History

A True - to - Life 'Bloody Week' in Old Phoenix Rivals Clint Eastwood Spaghetti Westerns for Violence Text by Dennis B. Farrell Illustrations by Bill Ahrendt

If they were doing the story for television, they would start with the lonesome sound of the wind as the camera pans slowly down a deserted street framed by boardwalks and adobe buildings. To heighten the mood, there might be a closeup of a saloon sign rattling in the wind. A plaintive theme of guitar or harmonica music would come up as the narrator said: “It was quiet that afternoon of August 23, 1879, in Phoenix, Arizona Territory. The boardwalks of Washington Street, usually alive with cowboys, farmers, miners, soldiers, and dance-hall girls, were strangely silent. The reason? Five fresh graves in the little cemetery and two new widows in town all in the space of five days...” And it was quiet. So quiet that the editor of the Phoenix Herald, forerunner of today's Phoenix Gazette, commented upon it in the news columns of that day's edition.

Phoenix in 1879 was a bustling village of mostly adobe houses and businesses on cottonwood-shaded streets. But a few wooden and fired-brick structures were beginning to appear.

The population was about 2,000; there were 28 saloons, two breweries, two “flouring” mills, one drugstore, an ice-manufacturing plant, and many mercantile stores. One of these boasted a newfangled soda fountain just brought in from faraway Boston by way of Cape Horn and San Francisco.

Thanks to the early development of irrigation in the valley, Phoenix began to prosper as a center of commerce as well as agriculture.

Water for drinking and other purposes came from small ditches, called ace-quias, along the sides of the few streets in use. These were connected to the Town Ditch that delivered water from the Salt River. When there was a fire, the volunteer fire department and anyone else available formed bucket brigades and dipped into the acequias for water to douse the blaze.

On Washington Street, saloon “swampers” used water from the little ditches to settle the dust in front of their buildings in the dry season. During the summer and winter rains, however, Washington Street was a sea of mud.

Public nudity on the part of the Indians had become such a problem that the town fathers drafted an ordinance requiring them to wear enough clothing to “cover their person.” The visit the previous week of a “large number of Yuma Indians, bucks and squaws” had the Herald editor giggling that, “The female portion of the party are evidently not used to city life as they make their appearance in a dress particularly noted for its brevity...” In that same edition of August 20, the editor deplored the fact that Phoenix had become a rowdy town. “For the past two months,” he wrote, “the California and Eastern press have had accounts of stage robberies, etc., until our town is becoming known as the home or resort of brigands.

“Within the past week we have passed from that stage to that of high-handed cruel murder.... The whiz of the bullet was heard on the street until it was considered unsafe to travel out at night. Men with families were afraid to leave their homes, and a general feeling of uneasiness seemed to prevail in the community...” What ignited the editor's temper was a particularly cowardly murder that came to an interesting denouement which many townspeople smiled wryly about for years afterward. The editor head-lined the story about the murder “A Bloody Week In Phoenix.” This all-but-forgotten chapter of Phoenix history literally was unearthed in the late summer of 1946 near Third Avenue and Madison Street, where a construction company, excavating for a warehouse building, plowed into several old graves.

The digging was halted as officials searched for a plat of the town's original cemetery, which had been located at the building site.

It was believed that all graves had been accounted for when the cemetery was moved in 1882 to another location. But apparently some were overlooked.

Stories in yellowing newspaper files gave one possible clue: they told of the neglect of the first town cemetery and how it had been crisscrossed by freight wagons that knocked down the markers and, in many cases, destroyed them.

This destruction, it was thought, could have accounted for some of the graves not showing on the plat of the original cemetery. Either that, or their occupants were personae non gratae and were laid to rest with a certain amount of civic plea-sure. It would seem unlikely that markers for those graves would have been monuments of enduring marble.

Although officials searched diligently, they never could be certain of the identity of the tenants of the opened graves. But as they studied the fragile pages of the Phoenix Herald, the saga of an eventful week in history played out again.

It was about sundown that sweltering evening of August 19, 1879, as Luke Monihon drove homeward in his sturdy farm wagon through what is now south-west Phoenix. Monihon was a quiet man who minded his own business, the Herald said, but he also was known as a man who would help people in need.

He had hauled a load of firewood to town from the mesquite forest near his farm and, characteristically for him, sold it, bought what provisions he needed, and headed back home.

As his wagon passed a large thicket about a quarter mile from his place, a shotgun roared from ambush. Monihon toppled off the wagon and into the dusty road, dragging the reins with him.

The dependable old farm team came to an abrupt halt as they felt the lines tug against their bits. They stood in their tracks, swishing their tails at the hordes of insects that arrived with the falling dusk. Finally, for some unexplained reason, they started once more for home.

When the wagon rumbled into the barnyard, Monihon's hired man came out of the house, calling out, “You're kind of late tonight, Luke.” Getting no response, he walked toward the team and wagon, and, seeing no sign of Monihon, looked back down the road.

He thought he could see something, a man, maybe, lying in the road. As he came closer, he saw that indeed it was a man and broke into a run. He found Monihon unconscious and bleeding from a wound in the upper back.

Once the wounded man had been carried home by the hired man and Mrs. Monihon, one of her children was dispatched to get Dr. B.L. Conyers, one of Phoenix's five physicians, and to report the shooting to Sheriff R.S. Thomas. Dr. Conyers could do little for Monihon except clean up the wound and await the inevitable.

'Bloody Week' in Old Phoenix

Monihon died at 10 o'clock that same night without regaining consciousness.

Dawn the next day found Sheriff Thomas and a force of regular and honorary deputies on the hunt for clues. One of his regular deputies, J.W. Blankenship, was working with Henry Garfias, a United States marshal, widely known as being an expert tracker.

Garfias had spent the night at Thomas' farm, which adjoined the Monihon property, and he was not long in the field before he struck a trail near the scene of the shooting. The tracks appeared to have been made by a barefoot man.

Sheriff Thomas and a volunteer, G.W. Marlar, joined Garfias following a trail that led them over a circuitous route to where a large, heavyset man appeared to have sat down and pulled on a pair of boots.

From there on, the boot prints went in an oddly roundabout route that eventually led them to the farm of A.J. Wilcoxson. Although Wilcoxson gave the trackers little satisfaction at first, Sheriff Thomas eventually drew out a framework of facts.

He learned that the Wilcoxsons and their hired hand, a big, heavy man named John Keller, were eating supper when Luke Monihon's wagon went by. Just then, Keller excused himself and invited the Wilcoxsons' youngster, a boy of about 10, to join him for a swim in the Monterey Ditch. It was near the ditch that Garfias had picked up the trail of the barefoot man.

Keller steadfastly denied any knowledge of the shooting, but as Garfias and the others looked him over, the boots and the prints made by a heavy man kept running through their minds.

Deputy Blankenship eased away from the group to have a talk with the Wilcoxson boy. When he came back, Blankenship put Keller under arrest. With a grim look, he said to Keller's employer, Wilcoxson, "You'd better come along, too."

Both Keller and Wilcoxson were jailed and a coroner's jury was empaneled. The Wilcoxson boy testified as he had told Blankenship earlier that he had gone to the Monterey Ditch, but did not see Keller there.

The boy said he became frightened at a noise in a bush nearby and ran back to the ranch house to get the family shotgun. His grandmother told him that Keller had come in a short time earlier and gone out again with the weapon. The inquest found that Monihon came to his death at the hands of John Keller, who was ordered held for trial in the circuit court. Wilcoxson was freed without charge, but the jury eyed him coldly as he left the hearing room.

Monihon's murder was the chief topic of conversation in every saloon and store along the boardwalk of Washington Street. And the civic temper, like the thermometers outside, began to sizzle in the August heat. Headlines in the Herald's semiweekly edition of August 20 did little to cool the fever that was rising in the community. They proclaimed: "Monihon Murdered Brutal Butchery Of A Quiet Citizen Foully Murdered Within Sight Of His Home The Assassin Shoots His Victim In The Back... A Man Arrested... Charged With The Crime."

Already talk was going around about a "necktie party" for Keller. Even substantial businessmen such as John Le Bar, who operated a saloon, were talking about a lynching as a warning to the wild-and-woolly element in Phoenix. (There were many idle men in the town as the result of a construction shutdown on the Southern Pacific Railroad line near Maricopa, only 28 miles to the southwest.) Ironically, Le Bar was to feature in a way he did not expect in the growing consensus for an impromptu hanging.

But Luke Monihon's murder was only the beginning of the violence-ridden week. Late Thursday afternoon, the day following the Monihon inquest, a guest at the Phoenix jail was becoming increasingly restive. He was Jesus Romero, a short, swashbuckling man of about 30, who had been arrested a few days earlier in connection with a bizarre slashing incident.

Romero was brooding in the August heat of the calabozo about the Anglo-Americans for whom he apparently had developed a strong hatred. And not surprisingly, since a man of Mexican extraction definitely was a second-class citizen in the Phoenix of 1879.

On a Sunday afternoon a couple of months earlier, Romero, riding his fine black horse, suddenly bore down on a crowd that had been watching horse races along Washington Street. Swinging a sharpened cavalry saber, he charged through the crowd, slashing left and right.

"Muerte a los gringos!" (Death to Americans!) he shouted as he galloped into the throng. The terror-stricken people seemed mesmerized as he made a second sweep at them. Three men, who had been cut on the head began to scream in pain as Romero wheeled his horse for a third pass.

But Romero spurred his mount and fled, outrunning several horsemen who began to pursue him, guns blazing.

Later, Romero would offer conflicting stories about his reason for the attack. He told a reporter for the Herald he wanted to impress a girl who was in the crowd with another young man.

He told Marshal Garfias, who tracked him to Tucson and brought him back, that, "The gringos seemed to be having so much fun making their ponies run I decided to have fun making the gringos run."

The men who had been slashed two of them seriously wanted to hang Romero, but instead he was given a jail term. Even so, Romero apparently felt he had not received justice.

Before opening Romero's cell door, the jailer handed his gun to J.W. Stephenson, an attorney visiting the jail, to hold for him. When the cell door opened, Romero exploded like a tightly wound spring and ran out of the jail and across the courtyard, swinging a piece of mesquite.

The escapee charged at Stephenson and another officer, Undersheriff Hi McDonald. Stephenson brought up the pistol he was holding and McDonald drew his weapon at the same time. Both men fired at Romero at almost pointblank range.

"They were compelled to shoot at him," said the Herald account, "and he fell, mortally wounded." Later a coroner's jury held that the shooting was justifiable.

That same evening, August 21, Le Bar, the respected businessman and former tax collector for Calaveras County, California, went into Brown and Daniels Saloon to have a nightcap on his way home. Seeing a group of his friends, he invited them to join him.

Le Bar neglected to include William McCloskey, a roustabout employee of the then-Town of Phoenix, in his invitation.

McCloskey, described as a "drunken ruffian," strode up to Le Bar and said, "I suppose I'm not good enough to drink with you." He stalked out, muttering about dandies who considered themselves too good for his company.

Le Bar and his companions forgot McCloskey and fell into a discussion of the Monihon murder. Their talk turned to lynching and Le Bar presented a case for making an example of Keller.

They were so engrossed in their discussion no one noticed McCloskey return like a dark, surly cloud. Without a word, he advanced stealthily toward Le Bar, whipped out a knife, and slashed him across the abdomen.

As Le Bar fell to the floor, groaning with pain, his companions piled onto McCloskey, but he beat them off and ran out the door. Like a swarm of angry bees, half a dozen men ran after the assailant, brought him down after a brief chase, and put him in jail.

Le Bar was taken home to his horrified wife and family on Center Street (now Central Avenue). He would linger in excruciating pain for another 36 hours until, as the Herald put it, "death released him from his suffering."

Before the sun rose very high the next morning, a crowd estimated at 500, and including some of the most prominent Phoenix residents, gathered quietly near the jail. Under the direction of a leader whom they addressed as "Captain," a plan evolved.

The leader, later identified as Marion Slankard, addressed the assemblage with grim forthrightness. "The law in these matters is too slow," he said. "Justice demands that we take the law into our own hands."

He admonished the people to be quiet and orderly and led them to the jail where, according to the Herald, the keys were quickly handed over to them at pistol point. (Another account said the group found the keys hanging on a nail.) Then the two prisoners, McCloskey and Keller, were brought out, and ropes were put around their necks. They were advised that they were to be hanged, and if they wished to say anything, this was the proper time.

Keller, the big, heavy man, broke down and cried. He said he had killed Monihon because of an old grudge. McCloskey, the rough, tough character to the end, spat out his words, saying he had been drinking too much when he stabbed Le Bar.

After the hangings - from a giant cottonwood in the old plaza, now the site of a city office building near Second and Washington streets Slankard made another speech.

Looking at potential troublemakers in the crowd, he advised them to leave town by sundown or suffer the consequences. He singled out a Mexican-American (never identified) and, speaking in Spanish, told him that any efforts to incite others to violence over Jesus Romero's death would not be taken lightly.

He asked saloonkeepers to close their establishments for the day, and they complied. A coroner's jury, empaneled on the spot, concluded that Keller and McCloskey "came to their deaths by hanging at the hands of a crowd of men unknown to the jury."

The Herald reported, ghoulishly, "Keller and McCloskey hurried hellward at the end of a rope It has been a long time since Phoenix was as quiet as it was yesterday morning and afternoon."

Dennis B. Farrell, a former science and medical writer for The Phoenix Gazette, is fascinated by Arizona historical events, especially those that found their way into the newspapers of their day. Pine-based Bill Abrendt specializes in historical subjects of the Southwest.