The Bisbee Massacre

THE BISBEE MASSACRE Six inept gunmen are gallows-bound after destroying five lives in an ill-conceived robbery

THE CHILLY DECEMBER DAY had fallen to dusk when five desperate-looking men strode up Bisbee's main street toward the Goldwater and Castañeda Mercantile. It was a peaceful time. Christmas was near. And the towns folk, engaged in everyday business, paid little attention to the strangers as they walked past. But what was about to happen that day, December 8, 1883, was anything but ordinary. The citizens of this rugged mining camp knew nothing of the dead ly instruments those stone-faced men concealed beneath their heavy overcoats and no idea that the deed the five were about to do would be known, within days and thereafter in the history of Arizona Territory, as the Bisbee Massacre.

As the Tombstone Republican intoned a week later: "The boldness with which the outrage was planned, and the audac ity and reckless disregard of human life in its execution, find no parallel in the his tory of this county, and probably not in that of the Territory."

Drawing near the mercantile, the gang members tugged handkerchiefs over their faces. Then three of them, James (Tex) Howard, Daniel (Big Dan) Dowd, and Daniel (Mick) Kelly, brandished their weapons and stalked inside the store. After pulling the shade over the front In the window, Howard ordered the customers to throw up their hands and commanded Joe Goldwater to open the safe and be quick about it. The contents, some odd pieces of jewelry and an engraved gold watch, were summarily stuffed into a bar ley sack. Then one of the bandits headed for a room in the back of the store, where proprietor A.A. Castañeda lay in bed. According to the Republican, Castañeda claimed he was "sick with rheumatism in my shoulders" and couldn't get up."

"Have you got anything about you?" the robber asked, placing his six-shooter against Castañeda's head.

"Not a cent," Castañeda groaned. The newspaper reported that the rob ber then reached under Castañeda's pil low and pulled out a buckskin sack containing more than $700 in gold coins.

"There, damn you," the masked man grunted. "[Now] lie quiet and you won't be hurt."

Meanwhile, out on the street, gang members Omar (Red) Sample and W.E. (Bill) Delaney, were herding passersby into the mercantile store at the point of their .45s when one of them, a man named John Tapiner, bolted toward a nearby saloon. He never made it. A burst of gunfire from Sample and Delaney dropped him beneath the watering hole's batwing doors.Reacting to the booming of the guns, a number of residents rushed to see what was happening. This was a fatal move for three people.

Mrs. Annie Roberts, operator of a boardinghouse and pregnant at the time, stepped unknowingly to the front door of her establishment and stopped a bullet that crashed through the glass, killing her and her baby.

D.T. Smith, a deputy sheriff from New Mexico, called to the two killers to surren der. His dedication to maintaining the public peace earned him several slugs and an appointment with the undertaker.

The fifth victim, one Albert Nolly, was caught in the hail of bullets while stand ing with a team of horses in front of the store.Within minutes of the first shot, the three desperadoes inside the store rushed into the street to join the two killers, and together they galloped from town, shooting indiscriminately as they rode. The result of their bloody rampage: the slaying of five innocent people and a meager haul. The real plunder the trigger-happy gunmen had sought was the Copper Queen Mine payroll that they believed was in the mer cantile safe. It was not.

The killing was over. But before the night was done, two grimly determined posses were already in pursuit of the cul prits, one headed by J.L. Ward of Tomb stone, another with a virtual stranger named John Heith as its guide.

According to one published account, Heith convinced the lawmen of his value in the chase by declaring: "Them snakes oughta be tracked down and hanged to the nearest tree! And I'll help do it! I know every inch of this country, and I'll guide this posse here!"

But several days of searching yielded deputies nothing, fueling suspicion that Heith was intentionally leading the men astray. This soon proved correct, as evi dence surfaced that Heith had previously ridden with the gang.

Heith was hauled off to the jail in Tombstone, while reward and wanted posters for the remaining five criminals were hung in every town in the South west and northern Mexico. Incredibly, all of them were rounded up within 45 days.

Sample and Howard made the mistake of giving some of the stolen jewelry to a talkative saloon girl in Clifton, leading to their arrest, and Daniel Kelly was taken while sitting in a barber's chair in Lords burg, New Mexico.

across the street, clicking his heels at the sound of each gunshot. The prosecution claimed that although he was not involved in the shooting, he was nonetheless guilty because he was the leader of the gang and the plotter of the crime.

Heith was tried separately on February 21 and given a life sentence for second-degree murder.

Word of the lenient sentence spread quickly, igniting a firestorm of anger. The next morning a group of about 50 men from Bisbee and Tombstone stood at the Tombstone jail door, wielding guns, and demanding the keys to Heith's cell.

Described in one account as "the nerve-est desperado ever to tread the soil of Arizona," Heith maintained his composure as the mob made its way toward him.

est desperado ever to tread the soil of Arizona," Heith maintained his composure as the mob made its way toward him.

"Gentlemen, I presume you are looking for me," he quipped.

Heith was taken from the jail and led west on Toughnut Street, where a rope was tossed over a telegraph pole and the 32-year-old Texan unceremoniously sent into eternity. His only request was that he not be shot full of holes as he swung between the earth and sky.

A note affixed to his body read: "John Heith was hanged to this pole by the citizens of Cochise County, for participation as a known accessory in the Bisbee Massacre, at 8:20 A.M. Feb. 22, 1884."

The coroner's jury knew the names of Heith's executioners, most of whom were upstanding citizens, but quickly found a way around the obvious conclusion that Heith was lynched.

After an examination of the corpse by county physician G.E. Goodfellow, the jury ruled that Heith "came to his death fromemphysema of the lungs, which might have been and probably was caused by strangulation, self-inflicted, or otherwise."

The following day, The Tombstone Epitaph published an editorial, that, in light of Heith's untimely departure, dripped with unintended irony: "Cochise County will put down crime of every character, and especially that committed by the element that prefers to consider that a six-shooter, a good horse, and a pair of spurs are the model marks of desirable citizenship."

On the matter of good citizens, Tombstone evidently had one in the person of a carpenter named Constable, who, in the days preceding the March 28 executions of the remaining five, built a grandstand outside the courthouse. His plan was to sell tickets to the impending noose work.

But Constable's enterprising handiwork was undone the night of March 27, when Nellie Cashman, a boardinghouse proprietor known as the "Angel of Tombstone," showed up with 20 men carrying axes and sledgehammers to tear it down. (See Arizona Highways, Feb. '89) As famed Epitaph Editor John P. Clum later explained, the condemned men didn't want their "day of tragedy turned into a roman holiday, and neither did Miss Cashman."

and sledgehammers to tear it down. (See Arizona Highways, Feb. '89) As famed Epitaph Editor John P. Clum later explained, the condemned men didn't want their "day of tragedy turned into a roman holiday, and neither did Miss Cashman."

Clum said "her Celtic soul was stained with indignation" at the idea of hawking tickets to a hanging.

The deathwatch for the condemned began with a last supper of fried oysters and a dessert of their choosing. Early on the morning of the 28th, a barber shaved the men and cut their hair, then they were issued black suits to wear during their final hours. At 1:00 P.M., accompanied by deputy sheriffs, the men were led outside where five nooses swung from a scaffold. A throng of more than 2,000 had jammed into the courthouse yard, perching on top of the stone wall surrounding it, and lin-ing adjacent rooftops.

Some of the killers shouted farewells to familiar people in the crowd. Then a round of handshakes passed across the platform.

"This is a regular choking machine," said Dowd, as the noose was tightened around his neck.

"Let 'er go!" said Kelly, who, like the others, probably never heard the creaking of the scaffold as its cargo of five bodies dropped through the traps. Even in death the men had no guaran-tee of peace. According to a rumor afloat prior to the hanging, their bodies were to be used for medical research. But Nellie Cashman had promised them that wouldn't happen and kept her word, paying guards to watch over their graves in Boot Hill Cemetery for several nights.

Judging by newspaper editorials of the time, few of which mentioned any vigilante activity, the executions were a high-water mark of justice in Arizona Territory.

The Arizona Gazette asserted: "The five men walked fearlessly to the halter, and unflinchingly met the Mosaic decree of ' a life for a life,' which has been preserved by all civilized communities."

Daniel Kelly, one of the doomed men, took a different view of Arizona justice. After John Heith's lynching, he wrote a poem, later published in The Epitaph, that ended with the ominous verse: "Oh, Stranglers prepare, for the day will come, that you will have to meet your doom.

You will curse the hour that you were born, the morning that Gabriel toots his horn."

Leo W. Banks has been fascinated by the history of Bisbee since he first visited the old copper-mining town nearly two decades ago. Dallas, Texas-based Phil Boatwright especially enjoys illustrating stories set in the days of the Old West.