to tolerate him and let him boast.
He’s a good hand with a team and
that’s all I care a damn about.” There
being little, if any, live creeks in those
red-rock canyons and gulches, the
chief job was building a series of big
dykes to catch and hold the spring
run-off. Quite an extensive job and as
the work progressed, the demands in-
creased that Keffer be fired but to no
avail.
While all but Keffer stayed in the
work camp, the foreman had asked
Warren to let Keffer stay with him so
as to avoid trouble and he would pay
for Keffer’s board. The true facts
never came out but the supposition at
first was that Warren may have, to

23
ng the

noose tight enough. At right is the Lander, Wyo. courthouse behind which the

scaffold was erected for the hanging. The crowd that came was “‘real big.”

Vet reae baad

avoid trouble at the camp, told Keffer
he was disrupting the work and crew
out at the job and had touched off an
argument by asking him to leave.

It was also thought that Warren
may have confided to his friend that
since he, Warren, had worked for the
Stage Co. several years he was pretty
well off. But be that as it may, Keffer
had roused folks in Derby in the dead
of night and breathlessly told them “I
just killed Old Warren! He got drunk
an’ tried to kill me! Lucky his first
shot only nicked my face, I hated t’
shoot him but it was a case o’ self
defense or his next shot would o’ got
me! I managed t’ git holt of a shotgun
an’ afore I knowed it I’d blowed his
head off! I’m headin’ for Lander and
tell the Sheriff!”

A freighter, on reaching Lander,
spread the news and that was the first
Sheriff Charlie Stough knew of the
killing. It was evident Keffer had
changed his mind about giving himself
up

But Sheriff Stough and his Deputy,

James Keffer Needed Killing — But No Man Deserved

: :
a GD -
:
;

Allen Axe, wasted no time in picking
up Keffer’s trail. Towns were few and
far between and even though Keffer
had appropriated one of the Stage
horses, he didn’t get far. He was
brought back to Lander and jailed
until his story could be checked out.
Accompanied by the Coroner, the two
lawmen returned to the scene of the
killing. ;

On reaching Warren’s cabin, where

the body had lain undisturbed on his
bed for two days, the Coroner’s first
words were “Lord God! He’s bloated
up like a poisoned wolf!”

As the three stood looking at the
gory, swollen form, Axe said “Well, it
looks like Keffer was telling the truth
alright. Whiskey bottles all over the
place! Not a hell of a lot left of Old
C. J.’s face, is there?”

Sheriff Stough picked up the rifle
lying beside the body and levered out
an empty shell, sniffed it and put it in
his pocket. ‘‘Looks that way, alright,”’
he-absently agreed. Then all three
began searching the walls. ‘“The bullet

VO UN DePS jw s

To Die That Way

Photos Courtesy of Author

Keffer says took the bark off his
cheek,” he resumed, “‘should be easy
to trace in one of these two walls. And
from the blood and corruption splat-
tered over that wall beside the bed,
Keffer had to be standing here. Yet
neither wall has a mark of a slug from
Warren’s rifle.”

He was sniffing the empty cartridge
again when Axe said “Charlie, you
don’t suppose —?’’:

“You bet your boots I suppose!”
came Stough’s sharp answer. “This
shell hasn’t been fired for hell only
knows how long.”’ Going to the bed he
picked up the rifle again and took it
out in the sunlight. Tearing out a
Riz-La-Croix cigarette paper he ad-
justed it in the breech of the old
Winchester and peered down its muz-
zle. ‘“‘Here,”’ he said, ‘“‘both of you take
a peek, as this is important. This bar-
rel’s as clean as a hound’s tooth and
you fellows know what even one shot
of black powder looks like in a gun
barrel.”

‘Right as rain,” Deputy Axe said.
“Let’s take another look-see around
the cabin.”’ In browsing around, the
Coroner discovered the victim’s pock-
ets empty but scattered under the bed
they found some checks made out to
C.J. Warren by Mr. Carmody, one of
the dyke builders.

“I think,” Sheriff Stough remarked,
‘“‘our Mister Keffer’s in trouble. Let’s
help Mr. Schoo load his corpse in his
Express Wagon and hightail it back
and see what Keffer has to say for

himself.”

After a formal charge of murder
was instituted against James Keffer,
the Sheriff and Deputy Axe went to
the cells adjoining the Court House
and began asking a few questions. But
all the prisoner had to “say for him-
self” was to damn the Sheriff, the
Dyke Co. and his former benefactor in
turn. see

“TI tell you,’ he shouted, “that
lousy old skinflint only had five meas-
ly dollars in his —”

‘“‘Whoa, Jim!” Stough said, grinning
at the accused, ‘‘Seems you put your
tongue where your brains should be.
Seems funny you took the time to
ransack his pockets! Otherwise how
would you know he only had fiv

dollars?”

“Because — well, because I had
wages comin’ an’ he tried to pay me
off with just five dollars, that’s how!
He claimed our agreement was that I
was to help him around the Station for
my board for a couple days an’ when I
went on my way he’d give me five
dollars. But before that job come up
he had me workin’ like hell around the
Station an’ I was to get two dollars a
day. But he maintained our old agree-
ment stood an’ tried to pay me off
with five dollars!”

“So you up and killed him,”
Stough prompted.

“Tt was self defense, I tell you, an’
you know it, Charlie! That ol’ booger
went batty all t’ once an’ would of
blowed my own head off if he hadn’t

Continued on page 27

So ee end ae MET Le

KEP FER

By JEAN A. MATHISEN

James, white, hanged Lander, yoming, September 25, 1902.

His First H

| WU Wed | NPR g

anging

Keffer pleaded that he was insane at the time of the killing. He claimed
that his head had been injured several times and that four times in his
life he had gone crazy. But a verdict of guilty of murder in the first

degree was returned.

he hills around the old Derby

stage station are a crimson red—

blood red—reminiscent of a

savage murder that occurred there in

1901. The killing resulted in the only

legal hanging that ever happened in Fre-
mont County, Wyoming.

Old D.J. ‘Dad’ Warren, about age

sixty, was the horse tender at the sta-

‘tion. Its buildings were constructed of

the same rock that makes up the sur-
rounding hills. Set some distance above
the carved banks of Twin Creek, the sta-

tion was generally a quiet place where
life rolled pleasantly along like the slug-
gish pink water in the stream—until the
day James Keffer paid Warren a visit.

James Keffer was born in Franklin
County, Kansas, on February 24, 1874.
He moved to the Willamette Valley in
Oregon with his parents that fall. He
had first appeared in the Lander area in
November 1901 and had worked as a
powder man on construction of the near-
by Enterprise Ditch. He bragged loud
and long that he had killed seventeen

Main Street, Lander, Wyoming, as it appeared about 1903.

April 1987
TRUE WEST

MAGAZINE,

April,1987 ®

men in seventeen states and would kill
another before he left Wyoming. He did
just that, but he would never leave the
state.

Keffer had been in Lander on a four-
day spree when he finally left town and
showed up at the Derby stage station.
He pleaded to Warren that he was dead
broke, and the horse tender took him in,

offering him a job hauling wood for five -

dollars and board. It was mid-December
1901.
A few days later Warren and Keffer

Pioneer Museum, Lander, Wyoming

)

Ailler's vic-

ver so slowly
ew inchgs of
. The explo-
antly ended
raveler’s life.
‘at, Charley
pistol toward
igh’s head.
int blank.
ounded, the
instinctively
s foot caught
, and he fell
ineven pile of
| or of the box

n his nose and
tinging in his
odically went
s’ pockets in
From Emerson
se knives and a
cket watch, but
nain. Finding
uperior to his
that away, too,
wn gun beneath
o he robbed
ropping the
loor. As the

rd its next stop,

*« TRUE WEST

the dying man’s blood pumped
from the dark, open wound while
moans oozed from his frothing lips.

It is not clear how much time
elapsed, but Charley awoke to loud

groans from his cowpoke friend. “Oh,

ing lips. “Lay up close to me,” said
Charley. Kingen, his teeth chattering
like a shaken sack of loose coins, pulled
the youngster under the tent of his
greatcoat. Despite their pain, the weary
pair again fell asleep.

The waning clickity-clack of the
wheels, as they passed over each
thin split in the rails, warned that
the train approached its mext sta-
tion, Hillsdale, a whistle stop nestled
in a bare valley between treeless
hills. Charley hopped out of the car.
Finding his way to the section
house, he asked John Brooks if he
could spare some lunch. Never
refusing a needy stranger, the pow-
erhouse engineer offered his fam-
ily’s hospitality. During the meal,
the boy told a confused, rambling
tale of his travels. First, he said, his
destination was Greeley, Colorado.
The next moment he talked of
Manhattan, Kansas. After eating his
fill, Charley paid his host with two-
bits from his new-found riches
before ambling back to the depot.
Fearing he might be caught with the
dead men’s knives and gun, he
cached them under a loose board at
the west end of the platform.

In the meantime, George
Mannifee heard strange sounds as
he passed a boxcar during his rou-
tine check of the train. Opening the
door, the brakeman found an
unconscious man with blood trick-
ling from a wound in the right tem-
ple, the flesh still warm. As
Mannifee’s eyes adjusted to the
darkness, he discovered a second
male. Like a traitor in his coffin, the
body lodged face down between
some ties. Leaning closer, the rail-
roader saw coagulated blood and a
neat hole almost hidden by a large
powder burn. A cheap, shiny
revolver, with two empty shells in its
chamber, lay near the right side of

JUNE 1997

The Laramie County Jail.

the corpse. The startled Mannifee
ran back along the tracks to the
caboose and told the conductor of
his discovery. When the brakeman
led them back to the macabre
scene, Fishbaugh’s dull, harsh snore
warned of pending death. After
making the victim as comfortable as
possible, the trainmen wired news of
the tragedy to authorities in
Cheyenne.

As the freight resumed its jour-
ney, Charley hoofed it to the
Hillsdale depot and bought a ticket
with a silver dollar before boarding
a passenger train to Cheyenne.

When the locomotive with its
bloody cargo arrived about 2 PM,
officials immediately unloaded the
bodies into a wagon and sent them
to the local drug store. The corpse
went to the undertaker at Warren’s
Emporium, while the wounded man
found a narrow cot at the Laramie
County Hospital. Blood and black
powder sponged from Fishbaugh’s
wan features revealed heavy eyelids
and glazed eyes that predicted the
young victim’s certain fate. “Tall,
strong, dark, lately shaven clean,
[the patient] wore such clothes as a
young man roughing it would
choose from a fair wardrobe,”
reported a witness. As hospital staff
removed the paralyzed man’s
clothes to search for other wounds,
they found in his pockets a ring of

Wyoming Division of Cukural Resources

keys and an express receipt for ship-
ment of a valise to Denver. His pos-
sessions also included an envelope
addressed to “Mr. Ross Fishbaugh,
St. Joseph, Mo.” and a small, soft
leather case with cards of introduc-
tion bearing the same name. Within
the envelope, letters of reference
from two Missouri grain dealers
praised the billing clerk’s good
habits and honesty. They lauded
him, too, as “an exceedingly good
judge of grain for a man of his age
[who] writes an unusually good
hand and is correct in figures and
neat in all his work.” Despite those
kind words, poor Fishbaugh died in
about four hours, never regaining
consciousness.

In the meantime, Doctor May-
nard examined Emerson at the
morgue. After concluding a bullet
in the brain caused the man’s
demise, the physician noted the
youthful corpse’s garments and gen-
eral appearance, “...well clothed in
a suit of free fabric and good fit. He
sported a new tie and had a natty
fall overcoat. He was sandy complex-
ioned, medium height and soft
white hands.”

That afternoon, the passenger
train arrived in Cheyenne carrying
Charley with his ill-gotten funds. He
heard men talking in the streets
about the Hillsdale murders, but he
remained fearless. In fact, he cele-

» Cultural Resources
ork runavyay.

gz, in response
ley received a
the Children’s
ied a five-dol-
iis sister, and
ailway ticket
by Chatfield
er he left for
| town twelve

Manhattan,
ers Fred and
d him at the
ardian, P.S.
aster and edi-
Loofbourrow
harge a home
H. Colt, man-
a publication
, Kansas. The
imentals of the

1 five months
sromise of free
. exchange for
2 guardian
s failed to
tless Charley

TRUE WEST

packed his meager possessions into
a valise pilfered from the minister
and left in mid-winter for the
Omaha-Council Bluffs area. With no
money, he begged food and hitched
his way aboard the Chicago,
Burlington & Quincy railroad and
made his way to Glenwood, Iowa,
where he earned his keep as a “com-
positer” at The Opinion newspaper
while living with the family of its edi-
tor, Louis Robinson. Although
Charley acknowledged the Robin-
sons’ fair treatment, the troubled
youth said he so suffered “... with
disease that I concluded I could stay
with them no longer.” Fourteen
months later, light-fingered Charley
pocketed $1.63 of Mrs. Robinson’s
precious pennies and, again, took
flight, this time to Ohio, via
Chicago.

During the next year or so, the
waif hitched rides on boats and
trains throughout the northeast
before looping back to the midwest.
Each day he fought a desperate bat-
tle against cold, hunger, the law,
and, most especially, loneliness. But
he feared most the threats from
boxcar toughs with whom he rode
the rails. So, with the last of wages
he earned by washing dishes, he
bought an old, nickel-plated .32 cal-
iber revolver and five bullets for
$1.25. With that new-found security,
he also took a sobriquet. “Kansas
Charley,” he called himself. And, in
true hobo style, he chalked his nick-
name on nearly every track-side
water tank along his route. But with
no money or job, he again stole
rides on trains. This time he went
west toward Wyoming.

Late afternoon, September 26,
1890, at a stop just east of Sidney,
Nebraska, Charley met two well-
dressed young men from Saint
Joseph, Missouri, also tramping on
his train.

Destined for Denver, Ross T.

Fishbaugh, a clerk for a grain com-.

pany and the sole support of his
widowed mother, and his childhood
companion, Waldo B. Emerson, the
son of a saddler, hoped for employ-
ment there. Although Charley did
not share their boxcar, the trio
arrived aboard the same train about

JUNE 1997

noon in Sidney. During that respite,
Charley earned a paper sack lunch
from a baker by picking up loose
coal near the tracks. A short time
later he found Fishbaugh and
Emerson sitting at the corner of
Front Street and shared his food
with them. The Missouri boys recip-
rocated by treating the lad in the
shabby brown coat and threadbare
pants to some beer at Sheriff Sam
Fowler’s saloon. While imbibing,
Fishbaugh pulled a ten dollar bill
from his pocket and boasted,
“That’s the second one I busted
today.” That afternoon, the three
young men tried boarding a freight,
but brakemen caught them. Forced
off the train west of town near the
fairgrounds, the boys trudged back
to Sidney with their belongings.
About 9:30 pm, Charley noticed
another freight crew preparing for
departure. This time he climbed
aboard an open livestock car, cov-
ered himself with hay, and fell
asleep before the locomotive pulled
out.

As the sun rose the next day,
Charley awoke when the train shud-
dered to a stop near Nebraska’s
western border. Avoiding the train-
men’s detection, he gingerly
dropped to the ground with a load
of hay in his arms and sneaked from

boxcar to boxcar until he found one
with a partly open door. As he
attempted tossing his grassy load
inside, a voice called, “Hello, Kid.”
In the doorway above him,
Fishbaugh’s welcome hand pulled
Charley up out of the wind and into
the dark warmth of the car. A short
time later the train crossed into
Wyoming and stopped at Pine
Bluffs, so aptly named for the
stubbed fir trees that crest the dis-
tinctive rocks along the Texas Trail.
During that brief break, the trio ate
breakfast in Mrs. Amanda Kauf-
man’s hotel dining room.

Shortly after their meal the boys,
soothed by full stomachs, returned
to the shelter of the boxcar and
removed their shoes, placing them
neatly in the center of the floor.
Emerson curled up on some rail-
road ties piled to within a foot of
the roof at the west end of the car.
Fishbaugh fell asleep next to him,
their heads resting on small pillows
of loose hay. On an adjacent beam,
a dark bottle gleamed with an inch
or so of the remaining bronze-col-
ored liquor. Some cold, crushed cig-
arette butts littered the spot upon
which the boys had spit and
swapped lies. Minutes later, the flag-
man’s signal gave the “go” to the
engineer and the cars snapped

Polly B. Burkett Collection

Pine Bluffs, Wyoming, a bustling burg near the eastern border with Nebraska
where Charley Miller's victims ate their last breakfasts.

ee Re CT a me at we

The Union Pacific Depot in Cheyenne, Wyoming, served as a makeshift mortuary upon the grim arrival of Charley Miller's vic-
tims. Circa 1890.

together with loud clangs and clacks
as the train slowly lurched west.

Mistaking Kingen’s tremors for those
of the train, Charley thought he still
rode the boxcar. Instead, he found him
self curled in the snow with his knees
pulled tight to his chest. Twitching and
shuddering, he nursed what little
warmth remained in his small, lean
frame. “Johnson has shaken us,
Charley,” Kingen moaned. “Oh! I'm so
worn out I can go no further. Guess I
shall die right here, but I would much
prefer to die here than to go back to
that jail in Cheyenne and die there.”
Although Kingen’s broad body, in its
sturdy sack coat, helped shelter the boy,
both felons shivered uncontrollably.
Hoping for some added protection
from his neck the empty flour sack in
which he carried their victuals and
pulled it over his head. As the lad’s
breath warmed the inside of the stale
cloth bag, sleep once more took him
into its arms.

Nestled peacefully among the

rough-hewn oak logs being shipped
from their home state, the Missouri

boys slept in the car made warm by
the high noon sun as the freight
rumbled on towards Hillsdale,
Wyoming. While they drowsed,
Charley helped himself to the last of
their whiskey. Hoping for a boost of
morale from that last bit of “Dutch
courage,” he sucked the flask dry,
but it only filled him with the chill
of self-pity.

I felt homesick and cold. My
clothes were ragged and I thought
I was far from my brothers and all
alone in the world, and I was hun-
gry. My shirt was torn through at
the elbows and my pants through
the knees. I drank the whisky
[sic]. I commenced feeling pretty
good and felt dizzy. It made me
pretty drunk,

In that stupor, Charley claimed
later, he found a brief cure for his
real and imagined ills. Furtively
pulling the black-handled revolver
from his hip pocket, Charley crept
to the side of the boys slumbering
upon the ties. Then, raising its muz-

zle above his head, he ever so slowly
lowered it to within a few inches of
Emerson’s right temple. The explo-
sion that followed instantly ended
the nineteen-year-old traveler’s life.
Without missing a beat, Charley
swung the barrel of his pistol toward
the startled Fishbaugh’s head.
Again, he fired point blank.
Although mortally wounded, the
twenty-one-year-old instinctively
tried standing, but his foot caught
beneath a heavy log and he fell
senselessly across an uneven pile of
lumber near the door of the box
car.

With acrid smoke in his nose and
the roar of gunshots tinging in his
ears, Charley methodically went
through his victims’ pockets in
search of valuables. From Emerson
he stole two small case knives and a
silver open-faced pocket watch, but
tossed aside its chain. Finding
Emerson’s pistol superior to his
own, he squirreled that away, too,
before tucking his own gun beneath
the corpse. Then he robbed
Fishbaugh’s money, dropping the
empty purse on the floor. As the
train churned toward its next stop,

TRUE WEST

the dying mai
from the dark.
moans 00ze

It is not cle
elapsed, but C)
groans from his
I’m so cold, Cha:
mumbled throug
ing lips. “Lay «
Charley. Kinge:
like a shaken sac
the youngster :
pair again fell a:

The waning
wheels, as the
thin split in u
the train appr
tion, Hillsdale,
in a bare vall
hills. Charley h
Finding his
house, he aske«
could spare :
refusing a nee
erhouse engin
ily’s hospitalit
the boy told 2
tale of his tray
destination wa
The next mc
Manhattan, Ka
fill, Charle
bits from
before ambu:
Fearing he mis
dead men’s !}
cached them u
the west end o

In the r
Mannifee hea
he passed a b:
tine check of t
door, the b:
unconscious 1
ling from a we
ple, the fle
Mannifee’s «
darkness, he
male. Like a tu
body lodged
some ties. Le:
roader saw co
neat hole alm
powder bur
revolver, with
chamber, lay

JUNE 1997

Wyoming Division of Cultural Resources

Cheyenne, Wyoming's business district in 1890 probably would have seemed familiar to Charley Miller, a New York runaway.

following year by ingesting Paris
green, a poisonous compound usu-
ally used as an insecticide and pig-
ment. In the wake of those

tragedies, the Miller children shuf- .

fled from home to home until 1881
when they entered New York City’s
Orphan Asylum. There they joined
some two hundred other homeless
and hapless youngsters.

On his twelfth birthday, asylum
authorities found a home for
Charley with a fruit farmer near
Norfolk, Virginia. But that match
failed. “I had a complaint while
there,” Charley bemoaned, “and
concluded the best thing I could do
[was] to return and give the people
no more trouble.” After returning
briefly to the orphanage in New
York City, officials there gave him
two new suits and shipped him west
on an “orphans’ train” to Fillmore
County, Minnesota. Upon arrival,
he met his sponsor, J.R. Booth, and
accompanied him back to his small
spread near the village of Chatfield

about twenty miles southeast of
Rochester. The arrangements.

offered Charley an interest in the
family’s land if he worked faithfully.
Charley: learned “faithful” meant
plowing fields from the sun’s first

a sympathetic woman teacher
shared Charley’s dismay and for-
warded his letters of complaints to
the Children’s Aid Society of New
York. Touched by her compassion,
the lad ran away from Booth and
moved in with the teacher and her
family. He remained there until the
farmer and one of his sons came for
him a week later. After threatening
“to tie him to a tree and cowhide
him,” they forced'the truant into
their buggy and returned ‘to the
farm.’Soon thereafter, a passerby
found Charley’ at the edge’ of
Booth’s ‘property and rescued him.
All seemed well until the new custo-

dian got drunk, drove him from the -

house, and out of his life, —

’ The following spring, in response
to his grievances, Charley received a
registered letter from the Children’s
Aid Society that included a five-dol-
_ lar bill, a note from his sister, and

“instructions that a railway ticket
awaited him at nearby Chatfield
depot. Two days later he left for
Leonardville, a small town twelve
miles northwest of Manhattan,
“Kansas, where brothers Fred and
Willie Miller awaited him at the
home of their guardian, P.S.
Loofbourrow, a postmaster and edi-
tor of the Monitor. Loofbourrow
soon found his new charge a home
with the Reverend J.H. Colt, man-
ager of The Enterprise, a publication
in nearby Randolph, Kansas. The
boy learned the fundamentals of the
printing trade there.

Charley remained five months
with the preacher’s promise of free
board and clothes in exchange for
his labors. Although the guardian
fed and bed him, duds failed to
materialize, so restless Charley

TRUE WEST

packed his
a valise pili
and left in .
Omaha-Counci)
money, he begs
his way abo:
Burlington & (
made his way
where he earne
positer” at Th
while living wit
tor, Louis R«
Charley ackno
sons’ fair trea’
youth said he
disease that I c
with them no
months later, |:
pocketed $1.6:
precious penn
flight, this t
Chicago.
During the
waif hitched
trains throug
before looping
Each day he fo
tle against co
and, most espe
he fe&red mo
boxcar toughs
the rails. So, v
he earned *
bought an
iber revol
$1.25. With th:
he also took :
Charley,” he c:
true hobo style
name on nea
water tank alo:
no money or
rides on train
west toward W\
Late aftern
1890, at a sto)
Nebraska, Ch
dressed your
Joseph, Missoi
Destined f
Fishbaugh, a
pany and the
widowed moth
companion, W
son of a saddk
ment there. A
not share th:
arrived aboard

JUNE 1997

Rie RS ers

oa aE Ai aaa Sao
pd ci ; CASPER WYOMING, SATURDAY, JAN. 9, 1915. .

ae : : UNL ig ORTED AS "De Sea < eee OF rs FIOQGED :
Be OLAND FROM THE WEST aaa pa Spe ERD |

WIFE AND THEN ATTEMPTS
SUICIDE WITH RAZOR.

FROM POLAND, IN THE WESTERN AND NORTH-!

FERN PART, ARE THE FEATURES OF. THE | jACT CAUSED - D-BY FANS

-NEWS {napri ee |e CHANGE.
t

‘REUSED WITH HEAVY Loss Ee oe =

hea Wocndce” Thald' Woy aki sncs Points and at Salt Creek, niSectied Mad hil

From Positions at Other Points—Germans Claim to with @ rasor and them attempteff to
commit suicide by eutting his wal. The Isle ‘of Marken, fn the Zuyder Zee, known to neany ever 4:

ken Two Thousand Prisons in the Argonne. throat with the same w tourist, is suffering from flotds caused by the outing of the dthom #- Ptanders+
para che eid ware emploves of the Salt Crna age| Ont oe Mrets bere hove vedere een ecard

tel, and the tragedy occupred in their

N wivolens to London), Jan. 9.—The French have | wos. cuaer, esq esteemed MINE UNDER AND ot NOBILITY. WES |

with heavy Josses northeast of Soissons and Petmer was employed aa 8 Waitres r
cording to an official statement this afternoon. | Th ved [ie TRENCHES
sit claims that in the forest af Argonne the Ger-| thre weeks Age BLOW UP

1,200 prisoners and were otherwise successful. It
that in the east, on January 7 they took 2,000 pris-|*"4 "5 « commotion heard | STRONG FRENCH POSITION 18 Fiigees A THOUSAND “GERMAK
r : “3 :

pager ote agra yccsocbnne wes) TAKEN. BY GERMANS IN NOBLEMEN MEET: ‘DEATH
; on
wee ; ay re = zn. prbsowt eA cup tang THIS MANNER, le ON BATTLEFIRED. «¢
Jan. 9—The French official statement today ad-| spectacle. Mra. Paimée’s treshee was ; ‘| ——
man victory in Alsace where the Germans have re- | severed cacsing almost dest | HAMBURG, Germany, Jan. 9.— | (Correspondence of Assorétated Press) |
unrbaupt, Le Haut. At other points the French we is toah one bee sul oR) Harrowing and exciting detaile of| BERLIN. Dee. 9,—itubiication of |4
ve made gains. Me ‘ ‘The county cote ee pet. mining and blowing up trenches are}the almanac ad, Gotha {rr 1915, ana
. fied and Coroner Chamberifa, Dr. ' told by a German officer in a letter|the . various geneglogzicnx! annuals |
DN, Jan. 9.—A violent renewal of the German drive | Lathrop, Francis Brown,: {0 a local newspaper, describing sth. has just rahe pliace here re-|t
nd—this time from the west and northwest at the |sheriff; RH. Nichols, particular the capture of a strong | veals that up to Novemideé: Grst 2791
the feature of the war situation today. The pert ey ©, Price, gore $8 | position held by the French in the! members of the German suabtnty had |
hacking their way forward at some points, only to ra gegen Argonne forest. Many of the French} 14: geath on the battiséield or had :

Palmer was brought to Casper a6d | 5 i
tarn from ‘their positions by Russian bayonet] jj.c63 in the Privets hospital, whase Wal hada tke tows detuet succumbed to wounds fpreived im ae- |
1,

positions of the two armies are about the same }it js stated that higt tujurise ore 3} akibeaihe ank-tlieé'te din nent:
a fortnight ago. f mecessarily fatal. tne tak body of who accomplished this feat The let- Tt is. shown that’ of “meinbers ‘<2

however, besides holding Von Hindenburg | serdered wife was brought to this|ter follows: longing to the * ‘graefilizhe” houses, |
or families carrying the) (itle of count, || t

city and is now at the Chamberlin ro ir ( t
, are sweeping through Bukowina. This army is By the first of December our com-|~ as ratten “tn battle or died ot | |

British observers sono.to-be well over the | wadertaking parlors. Palmer will be/ pany had been under fire for the fifth ; need,
: ew ly: moun | civen a preliminary trial as soon as/tim, and the distance between our} wounds by November th The “frie |,
| herrlichen” or baronical)tamilies had,

. he fs t vi ital.

um and France the struggle continues, and each] 1 hasan Mea paneer ore 2 | decreased trom 320 ne crenel wn lost 209 members through: iti, stat, >;

‘|< occasional slight gains at enormous sacrifices. very good reputation among ber #°-! to fifteen feet. But the company oad fe while the very _esnen cm of German ,
quaintances st the of! camp and thatlour ict Mwas separated from the) TOMMY. the “Uradeligmn” tamilies.
IN MEXICU MEXICAN BATTLE OONTIXUES. feeling ran high against the man who Freach by a vale. on the far side of | who trace their anCestofrn to the year! ty
CTICALLY SOLVED enused her death and for that reason! which ihe enemy had laid out three }Of 1250 of beyoud. had: ‘tose... 246),
: = - oe F he was hurriedly brought to Casper Mace St. trakcha members in all. The {runtilies ‘hit! id
NM, Jan. 9.--Progress ait » and placed in the private hospital. | “wa had cone to consider the $0: hardest are the Arming with $, the! bs
The reason for the awful deed 25! sition as fmpregnable.’ But progress Wedels with $, the Oagerens with 7 Teh a
stated by the gaan was simply 4nd jcided to mine the French trenches aul ne, Recheas | Cie mete nere: Fat
purely jealousy, as.she had given had tobe made Somehow Our plo: But the class of nobility hich seems ,,,
fmatne porn petri, | Ck Ma tng tad ner tokens ot] name dachment, therfore. de-( MAME tetera mor, sushi
man in a Berlin suburb com- | wtte™ and bad threatened to leavelmenr the position of our company.|’” : jt
the police that bis aleep | %™- The father fe James Sweet./waich, as already stated, were only| oN Whose members ibave een |p;
who resides at the soldier's home at} from nine to fifteen feet away. knighted by letters-pabepet and who, ¢,

Milwaukee, Wis, Sha'also leaves 8! “game of usfeared that the Frenen | 1 Known !9 Germany Ae briefade |
stator Mce.-0.,B. Miller, of Crawford,| wouid be doing the same thing and| U*° Oates This clatss lost 26071,
Nebr., and a brother, Clarence Sweet | wo low ‘rst. oor} ™e™ {te
at Apex, Mont. The sister at Craw- Nes Bde Pca a cane baie ssete The tota! number of losqees through | Be
ford telegraphed the officers th Ws December.) tbe. tine Whe ready death on the battlefield of jas tha ref .
morning to hold the body unt! shAMa: 1¢.30 In the moruing our first eae black sonal sap esepes i
Paaiges eer ot seer ad Stes . E conld arrive on Monday, when a de french wae cleared of men, and at the Seman. Haves Pepcasherelares, | an
peace dt eae eee aeepeTeoos oon iy . oe. would be made as to the place / 10:46 all of our trenches were empty.| | ies alto i Aimanac de} <
Pg pt y , it y
Staten Habe i apaatil blared ‘is them ne Gotha the following memifterrs of Ger- | ¢p

ee ocecteentomeens 6

: KSIDENT man and forvign reigninge “Reanses!
patter: as sh ARE. 5 the electric button. Ther followed still rekade bate Nduobar? cimeai i
ATTENTION, HIGH ” — } POLITICAL SPEECH.) @ denation loud enough to herald the |? ' : 7 Com MaAnapay
; jin the enemies’ armies Stfincw |

SCHOOL CADETS! end of the world “

wi Tits. py eee eta

sky blue.

Upon command, the boy stepped
toward the edge of the fatal trap.
The sheriff caught the swinging
noose and slipped it over Charley’s
head before adjusting the knot at
the base of his left ear. “Do you want
me to stand right in the middle?”

“No,” said the sheriff; “remain
here for the present.”

Suddenly, at precisely 11:27 am,
the unbearable suspense forced the
young man forward and onto the
trapdoor, triggering an inexorable
chain of fatal mechanical move-
ments. His 120 pounds depressed
one panel of the slightly raised, split
flapdoor and pulled a thin rope
over a pulley, plucking a plug from
a water-filled container suspended
at the end of a fulcrum. Ironically,
the mechanism resembled the scales
of justice. A metal counterweight
hung at the opposite end of that
arm. Sheriff Kelley, startled at find-
ing his prisoner’s feet unsecured,
quickly tied a strap there. At that
same ume, beneath the black hood,

the boy cried in a muffled, high-
pitched voice, “This rope is choking
me!” After the sheriff adjusted the
knot and relieved the pressure, his
prisoner sobbingly assured him it
was “All right,” and resumed his
prayer: “God have mercy on me.”
Fifty-eight and three quarters sec-
onds passed while the trembling
prisoner prayed and listened to the
flow of liquid as it shifted the bal-
ance between life and death. Water
spewed from its metal can until its
heavier counterweight released and
tugged a cord that jerked away a
hinged supporting pole from
beneath the trapdoor upon which
Charley stood. A great clatter of the
wooden panels followed. The scaf-
fold lurched as the weight of the
body snapped the lad’s neck at the
end of the rope, some five feet
below the platform. Then only
silence, broken by the rope’s soft,
creaking voice that insisted,
“Vengeance is mine.” No struggle
ensued, although muscle contrac-
tions caused several slight tremors

Wyoming Division of Cultural Resources
Julian’s Gallows, which took Charley Miller's brief life, is credited to designer J.P. Julian, a prominent Cheyenne architect. The
inventor of the water-driven device that triggered the trapdoor is given to an unidentified inmate at the Colorado Penitentiary in
Canon City.

in Charley’s legs.

During the next ten minutes,
Doctor W.N. Hunt of the Laramie
Couny Hospital, and an assistant,
twice checked the boy’s faint, still-
beating pulse with a stethoscope.
Finally, at 11:40 am, the doctor pro-
nounced Charley dead—the first
and youngest person ever legally
executed‘in the state of Wyoming.
The undertaker and his helpers
placed the corpse, its sinewy neck
stretched slightly by the impact of
the drop, into a plain black coffin
lined with white cloth.

Poor Charley. His life lasted only
seventeen years, nine months, and a
fistful of days. A burial, hardly
noticed, took place the next morn-
ing in the potter’s field of Chey-
enne’s Lakeview Cemetery, the
memory of Charley’s crimes frozen
in time.

TRUE WEST

COT 2 ee WE SE te a

The Blac
Richard I:
Wayne R. }
homa Pre¢
Norman, ‘
bound)

Here is
between D:
and Dodg«
(1876), if
have a cop
This new \
of the sc
Expeditio
escorted b
double-ch
gold in th
not exact
or less ex;
chief geo
Jenney.

Editor
and need
graphic,” :
sé@me of
entries.
quite reac
They are
informat
nated by
thanks to
for makin;
he enjoye:
life, thou;
one of five
because h:
the most
ble!”—of
The youn;
as the sol
was not <
jealous, h
tive. In shi
private wo

But the
and knew
ural diplo
Job, he ke
men thai
because
nals were !
Dodge wa
tion of eve
geologist.
sized up !

JUNE 1997

CHARLES MILLER, the boy murde rey,
who while ftragnping the country mur-
dered hist comipanions. Rosa Fishbaugh
and Waldo ‘Emerson, of St. Joseph, ina
‘box ‘var’ in’ Wyoming: was hanged at

: Cheyenne on the 22d. Ie was only six-
| techn ¥ eats sold. * aes =

“sae Alesre hp. (SEM

Weare
19 heed 7

4/4

WYOMING.

MILLER, Charles WM,17/18 Laramie
Murder, 2WM 4-22-1892

eee

TAYLOR, Talton, white, hanged Wyoming (Johnson County) on 5-11-1933.

e Kates,
was true
a There AZ 03 . a
ahem : first Gegres, aad recommend ..° -””

may be that the court fiopose the demith . +
ethod of vr cae nates

Such in substance; was the verttlict of °
legatiz ed the fury sitting in the case of the State ,
April 7 of Wyoming vs. Talton Taylor, ciharged
hen ~ with the slaying of William Embrey, at
but the his ranch home on Powder rive im Sans
t become j MAEy oe this aver .

‘aad te According to the testimony, Emibrey,
“he other & son-in-law of Mr. and Mrs. Tinmmmas
ennai at Carr, prominent old-time residemtts af:
adoption Johnson county, was shot and killed at |’ :

oe Were, the ranch of his father-in-law om Pow- ‘ : ' :
it Some | 2% Tiver, about 60 miles southwest. of , _, ME Me eS
y repeal Buffalo. He was struck three times - \ “t
‘sent seg- | 0Y bullets from a high-powered miifle, ac
ara: pears Ay Bate Bons. co. Aaron ow

evening, but he lived long enough te

eople ts repeat to his wife the history of tthe ‘Ss
‘eichstag shooting. It seems that there hadi tbeen »
dictator. | 2 @Uarrel earlier in the day, andi ‘that
t. which Taylor had ordered Embrey to stay an ,
! his. own side of the roag. Taylor was er dapsone
living in a house on the Carr place: sami: G\ 2
the corral in which Embrey dict his \ ™
milking was situated on this plame; so a

that it was necesary for him to g@ onto Sh
the Carr place in order to dim ‘his: “~).
chores. \N..

According to the testimoy. of Mrs. we
Embrey, wife of the murdered man, nM.
there had been‘a quarel over-a $1@ Joan oe
made by Taylor to Embrey. ‘Taylor
; Was demanding payment, but Embrey .
| claimed a grocery bill that would wiff-. -

» sat ‘i me on : 8
No TAGE
aed + ye ee
We aa Pee fear a
i dy Bag ates ee e 7,

ari Rae TY

ay Hitler | set this amount. During this quarmel ~ ose tity |
sn je “rmaiity | Taxlor threatened Kmbrey’s Ufe! nmatk=".
y ant ol finan “ ‘pew ing the statement, accortling tm IMrs. .
_— pig Hebe a Embrey, “I’ve «illed one man ama I'm, ~,
: jj enen bat gerry d to Siareee | not tod good to kill you, t50.” :
hg pee rhacs sit t CONROE enn = ane han: ciehstag | ‘rt was brought out im the testimeny * ~
Seek eT ee ages toh pas ¢ “for ® | that in 1999 ‘faylor had killed Patrick ;
pik f ciliions pomp Fy oye for the Dely. ie: Matteos eounte tee 3 . ; a
“1 ag ahort of eufienahes bethabeat jad Ger Thaving been over the ownership of a. Bee
athaahd prostration of- business. y saddle blanket. Taylor was brougint to . inte ed
eat a een 0 el WT LE et = sekies | trial at this time, but was acquitted of | - aire eae
se < A eae oe ~ !yppea , , So
‘¢ “" GRESS of the tarm relief bill in ~ i Ithe sharge, later moving to Jalmnson a
“> senate hag beeg” viow. Benim - | county.

ee A Ne || har, and Ms. HO. Timmermam were °° > ¢~ fF
y | Ormer witnesses for the state. Mrs. Timmer

"dignity would nat pertuit of the sd
Fy: eired the , said that atety after’ the

“sag up of the- ponderous tearhta-‘] ¢
“f the upper house of |)

dea of Secretary er’: ture blag: saogtung Taylor made his way t@ their “ PAS oe Baha ge
1. ce tor speed and for the passage | mau "MN [res about two miles from the scene hse
RRs ote ge : dil ag originally writteh gy’ the |) lead .of the crime, and that he readily ad« : ee ee y NC |
yee eee “= dent and big § jors.:..4 p just ; sends to ‘mitted the shooting, and that ne wawnuiy ts ce ae a
ea eRe te be tee ang thé “bt and » ancellor jighted a cigarette as her husband ttely *
Bee ey - body, tor sania ene have . T beace | ephoned for Sheri ‘Lisi. ne wan +
nce te pala = ey hare talked. ds from | <3; down to the toble and ate a hasty ; s
“-< " thig writing it_peemé. that “a” | the r years meal. Sheriff Tisdale, who madis the ;
vill eventually. pasg But whether 20n OUF | airest, testitied tnat Taylor aausitted i pe oe ;
x ) be the bil”. ° the the killing, but would not sign @ con- IGE GALES Y Chae:
Se Se ae eit ; té the admin- fcssion. When arrested Taylor gawe

himself up and came to town quietly. . ="
The dcfense plea was that of insam~

‘ity. but the state proved by competent ae ee scene dake
witnesses that the prisoner was mot in- OM? Oe
; Sane, Defendant did not take the stand .

jin his own behalf.. - .

The jury sitting in this case was tori -
posed of Carl Hoth, Fred Brown, John oe
uelpless | Taylor, Clarence Willison, D. W. Wolf,
vo? Maln- | James H. Roe, Fred ‘Heltzel, Charles
Washbaugh, John H. Myhre, Riley Bay, _

Ed Clapp and Amos Olheiser. Juxdine - «
James H. Burgess presided. County
Attorney Rose, assisted by R. EL Mice +.

; Nally of Sheridan prosecuted the case ,
while ‘Harry G. Beatty had been Bue
po-nted by the court as defense attar—
ney. The jury was about about an
7 : hour and a half before bringing ux ‘the
‘| peace | verdict of guilty and recommendiing -
ld. Ew _ that the death penalty be pronounced.
‘§ pact ee

WOOL BUYERS COMING WESE

‘asp f 7
cnet FP aa Rt RGN eth EERIE Sng 2

aL pio a LUNES A EE:

So REE PATE SEL aig gcc tt it 8G 5 aN OR EC

Fs et ERROR

JOHNSON COUNTY LIBRARY
Buffalo, Wyoming 82834

ray

lease forgive our tardiness in answering your request of October 197. We haunt
cotten it, but our work-load is tremendous and it was some time before I cald

tale the time to do research on your request. Inclosed are two newspaper articles

taken from our newspaper files and alse I have copied the original record from

the Sheriff's Office Arrest Book. We could not send yw a photostatic copy because

the book was much to large for the copying machine. Also I might tell you that

Sheriff BH. Turk was the one who arrested Mr. Teylor and helped bring his triaa.

As tar as I could tell, there have been no previcus hangings in Johnson County

prior to 1912. I hope this will help you in your research. If you naed any

more information in the future, please do not hesitate to ask use

Sincerely yours, :

Sandra L. Caudron, Asste Libr.

SHERIFF*S RECORD OF FRISONERS, JOHNSON COUNTY, WYQMING
Date Receiveds Post Office Address: Age:

= Occupations

Jarmary 1, 1933 Barnum 33 ech

Name & Alias: Crime Held For: Nativity: Height:
Maar

Talton Tayler Murder UeSe 5t53/)s

JOHNSON COUNTY LIBRARY
Buffalo, Wyoming 82834

C@=plescion:

Medium

Hairs

Brown

Eyes:

Bine

Crime:

Murder

Verdict

Guilty

Sentences

May ll, 1933 to hang
when Released from Jail or Taken to Prison:
March 31, 1933

CARBON COUNTY JOURNAL 9 : @
Rawlins, Wyoming June 2 1906 RICHARDSON=

not hanged,

To Be Hanged in Pen

Sundance, June 22--The case of Noah T. Richardson, convicted in the district
court here of murder in the first degree for the killing of Allie Means at
Gillette last August, has been concluded when Judge Parmalee overruled
the motion for a new trial and passed the death sentence upon the defendant,
Richardson will be hanged at the state penitentiary at Rawlins on Friday,
August 3.

If the death sentence is carried out this will be the first legal
execution held at the state penitentiary under the new law, as heretofore
all hangings have occurred in the counties in which the crimes were committed,
the last being the execution of Tom Horn in Cheyenne,

BES shirts ge
ur ‘rest skirts abd 90

“your Oh. priginal de
orepe heap Pring ¢ eolors.:

Gay Pleoted Ai rowed Skict

p blaer jacket Griaay.

s pring . ‘stylg ate
% TS, aa mvel. Sst

“ae 1 £; ight

» Wear: Alone or wi, a‘!

Apis res

YOu your: moniay”s ‘og :

any Verpatile way st ws
a te white Epes: .
eee pe

~
td

ic oe
*.§

RU ae

a TSE of 9g . ey i AS * -

Shige Ins atatd, Mas ahs weXinyy

FJ *:

This

war

Kive

“aa
Tee

‘

Goes to “His Death
‘Coldly, Quietly:

RAWLINS. Wyo. - (PR) Cord.
ha Md yiOhHtalka live 04 she end, |

pone Same convictegawtyr rhe:

slaving of Matt: Katmoé,; ‘Greve enbe.
war plant’ worker in 1943, went

“Ae
Yieuk
rT
‘WAY:
eho
; aftr)
LF
COBS
toy
"Tt?
one
‘the
arm

Caitily. t@ his death an the ;ea* -—in

chamber ‘ofthe -Wyoming . State’

_ Penitentiary this morning,

Prae
Wet

*“Katmo.- 44, was shot when he CL

_Tesisted, Ruhl's * demand. that -he, ON
give-him ‘his autortiobile. The slay-
“rig took place’on @. picnic’ at d0nd scar
on federal “property east of Lara='tHon
mig, SMe. ay i,

bee

thar

4 Appearing anxiote to have the;cres
ete over, -Rulil walked briskly

the. *chamheéer «and: was

s AWeA PRA in at 12:20 a.m Cyanide;
; Pellets were dropped into solution’
Frog 12:27 ‘o'clock: afd’ a minute:

ners
Russ

—TI

ater. Rubk appeared to have lost

Pi sPewicicncn.

It. appeared as’ tho ‘Runt he! fo
ms breatia. for the’ 4inal seconds,:

bog
+h

hting thé” fumes wonger—tharm ="

hree other men. who also faced:

‘thes death:.sentence. in’ the gas bure

ta fhamber at the state prison.

/Barlier in: the hight, Ruhl had
written “a> twdé-page letter, which’!
Was found in his 2el. Th letter:

“as Most abusive to officers, in }

“general. Rui wrote that he could
spill Jota of dope.” 4f he wanted ¢,

~ but that’ he -was not! crazy
endugh’ ‘to sks BO $s

ra
~ >

i Weontinsed , on Page iin):
: co ee One)

fiye-
May

Co
“Tem
little
ey

a ere
“peri io

*, pains

“first
ithe ‘<

geet cin

pty) on 3-11-1921,

CHINESE, ‘SLAYERS: DEED. ‘GIVES:
RISE TO SUSPICION HE.MAY BE -
“WANTED ELSEWHERE FOR CRIMES

‘Ys Yeo Ceow, vicious Chinese tongman, who yester-
das murcerad Jobti'¥ederhen and wounded “Big Tom”
3 4 gunn peeacee oe for a erime so serious that he

te he kitted, rather than sub-"
Sete te a arrest? «-
a 4 agit serena bei edn Se sais of tha

Yee ee: Young Tongman, Deadly’
volver After Taken Into Custod:

eas “of ee pate bee a
cause Hlegally in United Stat

4 elt. yd ‘found ‘hiisale in aor ly of the 18 law. -
ovestt. 4. NA eearching investigation. of his: ad will be made.

bee 20, Met ~ pope John S. Federhen, 30, veteran of the wor
AT, ote ee member of the Cheyenne fire department, was m1
‘tee 4 an iB rs vi Ret ae Thomas Holland, 438, agent of the department or
0 i tid GP te Be” > perhaps mortally wounded, by Yee Geow, 23, Chi
ean asd ages? o'clock Froday afternocn. The murderer was ¢
ethes ye! if a 7 : iy f PPh eye g mediately and is in the Laramie'county jail. 7
08,008} 0 7 robe @ Bea Bea aoe ; of Holland took place on Pioneer avenue, just 1
edeel.ts re Se eS ee Jeity-fire stativn, and that of Féderhen soem

> YY into which Geow pursved W. R. Mansfield, insp

immigration service, with the intention of ice
Mansfield escaped unharmed and assisted Fire

Charies Kammerer in arresting the Chinese.
De. J. H. Comway siated Holland walked ah

“bean “Gir Tom” Holland, Now Fighting for - Litel ie Meenas en Botan | es aie
Bu Za GS ae

SAFER he A Oe

sh_te hd
= ia-i Against. Effects of) Officer ing au even chance for re | Seow see local cn

py (i covery.
astive for Last. Dozen: ‘Years, PP e ge A coroner’s inquisition on the Dow perhaps were {
iee’s é * body of Federhen will begin at 19 hind Holland and
ae | o'clock this morning at the Harly- when the Piotresr

Themes Holland, special agent of the Segartmert Of \Seicker Broa. -“moettary. Jua- statlon was reached

rag ty stice ct the United States, who was shot and perhaps mcr- | cise of the Peace W. H. Edwards Just north of the
. were} tally wounded by Yoo Geow Fridsy, is ome of, the best} wilt act tor Coroser Clyde Karly. - Shaggy! — a

omator ners and moxt F popular men of heveape. John S. Peder-|7ho is expected to return tomight 004 he saw Hols

cnsey,i Hen, he wes elai by the vicious accor wags a veteran | {rem the east

: Manefisid, who ia the chief “siveping position, ¥
ateert-t ¢ r ¥ wit 1 military reco inet onS ax thal. pressed against nis
Sed 201 OO the world war with a fine iimigravoa inspector for thie bite Sette aws

most > Payaiat members ot the city fire denarement. Be-j district, arrived . from Denver °
Cox's hand. At that moa
"temo. Couse of: the prominence and popularity of his victims, + fael- Ln ahi Seat he — ale a ikene ai te

3S Swethy bis ‘Agabaat tee ttercerer’ is pe Te et { part mont of attics. na fs Fons Cielater tired 2 seo
oasion | “Big Tom" Woitand babes eared: twertodically, made therrounds of turned and made
, dudkes- ik ¢ fis Chorvenne, atending the iseal} licesi Chinese establishments for M an: sie fo ag
Ye GH ic ipubife schools, and no man fa tieithe purpose ot cheeking up the hah Bs ies ening :
st aif net i uN ay {city perhaps has a wider aca’ sam-jtnmates. At a Chinese jaundey | ned into the ope
nt of wis fa there} 02, Pioneer avenue, near Lincoln
-stion, a i ranceship thaa his, nor ig t ere! | "Way, they found Geow, a south-| fire atation and ra
soUbler mT Lat: jeay recident of tho city whostel ey} Chinese of auch slight propor-) lear. Coow pursut
tae inf eh Hit. Hi * letrele af watm friends 's wider-! tions that they assumed him !o be "eld ran past the
rence ME | a {During the last dozen or mOr?i merely a boy, and Manafield made “Acainery and Lato
*rehis | 2 a RTs] ’ menssee veare he has Peed engaged (2 Inqaniries regarding him of the "OOM = where Ze
also | 44° Atty ne Delice work, either ag a member! qther Chinese present. One of Charles Wisselback,
f, dv..} At if ete bUskse jot the police devariment, a vriV’t@ltyoge informed him that tne, 67° fire deparcment
iPher, | Pi Eee ~“Seldetective or an agent of (ie Ce-lstranger waa a cousin cf Yee Caras hite James |
a | ee : partment of ipsiice. Ler f° paw who is a kind of head mani reman, looked on.
On ay - re seg g pYic@ 4a ba Pace —* of the local Chinessa colanyv “anasfield states t
‘ ieemmreratic 4 andidate “'VYS founced toa Cio. chne LOC eG While the Inqniries were beins ‘through the :com
a that} Taft, ughes and Roet Vouk sseacy shout ovetre fe’ © on made Gaow, who previously "ad Varning that he wi
Uean; PP mierambns Covenant, eo a * , ‘iven no “Heation Phat 1 - ran who Was
an} 2°Aret a. mms Lovernan beprey 4g Se vt] -erstood sat raaficid a heot Kirn. “ha thy

Gtas$ r
— } tr ever es oor’ ’ :o , t se . - . ° 5 ra fr }

eoywrrées

BE IT FURTHER REMEMBERED, that on the said 7th da. of December
A.D.1920, in pursuance of the aforesaid assignment, the re ap=

peared in open court, being represented by his said counse

and the
State of Wyoming appearing by the County and Prosecuting Attorney of

Laremie county, Charles E.Lene, Esq., and the said cause wag called
for trial. And thereupon the State announced it was mn proceed

with the trial, and the defendant also announced that he "? ready
to proceed to trial upon the said information. It was thereupon ore
iered by the Court that said cause proceed to trial on the issues
Joined, and thereupon a jury, duly empanelled and sworn in/the above
sntitled cause as provided by law, heard the evidence ee a on the .
‘ vart of the State and on the part of the defendant, and, agger being
netructed by the Court. and hearing the arguments of couns L, retired
‘© their jury room, and, after deliberating upon their verdict, and
‘ithout having separated from the time they were sworn in said cause,
id, on the Sth day of December, A.D.1920, return into Co 5, and,
n the presence of the defendant and his counsel, returned verdict
n said cause as follows, to-wit:
"Verdict
We, the jury duly empanelled and sworn to try and determine the
ssues in the above-entitled cause, do find the defendant, Yee Geow,
illty of murder in the first degree, as charged in the information.
. | JG Leycock, Foreman,
I.W. Davis,
Edw. Ve Land,
H.E. Commons,
Otto Heckly,
Bert Gibson,
Rolla 8.Rentz,
Dave Flanegan,
George Wulf,
R.H.Fasen, ©
John Quirk,
Geo. F. Oetheimer, *
AND BE IT FURTHER REMEMBERED, that now, on this 18 h day of

yember, A.D.1920, the said defendant appearing in open Court in

teon and by his said counsel, is informed by the Court that on the
ld 9th day of December, A.D.1920, the jury, duly ae and

mn to try the said charge against him, had returned into court

‘ite verdict finding him guilty of the crime of murder in the first
degree, and without qualification. Thereupon the Mourt inquires of
the defendant if he has anything to say or legal reason to offer
why the judgment and sentence of the Court shall n t be prOnounced
against him, as provided by law, and, after hearing the said defend-
ant and his counsel, and no legal reason being shown why the Court —
should not pronounce judgment and sentence against the said defend-
ant on said verdict, and the Court being fully advised in the prem-
ises,- | ‘

IT IS HEREBY ORDERED, ADJUDGED AND DECREED, that you, Yee
Geow, be and are hereby remanded into the custody of the sheriff of
Laremie county, Wyoming, and be by him, in due time, taken to the
State Penitentiary at or near the city of Rawling, in the county of
Carbon and State of Wyoming, and there duly confined and safely
guarded until the llth day of March, A.D.1931,' and that upon eaid
llth day of Maroh, A.D.1921, before the hour of afBzinc, you be
taken from your cell by the proper officer as provided by law, and
then and there, within the walls of said penitentiary, hanged by the
neck until you are dead. |
| To all of which judgment and sentence the defendant, by his
counsel, now end here excepts.

Done in open Court this 18th day of December, A.D.1980.

Mileuahod tag

Judge. (/

YEE GOW, Chinese, hanged Wyoming (Laramie) on March ll, 1921.

"Kemmerer Revublican,News Paver, March 18,1921"
"EXECUTION of CHINAMAN SHOWS HANGING RELIC of DARK AGES"
Apponents of capitol punishment, varticularly hanging, which as a
relic of the dark ages, and ought not to be tolerated in a civilized
State, may find in the ghastly details of the hanging of Yee Gow,the
Chinese Murderer, at the Rawlins penitentiary last week, additional
material for making their argument effective. Something must have been
overlooked in the arrangement of the scaffold, for a story is told of
uncanny horror, which occured in the death chamber: within the grim

walls of the state prison. The drop was the usual length, about six feet,

OO er ee

notwithstanding which the victim of the law's vengiance dangled in mid
alr at the end of the rope for the space of 13 minutes, death coming
to his aid by strangulation instead of his neck being broken as is
contemplated when execution of this kind takes place.

Rev. Gerard Schellenger, who was formerly Pastor of St. Patrick's
church here, and who is now one of the Chavlains at the venitentiary,
ministered spiritually to the convicted murderer in nis last hours,
andhas written to some of his former parishioners in Kemmerer that

Yee Gow, at the last, renounced the faith of his forefathers and

became a Christian and was baptized into the Catholic faith.

Metadata

Containers:: Box 43 (2-Documentation of Executions), Folder 14
Resource Type:: Document
Description:: Thomas Horn executed on 1903-11-20 in Wyoming (WY)
Rights:: In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted
Date Uploaded:: July 6, 2019

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