Frontier Justice in the Wild West: Bungled, Bizarre, And Fascinating Executions

by R. Michael Wilson

Overview

Frontier Justice highlights eighteen crimes and subsequent punishments of the most interesting, controversial, and unusual executions from an era when hangings and shootings were a legal means of capital punishment. Learn about the bungled hanging of Tom Ketchum who was beheaded by the noose; the unique trigger for the trapdoor used to hang Tom Horn; "Big Nose" George Parrott who was skinned, pickled, and made into a pair of shoes; the double trials of Jack McCall, assassin of Wild Bill Hickok; the hanging of a woman-Elizabeth Potts; the shooting of John D. Lee of Mountain Meadows Massacre infamy; and the only use of a double "twitch-up" gallows; etc. Each action-packed chapter includes biographical information, the pursuit, the investigation, legal maneuvers, trial information, and rarely-seen photographs.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780762743896
Publisher:	Globe Pequot Publishing
Publication date:	06/01/2007
Edition description:	1st Edition
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.42(d)

About the Author

R. Michael Wilson, a former law enforcement officer, has been researching and writing about the Old West for fifteen years.

Read an Excerpt

From the Introduction
Frontier justice in the Old West was comparatively swift, usually fair, and occasionally brutal. On the frontier, justice took many forms, and hanging was the most popular form of lethal justice. The practice of hanging heinous criminals came to America with the Europeans and continued into the western territories with the pioneers. However, not every crime on the frontier was a capital offense. Actually, with one exception, only premeditated first-degree murder resulted in a legal execution and, contrary to popular belief, vigilantes usually applied justice with the same constraint. To accommodate lesser crimes, lighter punishments were devised.


As the West was being settled, building a jail wasn't a town's top priority. Petty criminals could be held under close guard for short periods in any secure structure, but in those early days it was more practical to chain a man to a rock, heavy log, or a tree. Where a jail was not available it could be effective, in some wilderness areas and for minor offenses, to banish a wrongdoer. As an example, soon after Cheyenne, Wyoming, was established in 1868, one of the local newspapers published a list of undesirable characters, with a warning to leave town or face the wrath of the Vigilantes. The "posted" men packed their belongings and moved westward to the Union Pacific Railroad's end of track at Laramie.

Table of Contents

Introduction

(1) John Millian, April, 24, 1868, Nevada (2) Asa Moore, October 18, 1868 Wyoming (3) Leander Morton, September 27, 1871, Nevada (4) John McCall, March 1, 1877, South Dakota (5) John Lee, March 23, 1877, Utah (6) George Parrott, March 22, 1881, Wyoming (7) Pond Brothers, May 1881 (8)Gilbert, Francis, July 29, 1881, Colorado (9) William E. Delaney, March 24, 1884, Arizona (10) Andrew Green, July 27, 1886, Colorado (11) Elizabeth Potts, June 20, 1890, Nevada (12) Enoch Davis, September 14, 1894, Utah (13) Charles H. Theide, August 7, 1896, Utah (14) Fleming Parker, June 10, 1898, Arizona (15) Herman St. Clair, June 24, 1898, Idaho (16) Thomas Ketchum, April 25, 1901, New Mexico (17) Hilario Hidalgo, July 31, 1903, Arizona (18) Thomas Horn, November 20, 1903, Wyoming, Bibliography, About the Author