Usually, when they talk about the Wild West, pictures with harsh cowboys, riotous saloon girls and, of course, Indians pop up before our eyes. But in reality, life there was completely different. One of the main dangers of wild, sparsely populated spaces were criminals, with whom the population often had to fight on their own. The results were sometimes terrifying.
People under the floor
In 1870, a lone traveler, walking through the mountains to New Mexico, at the foot of the Palo Flechado Pass, came across a sturdy wooden house. The owner introduced himself as Charles Kennedy and invited his new acquaintance inside to dine.
While Kennedy's wife Ute was setting the table, the traveler sat next to the couple's young son and asked him if there were many Indians wandering around the area. The boy looked at him for a moment, and then asked: “Don't you smell them from the basement? Dad puts them there."
The unfortunate traveler stumbled upon the lair of one of the most famous assassins in the West. Charles Kennedy killed at least fourteen people who were staying at his isolated farm while traveling across the pass. Having beaten the guest to death with a blunt kitchen knife and legs, the furious Kennedy attacked his son, who warned the traveler, and he almost escaped. He threw him facing the fireplace and crushed his head.
The murder of her son overwhelmed the patience of Kennedy's wife. While her husband was drunk, she slipped out of the house and got to Elizabethtown, where she made a full confession, which was fully confirmed. Everything turned out to be even worse: corpses barely covered with earth and burnt bones were found even in the courtyard of the house.
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Elizabethtown
Charles Kennedy was taken into custody and a trial was scheduled for his case. To the indignation of the residents of the area, a new-fangled presumption of innocence was applied to the killer, a lawyer was given and forbidden to lynch him, as required by the customs of the settlers.
A gang of ferocious country gentlemen stole Charles and brought him to his own court, dragging his horse around the city for the amusement of the public until he died and his corpse was completely disfigured. After that, he was buried behind the fence of the local cemetery so that respectable citizens would not have to live next to such a vile killer after death.
"Dance of War" by Clay Ellison
The leader of the mob that tore apart Charles Kennedy was Clay Ellison, a local violent vigilante who killed more people than the serial killer he decapitated. Once, in order to settle a petty dispute with his neighbor, he dug a grave and invited him to fight with knives inside the grave, so that later there would be less fuss with the body of the loser.
Ellison rose to fame as one of the most violent participants in the Kolfak War, a massive land dispute that led to an armed confrontation that killed up to 200 people. At the start of the war, Allison organized the lynching of a local constable whom he suspected of murder.
When the deceased's uncle decided to take revenge, Allison shot him dead in a local saloon. After the murder, Allison reportedly stripped the corpse naked, tied a red ribbon around his cock and performed a "war dance" at the crime scene.
Shootout at Gowing Snake
No one knows exactly what caused the feud that killed 11 people in Judge Blackhawk Sickskiller's courtroom at Gowing Snake. Be that as it may, in 1872 Zeke Proctor came to Jim Kesterton's mill and opened fire. The miller was injured and soon recovered, but his wife, Paulie Beck, died from an accidental bullet.
The murder took place in Cherokee Indian territory. Both Proctor and Beck were Cherokee Indians, so it seemed clear that the case would be tried by a Cherokee court. But Proctor came from a well-connected family and was a member of the influential Indian religious organization Kituvah, so the Beck family began to argue that they could not expect a fair trial in Indian territory. The Becks wanted the case to go to federal court at Fort Smith. When their request was denied, a group of Beck's relatives rushed into the courtroom and opened fire.
But things didn't go as planned. The attackers lingered in the cramped doors of the courtroom, Zeke Porter drew a pistol from somewhere and returned fire, supported by several guards. The planned shooting turned into a close range firefight. Eleven people died: seven of Beck's relatives, two guards, a lawyer and a bailiff. The participants quickly scattered. As a result, no one was ever convicted.
Felipe Espinosa's crusade
Felipe Espinosa was a petty criminal who deeply resented the settlement of Colorado by Anglo-American settlers in the 19th century. He was also a fanatical member of the Penitnentes, a local Catholic brotherhood known for bloody self-torture and other acts of self-mutilation. When American soldiers tried to arrest him for banditry, Felipe declared his personal war on Protestant outsiders.
Accompanied by his brother Vivian and his nephew Jose who later joined them, Felipe hid in the Colorado mountains, killing every Englishman he came across. Some bodies were found with a cross carved into their chests. Felipe wrote insolent letters to the governor asking him to find out “if anyone has killed more people than Espinosa. We killed thirty-two people."
Despite the massive raids that killed Vivian Espinosa, Felipe remained elusive. In a letter to his wife, he boasted: “They have hands, but they cannot touch me. They have legs, but they cannot catch me. They have eyes, but they cannot see me. They have ears, but they cannot hear me."
The desperate government eventually hired the famous mountaineer Tom Tobin, who tracked Felipe and José Espinos down to the Sangre de Cristo mountains and personally killed them in a bloody battle near the summit of Mount Mestas. Tobin then returned to Fort Garland and received his bounty by presenting the severed head of Felipe Espinosa to the shocked colonel who had hired him.
Cowboy from Cop El Paso
In 1881, El Paso, Texas, appointed legendary shooter Dallas Studenmire as its new city marshal. He successfully cleaned up the city, but only with the help of terror, while many local residents were killed in the shootings. It is said that he used the church bell as a target and was often drunk. When the city council tried to fire him, Studenmire pulled out his pistol and invited council members to get their pistols.
Studenmire's most famous shootout took place just three days after his appointment. The battle, dubbed “four corpses in five seconds,” began when a local rowdy named John Hale grabbed a pistol from his friend George Campbell and shot one of Studenmire's constables. Studenmire immediately drew his pistols and shot Hale, bystanders and Campbell, who was shouting loudly that he was not going to fight back.
El Paso in 1880
Campbell had good friends in the wealthy Manning brothers, who out of revenge hired a man named Bill Johnson to kill Studenmire. Unfortunately for Johnson, he fired too early, which allowed Studenmire to calmly lash him in the groin. Johnson soon bled to death, and Stoudenmire remained in El Paso until he died in a shootout with the Manning brothers 18 months later.
Terrible Horrells
The Horrell brothers were cowboys who committed several atrocious crimes in the Old West. In 1873, they killed five police officers in a Texas bar and fled to Lincoln, New Mexico. Shortly after arriving, Ben Horrell shot and killed another member of the law while drunk, after which he was killed by a local squad.
Ben's killers were mostly of Mexican origin, and the rest of the Horrells decided to take revenge on the entire Hispanic community. The ensuing racial war began with the murder of two Mexican Americans on a ranch by the Horrels. A few weeks later, the Horrells killed four more people during a wedding ceremony. Local Hispanics armed themselves and captured the hills surrounding the Horrell ranch, but they fled after a short siege, the ranch was burned to the ground.
Having recruited Texans into their gang, they traveled around the state, killing Mexicans by chance. The killings ended and the Horrells fled back to Texas when local authorities requested military assistance. Official estimates put at least 29 deaths during the Horrell War.
Horrell feud with Higgins
After returning to Lampasas, Texas, the Horrels were promptly acquitted of the New Mexico murders with the help of a jury drawn from their old cronies. But the crimes continued. In 1877, Merritt Horrell was shot dead in a bar by the Pink rancher Higgins. Since they still remembered the massacres that followed Ben Horrell's death, the terrified Higgins family decided they had no choice but to strike first.
In March, the Higgins clan ambushed Tom and Martin Horrell on their way to court. But they were not hardened killers, so Martin Horrell, standing over his wounded brother, single-handedly drove off the attackers. By June, Lampasas had become a miniature war zone, with warring families fighting each other throughout the city.
The Texas Rangers ended the feud, forcing the clans to sign a "peace treaty". Amazingly, the following year the Horrells decided to continue their criminal war until Martin and Tom were killed by an angry mob, seemingly spurred on by Pink Higgins.
Bascom Incident
In 1860, an inexperienced lieutenant, George Basko, was ordered to return a little boy who had been kidnapped during an Indian raid. Bascom mistakenly believed that the raid was carried out by the Chiricaua Apache Indians, and decided to find their leader Kochis. Unaware that a hunt had been announced for him, one fine day Kochis, accompanied by his relatives, wife and son, calmly arrived on a visit to the Bascoma camp.
There was a conversation, during which Bascom used all the threats he knew and demanded the immediate return of the boy, and the upset Kochis insisted that he did not have the boy, and therefore he could not return him. Then Bascom announced that he was arresting Kochis and his relatives. At some point, Kochis pulled out a knife, cut the side of the tent and pulled out of the camp, despite the bullets whistling around him.
The Kochis family remained hostage to Bascom, so the Apaches attacked the train, tortured eight Mexicans to death, and kidnapped four Americans for exchange. Nevertheless, Bascom stubbornly refused to exchange, unless the kidnapped boy was returned along with the captives. Enraged, Kochis killed his hostages and retreated. After some consultation, the Americans hanged most of their hostages and retreated as well. The ensuing war lasted ten years, killing thousands.
Death of Mangas Coloradas
The brutality of the war that erupted after the incident with Baksk was manifested in the death of Mangas Coloradas. While the American Civil War was raging, the Apaches drove out white settlers from much of southern Arizona. However, as the war in the east drew to a close, reinforcements began to arrive, and it became clear that the Apaches could not hold out forever. Kochisa's uncle, the great leader Mangas Coloradas, decided to try to negotiate peace.
When the leader arrived with a white flag, General Joseph West ordered his arrest immediately. He then pulled the guards aside and told them, “The old killer left a trail of blood 500 miles long. I want him to die before dawn, do you understand? I want him to die."
On the same night, the guards entered the room where they were holding the leader and began to torture him with red-hot bayonets. They scalped him with a kitchen knife and then shot him "while trying to escape." The war continued for several more years.
Bloody Bender
In 1870, four people settled in Labeta County, Kansas, near the place where the writer Laura Ingalls Wilder lived with her parents in her youth. They called themselves Benders and claimed to be family, although the exact nature of their relationship was later questioned.
Bender's father and mother spoke only German, but their children were fluent in English, and the family soon turned their two-room shack into a small hotel. They were rumored to have practiced magic, and Kate Bender (daughter) became known among the locals as a fortune teller and medium.
In the following years, settlers began to disappear while traveling through Labet. Parts of their bodies were found outside the city, but no one knew who did it. In the end, the locals held a meeting and agreed to form a team to search every home in the area, but the searches were delayed due to bad weather. When the team finally got to the Benders' house, the family left it long ago.
A basement hatch was found under the bed, where the floor was covered in blood. Eight bodies were found in the garden, each with a slit throat and a shattered skull. Bender was never found. There are several versions of what happened to them after fleeing the farm. According to one of them, the van in which they fled was found empty in undeveloped lands. It was riddled with bullets, there were traces of blood everywhere, but there was not a trace of family.
Used materials from the site: ribalych.ru