TWIN MURDERS AT TUTTLE'S STATION

It started with an argument over a dog, and before the matter was settled two men would be brutally murdered, lynch mobs would demand rope justice and President Woodrow Wilson would order a dramatic, lastminute stay of execution. But in the end, killers William Stewart and John B. Goodwin would dangle at the bottom of government gallows.

the animal hard enough to draw a yelp. An argument erupted, but by the next day, the hunters assumed the incident was over. On September 14, 1910, a year and a half before Arizona became a state, deer hunters Fred Kibbe and Alfred Hillpot tied their horses outside Tuttle's Station, a stage stop and inn located along an old military supply road between Fort Apache and San Carlos in eastern Arizona.

Owner Bill Tuttle had turned operation of the station over to Stewart and Goodwin, unaware that both men were deserters from the U.S. Army. But Kibbe and Hillpot had no reason to suspect trouble. Stewart and Goodwin invited the hunters to lay over, offering to cook for them and care for their horses.

As they awaited the next day's hunting, Kibbe, 24, a grocer who'd married into a prominent Globe family, and Hillpot, about 27, a newcomer from New Jersey whose first name also was reported as Albert, chatted amiably with the two station managers.

But trouble began that same day when a dog belonging to Stewart bit Hillpot in the leg, and he responded by kicking The gruesome story of what happened next came from Joseph E. Morrison, U.S. attorney for Arizona and a bullet into Kibbe's forehead, killing him instantly.

Then Stewart took up a .30.30 Marlin rifle and began firing at Hillpot as he lay on his back on his bedroll with his head against a saddle. One shot penetrated Hillpot's torso, narrowly missing the heart.

prosecutor in the subsequent case. His account was published 47 years later in the Globe Arizona Record.

It was right after supper, and Kibbe was sitting on a backless chair, leaning forward with his elbows on a table, enjoying a smoke from his corncob pipe.

Goodwin, better known by the alias James Steele, rose from where he was sitting a few feet away, and with no provocation, drew a six-shooter and put a Another entered the middle of his left shoulder and exited at his armpit, and a third struck him in the neck.

But Hillpot was alive when the shooting stopped, so Stewart charged him and, using the rifle as a club, beat Hillpot so severely that the rifle's stock splintered and "portions of the brains and bone were dashed against the walls of the cabin," according to Morrison.

The killers hurried outside tosteal their victims' horses, then decided to return to the cabin to rob the bodies of any valuables. Remarkably, Hillpot was not yet dead. To finish the job, Stewart drew a knife and cut his throat.

steal their victims' horses, then decided to return to the cabin to rob the bodies of any valuables. Remarkably, Hillpot was not yet dead. To finish the job, Stewart drew a knife and cut his throat.By that time, Stewart's shoes were so bloody that he yanked Hillpot's shoes off the still warm body and put them on. He and Goodwin mounted the horses and fled the station, carrying all of the hunters' belongings.

The killers were up against a formidable opponent in J.H. Thompson, known as the Territory's senior sheriff and a cunning tracker of bad men. In previous cases, Thompson had earned a reputation for the peculiar contents of his saddlebags: an extra box of ammunition, a change of socks and underwear, and a box of salt. As the Arizona Record noted: "He [was] a great lover of this life sustaining substance."

This manhunt also marked the end of an era for Thompson. For the first time in his long career, he shunned his horse for an automobile. The sheriff contacted M.L. Naquin, owner of the first Cadillac automobile to appear on the streets of Globe, and convinced him to use that car as the chase vehicle. So Thompson-along with Naquin, "horseless carriage" mechanic S.T. "Red" Brewer, and District Attorney Walter Shute - drove off in high style to find the killers. The Cadillac performed wellon the pock-marked road but burned out a bearing just short of Tuttle's Station. This near disaster resulted in what press accounts described as heroic repair work by Brewer.

Twin Murders at Tuttle's Station

He went to an old sawmill and retrieved bearing metal from some abandoned machinery, melted the metal in a frying pan and cast a bearing in sand. After many hours of work, Naquin's Caddy was up and running again.

The manhunt was several days along when Thompson's party found the getaway horses, exhausted and running loose about 20 miles east of Holbrook. The tip that led to the arrest came from an unlikely source, a barber in Holbrook named W.B. Cross.

He was cutting the hair of a Gila County cowboy, whose name has never been firmly established, when conversation turned to the ongoing manhunt. The cowboy mentioned that he'd just spotted two sets of tracks left by humans near the whistlestop of Adamana, 25 miles east of Holbrook.

Hearing that, Cross dropped his scissors and bolted across the street to the telegraph office to alert Thompson. Capture came without incident on September 22, when Stewart and Goodwin went into a store in Adamana to buy supplies.

Thompson then loaded his prisoners onto a train for the trip back to Globe. En route, he learned that the mood in town had grown ugly and that a mob of 500 townsmen was meeting every incoming train. Fearing a necktie party, the shrewd sheriff transferred his prisoners to a car in Phoenix and spirited them safely back to Globe along the rugged Apache Trail flanking the Salt River.

Stewart and Goodwin were put on trial five separate times in a bizarre legal tangle that lasted four years. In the first two trials, both men were found guilty and sentenced to life in prison-Goodwin for killing Kibbe and Stewart for killing Hillpot. But defense lawyer Thomas E. Flannigan won a new trial by arguing that Goodwin's last request to Flannigan was to be hanged wearing oxford shoes, new trousers, a white shirt with a black necktie, and a red rose on his breast.

because the crimes were committed on an Indian reservation, with only white men involved, his clients had been convicted illegally by the trials in Territorial court. The law required that the cases be heard in federal court.

Flannigan won his argument, but the results were disastrous. He ran up against U.S. Attorney Joseph Morrison, a fierce prosecutor who wanted both defendants to suffer the death penalty.

The best way to accomplish this, Morrison reasoned, was to reindict the men for the most brutal of the two murders, which was Hillpot's. Success hinged on convincing the juries that both men were legally culpable for both murders.

Two more trials were held. Goodwin was convicted and given a death sentence, but Stewart, thanks to a single juror who couldn't abide capital punishment, was sentenced to life in a federal penitentiary in Atlanta.

Not content with letting Stewart live out his sentence, Morrison pulled an unprecedented legal maneuver and brought Stewart back from Atlanta to stand trial for killing Kibbe. This time Stewart, too, was sentenced to death.

This fifth and final trial produced an interesting side drama, a romance between prosecutor Morrison and Rose Kibbe, Fred's sister. Joe Morrison later married Rose Kibbe.

The killers' executions were recounted in the book, Sheriff Thompson's Day, by Jess G.

Hayes, former Gila County superintendent of schools. Goodwin's hanging was originally scheduled for March 14, 1913, at the Gila County jail in Globe.

But Flannigan, racked with guilt at his legal gamble gone bad, scrambled to save his client's life by appealing directly to President Woodrow Wilson for executive clemency. Hours before the hanging was to occur, Wilson sent a telegram to Arizona, ordering a 60-day stay to study the issue.

With that delay, the fever of anticipation in Globe broke, and the tense deathwatch around the newly built gallows ended. But before the crowd dispersed, souvenir seekers practically carried the gallows away in pieces.

The execution was carried out as soon as the stay was over. Goodwin's last request to Flannigan was to be hanged wearing oxford shoes, new trousers, a white shirt with a black necktie, and a red rose on his breast.

"Pin it on my shirt so it won't fall off when I make the drop," Goodwin told his lawyer. "Bury me with it on."

Flannigan pinned on the rose, then Goodwin took the 13 steps to the gallows' platform two at a time. At the top he saw that his executioner was a local bill collector named Bill Cunningham, who was hired to spring the trapdoor, for a reported $50, by a fainthearted U.S. marshal and his deputy. Before dropping to his death, Goodwin cussed out the two absent federal lawmen for lacking the guts to do their job.

Stewart died in the same spot a year later, on May 29, 1914, also at the hand of hangman Cunningham. Stewart, too, was angry that the federal lawmen were absent. He confronted Cunningham on the gallows, saying, "I'll meet you in hell, and before you come to be