Infamous America - BILLY THE KID Ep. 4 | "Shots Fired"

Episode Date: November 27, 2019

The conflict brewing in Lincoln County reaches the point of no return. Sheriff Brady and Jimmy Dolan organize a posse to attack John Tunstall and Alex McSween. The first shots fired ignite a war that takes a heavy toll on both sides. For more details, please visit www.blackbarrelmedia.com. Our social media pages are: @blackbarrelmedia on Facebook and Instagram, and @bbarrelmedia on Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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In Lincoln, the Office of the Justice of the Peace barely qualified as an office. It was a one-room Adobe building that was also a public meeting space, a dance hall, and the courthouse when a judge showed up twice a year. The building belonged to J.B. Wilson, the Justice of the Peace. On this day, a strong, tough. young man stood before him ready to swear an oath as a deputy constable. The young man would then turn around and swear in his friends and colleagues. Tension in Lincoln County had been building steadily over the last year and it had escalated sharply in the last two months. Less

than two weeks ago, it had finally spilled over into murder. The first shots of the Lincoln County War had been fired and a man had been killed. Now, his first four years, his first friends and supporters banded together to avenge his murder, and the killing would not stop for three years. Some of these men would be forgotten, some would be minor players in written works that followed, and one would become a folklore hero and a legendary character in American history. From Black Barrel Media, this is Season 3 of Infamous America. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer, and this season we're telling the story of the most notorious

outlaw in American history. The Kid. This is chapter 4, shot spire. Events spiraled out of control fast in mid-February 1878. Less than two weeks earlier, the Tunstall-McSween faction had met the Dolan faction at a judge's home to deal with the embezzlement charge against McSween. It was a bogus charge, and everyone knew it, but Jimmy Dolan was working the political machinery of the Santa Fe ring to perfection. He had McSween and Tunstall boxed in. The embezzlement issue had been postponed,

but Dolan had used the corrupt judge and a corrupt district attorney to issue a judgment against McSweene. It allowed Dolan to attach all of McSween's assets to the civil lawsuit he had filed. This meant that Dolan had been given the authority to seize everything McSween owned and to hold it until the legal proceedings were finished. In the process,

Dolan hoped to save his own business, which was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. Dolan enlisted his friend, Sheriff Brady, to help him catalog all of McSween's assets. Sheriff Brady had inventoried everything in McSween's home. McSween could still live there, but it was all attached to the lawsuit. And because McSween and John Tunstall were so closely associated with each other, even though they were not legally business partners yet, Dolan used the judgment to seize all of Tunstall's assets as well. Sheriff Brady's men were occupying John Tunstall's store day and night.

Tunstall had recently received a shipment of supplies from St. Louis, and he couldn't sell them. The goods just sat in his store collecting dust while Brady's men happily kept him from doing business. Yesterday, Tunstall had confronted Brady with the help of his good friend Rob Wydenman and two of his hired guns. Billy Bonnie and Fred Waite. Tunstall had persuaded Brady to give back some horses and mules that had been taken during the initial seizure. But today, Brady's leniency was forgotten. The sheriff deputized the man who was Jimmy Dolan's silent partner and told him to round up a posse and collect all the cattle at John Tunstall's main ranch on the Fleeze River. The cattle were now impounded.

They were attached to the lawsuit. The new deputy, Billy Matthews, grabbed three men and headed for Tunstall's ranch. On the way, they conveniently ran into outlaw Captain Jesse Evans and his two top lieutenants, Frank Baker and Tom Hill. At the ranch, Tunstall's men were eating breakfast when the posse arrived. Robert Wydenman and Dick Brewer, the foreman of the ranch, stopped the posse 50 yards from the small adobe house that served as headquarters. Billy Bonnie, Fred Waite, and several other men stepped out of the house and arrayed themselves in a show of force.

Deputy Matthews informed Brewer and Wydenman that the posse was there to seize Alex McSween's cattle. Brewer told him McSween didn't have any cattle at this ranch, and then he offered a compromise. The posse could round up the cattle and leave a man to guard them while the courts decided who owned the animals. Matthews wasn't expecting cooperation from Brewer, and he was confused. He decided he needed to go back to Lincoln to get more instructions from Sheriff Brady. But before he did, Robert Wydenman almost turned the compromise into a bloodbath. Wydenman contradicted Brewer. He said absolutely not.

The posse could not touch one single cow on the ranch. Weidman wasn't concerned about the cattle as much as he was concerned about Jesse Evans, Frank Baker and Tom Hill. Several months ago, Wydenman had convinced the U.S. Marshal of New Mexico to make him a deputy. He wanted to arrest Evans, Baker, and Hill for stealing John Tunstall's horses.

And since the local law would never do it, he would do it himself. He teamed up with some soldiers from Fort Stanton and tracked the outlaws to Lawrence Murphy's Ranch. Everyone knew they were there. It was no secret. but Murphy had stood in front of Wydenman and the army and claimed there were no outlaws on his property.

Wydenman was embarrassed and livid. He had to abandon the effort. But now, the outlaws were right here in front of him, and he wanted to arrest them. He tried to get the other Tunstelmen to help him take custody of Evans and his lieutenants, but everyone said no. Any move in that direction would lead to a gunfight,

without a doubt, and it was too early in the morning. for that much killing. Eventually, the posse left the ranch. That night in Lincoln, Matthews met Sheriff Brady. Brady yelled at him to get a bigger posse, go back out there, and take all the cattle. So Matthews went back to work. He rode to the Seven Rivers community, where the ranchers were loyal to Jimmy Dolan. He collected volunteers, and with Jesse Evans and his outlaws, the posse now had 23 men, including Jimmy Dolan himself. They returned to Tunstall's ranch, hell-bent on collecting the Englishman's cattle.

But by the end of the day, no one would care about the cows. A man would be dead, and a war would be imminent. While Dolan, Brady, and Matthews organized their posse, Tunstall, Brewer, and Wydenman planned their strategy in Lincoln. McSweene was stuck in his home under house arrest and guarded by a deputy sheriff from Las Vegas, so he couldn't help. But he wouldn't have been much help anyway. He was a firm believer in non-violence,

and this situation was rapidly moving toward a violent confrontation. In fact, that's what Tunstall was preparing for. He had his loyal bodyguards with him, Billy Bonnie and Fred Waite. He sent them back to the ranch with his friend Wydenman to prepare for an attack. The three men hurried down to the ranch and explained the situation to the rest of Tunstall's men. They got to work turning the small adobe house into a makeshift fort. They cut holes in the walls to act as gun ports, and they barricaded the doors with grain sacks that were full of dirt. They prepped their weapons and settled in for a standoff.

But then Tunstall changed his mind. He decided he would not resist the posse. He galloped to his ranch to tell his men of the new plan. He gathered his seven or eight loyal followers and told them that tomorrow morning, most of them would drive some of the horses back to Lincoln. The elderly cook would stay behind to help the posse round up the cattle. Tonstall was going to let Jimmy Dolan win this round.

Tonstall ordered William McCloskey to ride down the Pinyasco River toward the posse. He instructed McCloskey to tell the posse, of the new plan, the posse could do its work. Tunstall would not fight it. Tunstall and his men grabbed a few hours of sleep and rose before dawn. They gathered the horses that Sheriff Brady had allowed Tunstall to keep off the attachment list. The horses were now the only things that could not be seized by Jimmy Dolan. Before dawn on February 18, 1878, John Tunstall and his seven men began the trip to Lincoln.

A couple hours later, Jimmy Dolan and his posse of loyalists, Seven Rivers Ranchers, and Outlaws crept up on John Tunstall's ranch. Despite McCloskey's assurance that Tunstall would not resist, Dolan and his men surrounded the small adobe house and moved in as if they expected a fight. All they found was an old cook. He told the posse that Tunstall and the other, men had left well before dawn and were driving some horses to Lincoln.

Jimmy Dolan immediately decided that those horses should be confiscated as part of the attachment, despite the fact that Sheriff Brady had specifically exempted them. Dolan told his silent partner, Deputy Matthews, to pick 14 men and intercept Tunstall before he made it to Lincoln. Matthews deputized 14 men on the spot, including Dolan's foreman, Buck Morton and the three prominent outlaws, Jesse Evans, Frank Baker, and Tom Hill. It was about 5.30 p.m. on Monday, February 18, 1877. The sun would have been nearly set, and it would have been growing dark quickly. Tunstall and his men were driving the horses through

a canyon. Tunstall, Dick Brewer, and Rob Weidenman pushed the horses down the trail. Billy Bonnie and John Middleton followed about 500 yards behind the main group. Fred Waite, Billy's good friend, was on a different road. He was driving a buckboard wagon that prevented him from using the canyon trail. As Tunstall, Brewer, and Wydenman crested a ridge, they scared a flock of wild turkeys that were hiding in the brush. Wydenman offered his rifle to Tunstall, but Tunstall declined. Tunstall said Wydenman was a better shot and would have more success on the hunt.

Brewer and Wydenman raced after the turkeys while Tunstow remained on the trail with the horses. That was when Billy Bonnie and John Middleton heard riders coming up behind them. Billy and John turned and saw the posse galloping toward them. They spurred their horses forward to catch up with their friends. Billy angled to the left to tell Brewer and Wydenman about the threat. John angled to the right to warn Tunstall. Brewer and Wyden men had already seen the posse charging down the trail, and now they heard the first gunshots.

Bullets slammed into the dust and rocks around them. They dove for cover, just as Billy arrived. On the other side of the trail, John Middleton screamed for Tunstall to follow him to safety. John pushed his horse up the hillside so he could circle around to join Billy and the others. He reached his friends, and they dove off their mounts as a fresh round of gunshots peppered the rocks around them. The four men found cover and took up firing positions. But they were missing someone.

Tunstall had not followed Middleton. He was somewhere back near the trail, but they couldn't see him through the brush. Down in the canyon, three men chased John Tunstall off the trail. Tunstall galloped toward a thicket about a hundred yards away. He might have thought it would offer protection, or maybe he was just running for his life and acting without a plan. But as he rushed into the thicket, he was pursued by Jimmy Dolan's foreman, Buck Morton, outlawed Captain Jesse Evans and one of his lieutenants, Tom Hill. At that point, the four men were completely concealed, and the version of what happened next came from Buck Morton.

Morton said he and Evans and Hill confronted Tunstall and told him to give up the horses, pursuant to the legal writ of attachment. Tunstall refused and pulled his gun to resist. He fired two shots, and Morton and the others responded with their Winchester rifles. Morton shot Tunstall in the chest. The bullets spun the young Englishman around, and as he was falling to the ground, one of the other men fired the fatal shot. A slug from Evans or Hill tore through the back of Tunstall's head

and exited over his left eye. If Morton is to be believed, Tunstall was probably dead before he hit the ground. The other possibility is that Tunstall was faced down in the dirt, dying from a chest wound, when someone shot him in the back of the head in a cold-blooded execution. Either way, John Tunstall was killed on the edge of a remote trail through a canyon in Lincoln County, February 18, 1878.

He was 24 years old. That night, Tunstall's men rode into Lincoln. Dick Brewer, Rob Weidenman, Billy Bonnie, and John Middleton spread the news that John Tunstall had been killed by the posse that was commanded by Deputy Matthews. and Deputy Matthews was the tool of Sheriff Brady and Jimmy Dolan. By midnight, a huge group of men gathered at Alex McSween's house. But many of them weren't responding to the shocking news. They had already planned to be there. John Tunstow had sent word around the area that he wanted to hire gunmen.

He had seen the coming storm, and he wanted to be prepared. Ironically, he was caught off guard and killed while I. alone and outnumbered. Then an unexpected visitor burst into McSween's home. It was John Riley, the business partner of Jimmy Dolan. Riley was scared and extremely drunk. He wanted to show the men in McSween's house that he was unarmed, so he emptied his pockets. One of the things that tumbled out was a small book that contained a letter. The letter was a damning piece of evidence against Dolan, Riley and the Santa Fe Ring, if McSweene could find anyone who cared. The letter was from the district attorney down in Messia,

the man who helped Dolan craft the writ of attachment that led to Tunstall's murder. In the letter, the district attorney told Dolan and Riley to push McSween and Tunstall out of Lincoln. He said he would help punish them if he could. He advised them to use Sheriff Brady and some good men for the job, and he would help in any way he could. The DA didn't exactly sanction the murder of John Tunstall, but it didn't take much imagination to believe that if it happened, he would help Dolan get away with it. The purpose of Riley's visit is still mysterious. He probably wanted to persuade Tunstall's men that he had no part in the killing, but he left behind a damaging piece of evidence

that proved the whole legal system was working against Tunstall and Mell. McSweene. As quickly as he arrived, John Riley left. He hurried to Fort Stanton to seek protection from the army. The fort was less than 10 miles away, and he wasn't the only one who wanted protection. Sheriff Brady saw the collection of angry men at McSween's house, and he felt exposed. Most of his men were down at John Tunstall's ranch with Jimmy Dolan in the posse. He only had a skeleton crew with him here in Lincoln. Brady sent word to Fort Stanton that he needed a detachment of soldiers

to support his deputies as they guarded the Dolan store and occupied the Tunstall store. The soldiers had no interest in taking part in yet another feud in Lincoln, but they went anyway. They surrounded the Dolan store to protect it from the 40 or 50 men in McSweene's house.

Men who weren't actually doing anything, but who frightened Brady nonetheless. As it happened, McSweene was the only person who took any action that night. He sent four men to collect John Tunstall's body. The next day, the escalation continued. John Tunstall's best friend, Rob Wydenman, rode to Fort Stanton early in the morning. He was still a deputy U.S. Marshal, and he had heard that Jesse Evans was hiding somewhere in town. He requested more army troops to come to Lincoln to help him finally arrest.

arrest the outlaw captain. While Wydenman was on his mission, a coroner's jury convened in Lincoln to hear testimony about the murder of John Tunstall. Dick Brewer, John Middleton, and Billy Bonney told the jury their version of events. They swore affidavits against 18 men, including Buck Morton, Jesse Evans, Frank Baker, Tom Hill, and the mastermind, Jimmy Dolan. The Justice of the Peace, J.B. Wilson swore out arrest warrants for all 18, plus one more. Sheriff Brady. But Brady's warrant

wasn't for murder. It was for larceny. Brady had allowed the soldiers who were guarding the Dolan store to feed their horses using hay from Tunstall's store. And Alex McSweene pounced on this opportunity to take action against Brady. McSween charged Sheriff Brady with stealing hay from Tunstall's store to give to the soldier's horses. It was a minor offense, but McSweene wasn't going to let anything slide. Justice of the Peace Wilson handed all the arrest warrants to the town constable, who, as you'd imagine, had zero enthusiasm for what he was supposed to do. He had just been told that he was supposed to walk over to Dolan's store and arrest the sheriff of Lincoln. And if he didn't do it, Billy Bonnie said, I'll kill you myself.

Billy and Fred Waite escorted the constable to Dolan's store. They marched up to the door and were greeted by an arsenal of guns pointed straight at them. Sheriff Brady informed Billy, Fred, and the constable that no one in the store would be arrested that day. And then Brady turned the tables on the three men. Brady had them outnumbered and outgunned, and he arrested them for resisting a sheriff. Brady paraded the three men down Main Street for the entire town to see. It was an insult that Billy would not forget. And then Brady made it worse.

That night, he let the constable go. But he kept Billy and Fred in jail, and they missed John Tunstall's funeral the next day. John Henry Tunstall, the Englishman who would turn 25 in a couple months, was laid to rest behind his store in Lincoln. He had come to America to make his fortune. He was no less greedy than Murphy and Dolan, and he was willing to use violence against his enemies. But his fatal flaw was that he was not quite as ruthless and cold-blooded as Jimmy Dolan.

A Presbyterian minister conducted the ceremony, and when it was over, Tunstall supporters turned their attention to Sheriff Brady. They confronted him about his unwarranted arrest of Billy, Fred, and the constable. They became more open in their contempt for the sheriff, who was becoming more publicly partisan by the day. Late that night, Rob Weidenman returned to Lincoln with a contingent of troops from Fort Stanton. Early in the morning, he and the troops surrounded the Dolan store, and they were supported by Tunstall's men, Dick Brewer, Billy and Fred, Doc Scurlock, and many others. The Tunstall team ransacked the store looking for Jesse.

Evans. Wydenman was still on a mission to arrest the outlaw for stealing Tunstall's horses last year, but now Jesse had a murder warrant on him as well. Unfortunately for Wydenman, he struck out again. Jesse wasn't in Dolan's store, so the party marched over to Tunstall's store where five of Sheriff Brady's men still occupied the building. The constable whom Brady arrested probably took great pleasure in arresting one of Brady's men. George Pepin, and throwing the others out of the store. For the first time in three weeks, John Tunstall's store was free of Brady's men and out of Jimmy Dolan's control.

The next morning, John Tunstall's advisor and future business partner Alex McSween and his best friend, Rob Weidenman, performed the sad task of writing letters to Tunstall's family in London. They tried to explain the young man's tragic death, and the complicated and corrupt circumstances of life in Lincoln County, New Mexico. With that grim work complete, they turned their attention to the safety of Alex McSween. The rapid escalation of events over the last month that culminated in the murder of John Tunstall made it clear that McSween could not stay in Lincoln.

McSween wrote a flurry of letters to government officials outside Lincoln County in the hope of drawing attention to the corruption and violence that plagued South. southeastern New Mexico. But even if his letters worked, it would take time. The process would be slow. After he finished the letters, he made out his will and then fled into the mountains outside Lincoln, still under the protection of the deputy sheriff from Las Vegas who stayed with him for nearly two months. Now, with Tunstall dead and McSween in hiding, someone had to take command of the small army of men who were ready to fight Jimmy Dolan. in the Santa Fe Ring. The natural selection was Tunstall's foreman, Dick Brewer.

Brewer put no faith in McSweene's letter-writing campaign. He wanted to kill or capture every man who had taken part in the murder of John Tunstall. On March 1, 1878, he stood before Justice of the Peace J.B. Wilson and had himself appointed a deputy constable with the power to serve arrest warrants. In turn, he did. deputized a group of men who would become infamous and would give themselves a legendary name. Brewer deputized the rest of Tunstall's men, John Middleton, Fred Waite, Henry Brown, and Billy Bonnie. He deputized two men who were his friends and neighbors and were supporters of Tunstall,

Charlie Bodry and Josiah Doc Scurlock. He also deputized Frank McNabb, a cattle detective for John Chisholm. They added a couple more men to the group, and then each man swore an iron-clad oath to the posse. They would never give any information or do anything that would hurt another member of the group. They were bound together in the hunt for John Tunstall's killers, and they called themselves the regulators. Next time on infamous America, the Lincoln County War begins in earnest. The first shots fired had killed John Tunstall. and the next would kill his assassins.

The regulators go on the war path, but their legal authority is soon revoked by the governor. With the stroke of a pen, they go from deputies to outlaws, but they never stop chasing the men responsible for the murder of John Tunstall. That's next week on Season 3, Billy the Kid. Research assistance for this season was provided by Aaron Ailsworth.

Original music by Rob Valier. Editing and sound design by Dave Harrison. I'm your writer and host, Chris Wimmer. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening. Please visit our website, Black Barrel Media, for more details, and join us on social media.

We're Black Barrel Media on Facebook and Instagram, and B-Barrel Media on Twitter. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.