Last Podcast On The Left - Episode 171: Serial Killers of the American Frontier

Episode Date: April 22, 2015

It's two tales of frontier madness this week as we cover Mickey and Wiley Harpe, the smelliest cave men to ever rampage across Kentucky, and Felipe Espinoza, whose body count positively dwarfs the notches on the gun of any wild west outlaw.

Hey, are you listeners in the New York Metro area? Don't forget that this Saturday, April 25th, is the last podcast on the Left Live Show, which we have the 4th Saturday of every month at the creek in the cave in Long Island City, Queens, right off the G-Train and the 7-Train. It's at 10pm, it's absolutely free, and we'll see y'all there. There's no place to escape to, this is the last talk on the Left Live from your glass, that's when the cannibalism started, what was that? I hate my wife! Oh, you should love your wife, happy wife, happy life, Kitty.

I don't know, are we going to start the show with Meow Meow? You should see if he's got his little hands up, or if he's doing kitty hands. Oh, he's doing kitty hands? Adorable. Alright, well let's just welcome people to the show then. I hate gay people. Oh, okay Kitty, good God, what's wrong with you? I'll stab a homo with a fork. You think that's appropriate Kitty talk?

Hey, I don't know, someone used to teach me, maybe escorting me with a water bottle, or a bit of lemon juice. Right, right, yeah, I'm Ben Kissel, that's Marcus Parks, we've got Kitty Dzebrowski over there in Toronto. Yeah man, I'm representing TDOT, woo! I had a guy in the street last night tell me that, he's just like, you smoke that weed? And I was like, yep, and he's like, you ain't been smoking that TDOT weed! TDOT is a thing that they call Toronto here, it's an urban speak. Yeah, what does urban Canada look like? Uh, still white.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Very strange, no, no, no, there's black people here, and they're lovely. TDOT is a word for it, also the six, and people worship Drake here. They love Drake, because he's from Toronto. All he does is talk about TDOT. Yeah, yeah, Degrassi and all that. He played the handicapped kid in a soap opera, right? Yeah, he did.

Yeah, he had like backwards feet. Frontier, let's go to the frontier, shall we? Oh, we're going to the American frontier today, two tales of frontier madness! Oh my God, this is your extended family, right Marcus? This episode's about? Well, I mean, it's very possible. Actually, it's actually extremely possible, for my family was here pre-revolutionary war. We fought for the right side.

That's very good, Marcus. We fought for the Americans. Why are you pointing at me as if my family at some point didn't fight for the right side? Because some of us have lineages of a horror. Your father is an NYPD officer, Henry. He was an American NYPD officer. Ben, I'm going to make you feel better here. Speaking of my ancestors, I'm going to go and own up to something.

I found out through a family genealogy, we found a draft card from one of my ancestors that fought on the wrong side of the Civil War. And his occupation was listed as overseer. Wow, he was in charge then. Of the slaves, yes. What he would do, most of his job was making sure they had their exercise and making sure they were eating right. It was stuff like that.

I don't know if that's the right history. What books are you reading on slavery? I wrote this whole thing called, hey, it was this weird book. It said, hey, let's buy them again. By Richard Rankleton? Oh, Rankleton, yeah. He's from Connecticut. He would go around to the tallest of a black group of children

and try to give them a $100 check and say, I'm your owner now. Which is a difficult pitch. So today we are covering, I was saying this before we started recording, American serial killers after 1960s, yes, Dahmer and our favorite John Wayne Gacy. These people are fucking pussies. They are pussies. Compared to these Wild West serial killers, these guys are fucking maniacs. These frontier serial killers are so much scarier than Bundy, than Dahmer, than Gacy

because as they were murdering their pants were full of dookie. There was no clean underwear. These people were filthy and they would just murder whenever they wanted to. And I feel like there's also something scarier about that. That's how I imagine all these guys talk. Yeah, exactly. They talk like human corn kernels. Well, you better don't eat. Because in the Wild West, it wasn't like the silent killer who had to blend into society.

You knew who the killer was because he had no clothes on and you were swinging a tomahawk around. Well, I got to give a listener credit for this because I can't remember exactly what his name is. I apologize, but a listener turned me on to this book called America's Early Serial Killers by Mike Riley. And I got both of these tales from this book and the first tale we're going to get into. I also got a lot of information from an article called Killing Cousins by Jim Ridley. A great article that really talks about these guys more in depth. We're talking about the harp brothers. Now, do we have any music to sort of lull us into the world?

Here it is. All right, well, we're going to go to Kentucky. Well, I hope you have some of my gin. I made it out of my old boot. Oh, yeah, my favorite kind of gin. You made three of my daughters blind, but I made one of them queen of the fair. So we're going to go to Kentucky, the American Revolutionary War. And we're going to make a little visit to two brothers, possibly Scottish,

possibly first generation American born to Scottish ancestors. We're talking about Mickey, Big Harp, and Wiley, Little Harp. I like it because the nicknames are simple. Right, big and little. We got both kinds. Oh, yeah, so Mickey and Wiley Harp, they were brothers, possibly cousins, born friends. What's the difference? What we're going to have here in this episode is that we're going to have a lot of speculation.

We're going to have a lot of possibilities. Maybe this thing happened, maybe that thing happened. You're also very specifically only southern relationships that can happen, which is you're either brothers or your cousins, not really sure. That's it. Sometimes it kills when it's all dark outside. These guys would own up to over 40 murders between 1797 and 1804. They are widely recognized as America's very first serial killers. And there wasn't a lot of people back then.

So 40 murders back then, that's like 200 by today's terms. Oh, easy. Anyone they ran into, they'd kill. Absolutely. Does inflation really work with body counts? I think it does. I actually think it does. So does Hitler, can we now start saying Hitler killed like seven bajillion Jews?

Yes, seven bajillion. Because if it goes down, that's racist. Of course. So Mickey, huge fellow with a fierce look, covered in dirt all the time. That's what everyone, all the eyewitnesses, all the people about Mickey, they always say just covered in dirt constantly. Like pig pen. Exactly. But if pig pen was a raping psychopath?

Yes, maybe he was. He had black curly hair, but his brother Wiley redheaded. He was much smaller, but said to be more devious. Yeah, like the gingers are. All of those gingers are half leprechaun. We love being sneaky. We love playing tricks. That's right.

We can turn chocolate into gold. Just ask the maids. I put, I take off the do not disturb sign and I hide in the bed. And then when they come out, I pop out all naked and I'm just like, you ready to play tag? You know, and then I run him. I run him down the hall to chase him down the hallway. Yeah.

I think that's a fun game. I think that's what got Dominic Strauss Conn arrested. He was a very wealthy politician before. You're just trying to play some tag. So these guys heavily armed at all times. They usually carried a hunting knife, a pair of pistols, a long rifle, and their favorite weapon, a tomahawk. So cool.

Oh, yeah. Eventually this kind of sounds like a D&D campaign. It really does. I mean, as far as weaponry goes, these are pretty badass weapons. You got your knife. You got your old school guns. Yeah. Badass tomahawk.

Oh, yeah, man. These guys knew what the fuck they were doing. So the family, the harp family, they ran plantations in Tennessee, and there are two different accounts as far as the harps go during the Revolutionary War, because this was right around the time that the Americans were getting shit, or they were getting sick of the British, and decided it was time to kick them the fuck out. Hell yeah.

Yeah. Get out of here with your English way of talking and your bizarre knowledge and brains. We did it. We kicked out them long trousers. That's what I've been calling British people here, but your long trousers. I agree. I mean, really, the Brits just must have been stunned when they lost the war to all of these mud people, AKA a few Americans.

Oh, it was the beginning of the end for the British. Yeah. Yeah. But we also had a lot of help from the French. Oh, thank you, French. Yes, thank you, French. So in one version of the harps' participation in the Revolutionary War, they're much more grown up.

They were able to actually participate in the war. They changed their names from William and Joshua to Mickey and Wiley, just to really get that white trash angle in there. Perfect. Yeah, this is proto white trash here. So these guys, they fought for the British. They did. Yeah, they were royalists.

They were British loyalists. There were plenty of settlers in that time that did fight on the side of the British. They joined a Tory rape gang in North Carolina. Oh, yeah, I remember when I got into my first rape gang. I was so thrilled. I got my sash. They give you a little tiara. Yeah.

And then they give you a tearoey pants so that you can rape faster. Oh, I see. Yeah. So you're a part of the rape gang. What do you guys do mostly? Well, you know, a lot of the times it's paperwork. We're playing cards a lot and then, you know, and then we go out to launch a lot as a group and then we go bowling sometimes and then, oh yeah, I mean, there's a shit ton of rape.

That would make sense. I mean, these guys are the worst of the worst. These are the people that really take it. They don't necessarily give a fuck about the war that's going on around them. They just use the chaos of war to rape, steal, murder, burn and destroy property, especially farms of Patriot colonists. I mean, that's how fucking British they were. They needed a hierarchy just to do it.

You could just go be a loose group of dudes out raping people. They had to be a gang and it had to be organized. There had to be a leader and there had to be old sorts of uniforms. A bunch of rules. Yeah, this is what you call total war. Right. Much like Sherman's March in the Civil War, but much, much worse. So on August 19th of 1782, in the older version, the Harps accompanied a British-backed

Chica Mauga Cherokee War Party to Kentucky in the battle of Blue Licks. Okay. Yeah, they help. Blue Licks is also the name of a website where it's just going down on grandmothers. Oh yeah, I love bluelicks.com. It's one of my personal favorites. It's near the end of the war when it was obvious that the British were going to lose. The Harps deserted and lived among the Chica Mauga Cherokee and lived in the village of

Nickajack near Chattanooga for approximately 12 to 13 years. What are the names? Do they name all these things just by throwing a bunch of sticks at a bunch of rocks? Now what that sound like to you? Sound like Chattanooga to me? In the other version. That's racist against the Native Americans. We love Native Americans.

And that's not fair because there's so few of them to defend themselves. That's right. I love Native Americans. Yeah, in fact, I'm pretty sure about a quarter of the Native American population in America is a part of our Facebook group. That's wonderful. It's true. And so we honor your people.

Yes. Yes. Moment of silence. Oh, okay. So it's said when there's another version that the Harps were too young to fight in the war, but were still the sons of British loyalists. So either way you slice it, the Harps were fucking traitors to the American cause. Unbelievable.

And in the years... Yeah, they started off bad. Yeah, they started off terrible. And in the years following the pivotal British loss in 1780 at the Battle of Kings Mountain, Patriot, quote, unquote, regulators, not to say that the British were the only people with the horrible rape gangs. The regulators, they went through and destroyed all of the British loyalist property and whatnot. And so it's said that it's possible that the Patriot regulators killed the parents of the

Harps, leaving the Harps to fend for themselves, stealing, killing whatever they could find to eat, and generally developing quite the chip on their shoulder. So they became like Batman if Batman was a smelly mountain rapist. And he might as well have been. He definitely spent a lot of time in the cave. Yes, he did, Batman. One, they actually have many ancestors still alive today and one ancestor who's a little too proud to be descended from these guys.

His name is E. Don Harp. What's the first letter to stand for? It's like Engelbert. Is that why it's an E? Because he's embarrassed. E. Don Harp. A. B. O. M. E. Don. So he said that they lived off whatever they could find, holing up in caves, which the cave

lifestyle would become pretty normal for the Harps over the next few years. Yes. And they eventually settled with the Chickamauga tribe. Both accounts say that they spent a lot of time with the Cherokees, which is where they developed their tomahawk fetish. Okay, awesome. But either way, it's during these 12 to 13 years that Mickey kidnapped two sisters, made them his wives.

Man, I remember when things were simple. You didn't have to go through online stuff. You saw a woman that you wanted to be your wife? You just took her. You just had to take her. This is a time when men were a lot closer to cavemen than we are now. They are literally cavemen. Cavemen actually didn't live in caves.

Cavemen lived wherever they were. They put their tents. These are cavemen. These are two men that are so smelly. They chose the cave. It's interesting. Because bears left them alone. Because they thought that they were one of their own.

Well, yeah. I mean, all the bears packed up in their little cute little bear luggage and had to leave the cave when these jackasses showed up. That's for sure. It's good out of here, bouncy bear. If we don't get out of here, these two, I'm afraid that these two smelly monkey people are going to start raping us. We're honey bots.

Bears are so adorable. But Wiley, being the more level headed of the two, actually courted and legally married a woman named Sarah Rice. What a square. Well, the women, whether they were married to Mickey or married to Wiley, the women were horribly, horribly abused and were too scared to run. And in fact, there were a couple of opportunities for them to escape. And as soon as they possibly could, they returned to the cave harps.

A pair would not be seen again until 1795, when the entire family settled into a cabin in Tennessee. And at this point, they'd already killed two people. And these people, they really traveled as a unit. They, everywhere they went, there was always the two heart brothers, the three wives. And whatever children that managed to survive past four months. Okay. Yeah.

And there was a brief period of about two years where they tried to make an honest living. They tried to raise crops. They tried to get to know their neighbors. But of course, they couldn't help themselves. They dabbled a little bit too much in horse thievery and had to go on the run. They were just terrible at the block parties. Yeah, sounds awful. But another account says, you know how like white trash people have like car tires in their

front yard? They have a bunch of like hooves and random horse legs in their front yard. I'm gonna put that together one of these days. These literally, as far as I'm concerned, it's like, I, when I imagine Mickey and Wiley, I literally just imagine Yosemite Sam. Yeah. Yosemite Sam was real and terrifying. Yeah.

Yosemite Sam is far too likable in those cartoons. He's a, he's a terrible man. Oh. He is a, he is a literal psychopath with, with a hair trigger. Who probably tried to rape Bugs Bunny at least once when he was walking around that skimpy little dress. Of course. Bugs was asking for it though.

Another account of how the Harps lost the farm was it said that they bet the entire farm on a single horse race and lost everything. Now, now for this horse race, let's choose our fattest horse. You see, that way it's low to the ground and it's got a lot of energy in it. Wiley, we gotta choose the shortest horse. Shortest horse is the shortest to the ground. Now, boys, you know you showed up here with a mule for this horse race, right? You say one more goddamn thing about my horse.

I'm gonna stick this gun so far down your throat. You're gonna think it's my cock. All right. Let's start the race. So this is in a mob into the world. Of course, now they're rootless again. And in April of 1797, a young Methodist preacher won Reverend William Lamboose was riding through the woods in Kentucky.

It's a lovely day to be outside for a reverend. Is this a fresh apple? Straight from a tree? What's that smell? Well, okay, one thing you gotta remember about Kentucky at this period of time. This is still, Kentucky is still the frontier. It is completely overgrown with wilderness. There are only a couple of roads that are safe enough, or not safe enough, but are paved and not paved,

or at least people can travel. Yeah, where they actually have a map and there's like a directional, you know, there's a place to go. Yeah, they're not just wandering through the woods. Right. So William Lamboose walking down the road and he said that a large man, stepped from the brush, had a rifle, so the harps and the women gathered up all of the belongings and vanished into the woods. And then a moment later, the bigger one, Mickey, jumped back out and screamed,

We are the harps! And slunk back into the forest. I think that went really, really well. It's a good job that when you scream, we are the harps. You know, I wish he had maybe told them what our last name was. We could have made up a name so we could hide better, but I will go while you do good. Very cool. Terrible.

Terrible accents. I need to get better, man. No, you're doing great, Henry. So the family eventually found a somewhat permanent residence, or at least the most permanent residence they could find. They settled in a place called Cave and Rock. And what is Cave and Rock, Marcus? It is a cave in a rock.

Oh. Yes, yes, yes. So it wasn't like a fun boutique hotel. No, and in fact today, Cave and Rock is better known as the location of the gathering of the juggalos. Oh. The only other place where there are actual slave wives. Yeah, just grab them and go. So while living in this limestone cave, the brothers hooked up with a gang of river pirates

who had been operating on the Ohio River for decades. The harps acted as guides to unwitting settlers to help the pirates trap the unfortunate souls so they could rob them and whatnot. It's really just an unfortunate set of circumstances that this whole group got together. You know what I mean? It's like technically the same force that got like John and Paul together to start the Beatles. Right. Join them to the river pirates. It's such a fun, just the names of these people.

It's just so fun. River pirates? I want to hang out with river pirates and cave people. It sounds like a great time. So before the harps, the pirates were more interested in just simple thievery rather than physical harm. But that quickly changed once the brothers came into the fold. In one incident, the harps, for no discernible reason, stripped a man naked, tied him to a horse, and chased him off a cliff. So what'd you guys do today?

We played horse and man. What we like to do is it's called horse and man. It's like a funny thing where we say, hey, hey, you want a free trip to the bottom of the canyon? And the guy's like, good. We time to a horse. And then we just kick the horse off the top of the canyon. I could listen to your stories all night long. But I like to hear how the river pirates sever ties soon after. So they were just like, you know what?

We're fucking out. We can't handle this anymore. Yes, yes, we're a bunch of river pirates. Yes, you know, I have shell shoes on, which are sharp and are cutting my feet. I'm upset most of the time. But you guys are fucking crazy and you smell wily. And I tell you one thing about us river pirates, we're clean because we live on a bath. That's right. Get some bubbles in there. The record shows the harp showed up again in 1798 in Kentucky where they killed a little girl by smashing her head in.

They murdered a boy on his way to a mill and slaughtered the man that they suspected fingered them for the horse wrap that caused them to flee their cabin in Tennessee. How many times I have to eliminate somebody who's trying to finger me for a horse wrap? I know. It's so classic. It's really hurting me making friends here in Toronto. Yep, yep, yep. The man's body was found in a river covered in urine and ripped open with his belly filled with rocks. This would be the Harps Brothers calling card. He's eating all wrong.

It's called, you know, they were like, huh, you want to do funny thing and make a thing? We'll call it our peepery bowl. Yeah, I mean it is kind of fun. Sometimes they put ice chips in the urinals at bars and stuff. Yeah, I always love to bar you because it's like, yeah, it's cool when they have the trough. But how much more cool if it was just an open ripped up fucking dude's belly all full of rocks? It would be much, much cooler. That's for sure.

So the Harps were absolutely merciless in their reign of terror. They would kill anyone who even suggested that they might be murderers. Now this is a very sophisticated form of hiding in plain sight. Because they would kill anyone who suggested they might be murderers and then they would have to kill the people that accused them of killing the person who had accused them of killing the person before that. That's gotta be exhausting. It's almost, it reminds me of, it follows in that, to that way.

You know, they just constantly go after the next person. So they killed one boy for corn. Hey man, love me some corn. Yeah, I mean that's what they would do. They would just come upon people and they would just, it's like you got something I want, you're fucking dead. Like where they would, I mean they could have just as easily just beat them within an inch of their life and left them there, but they just love to kill. And that's all they wanted to do.

They killed a little girl, as Mickey would later say, just to cut her flesh into strips. They massacred an entire family and their slaves leaving at least eight people butchered, possibly many more. And that's what I read. I said, I read it said leaving at least eight people butchered, perhaps many more which makes me think they didn't do a full count of the slaves. Right, right, right, right. I just, you know, they just made this little girl into bacon.

Yeah, they did. They just kind of, did they eat the strips? Or they just wanted to cut the, I think it was more of a chip. They probably did, I would not be surprised if the harps dabbled in cannibalism. No, no, what I bet they did is that they kind of just draped it over their face and they're like, hey look, I'm drapes, I'm drapes. Just hanging off their face. Yeah, kind of a fun little costume.

Mickey even killed his four month old daughter by smashing her head against a tree just because she wouldn't stop crying. And he said it's the only murder that he regrets. Oh, that's nice though. I don't regret. I really wish they hadn't started that babysitter's club though. After that. That's what Timmy was a mistake.

I feel like that's just asking for it. It's asking to make yourself mad. Yep, yep. So finally, after a body count that had reached double digits, a bounty of $300 whole dollars was placed on the head of the harps. That's about right. I would say $300 and that's probably what, like $10,000 now. So a good amount of money.

It's a good amount of money, yeah. Yeah, yeah, they're killing little boys for corn and they're just killing a little girl to make her body into bacon. Yeah, 300 bucks. Throw 300 at them, sure. Of course, this didn't deter the brothers at all, who while on the run continued to break into settlements to kill those inside or just anybody on the road that might have goods they could use for their own purposes.

They would be arrested once before they finally were brought to justice. In their first arrest for murder, there was a man who had intervened on the harps behalf when the family couldn't pay for a bill. The harps invited the man to ride along with them and predictably murder him and left his corpse on the side of the road. What possessed this man to help out these murderous thugs? Why would he help out of all the people to help out in the world? I don't know.

These are not the ones to do. I mean, just at first glance, of course, they seem like possibly like simple mountain men. But also, it's like people who used to hang out with Hell's Angels back in the day that were just hangers on. Like guys that would just kind of hang out with the Hell's Angels and do whatever it is they asked them to do, even though they had no intention of ever letting them into the group. Yeah.

And knowing that the man had previously associated with the harps, we got the first posse of the episode. Woo! That is so good. It's posse time! Boy, buddy, y'all, now we're pulling from the posse. Oh, I want some chewing tobacco. I got all these horseshoes.

I'd like to bring a rope, but the only rope I got is this belt I got. That ain't going to be long enough. Oh, dang. Why don't we- Hey, does everybody have rope belts? Yeah! We'll let this tie together! It's posse!

Oh, good times. So the family was captured. Wives and all. Right. They captured all of them. But the brothers, in something that we all will also see a lot in our second story, they were able to escape, left all of the wives behind. The wives were all pregnant at the time.

Right. And after the women gave birth, they released them, and the women immediately went back to cave and rock. So it wasn't as if these women didn't enjoy the existence. I mean, they must have. I don't think that's true. I think that they were beaten until they were brainwashed and were deeply scared and had no life skills and had nowhere to go.

So the killing continued with the harps as they moved through Kentucky and to Tennessee. And now you're literally watching them actually slip into berserker mode, which is weird because technically they started at berserker mode. I know. You didn't think they could get any crazier, and then they proved us all wrong. Oh, yeah. So there was no, you got to remember, no organized police force whatsoever. The most the people had was the military at this time,

and the military aren't necessarily the best investigators in the world. So the harps were pretty much able to just move from person to person, from settlement to settlement without anybody really knowing what the fuck was going on. And in fact, sometimes, and probably a lot of times, any time there was one of these brutal killings, the first impulse of people to say, well, goddamn Indians did it. Right, right, right, right. So with each of these killings, there were probably a good,

I don't know, four dead Indians to go along with it. Maybe you still don't understand all the Indians were doing were taking fucking mushrooms and talking to their reptilian gods. They just did everything right, man. I love Native Americans. I want to take some of that peyote, and what's the other thing? Ayahuasca? Ayahuasca.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what I want to do is start wearing sandals, and I want to wear pants to show my bush hair. Yeah, you can do that. Put a little sunscreen in your nose to go with it. You'll look perfect. So in August of 1799, the harps visited the home of one Moses Stiegel, a man of suspected ill repute.

So does that make him a male prostitute? I think so, yeah, something like that. Well, these, I mean, they knew each other from various dealings. It's possible because all criminals knew each other in the Wild West. It seems that way, doesn't it? It's possible that Moses was a former river pirate. But when they got to the Stiegel homestead, Moses was away, but his wife, who had a four-month-old baby in the house,

was glad to accommodate their needs, invited the harps right in, the harps requested a meal and a place to sleep. Staying with the family was a house guest that was one of the guys in the house, a one major William Love. Love shared a room. Love shared a room with Mickey, and unfortunately, Love proved to be a snorer, right? He proved to be a deafening snorer.

Mickey, of course, was just like, hey, man, hey, do you know that you're snoring? Could you move to your side a little bit? Right, and then it was over. Buried a tomahawk right into his fucking face. Put a tomahawk in his face. Well, that was the original breathe-right strip. It was just a tomahawk right in the person's face.

So the next morning, Mrs. Stiegel, who had a colicky baby, and if you know anything about colicky babies, they never stop crying. It was a colicky baby. Oh, that's not surprising. Yeah. So Mickey, well-prepared to handle such a situation. So he picked up the baby, and he knows that what you do is you kind of, you just have to be patient with it, and you coo at it, and you sing in a song,

and maybe a little bit of brandy, and you rub it on its gums, right? Yeah. Slit its throat right in the crib. Different approach to parenting. Okay. So Mrs. Stiegel, she was very impressed. All throughout the press. Well, she was impressed because she didn't know that the psychopath had gone in

and slit her fucking infant's throat. So she would say like, you just have a way with babies. I don't know what it is, just nothing. Yeah, I've got a way with the baby. I'll make it into a doorstop. Well, I don't really know what that means, but the baby stopped crying for the first time in three months. So, let's see.

I stabbed it in the face. Well, I don't know what that means either, but. Well. Biscuits are up. Biscuits are up. I mean, I guess so the woman was, you know, not privy to the information that her child had been murdered. So she probably did have a couple of nice, peaceful hours.

She really did, until of course she went to go check on the baby, discovered that it had a slit throat. And of course she freaked out and was murdered by the same knife that they had used to silence the child. They stole her money, set the house on fire, and lit on out. When Moses found his wife's body, Big Harp's knife was driven so deeply into her body that its hill didn't burn.

So when you get your knife, when you get your throat slit and your house burnt down, that's just natural causes in the frontier times, right? That's just natural causes of death. So this time, this is one of the few times, and this is what we see with the Harps, and also with our second story of Felipe Espinosa, the reason, one of the reasons why these guys were able to operate for such a long time and kill so many people,

there were no eyewitnesses to any of these crimes. Right. Nobody had any idea what these people looked like. There was no ID. They would just find a body and just go, well, limbs and brakes. That's it. But I'll also put it, you know, if they did have cell phones

and they did have Instagram, I do believe that the Harps would be taken a lot of pictures. Oh, absolutely. They seem like they're very proud. Where are the Harps? There was a laborer working in the fields near the house. He was able to get a positive ID on him. He informed Moses.

And of course, we got another posse! Uh-oh. Where for? Eww! Man, I want to be in a posse so bad. You just got to join one. There's no application process. You just get to the back of the posse.

And if you're loud enough, I'll tell you what, Ben, you can work your way to the front. All right. So they let out looking for the Harps. They spotted smoke coming from a nearby cave. Because of course, if there's a cave around, the fucking Harps are going to find it. They're so dumb.

So the posse snuck up and the leader, a one Silas McBee, managed to shoot Mickey, but both he and Wiley were able to escape on separate horses, once again leaving the wives behind. But with not enough men to chase them both, the posse decided to focus on the deadlier of the brothers, focused on Mickey.

Once they caught up to him, four men fired, only one caught Mickey in his leg. There was a man named John Leaper. His ramrod was jammed. Because of course, we're going there having muskets and shit like that. His revolutionary wartime.

His ramrod jams. He asked to borrow a man named James Tompkins rifle, took aim, pulled the trigger, ball thunked in the outlaws heavy frame, and shattered his spine. Now it counts various to what happens next. Some say that Mickey asked for a drink of water. But wouldn't you know what?

They brought it to him in a shoe. Isn't that mean? That's just rude. You mentioned his shoe. Oh, good God. Some say he confessed to his crimes as he lay dying, just saying, so many dead, so many dead. So many deed.

So many deeds. So many deeds. So many deeds. So many deed. So many what? So many deeds? I can't understand this guy. I'm Scottish.

I'm Scottish. Oh. I bring me my daughter. I'm going to bury it in your face. Okay. Others say that Mickey said that his brother, that he and his brother had become disgusted with all mankind, and it agreed to, quote, destroy as many persons as they could.

And this actually reminds me of this Carl Pansram quote that I looked up, which is that Carl Pansram saying the meanest man who ever existed. I have no desire or whatever to reform myself. My only desire is to reform other people who try to reform me. And I believe that the only way to reform people is to kill them. And what I want to do is rob them all, rape them all, and kill them all. Well, I just don't think we're going to have...

You're not Walmart material. Thank you for the application process. This is... I'm going to go. I just want to ride the shining machine. I want to shine the floors. I like them when they're shiny. Okay.

Just... Okay. Well, Mickey himself had killed over 40 people during his spree. Oh my God. He was only 31 years old. Oh, I'm such a loser. I'm 33. I haven't killed anyone.

So, the guy that's in charge of everything, he drew a butcher knife set upon Mickey. History records Mickey Harp's last words as, You're a goddamn rough butcher, but cut on and be damned. Uh-oh. Great last words. Cool. His head was nailed to a tree 35 miles away.

It was left there for years until it was nothing more than a skull. Eventually, the road it was displayed on was named Harp's Head Road, which is what it is named to this day. I love it. I love it. It's also, I mean, that had to be used for directions. Like, take a left by the big rock or right by the pond, another left by the head of this guy, this harp guy,

and you're going to be right there. Don't worry about it. That's how you're going to know you're getting close because it physically smells. So Wiley, he had gotten away from the first posse. He was captured later after continuing on a murder spree of his own. His whole thing was seducing women and then killing them, but he was caught trying to collect the bounty on the head of a gang he had ridden with.

He, you know, was riding with a gang. There was a bounty out on the leader, cut his head off, tried going and turning in the bounty, but he was recognized by a man who had gotten to a bar fight with him years earlier. The man, John Bowman, said, At that little harp, he'll have a knife scar under his left nipple from a go-round we had back in Knoxville. And the scar was indeed there.

Do you think when, when he was beheading this guy, he was like, you know, this was more fun when Mickey was around. He probably missed him a little bit. I bet he missed him. Of course he missed him. Yeah. Well, just better keep on going on. That's what Mickey would have wanted.

So Wiley. Step, step, step. So Wiley, like his brother, had his head displayed on a spike as a warning to other outlaws. Very cool. Damn, damn, damn, the harp brothers, dozens. Yeah, that is one of my favorite things that people have done throughout history. And we still do it today with, you know, perp walks and things like that, but just the display of a corpse, you know, as a deterrent is so awesome.

That's one of your favorite things? I think it's interesting. I mean, everybody does it. Humans have done it forever. Yeah, man. I mean, in public hangings, I mean, it's not that long ago that we were still doing this. You know what my favorite thing is? The invention of chocolate.

Yeah, ISIS does it to this day. Yeah, no, I know chocolate is a great invention, Henry. All right, well, now we're going to go from the woods of Kentucky to the deserts of Colorado. Yeah, where they have a tortilla for a flag. I don't know if that's true. So Felipe. Why are you so angry? I don't know, Pedro.

Why am I angry? I think it's because you've got the piece of cactus in your shoe. It's possible. Oh, God, I keep it there, man. I keep it there. Felipe Niero Espinoza was a mass murderer known to have killed at least 30 people in the Colorado territory near the end of the Civil War in the 1860s. His motive was said to be vengeance. Uh-oh.

You'll take my vengeance. You will have his revenge. So Felipe was a Spanish-American, extremely religious. He grew up in a religious group called Los Hermanos Pinatintes. They were known for practicing self-flagellation as a means of removing sin. Other practices included standing on cacti, placing stones in their shoes, and binding themselves to wooden crosses. Sounds like it. Also known as the South American Olympics. What's self-flagellation?

Is that a fart thing? No, that's when you beat yourself with a whip. Still do that today? Yes, still a big thing in the Philippines. It's a crazy Catholic thing. The Catholic Church near the beginning of the 20th century, the Church officially came out and said, No, no, no, no, no. You shouldn't be doing that. Well, yeah, because a bunch of priests started coming while they were doing it.

Most of them were. That's why it started. Oh, I see. So Espinoza was the oldest of five, I believe, known throughout his life as violent and mentally unstable, but it would not be until his 43rd year that his murderous side would finally show. Newspapers at the time described a, quote, jack-o-lantern grin of oversized and gapped teeth. His canines were pronounced and hung lower than any other tooth. I'll put it this way. Again, it's in the West. You don't look, it's not the silent types you watch out for.

It's the screaming jack-o-lantern tooth maniac. Jack-o-lantern grin, the way they describe his teeth. It sounds like a racist caricature. It sounds like he should be the mascot for some majorly baseball team. It reminds me of the Indians. I actually did see a picture of him, like a painting of him, and man, he does look festive. Festive. Yeah, festive. I'm gonna look him up right now because I want to see you.

Espinoza. He's got a fun hat on though. Yeah, in this picture. It's a real festive part. 43 years old, so why did he wait so long to start murdering? Well, let me get into that. Let's talk about, I guess, the general mood of American 1863. Extreme violence was pretty much the norm.

The Civil War was still raging across the country, and in addition to that, settlers and the army itself were battling and having wars against the plains Indians. People thought that, people thought that also that if you brush your teeth, that ghosts would fill the room. Oh, yes. So no one brushed their teeth. I still, I believe that's true. Yeah. I have not brushed my teeth in a good fire, and I haven't seen a ghost since.

That's a little known fact about American that time is that the Union was actually fighting a war on two fronts, both against the South and against the plains Indians, although with the plains Indians, it was mostly just trying to fuck them over as badly as possible, as often as possible. But extreme violence was definitely something that happened. So it was something that people were used to, but despite people being used to it, the crimes of Felipe Espinosa were especially brutal. All right. Yeah, the first victim that was attributed to him was found in May of 1863.

Felipe Espinosa's whole thing was post-mortem mutilation. His first victim, they found him with his heart hacked out of his chest. Where'd it go? I think it was just lying next to him. He gave it to a girl as a valentine, and she screamed and ran away. Oh. So over that magical summer of 1863, 25 more bodies would be found and killed in various ways. Felipe used weapons both long range and handheld,

and there was no real link between the bodies other than the intense mutilation. But Felipe was not alone in a psychopathic quest for his younger brother, Vivian. Oh, Vivian. They wanted a daughter. Was he dressed in like long trusses and constantly combing his long, beautiful blonde hair? I'm a man, god damn it. I'm a man. Shut up, Vivian. Be a girl. So Vivian, he joined Felipe in this life of banditry,

and the story that brought the Espinosa's to the attention of local law enforcement was a man, a wagon, and a horse. That's most Old West stories, Marcus. It's not that unique. A man, a wagon, and a horse. Actually, now that I think about it, yeah, most, oh yeah, it is a man, a wagon, and a horse. So we got word we're looking for a man, a wagon, and a horse. So we are looking for every single person?

Oh, yeah, cool. Good. Wait a second. Let me go look for one. Oh, there's fucking 20 of them, Rob. All right. Any of them got a jack-o-lander-like face? All of them do. Okay. We're whittling it down. So after robbing a wagon heading west, the Espinosa's tied the driver underneath the wagon with his head barely above ground.

Oh, wow. Then they whipped the horses who ran with the man tied underneath still for several miles, almost killing him, they said, when the train, or when the wagon finally stopped, the man's face was almost unrecognizable as human. Jesus. That is a hell of a way to ride. Oh, yeah. Hey, guys, I'm supposed to be up on top. No, no, we know what we're doing.

So the man survived, though, and was able to describe the two brothers and fingered them as the Espinosa's as he had once been their neighbor. Apparently, the Espinosa's had forgotten, but the man... He had to move because those fucking... these quinceaneras are just getting rougher and rougher. And so a one-lieutenant hut, accompanied by US Marshal Austin, hunted the brothers down to a nearby cabin,

where Hunt, wanting to draw the brothers out using a clever ruse, knocked on the door and attempted to recruit Vivian as a soldier in the ongoing Indian wars. Hey, we got a whole bucket of carnitas out here. Anybody who comes unattended, bucket of carnitas. Certainly don't have a bunch of Mexican men nets. Nets in the shape of Mexican men. Yep. So this guy, Lieutenant Hunt, got Vivian outside,

tried to recruit him as a soldier, which was a very common thing at the time, since a lot of soldiers were, you know, fighting the Civil War. They tried to recruit local guys. So Vivian, you know, kind of played along for a long time, but unbeknownst to Hunt, Felipe was inside the cabin with a rifle trained on the lieutenant's head. Finally, Hunt grew tired of the game,

grabbed Felipe's arm, tried to arrest him, Felipe opened fire, and the gunfight began. Now, this is one of those classic Old Western gunfights, where you've got the house surrounded by soldiers. Felipe and Vivian are crawling on the floor, shooting through the windows. Their relatives are feeding them ammunition the entire time, but despite the odds, the espionoses managed to escape.

So, I mean, you know, you root for the underdog. Yeah. And in this case, they were the underdog, so it does remind me of all the Old West, you know, the Firefly family, of course. Oh, yeah, it reminds me of young guns. In Lincoln, New Mexico. We all rooted for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,

because they also looked like it was Robert Redford. And what's his name? And they're handsome and charming and shit. If they look like two fucking hairy, screaming Mexican maniacs, it's gonna be a little harder to root for him. Well, I'm rooting for them. You know, at this point, pretty much, I mean, they played what you call like a frontier goof.

They hadn't killed anyone yet. At this time, all they'd done is, you know, tie a guy underneath a wagon and horribly mutilated his face beyond all repair. Technically, that's just a funny prank for the Wild West. This is before the hidden camera gags and stuff like that, and it was just you tie a person to the bottom of a wagon and hope they, you know, get miserably mangled.

So, after the escape, the American officials stripped the Espinosa home of all belongings, including the recovered money from the previous wagon robbery. Sometime later, the brothers returned to the home to find their family in distress and without means of basic survival, and this is the point when Felipe fucking snaps. Right.

Surely after the gunfight, Felipe was supposedly visited by a vision of the Virgin Mary who told him that it was his sacred duty to avenge the death of his family four years earlier during the Mexican-American War. Six members of Felipe's family had been killed by American chefs. By American shells, the Virgin Mary told him to kill 100 gringos for every one of his family that was killed. Six hundred would be his ultimate goal.

That's great. Henry, I don't ask you to do many impressions, but can you just do the Virgin Mary telling him to kill gringos, please? Felipe? Hello, Felipe. Felipe, stop having sex with the raccoon. It's me, the Virgin Mary.

Yes, Felipe? Whoa. I don't know. It's weird that I'm even delivering this message, but you know how your family was killed for the war that we all signed up for, those six people, and they got killed in that? Yeah.

I'm going to need you to go ahead. I know. I'm going to need you to go ahead, and I need you to kill about... Let me just do the math. Six times 100. I need you to kill 600 gringos. For every one of them, they got killed

in that totally fair war that everyone signed up for. Okay? Hey, and why don't you do a little prayer for me because it's like, I don't know what a girl's got to do to get fucked up in heaven. I'm sick of this nickname. I believe, I believe. Well, another account says that Felipe was actually inspired

in a fight against frontier gentrification. Really? Yes, because Espinoza's family, and this was a big problem for a lot of Mexicans at this time, a lot of Mexicans had been living in the American West for hundreds of years before the white man showed up. No, no, Marcus, that is wrong.

We went and we, there was no one there. We were given it by Jesus Christ. That was our, that was our land to take part in. That was our manifest destiny. So Felipe just looked up one day and he's just like, gentrification, what's with all the yogurt shops? All the muffin stores. This used to be a terrible ghetto frontier.

Well, all of these Mexicans who had been there for five generations or more, they suddenly found themselves to be Americans after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. You should be thanking us. Yes, they should be thanking us. We started signing treaties with these people, but unfortunately, as you know,

Americans and treaties don't really jive with the outcome all the time. So essentially they just started taking Mexican land and giving it to white settlers. That's because you always have to have somebody behind the person signing the treaty so you can see if they have their fingers crossed behind their back.

And we did, so technically that was all legal. Well, at any rate, Espinoza's motivation was simple. Riven. Oh yes. And he was brazen as well. He was very upfront about what his goal was. He sent a letter to Territorial Governor John Evans,

laid out his plan in very simple terms. He demanded pardons for all of his gang members because he wasn't alone. And he also demanded a large plot of land or else the killing would continue. Of course, the governor declined despite a threat against him. He also demanded a large plot of land

or else the governor declined despite a threat against his own life. Espinoza killed a man named Jim Harkins. The Sunday Gazette would later describe the murder scene. Harkins had been shot in the middle of the forehead with a Colt Navy revolver. Then the murderers had taken the axe and split his head open, top of the mouth.

And then, judging from the appearance of his head and the axe, they had hit him on each side of the head with the head of the axe. And two pieces of skull in his brain on the ground on top of his head. He was also stabbed twice in the left breast. Frontier newspapers were very matter-of-fact. The editor was thrilled.

The guy writing this story was thrilled. Ever since newspapers existed, people love that blood. Oh, man, they absolutely do. So the next victim showed up days later. A man named William Bruce was found hacked to pieces outside his home, and a makeshift crucifix made from sticks was protruding from the bullet hole in his forehead.

Pretty awesome. Brie Manson, I love a good forehead. An art installation of the forehead is pretty powerful. You could call it that. So most victims were in secluded areas and completely random. One incident saw the brothers kill an entire small mining settlement, picking off the isolated men one by one

after sometimes stalking them for hours. Now that's like a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie. It really is. I mean, how did these two guys get... I mean, these miners, they all had black lung, and they were slow, and I'm sure they were going to die in weeks anyway. But it can't be easy to do this.

I mean, this is a fantastic horror movie. Can you imagine how terrifying that would be? You're out there, you're secluded. The West is a dangerous and new place to most of these guys. And all of a sudden, people just start dropping dead. You just start finding these people. Also, they would play on the racism of people where they would show up,

they would send one man in and he's like, hey, who wants to buy a piñata? And all the miners are like, I need more in my life right now than a horse full of candy. And then they buy the piñata and they don't know that Felipe is hiding inside of it. Oh, okay.

Sort of a Trojan horse type situation with a Mexican version. So he's in a piñata horse as opposed to a wood one. The bodies were disemboweled, decapitated. Their hearts sometimes cut out. Crosses were slashed onto their chests, stakes sometimes driven through their chests so hard that they would go into the earth.

Do we know that they weren't vampires? That Felipe and Vivian weren't... No, the people they had to murder. Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm saying. So your theories that Felipe and Vivian Espinoza were fucking vampire hunters? You can just put that word behind any Felipe, the vampire hunter, yes.

I believe it. So newspapers before his identity became known simply began referring to Felipe as the Axeman of Colorado. See, they give these people the coolest names. So why would that... there's not a deterrent there. I want to be the Axeman of Colorado. That's also really disappointed the guy who was calling himself

the Axeman of Colorado had developed a really early version of the electric guitar. Right, right, right. Paranoia ran rampant across the Colorado territory. Although Felipe Espinoza was known by name, nobody knew what he looked like. On one occasion, a settler new to the town of Alma was almost lynched under suspicion of being the killer

until a local pastor talked the crowd down. Good Lord, and I can imagine that... No small way did racism maybe feature into this whole landline? This is America, Henry. Racism never existed here. We don't blame minorities for the crimes that others have committed just to make ourselves feel better.

It's not like the NYPD still do it. No, institutional racism's a myth. Just like evolution. Oh yeah, especially in 1863 Colorado. Looking for a man named Felipe Espinoza. If a guy was out in the sun for too long, they were going to lynch him up. No, they would say we're looking for a guy named Felipe Espinoza.

Or he might be a future president. We just don't know, because anybody has a chance in America. Felipe, however, would be soon identified a lumberjack driving his wagon west once more, a man, a wagon, a story. That he would slip lumberjacks, all they do is gossip. You know what it is, because they only get to talk to beavers most of the time. Oh yeah, and you know, beavers are always chatting about something.

Actually, at this time in America, you're pretty spot on, Henry. Most of the people that were in these territories were mountain men. Guys like Kit Carson that had gone up into the mountains. A lot of them were beaver trappers. And in fact, every once in a while, here's a fun little fact. Once a year, all of these mountain men would gather together in a big mountain man party. And if somebody didn't show up, very likely they were dead.

Oh, okay, sort of a leather thing. Kind of a leather party, I can just picture that. You know, the interesting fact about the beaver, it was the original chainsaw. Oh yeah? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Stick your finger in its butthole. He just gets to chop it. I was about to say that.

Well, this beaver's dead. So, the only people showing up to the mountain man party with hors d'oeuvres. I don't think there's round little sandwiches that have like the cream cheese and other stuff and be like, I just thought, somebody would be hungry, right? Hi, I'm a mountain man. Well, upper areas of the new territory of California in San Francisco. Oh, yes.

Yes, hi. Hello, hi. My name's Terry, Terry. Terry, Terry, huh? What are you doing the mountains, Terry? Well, mostly, I love to watch the seasons change. The beautiful, the reds, the greens, the yellows. I just, the way it changes, and a lot of times what I like to do

is I describe it for the newspaper and this thing I like to call a soliloquy. All right. What are you doing to me? Why are you tying me to the tree? I was going to go, all right, he's one of us. Just unzipped him pants and come over here. You know, the funny thing is that the West was actually filled with dudes like that. Oh, they were always butt-banging each other, right?

No, no. I mean, guys going out like just nature dudes. Going out like writing stories, sitting back east to be published in Harper's Weekly. Right, right, right. Oh, yeah, we were, in some ways, we were more civilized then. Hmm. Think about that. I mean, no, don't, because it's not.

You could just rape a woman as she becomes her wife. Right. I'm talking about conservationism. Oh, okay. So, the lumberjack, he was actually shot at point-blank range by the espinozas, but not without getting a good look at his assailants. The sound spooked the horses who carried the wounded lumberjack to safety. The only thing that saved him was a condensed copy of the Emancipation Proclamation

that he kept in his breast pocket at all times. It's just as American as it comes. That is the most American story I have ever heard, actually. I love that story. Felipe's diary would later show that he had written on that day that he had, quote, killed a man in a wagon. And this is very interesting. Different diaries than a girl has.

Yeah, very different diaries. All of Felipe's deeds were recorded by the man himself. He kept a murder diary. I love it. Yeah. That's pretty sweet. Yep. But the man Felipe assumed he killed would be the first person to give the killers a face.

And, of course, it's time again. It's positive. All right. Yeah. Can I ride on top of the wagon this time, boys? All right, but only if you sit on my knee for half an hour. Not again. It's just a good old-fashioned posse time, everybody.

So the posse was formed, and we were able to follow the tracks of the espionoses along the way that would find another mutilated corpse so damaged that he was only able to be identified by his brother, who happened to be a part of the posse. Wow. Very sad tale there. So the espionoses would be found the next morning, casually tending to a campfire,

unaware that the posse was closing in. The posse spotted a man whistling while tending to his horse. They opened fire and shot the younger espinoza vivian through the head. Ooh. Felipe, however, who, in an odd coincidence, just happened to be dressed in the exact same clothes of one of the members of the posse. This is why you do not wear uniforms as a posse. Right, right.

No, it just turned out that the guy in the posse shopped at the same store that a man that Felipe had killed earlier, because Felipe had a habit. That is embarrassing. That is, that is, nothing was more embarrassing than seeing someone else in your own shirt. Yeah, well, Felipe had a habit of wearing dead men's clothes. Well, naturally, yeah.

Those were the original stores. So Felipe slipped away. The posse gave chase, but eventually gave up. They returned to the campsite. What do you mean they gave up? They gave up! Yeah, I'm done. They gave up.

What kind of posse are we, boys? They needed a big, they needed a pep speech. They needed like a good coach to come in there and let them know they're the best posse around. Well, that man. Now, you knew when you were asking, you know this is a fair weather posse. This whole time is that we're just hanging out until it's fun and cool,

but as soon as it gets heavy, we got to go. You know why? Because you know why. I want to be an actor in the circus. So they returned to the campsite and they found Felipe's diary. Inside the diary, they found... I knew it was Felipe's because it was one of those Lisa Frank ones with the pink unicorns on the front of it.

So inside the diary, they found all of his killings listed in great detail, both the act of the killing and the post-mortem mutilation, long political screeds against the American government, imagined conversations with family members and behind it all, a strong religious conviction justifying every single one of his deeds. Sincerely. Sincerely.

Voy a tener mi venganza. Felipe Espinosa. He was an educated guy then, huh? I mean, he at the very least knew how to write and killed a man in a wagon. That's a lot! Most people were illiterate and couldn't write at all. Yeah, most people.

But yeah, I mean, he was... In fact, the letter that he wrote to the governor was actually very well written. And he had ideas. He definitely had ideas, but unfortunately decided to follow, you know, psychopathic Virgin Mary into a quest to kill 600 gringos. Oh, okay.

So after his brother's death, Espinosa laid low for a few months before resurfacing with a new partner, his 14-year-old nephew, Jose, and on October 8, 1863, Felipe came across a wagon carrying a Mexican woman and a white man. The white man managed to escape while the woman, a one Dolores Sanchez,

was left to be raped by Felipe repeatedly. Felipe tied her up saying, I'll be right back, I gotta go get this white dude, but don't go anywhere. She managed to wriggle loose and was able to find the local military outpost, and the military now had the best description yet of Felipe Espinosa,

and they set a man named Thomas Tate Tobin on the trail. Triple T. Triple T, man. People say chivalry is dead now, but I think it was dead before. It seems like most of these guys just hop up and leave at the first sight of trouble, and their wives are just there. Immediately.

Thomas Tate Tobin did the things like, for five dollars, I'll bring you two of them, but for fifteen dollars, I'll bring the head, the tail, the whole damn thing. Oh, wow, the tail even. It's exciting. Tobin, he was a famous tracker and scout. He led campaigns against Indians

alongside Wild Bill Hickok, Buffalo Bill Cody, and Kit Carson, real Old West sideshow type of guy. Tobin, lifelong friends with Kit Carson, said to be the only man to surpass Carson in tracking, shooting, and scouting abilities. A short... We were out in the water, a hundred men out in the water,

and there was a Mexican deep in the ocean, and he popped up out. His eyes, like a doll's eyes, rolled back. A hundred men went in, five men came out. Wow, he killed ninety-five. There's a lot of people that died in the water.

I don't know why I'm doing this, Quinn. Yeah, why are you doing Jaws? But you know, I mean, you could just flip this. This guy is also a serial killer. Yeah, I don't know. Everyone's a serial killer. No, Tobin was probably a pretty big piece of shit. Right.

I mean, yeah, I mean, he was one of those, you know, psychopathic Indian killer. It was said that he could crack a grasshopper through sagebrush. Which is also an Old West term for finding the clitoris. His reputation, known throughout the Southwest, in October of 1863, Tobin was in the prime of his life.

He set out with fifteen Union soldiers. What did they form? They formed... Hmm, what could it be? A posse. Oh, it's a posse. Isn't that exciting? I mean, this is actually more of an official type of...

I had beer for breakfast and I had rum for dessert. Oh, my. You had all the food. Oh, yeah. So this posse set out with fifteen Union soldiers and a boy to tend to Tobin's horse. Oh, the poor boy. Now, that's the one.

We just toss him around our laps over and down again. This is the problem. Is it like every single posse always involved some twelve-year-old boy who was just fucking always, always murdered? Yes. Stop bringing the boy? I would just say.

No, the boy was there to tend to Tobin's horse. Every time Tobin got off his horse to go inspect the trail. You don't want the horse walking off and Tobin gets off the horse a lot. Right, right, right. You know, I think it's a lot of fun is that they think I'm a twelve-year-old boy

but actually I'm a forty-five-year-old little person. Oh, my God. It's like the movie Orphan. Proportional dwarfism. So they stopped only for a few hours of sleep every night. Tobin allowed no fires and anyone in the company that complained or grew exhausted got sent right the fuck on back to the fort.

Thank God. Yeah. That's where I want to be. I want to be away from you. You sociopath. Fuck no, man. I want to find Espinoza. I want to start a fire and have s'mores.

That's what I thought we were going to be doing out here. So after three days of constant search, the posse spotted smoke from a small campfire around which Espinoza and his fourteen-year-old nephew were found warming their hands. Tobin snuck up and watched the duo for a long while before Felipe, possibly sensing the end, stood up and stretched his arms out in a Jesus Christ pose.

Tobin opened fire on the fiend and shot him in the stomach as Felipe called out. You just pay him under me. And collapsed into the fire. The nephew was quickly dispatched as he attempted to flee from the site. Tobin walked up to Espinoza who had managed to pull himself out of the fire.

Tobin recalled asking him, Do you know who I am? Felipe replied, Bruto, Bruto. Tobin pulled out his machete, lopped the heavy blade down. Oh, yeah, the enemy got us. Hacking twice to fully sever the head. Upon his return to Fort Garland,

Tobin immediately strode into the office of Colonel Topan. He announced, Got him. Got him. Topan asked, Got what? I got this fucking bag of heads. No, none of them. None of them are Felipe. Oh, I made a mistake.

I left all the heads. Oh, yeah, I don't know what these are. Oh, yeah, these are guys who wouldn't. They didn't scoop my ice cream fast enough. Tobin reached into the flower sack he was carrying and pulled out the heads of Felipe and Jose Espinoza as for the promised bounty of $550. The governor of Colorado soon revealed that the state,

its funds depleted from the Indian Wars, wars just didn't have the money to pay Tobin. But in its place, he was gifted an elaborate coat and a limited edition Henry rifle. A coat? An elaborate coat. I just beheaded two people and I get a coat. An elaborate coat.

I didn't win a golf tournament. And a rifle. No, I'd like my $550, please. You get a coat. I don't like this country anymore. The head would be a traveling exhibit, as was the style at the time, until the early 1900s. A traveling exhibit.

Yeah. No, they did that. They used to do that all the time. Right, right, right. They did the same thing with the, when they first, that was a problem. When they dug up King Tut, they just immediately just put him on the road.

Yeah. So floating in a jar of alcohol, the head eventually found its way to the desk of the editor of the fair play flume. And later, in the offices of the Rocky Mountain News, the heads would eventually disappear into legend. Ooh. Ooh.

Somebody drank all the booze, and then the head just went away. Just didn't survive. And that's dripped away. Two tales of frontier madness. I'll tell you this, man. Every time I read about these time periods, it's just like, thank Christ, it's 2015.

Yeah, just toilet paper, running water, you know, plumbing. I got a memory foam topper to my bed. I can't handle just sleeping on a rock. No. It's fine. It's terrible. That's your family. It's your lineage.

Your lineage. You're part fucking, you're part coyote. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. And I'm proud of it. Part overseer as well. Well, you know, that's the other side of the family. There's one side I'm proud of,

and one that's a little dubious. That's the part that makes Marcus a good producer. Oh, I see. Yes. So we're his slaves. Managing is in my blood. Oh, great. Great.

All right. Wow. Frontier serial killers. Very intense. Fun stories. Oh, yeah. Great stories, man. Yeah.

So if you haven't subscribed to the podcast, go to iTunes, subscribe, rate and review while they're there. That pops us up into the top 100, the top 50 of iTunes. Well, let's try to get into the top fucking 20. If you haven't gone rate and reviewed yet, go and do that. Follow all of us on to follow last podcast on the left on Twitter at LP on the left. That's at Ben Kissel at Henry loves you. I'm at Marcus Parks.

Go to cave comedy radio.com slash last podcast on the left to get your last podcast on the left t-shirt, the $25 domestic $40 international. And it takes it. I'll go and warn you. It takes a little bit to get out. Sometimes it can take up to a month where a podcast, not a t-shirt company. So please be patient with us, but your t-shirt will come as soon as it can possibly get there. So thank you so much for all the kind words that I have received on Facebook and on Twitter

and things like that. It really means a lot to all of us because this business is very difficult and insane and encouragement is always well received. Absolutely. And you know, guys, the Facebook page is fucking great. We're coming back. I've been doing some public meltdowns on there to be included on my hotel journey. That's great.

I'm doing some meltdowns on Twitter. So make sure to follow me for those. You have really been doing some. I'm not going to say I'm concerned. Okay. Very good. Thank you, Henry. You can go to Facebook to read an article that I just discovered about how dirt is a natural

antidepressant. So both of you can fuck off. Oh, well, it sounds like you're pretty angry. Apparently it's got some information about how UFOs come from ultra-terrestrial civilization inside the Earth's mantle. Oh. So I'll be putting that up shortly. All right.

Well, well, Hyal-Gene, everyone, and coming next week, that phrase is going to have an extra special meaning. Can I get the Hail Satan of you, Satan? Hail you, Satan. Hail yourselves, everyone. Hail me, please, this one. And McGoose relations. Oh, yeah.

McGoose relations. You know, I'll just show up in my hotel room and see what happens. Nothing. Don't go to his hotel room. Do not. Nothing of interest will happen. No. Just come over.

No. Come over. Okay. Bye. All right.