Legends of the Old West - PLEASANT VALLEY WAR Ep. 5 | “Lock, Stock, and Barrel”

Episode Date: August 4, 2021

When members of the Graham family feel they were denied justice after the deadly ambush of Bill Graham, they team up with the Blevins brothers to take the law into their own hands. They attack the Tewksbury family and commit two brutal murders. After the attack, the Blevins family suffers devastating losses during a shootout in the town of Holbrook. Join Black Barrel+ for bingeable seasons and no commercials: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join For more details, visit our website www.blackbarrelmedia.com and check out our social media pages. We’re @OldWestPodcast on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. This show is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please visit AirwaveMedia.com to check out other great podcasts like Ben Franklin’s World, Once Upon A Crime, and many more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Fortnite created to give players of all ages, including kids and families, a safe digital space to play in. Download Fortnite on consoles, PC, cloud services, or Android and play Lego Fortnite for free. Rated ESRB E10+. August of 1887 was the deadliest month to date of the Tewksbury-Graham feud in Pleasant Valley,

Arizona. In late July, Martin Blevins disappeared and was probably killed by Apaches. Martin was the father of the Blevins family, a group of outlaws who supported the Graham side of the feud. As search parties scoured the area for Martin, a confrontation happened at a ranch that was owned by a Tewksbury ally. A Tewksbury brother shot and killed a Blevins brother. Then exactly one week later, a Graham brother, Bill Graham, was shot during an alleged ambush. Bill lived for 24 hours after suffering gory injuries, and during that time, he named his attackers. He said Ed Tewksbury fired the fatal shot, and two more Tewksbury brothers were present at the scene, along with several others. By that point, after four years of bad blood between the Tewksbury family and the Graham family, the Grahams believed Bill's story without question.

But that didn't mean there weren't questions. In fact, there were lots of questions. The coroner's inquest would cast doubt on virtually every piece of Bill's story. The gunshot wounds, the location of the ambush, and Bill Graham's ability to identify his attackers. And on top of all those problems with Bill's accusations, there was a dilemma that was even more troubling. Someone else claimed responsibility for the shooting. But none of that mattered to the Graham family. By the end of the month, they would have their revenge. priority has always been audio and the stories we're able to share with you. But we also sell merch. And organizing that was made both possible and easy with Shopify. Shopify is the global

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I'm your host, Chris Wimmer. And this is a six-part series about the bloodiest feud in the West, the Pleasant Valley War. This is Episode 5, Lock, Stock, and Barrel. After Bill Graham died, a coroner's inquest convened to hear testimony about the shooting. The story that Bill relayed to his friends and family before he died was this. Bill left the family cabin very early on the morning of the shooting. He was riding on a trail north of the Graham Ranch, and at some point, Ed Tewksbury stepped out from behind a tree and shot him twice. Then two of Ed's brothers, John and Jim, along with several other men,

stepped out from hiding spots along the trail. Presumably, the group then rode away and left Bill to die. But Bill made it back to the cabin and survived for another day. On the surface, that sounds like a story that would be common in the Old West. But at the inquest, numerous problems came to light. And the first question was raised by Bob Sixby, one of the men who treated the terrible gunshot wound to Bill's abdomen. Bill was gut shot, and the wound to the front of the stomach was terrible. Bob Sixby thought that the severity of the wound made it look much more like

an exit wound than an entrance wound. But if that was the case, if Bill had been shot in the back, then how did he know who pulled the trigger? How could he be positive that Ed Tewksbury was the shooter? There were no good answers. But even if you set aside those questions, there were deeper problems. The area where Bill said he was ambushed was mostly flat and open in all directions. There were some gentle hills along the path, but none of consequence. The only trees in the area were small, skinny juniper pines.

The grass was low, and there were no boulders or other obstructions that could provide cover. other obstructions that could provide cover. So, how would Ed Tewksbury have been able to hide behind a tree so that he could step out and ambush Bill Graham? And where would the other men have hidden if there were no high hills or boulders or ravines or gulches or even tall grass? It was starting to seem impossible that the ambush could have happened in the location that was specified by Bill. And another strike against Bill's story was that the closest area that matched his description was nearly a day away. If he had been ambushed in that spot, he never would have survived long enough to ride back home and tell his story. So if he was lying about the site of the ambush, why? What was he hiding? Now, it also has to be acknowledged that the trauma of the event could have affected Bill's memory. It happened in the early morning, probably in low light. He might not have been able to see

very well, and the shock of the ambush might have played tricks on his mind. He might have believed everything he said, and it still could have been wrong. Ed Tewksbury and the others who were named in Bill's statement always denied participating in the ambush. The man who did claim responsibility was Deputy Sheriff James Houck. He said he was trying to arrest Bill's older brother, Johnny. Houck said he rose well before dawn and stationed himself along the trail. He'd studied Johnny's routine, and he expected Johnny to pass that way. At daybreak, a horseman approached from the direction of the Graham Ranch. Houck stepped out from behind a tree and aimed his rifle at the rider.

The lawman said he ordered the rider to throw up his hands. The man on the horse supposedly looked up and was startled. It was then that Houck realized that the rider was not Johnny Graham. Houck turned his rifle barrel up to show he was not a threat and yelled, I've got the wrong man. According to Houck, Bill Graham yelled, I haven't, and pulled his pistol. Then he fired a wild shot at the deputy. Houck was a much more experienced gunman, and he returned fire from about 40 yards away and mortally wounded Bill Graham. A friend of the Graham family accused Deputy Houck of covering for Ed Tewksbury.

The friend claimed that Houck and the Tewksbury shared connections through the sheep industry, but the Tewksbury's weren't sheep herders. Their operation focused on hogs, horses, and cattle. In addition, there was no obvious animosity between Houck and either family, the Grams or the Tewksberries. Houck was known to be tough, but not a liar. Houck's explanation of events seems to be the most likely, that it was a case of mistaken identity. James Houck and Ed Tewksbury had similar features. They were about the same size, and they both had dark hair and dark complexions. In the low light of the early morning, and if Houck had his hat pulled down low, it was easy to understand how Bill Graham

could have mistaken James Houck for Ed Tewksbury. And then the rest of the inconsistencies in Bill's story could have been due to trauma. But as previously stated, none of that mattered to the Graham family. The Tewksbury family already assumed there would be trouble. Jim Tewksbury had killed Hampton Blevins and a hash knife cowboy just one week earlier. Lawmen were already on the way to the Tewksbury Ranch to arrest Jim before they learned of Bill Graham's dying declaration. And after news of Bill's accusation made the rounds, the Tewksburys were even more incentivized to literally head for the hills. When a sheriff's posse arrived at the Tewksbury Ranch, there were only two people there, J.D. and the wife of J.D.'s eldest son, John. J.D. and John's wife were not very cooperative,

but somehow the posse managed to figure out that the rest of the family, 16 people in total, had gone into hiding in the nearby Sierra Ancha Mountains. There, tucked away in hard-to-reach crevices, were several ruins of ancient people who predated the Apaches, possibly some who belonged to the Salado or Mogollon cultures. And though the name of the Mogollon Rim may have been more directly tied to a governor of New Mexico in the 1700s, it almost certainly has deeper roots in the Mogollon culture, a culture that drifted out of history in the 1400s. They cut dwellings into the cliff walls, which the Tewksbury brothers frequently used for shelter

when they were out on long hunting trips. Rather than follow the Tewksbury boys and their families into the mountains, the posse rode several miles north to the Sixby Ranch. From there, the sheriff sent a communique back to his home base in Prescott. The Tewksburys were in hiding, he reported, but he thought they would come out soon. Meanwhile, word spread quickly that officials from Prescott were in the area.

Andy Blevins, the oldest Blevins brother, usually tried to stay as far away from the law as he could, but his brother Hampton's murder spurred him into action. He rode to the Graham Ranch and joined up with Tom and Charlie Graham. Together, they rode to the general store where the sheriff and his posse were staying out of the sun and waiting for news. Andy told the sheriff that if he didn't take the Tewksbury's into custody, a war would start. George Newton, who owned the Middleton Ranch

where Jim Tewksbury had killed Hampton Blevins, rode to the store as well. He insisted the deputies come out and look at his cabin that had been burned to the ground. The lawmen now had three serious cases on their hands, two killings and a possible arson. They badly needed the Tewksbury's to come out of hiding to straighten everything out. But the Tewksbury's were stubborn. On the twelfth day of hiding, they sent word to the posse that they would not leave their mountain fortress. They were too afraid of what the Blevins brothers and the Graham brothers might do to their families. The sheriff believed them

and decided that it was getting too expensive to wait them out. He and his posse returned to Prescott after two weeks on the trail and with little result. When the posse left town, the Blevins family and the Graham family felt the law abandon them. The Blevins clan demanded justice for a Tewksbury killing Hampton, and the Graham family demanded justice for a Tewksbury allegedly killing Bill. They felt the only thing left to do was to join forces for frontier justice. When the Grams made the decision to take the law into their own hands, they weren't picky about which Tewksbury they attacked. Bill Graham had named Ed Tewksbury as his killer, but he'd said John and Jim Tewksbury were also present.

And Jim was the known killer of Hampton Blevins, so Ed and Jim would logically be the first targets for revenge. But it was John Tewksbury who ended up in the crosshairs. On August 31, 1887, John Tewksbury, his brothers, and their wives and children quietly made their way out of their mountain retreat and back to their ranches. John's wife had stayed at the ranch with John's father because she was eight months pregnant with their second child. The morning after they returned, John woke up early. He went out to check on their horses, as he always did.

One was missing from the corral. It wasn't unusual for a horse to occasionally get out and wander away at night. But with tensions high, an escape could be necessary at any moment, so horses were even more valuable than normal. They couldn't afford to lose even one. John's friend and business partner agreed to accompany him to find his horse. They armed themselves and then carefully followed the tracks across a creek which wrapped around the corral toward the southwest. They carefully listened for sounds of the horse and anything

else that might filter through the cottonwoods and scrub pines. The trees quickly grew thick beyond the front yard of the cabin. You could lose sight of the cabin after walking about 15 yards into the brush. John and his friend advanced with caution. Eventually, they heard the whinny of the horse not far away. They moved deeper into the brush, and then they heard the crack of a single gunshot. John slumped to the ground. The bullet hit him in the back, and he died instantly. John's friend froze as a group of men emerged from the brush. He recognized three of them as Andy Blevins, Johnny Graham, and Tom Graham. The friend raised his hands to surrender. Instead of shooting the friend, one of the gunmen swung his rifle like a baseball bat. He clubbed John's friend in the head.

The friend crumpled to the ground and tried to crawl away. Then one of the assailants picked up a rock and bashed the man's skull until he was dead. Johnny Graham pulled out a knife. He grabbed a handful of John Tewksbury's hair and made ready to scalp him, but Tom Graham stopped him. At that point, Andy Blevins and a few of the others mounted up and rode away. But Tom and Johnny stayed behind. They still had unfinished business with the Tewksbury family. At the Tewksbury ranch, family members heard the gunshot in the distance. One of J.D.'s step-sons looked outside and saw what appeared to be gun smoke rising above the pines about a quarter of a mile away.

As he walked out to the corral to get a better look, more gunshots rang out from the woods. This time they were closer. The bullets smacked the barn and popped in the dirt around him as he raced back to the cabin. For the next eight hours, gunshots flew from the tree line near the creek. The Tewksbury family huddled in the cabin and hid the children behind the stove for extra protection. The shooting stopped at sundown, but the Tewksburys didn't dare go to sleep that night. They didn't know who was terrorizing them, but there were three obvious possibilities. The Blevins brothers, the Graham brothers,

possibilities, the Blevins brothers, the Graham brothers, or the Apaches. The long night passed in quiet, but neither John Tewksbury nor his friend returned. In the gray light of the morning, one of the family members spotted a bad sign. About a quarter mile away, vultures hovered over the pines. over the pines. Ed Tewksbury took on the awful task of going to look for the source of the buzzard's attention. He walked quietly and carefully, rifle at the ready. He lived his whole life on the frontier and did not scare or disgust easily, but what he found pushed him over the edge. Dozens of turkey vultures cackled and fought over the remains of his brother's body, and the same desecration was probably happening to the body of John's friend. Ed rushed at the birds and tried to brush them away, but they kept coming back. He did the best he could, but gave up and went back to the cabin to deliver the

bad news to his family. His stepmother and a younger member of the family returned to the scene and covered the bodies with blankets until the law could arrive. It took several days for a justice of the peace to ride out from Prescott to conduct a coroner's inquest. The inquest was handled right at the scene of the crime, and by the time ten men could be found to convene a jury, the remains of the dead men were putrefying in the summer sun. The son of one of the jurors remembered his father telling him that they all gagged throughout the inquest. When the proceeding mercifully ended, there was nothing left to do but ask for volunteers to shovel the remains into packing cases

and bury them where they lay. Meanwhile, news of the murder spread, partially thanks to Andy Blevins. When Andy and his companions fled Pleasant Valley after the killings, they pressed hard through the night to get to the town of Holbrook. At some point after the disappearance of Martin Blevins, the father of the family, and the murder of Hampton Blevins, one of the middle brothers, the rest of the Blevins clan fled Pleasant Valley for the supposed safety of Holbrook. As Andy and his allies rode through the night toward Holbrook, they kept themselves awake by telling stories of bravado and taking snorts of whiskey.

And it was Andy's drinking and bragging that allowed people to piece together the story of the murders of John Tewksbury and his friend. That particular night was quiet and still, and the voices of the riders carried easily over the landscape. Their path took them past Dry Lake, where a man named James Shelley was camped for the night. Shelley was a school teacher and a postmaster. If you remember back to the previous episode, Shelley's daughter was the woman whose family ran a store in the town of Heber.

A Navajo war party rode up to the store looking for a member of the Blevins family, and Shelley's daughter ran outside with loaves of freshly baked bread. And now, as James Shelley sat at his campsite, he heard Andy Blevins brag about the recent killings as Andy and his co-conspirators rode by. Shelley already wondered why the Blevins family had suddenly moved to Holbrook from their ranch at Canyon Creek, and now he thought he had the answer. He thought they knew what Andy planned to do, which meant they also thought the Tewksbury's would seek violent retribution. The Blevins family must have thought

Holbrook was a good place to lay low. Based on the town's reputation, it probably sounded like a safe bet. Holbrook was notorious for lawlessness, despite the evidence to the contrary that was about to be presented. Just the year before, 26 men were killed by gunfire in the town of only 250 full-time residents. The Salvation Army designated the town as a special target for evangelizing. When Andy Blevins and his crew got to town, Andy continued to crow about his killing of John Tewksbury and the other man, whom he admitted he didn't even know. Residents of Holbrook didn't like it, and they immediately pressed the Apache County Sheriff to take action. That sheriff was Commodore Perry Owens,

a colorful character whom you met way back in Season 1 of this podcast. In appearance, he's essentially a smaller version of Wild Bill Hickok. His long hair and mustache looked like they were copied from photos of Wild Bill. He didn't drink, gamble, or womanize. Many dismissed him as a dime store cowboy, only to find out that looks could be deceiving. He'd worked as a cowhand, a buffalo hunter, a shotgun rider for a stagecoach line, and now as a lawman. He was cool under fire and great with a gun. Years later, someone asked Owens which experience as a lawman was most memorable. He said it was the day he went to arrest Andy Blevins in Holbrook, Arizona.

Owens already wanted Andy Blevins. Recently, Owens sent Blevins a notice to surrender on an outstanding warrant for stealing horses from the Navajo. Andy never responded. Then the entire Blevins family set up shop in Holbrook, and the townspeople swore out a complaint against the family they knew to be murderers and thieves. Men of the town went so far as to form an armed posse to help Sheriff Owens arrest the family, but Owens thanked them and sent them home. This was a job for the sheriff, and Owens would handle it himself. He cleaned his guns in a nearby livery stable, and then strode down a dusty street toward the Blevins' house.

For a family that was supposedly trying to lay low, the Blevins' clan picked a house that offered no concealment. It was right alongside the railroad tracks, and on that side of the tracks, there were only three or four ramshackle structures. So a house with a bunch of people going in and out would have been obvious to everyone in town, especially since the other side of the tracks was lined with shops. So in the first week of September, 1887, Sheriff Owens walked beside the tracks toward the small house that held all but one of the Blevins family members. There was a lone cottonwood tree in front of the house, and a horse was tethered to a branch.

Owens stepped up onto the porch and looked through the windows to the left and right of the door. up onto the porch and looked through the windows to the left and right of the door. He saw Andy and other men inside. Owens knocked. The wife of John Blevins, Andy's 20-year-old half-brother, answered the door with a baby in her arms. She politely called for Andy, who came to the door and peered around his sister-in-law. Owens was blunt. He told Andy to step outside because he was under arrest for stealing horses. In response, Andy flashed a pistol he'd hidden behind his back and tried to close the door. Owens jammed his boot in the opening and swiveled his Winchester into position. He fired a split second before Andy could pull the trigger. Owen's bullet hit Andy in the stomach and splattered blood all over John Blevins' wife and baby. As Andy crashed

to the floor, a door opened on the side of the house. John Blevins slid a rifle through the opening and fired at the sheriff. The bullet missed Owen's and hit the horse that was tethered to the tree. The horse shrieked, pulled itself free, and ran away. Sheriff Owens pivoted and fired at John Blevins. The bullet hit John in the shoulder and he yelled as he fell back into the house. At the same time, Andy dragged himself along the floor toward a window at the front of the house. Andy dragged himself along the floor toward a window at the front of the house. He slid it open and aimed at the sheriff. Owens spun toward the window and fired.

The bullet smashed through the thin wood boards of the house and killed Andy Blevins. Owens stepped away from the porch and stood in front of the house for a few moments. He reloaded his rifle and stayed alert for a new attack. Suddenly, one of Andy's friends jumped through an open side window with a gun. Owen stepped to his right and fired. The bullet tore through the man's back, pierced his lung, and broke his shoulder. He coughed up blood as he fell face down in the dust. And then, the youngest remaining Blevins' brother, 15-year-old Samuel Blevins, burst through the front door with a pistol. He had grabbed a gun from one of his brothers, and he screamed in rage as he leveled it at the sheriff. Owens fired and hit Samuel in the chest. The teenager fell to the ground, and the gunfire ended. It was all over

in the space of about a minute. Blood was everywhere, and the women and children wailed in the house. Samuel Blevins was dead. Andy Blevins died around midnight. John Blevins was badly wounded, but he survived. Andy's friend lingered in agony for several more days before he died of his injuries. Over the course of about five weeks, the men of the Blevins family were nearly wiped out. Martin Blevins had disappeared and was presumed dead. Andy, Hampton, and Samuel Blevins were killed in shootouts. John Blevins was in no shape to keep fighting. That only left Charlie, the second oldest brother, who was not present at the Holbrook shootout.

Charlie wasn't in Holbrook because he was still down in Pleasant Valley with the Graham brothers, and the Graham brothers were still continuing their war with the Tewksbury's, and the fighting wasn't even close to done. Next time on Legends of the Old West, no matter how many lawmen Arizona Territory sends to Pleasant Valley, the bloodbath continues. The effects of the feud reach all the way to Washington, D.C., and have lasting consequences for the whole territory.

The bloodiest feud in the West finally ends next week on Legends of the Old West. And members of our Black Barrel Plus program don't have to wait week to week. They receive early access and the entire season to binge all at once with no commercials. Sign up now through the link in the show notes or on our website, blackbarrelmedia.com.

Memberships begin at just $5 per month. This series was researched by julia bricklin and written by julia and myself special thanks to historian eduardo pagan for his help during this production audio editing and sound design by dave harrison original music by rob valier i'm your host and producer chris Wimmer. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening. Check out our website, blackbarrelmedia.com, for more details. And join us on social media. We're at Old West Podcast on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. This show is part of the Airwave Media Podcast Network.

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