| |
Tom Horn - The Legends, The Truth |
Tom
Horn in jail in Cheyenne, WY
|
Old West outlaw? No, not
in the conventional sense. Old West lawman, yes, at times
a deputy U.S. marshal and deputy sheriff. Old West stock
detective. Superb athlete and cowboy.
An instrument of Satan? Perhaps, depending
upon one’s perspective.
But people whose parents and grandparents
employed him say he was “a fine fellow, honest and
dependable and very, very good at what he did.” |
|
Tom
Horn
Who painted this picture?
|
Today
few stories are more alive, colorful and controversial
than are those of Tom Horn of Wyoming. Hanged for a murder
he probably did not commit (but could have), firestorms
of controversy still surround debates of his guilt and
the questionable nature of his trial.
Operating unchecked as a stock
detective for Wyoming’s cattle barons for ten
years, he was a death sentence to rustlers and the
devil incarnate to the homesteader. |
|
Born in 1860 in northeast
Missouri, he left home as a young teen, in search of adventure – and
because
of an abusive father.
|
Tom
Horn's Father
|
|
|
Army
scouts in Arizona -- Tom Horn at left (?) |
He headed for the Southwest,
where he soon became a wrangler and scout for the army
in the Apache wars. Becoming chief of scouts under Generals
Crook and Miles, he was instrumental in capturing Geronimo
for the final time.
|
|
F. M. Ownbey,
who worked with Tom Horn after Horn became a Pinkerton's
agent
in Colorado. After Horn's arrest for murdering Willie Nickell,
Ownbey wrote to
him in jail and said he felt he was innocent.
|
F.
M. Ownbey
|
|
The
Nickell family at their homestead
(Willie at right)
|
An epidemic
of cattle rustling in southern Wyoming in the 1890s and
the desperate straits of stockmen set the stage for Tom
Horn’s arrival. Cattle thieves were duly warned,
blood was shed, and Tom Horn was implicated but never charged.
|
|
Then on the morning of
July 18, 1901, Willie Nickell, the fourteen-year-old son
of a contentious, paranoid Wyoming sheepman, was shot.
|
The
murder site (gate at center)
|
|
Glendolene
M. Kimmell, Horn's alleged girlfriend
|
Horn had
been in the area, where romance entered the legend, in
the person of an attractive schoolmarm.
|
|
| Witnesses said “He made a very good impression
on her; she was stuck on him.” |
Tom
and Glendolene (from a painting, "Iron Mountain Morning" by
L. D. Edgar)
|
|
Joe
LeFors
|
Horn was
duped into making a so-called confession after spending
a night carousing in Cheyenne. The ruse was a job as a
cattle detective in Montana – which did not exist.
The master of dirty tricks was a deputy U.S. marshal in
search of the reward money and glory, Joe LeFors.
|
|
Horn was arrested,
tried in a controversial trial and hanged the day before
his 43rd birthday in 1903.
A retrial was held in 1993 in which he was declared innocent.
The New York Times described the trial, “Once Guilty,
Now Innocent, But Still Dead.”
|
Gallows
used to hang Tom Horn in Cheyenne, Wyoming
|
|
|
For the complete story of Tom Horn, read
"Tom Horn - Blood on the Moon" by Chip Carlson, the world-renowned
expert on Tom Horn, and his third book on the subject:
|
|
| |
