On October 26, 1881 – 130 years ago this week – a 30-second grudge fight catapulted its combatants as well as their brief clash into the stuff of legend that goes well beyond the significance of the people involved or the incident itself. Except for this street fight, we would likely never have known about Wyatt Earp and his companion Doc Holliday. Who would have cared that a town named Tombstone existed in southern Arizona 30 miles north of Mexico? Yet, hundreds of books and dozens of films have been produced about these 30 seconds which claimed the lives of three of its participants and wounded all of the others except one – Wyatt Earp.
Tombstone owes its existence to Ed Schieffelin, an Indian scout assigned to nearby Camp Huachuca. When he wasn’t chasing the Chiricahua Apaches who inhabited the neighborhood, Schieffelin would journey out into the desert wilds “looking for rocks.” "Ed, the only stone you will find out there will be your tombstone," the soldiers would jeer.
But one day Schieffelin did find the stone he was looking for. It was laden with silver. He staked a claim in 1877 and called his mine Tombstone. Predictably word of Schieffelin’s discovery got out and miners, lawyers, saloon owners and prostitutes, business people, and two newspaper publishers flocked to the area. Initially they lived in tents among the mines near the closest water spring. But when it became apparent that a proper town was needed, they located it on a nearby high plateau called Goose Flats – the only place level enough to lay out a grid of streets and building lots. It was 1879.
Wyatt Earp arrived in Tombstone in December of that year and his older brothers James and Virgil along with younger brothers Morgan and Warren arrived six months later. One thing characterized the Earp clan – they were close. They trusted few others than each other. Moreover, each of the Earp men had a quality that originated in their father – they wanted to be somebody. They wanted to be respected by the community and successful in business and society. None of them would ever achieve that aim.
One non-family person who gained the confidence of the Earps, especially Virgil and Morgan, was John Henry “Doc” Holliday. Born in Griffin GA, his family moved to Valdosta GA when he was 13. He received a classical education from the Valdosta Institute, including competence in Greek, Latin, and French, making him far better educated than the Earps. After earning the degree of Doctor of Dentistry in Philadelphia, he practiced for a while in Atlanta. The famous physician Crawford Long was his cousin, and later Margret Mitchell, author of Gone with the Wind, would become a cousin by marriage.
Shortly after beginning his practice of dentistry, Holliday developed tuberculosis. His practice suffered and, moving to Texas, he began gambling to earn money and began drinking to control his cough. That combination and his hot temper put him in lots of fights which in those days were usually settled with a gun. In time Holliday developed a reputation as a fast gun and knife fighter, made even more fearsome by his having a terminal health problem. His reputation made sure he stayed on the move and ahead of the law.
Why Holliday went to Tombstone is uncertain. He had met the Earps in Dodge City KS but they followed different paths after that. He could have been drawn to Tombstone’s climate or its reputation as a boomtown where money was flowing across the gambling tables. But it is possible that the Earps asked Holliday to join them in Tombstone because of a looming confrontation between the Earp clan and a group loosely called the “cowboys” – a pejorative for rustlers and thieves. In those days, legitimate cowmen were referred to as cattle herders or ranchers.
This conflict was not helped by the fact that the Earps were Yankees, Republicans, and Virgil and James had fought in the Union army. They were also “town people” with the sympathies of the local newspaper, The Tombstone Epitaph, and its editor, John Clum, who was also the town mayor and postmaster. Moreover, Virgil Earp represented the law in Tombstone and Wyatt and Morgan were periodically his deputies. Virgil’s position could best be called police chief, although his title was town marshal. On more than one occasion, the Earps “buffaloed” – i.e. pistol whipped – a cowboy who came to town and got rowdy.
The cowboys were Southerners, former Confederate vets, and Democrats. Their most vocal troublemakers were Ike and Billy Clanton, Tom and Frank McLaury, and Billy Claiborne. The cowboys had the sympathies of the surrounding ranchers and the publisher of the other newspaper, The Tombstone Nugget, owned by Harry Woods. To make matters worse, the Cochise County sheriff, John Behan, always sided with the cowboys and ranchers and against the Earps. Behan’s common law wife, Josephine Marcus, would leave him for Wyatt Earp, eventually becoming Earp’s common law wife for 48 years. When this occurred is unknown but it would have fueled the animosity between Behan and Wyatt Earp.
Contrary to the stuff of Hollywood legends, men were not allowed to be armed with pistols and rifles while within the city limits of most “wild West” towns. They had to check their firearms either at their livery stable or any saloon or hotel. Of course, that regulation was often violated by concealing a pistol. With few exceptions, pistols were not worn in holsters but rather were shoved in the pants waistband or carried in a pocket. Ammunition was notoriously unreliable in that day and would fire unintentionally, so a live shell was never carried in the firing chamber, especially because of the threat to the male anatomy when pistols were carried inside the pants. Pistols were so inaccurate that men firing at one another at ten paces could empty their pistols without hitting each other.
Virgil Earp and his brothers did not dress like Matt Dillon. They wore black suits, street shoes, and bowler hats like most town people. They were often unarmed while on duty, since the people in town were supposed to be unarmed.
On March 15, 1881, an aborted stagecoach robbery en route to Benson cost the life of the driver and a passenger. A posse consisting of the Virgil, Morgan, and Wyatt Earp, Behan, and a Wells Fargo agent followed the trail to a ranch house and took one man into custody. He identified the bandits and the Earps continued the chase while Behan and the agent took the witness to Tombstone. When the Earp horses broke down and Behan failed to send them fresh mounts, the Earps had to walk 18 miles back to Tombstone. That caused even less love to be lost between the Earps and Behan. And when the witness escaped from Behan’s jail, helped by a cowboy confederate, the rift between the Earp faction and the Behan-cowboy faction grew wider.
On September 8, 1881, a stagecoach en route to nearby Bisbee was held up. There was no strong box on board so the passengers were robbed. The stage driver said one of the robbers referred to money as “sugar” – a phrase known to be used by Frank Stilwell, one of the cowboys. Stilwell had recently been one of Behan’s deputies but had been fired for “accounting irregularities.” A special boot heel worn by Stillwell and a print at the scene positively put him at the robbery site. The Earps found him in a Bisbee saloon and arrested him. Because sympathetic cowboys vouched that he was elsewhere during the robbery, he was released. The Earps rearrested him for interfering with mail delivery. Cowboys saw this as harassment by the Earps and warned the brothers that there would be retaliation.
On October 25, 1881 Ike Clanton and Doc Holliday had gotten into a shouting match that ended with mutual threats. Clanton was a known loud-mouth and both men had violent tempers. Clanton continued an all-night drinking binge and began boasting that he was going to kill Holliday. By noon on the 26th, he had armed himself with a rifle and pistol and was fully drunk. When word of this got to the Virgil, Wyatt, and Morgan Earp, they began looking for him, and once found, Virgil and Morgan “buffaloed” him into unconsciousness and then dragged him to the Recorder’s Office to await a judge to fine him for carrying firearms inside the city limits.
During the hearing, Wyatt and Ike began hurling threats and accusations at each other. Fuming, Wyatt stormed out of the court room after disarming Ike and came face to face with Tom McLaury who had come looking for his companion cowboy, Ike. More shouting and threats erupted between these two until Wyatt ended it by “buffaloing” McLaury and stalked away.
As he left, Wyatt saw Billy Clanton, Frank McLaury, and Billy Claiborne go into Spangenberg's Gun Shop. Claiborne was a 21-year old show-off who had fashioned a persona as a gunslinger and liked to be called Billy the Kid. Ike soon joined them in Spangenberg's. More provocative, however, was that Frank McLaury’s horse was up on the sidewalk – a violation of a city code. Wyatt walked over and grabbed the bridle in order to back the horse into the street when Frank rushed out and grabbed the bridle also. After a moment of silent stare-down, Frank backed his horse off of the sidewalk.
When Wyatt rejoined his brothers and Holliday, word came that the Clantons, McLaurys, and Billy Claiborne had gathered in an alley off Fremont Street next to C.S. Fly’s boarding house where Holliday lived. The Earps also lived in houses on Fremont and would have to pass the alley to go home. Billy Clanton and Frank McLaury were visibly wearing holstered pistols. Although the O.K. Corral would be mythologized as the location of the famous shootout, Fremont is one block north of the O.K. Corral, which fronts Allen Street, and the alley is six lots down from the corral’s rear pedestrian entrance.
Virgil decided that he should disarm the cowboys and he deputized his brothers and Holliday to go with him. While Wyatt was at Spangenberg’s, Virgil had stopped at the Wells Fargo office to pick up a short barrel shotgun which he hid under the long coat that he and the others were wearing. There was a cold wind blowing that day and patches of snow were on the ground. Holliday was wearing a pistol in a holster and carrying a cane. Virgil handed the shotgun to Holliday, telling him to put it under his long coat, and he took Holliday’s cane. The Earps had pistols in their coat pockets.
Around 3 p.m. the Earp party started north on Fourth Street and turned left on Fremont walking toward Third Street. Nearing Third Street, they saw the Clantons, McLaurys, and Billy the Kid Claiborne all talking to Johnny Behan. Behan ran toward the Earp party and said something to Virgil, but from this point in time the details get murky. In the subsequent inquest and trial, Behan said he told Virgil that he had disarmed the cowboys; Virgil said Behan warned him – "For God's sake, don't go down there or they will murder you!"
Most witnesses were pro-Earps or pro-cowboys. Those who were supposedly impartial gave conflicting testimony of the 30-second shootout. Witnesses generally agree that the Earps and Holliday walked to within six feet of the Clantons, McLaureys, and Claiborne and Virgil or Wyatt said something. Two pistol shots were fired almost simultaneously, one most likely from Billy Clanton but the second can’t be attributed. After these two shots were fired, Ike Clanton ran toward Wyatt screaming that he was not armed, and running past Wyatt, kept running for many blocks. Claiborne also cried out that he was unarmed and ducked into a nearby building where Behan had also taken cover.
Frank McLaury fell to his knees from a bullet in the stomach that quite likely came from Wyatt, who was standing in front of him and fired point blank. Some witnesses say he regained his feet and tried to cross over Fremont, firing a shot that grazed Holliday in the waist. Holliday fired his pistol and the bullet went through Frank’s head behind the right ear, killing him instantly.
Billy Clanton was shot through the right wrist, incapacitating his shooting hand. He switched his pistol to the left hand. When a bullet went through his left chest puncturing a lung, he sank to a sitting position and continued to fire his pistol. It’s believed one of his bullets entered Virgil’s calf. Billy continued to fire with his pistol resting on his leg until he ran out of ammunition. He received another shot in the abdomen, which was his mortal wound.
No pistol was found on Tom McLaury, although a witness who had just arrived in Tombstone to visit relatives and who could not have been partial to either side said that she saw Tom firing from under the neck of Billy’s horse. Witnesses say that when the shooting started, Tom ducked behind the horse and was reaching for a rifle in the horse’s scabbard when Holliday fired the shotgun blowing a hole in Tom’s right rib cage.
Morgan Earp was wounded in the melee by a bullet that either grazed or passed through both shoulder blades and a vertebra. Wyatt was the only person in the shootout to emerge unscathed.
When the smoke cleared Behan told Wyatt that he was under arrest. Supposedly, Wyatt replied: "I won't be arrested today. I am right here and am not going away. You deceived me. You told me these men were disarmed; I went to disarm them."
Later, the Earps and Holliday were charged with murder. The trial lasted 30 days, and the testimony was so contradictory that the judge threw the case out and dismissed the charges.
But a few days after Christmas 1881, Virgil was crossing a street in front of a saloon when five shots were fired at him from a building under construction. Two hit his left arm inflicting such damage that his arm was unusable for the rest of his life.
On March 18, 1882 Morgan was playing pool with the owner of a billiard parlor while Wyatt watched. As Morgan bent over to line up a pool shot, an unknown assailant shot through an outside window hitting him in the back. He fell over on the table where he died.
Wyatt suspected the killer was Frank Stillwell, with whom he’d had a run-in in the Bisbee stage coach robbery. Stillwell’s wife confirmed that he has boasted about the murder. After loading the casket carrying Morgan’s body on a California-bound train to their parents, Wyatt, Holliday, and another man found Stillwell in Tucson. No one witnessed what happened, but Stillwell’s bullet riddled body was found near the train track where Morgan’s body had been put aboard.
Behan tried to arrest Wyatt when he and Holliday returned to Tombstone but they ignored him and soon left Arizona Territory for good. Holliday headed for Colorado where he surprised himself and others by living another six years after the famous shootout. He died at age 36 in a sanatorium near Glenwood Springs. Five months prior to his death Ike Clanton died in a hail of bullets from a posse chasing him for cattle rustling.
Billy the Kid Claiborne challenged one man too many to a gunfight. He was shot to death on Allen Street one year after the shootout.
Johnny Behan was not nominated by the Democrat party as their candidate for the sheriff in 1882. He never again worked as a lawman, but spent the rest of his life employed in several government jobs. He died of natural causes at age 67 three decades after the shootout.
Virgil and his common law wife, Allie, accompanied his brother’s body to California for burial. He bounced around from saloon keeping to mining to law enforcement several times. He was a county deputy sheriff in Nevada when he contracted pneumonia and died 24 years after the shootout at age 62. Allie lived on for 42 more years, dying at age 99 in 1947.
Wyatt lived 48 years after the shootout, dying impoverished at age 80 in a dingy Los Angeles apartment. His common law wife, Josie, was too grief-stricken to attend the funeral. She had his body cremated, and since she was Jewish, she buried him in the Jewish cemetery of unincorporated Drennan, CA. When a post office was established there the next year, the town was renamed Earp, CA in his honor. Josie lived 15 more years and her body was cremated and buried next to Wyatt. It is the most visited grave in the cemetery.
In death Wyatt Earp gained the renown that had eluded him in life.
Tombstone owes its existence to Ed Schieffelin, an Indian scout assigned to nearby Camp Huachuca. When he wasn’t chasing the Chiricahua Apaches who inhabited the neighborhood, Schieffelin would journey out into the desert wilds “looking for rocks.” "Ed, the only stone you will find out there will be your tombstone," the soldiers would jeer.
But one day Schieffelin did find the stone he was looking for. It was laden with silver. He staked a claim in 1877 and called his mine Tombstone. Predictably word of Schieffelin’s discovery got out and miners, lawyers, saloon owners and prostitutes, business people, and two newspaper publishers flocked to the area. Initially they lived in tents among the mines near the closest water spring. But when it became apparent that a proper town was needed, they located it on a nearby high plateau called Goose Flats – the only place level enough to lay out a grid of streets and building lots. It was 1879.
Wyatt Earp arrived in Tombstone in December of that year and his older brothers James and Virgil along with younger brothers Morgan and Warren arrived six months later. One thing characterized the Earp clan – they were close. They trusted few others than each other. Moreover, each of the Earp men had a quality that originated in their father – they wanted to be somebody. They wanted to be respected by the community and successful in business and society. None of them would ever achieve that aim.
One non-family person who gained the confidence of the Earps, especially Virgil and Morgan, was John Henry “Doc” Holliday. Born in Griffin GA, his family moved to Valdosta GA when he was 13. He received a classical education from the Valdosta Institute, including competence in Greek, Latin, and French, making him far better educated than the Earps. After earning the degree of Doctor of Dentistry in Philadelphia, he practiced for a while in Atlanta. The famous physician Crawford Long was his cousin, and later Margret Mitchell, author of Gone with the Wind, would become a cousin by marriage.
Shortly after beginning his practice of dentistry, Holliday developed tuberculosis. His practice suffered and, moving to Texas, he began gambling to earn money and began drinking to control his cough. That combination and his hot temper put him in lots of fights which in those days were usually settled with a gun. In time Holliday developed a reputation as a fast gun and knife fighter, made even more fearsome by his having a terminal health problem. His reputation made sure he stayed on the move and ahead of the law.
Why Holliday went to Tombstone is uncertain. He had met the Earps in Dodge City KS but they followed different paths after that. He could have been drawn to Tombstone’s climate or its reputation as a boomtown where money was flowing across the gambling tables. But it is possible that the Earps asked Holliday to join them in Tombstone because of a looming confrontation between the Earp clan and a group loosely called the “cowboys” – a pejorative for rustlers and thieves. In those days, legitimate cowmen were referred to as cattle herders or ranchers.
This conflict was not helped by the fact that the Earps were Yankees, Republicans, and Virgil and James had fought in the Union army. They were also “town people” with the sympathies of the local newspaper, The Tombstone Epitaph, and its editor, John Clum, who was also the town mayor and postmaster. Moreover, Virgil Earp represented the law in Tombstone and Wyatt and Morgan were periodically his deputies. Virgil’s position could best be called police chief, although his title was town marshal. On more than one occasion, the Earps “buffaloed” – i.e. pistol whipped – a cowboy who came to town and got rowdy.
The cowboys were Southerners, former Confederate vets, and Democrats. Their most vocal troublemakers were Ike and Billy Clanton, Tom and Frank McLaury, and Billy Claiborne. The cowboys had the sympathies of the surrounding ranchers and the publisher of the other newspaper, The Tombstone Nugget, owned by Harry Woods. To make matters worse, the Cochise County sheriff, John Behan, always sided with the cowboys and ranchers and against the Earps. Behan’s common law wife, Josephine Marcus, would leave him for Wyatt Earp, eventually becoming Earp’s common law wife for 48 years. When this occurred is unknown but it would have fueled the animosity between Behan and Wyatt Earp.
Contrary to the stuff of Hollywood legends, men were not allowed to be armed with pistols and rifles while within the city limits of most “wild West” towns. They had to check their firearms either at their livery stable or any saloon or hotel. Of course, that regulation was often violated by concealing a pistol. With few exceptions, pistols were not worn in holsters but rather were shoved in the pants waistband or carried in a pocket. Ammunition was notoriously unreliable in that day and would fire unintentionally, so a live shell was never carried in the firing chamber, especially because of the threat to the male anatomy when pistols were carried inside the pants. Pistols were so inaccurate that men firing at one another at ten paces could empty their pistols without hitting each other.
Virgil Earp and his brothers did not dress like Matt Dillon. They wore black suits, street shoes, and bowler hats like most town people. They were often unarmed while on duty, since the people in town were supposed to be unarmed.
On March 15, 1881, an aborted stagecoach robbery en route to Benson cost the life of the driver and a passenger. A posse consisting of the Virgil, Morgan, and Wyatt Earp, Behan, and a Wells Fargo agent followed the trail to a ranch house and took one man into custody. He identified the bandits and the Earps continued the chase while Behan and the agent took the witness to Tombstone. When the Earp horses broke down and Behan failed to send them fresh mounts, the Earps had to walk 18 miles back to Tombstone. That caused even less love to be lost between the Earps and Behan. And when the witness escaped from Behan’s jail, helped by a cowboy confederate, the rift between the Earp faction and the Behan-cowboy faction grew wider.
On September 8, 1881, a stagecoach en route to nearby Bisbee was held up. There was no strong box on board so the passengers were robbed. The stage driver said one of the robbers referred to money as “sugar” – a phrase known to be used by Frank Stilwell, one of the cowboys. Stilwell had recently been one of Behan’s deputies but had been fired for “accounting irregularities.” A special boot heel worn by Stillwell and a print at the scene positively put him at the robbery site. The Earps found him in a Bisbee saloon and arrested him. Because sympathetic cowboys vouched that he was elsewhere during the robbery, he was released. The Earps rearrested him for interfering with mail delivery. Cowboys saw this as harassment by the Earps and warned the brothers that there would be retaliation.
On October 25, 1881 Ike Clanton and Doc Holliday had gotten into a shouting match that ended with mutual threats. Clanton was a known loud-mouth and both men had violent tempers. Clanton continued an all-night drinking binge and began boasting that he was going to kill Holliday. By noon on the 26th, he had armed himself with a rifle and pistol and was fully drunk. When word of this got to the Virgil, Wyatt, and Morgan Earp, they began looking for him, and once found, Virgil and Morgan “buffaloed” him into unconsciousness and then dragged him to the Recorder’s Office to await a judge to fine him for carrying firearms inside the city limits.
During the hearing, Wyatt and Ike began hurling threats and accusations at each other. Fuming, Wyatt stormed out of the court room after disarming Ike and came face to face with Tom McLaury who had come looking for his companion cowboy, Ike. More shouting and threats erupted between these two until Wyatt ended it by “buffaloing” McLaury and stalked away.
As he left, Wyatt saw Billy Clanton, Frank McLaury, and Billy Claiborne go into Spangenberg's Gun Shop. Claiborne was a 21-year old show-off who had fashioned a persona as a gunslinger and liked to be called Billy the Kid. Ike soon joined them in Spangenberg's. More provocative, however, was that Frank McLaury’s horse was up on the sidewalk – a violation of a city code. Wyatt walked over and grabbed the bridle in order to back the horse into the street when Frank rushed out and grabbed the bridle also. After a moment of silent stare-down, Frank backed his horse off of the sidewalk.
When Wyatt rejoined his brothers and Holliday, word came that the Clantons, McLaurys, and Billy Claiborne had gathered in an alley off Fremont Street next to C.S. Fly’s boarding house where Holliday lived. The Earps also lived in houses on Fremont and would have to pass the alley to go home. Billy Clanton and Frank McLaury were visibly wearing holstered pistols. Although the O.K. Corral would be mythologized as the location of the famous shootout, Fremont is one block north of the O.K. Corral, which fronts Allen Street, and the alley is six lots down from the corral’s rear pedestrian entrance.
Virgil decided that he should disarm the cowboys and he deputized his brothers and Holliday to go with him. While Wyatt was at Spangenberg’s, Virgil had stopped at the Wells Fargo office to pick up a short barrel shotgun which he hid under the long coat that he and the others were wearing. There was a cold wind blowing that day and patches of snow were on the ground. Holliday was wearing a pistol in a holster and carrying a cane. Virgil handed the shotgun to Holliday, telling him to put it under his long coat, and he took Holliday’s cane. The Earps had pistols in their coat pockets.
Around 3 p.m. the Earp party started north on Fourth Street and turned left on Fremont walking toward Third Street. Nearing Third Street, they saw the Clantons, McLaurys, and Billy the Kid Claiborne all talking to Johnny Behan. Behan ran toward the Earp party and said something to Virgil, but from this point in time the details get murky. In the subsequent inquest and trial, Behan said he told Virgil that he had disarmed the cowboys; Virgil said Behan warned him – "For God's sake, don't go down there or they will murder you!"
Most witnesses were pro-Earps or pro-cowboys. Those who were supposedly impartial gave conflicting testimony of the 30-second shootout. Witnesses generally agree that the Earps and Holliday walked to within six feet of the Clantons, McLaureys, and Claiborne and Virgil or Wyatt said something. Two pistol shots were fired almost simultaneously, one most likely from Billy Clanton but the second can’t be attributed. After these two shots were fired, Ike Clanton ran toward Wyatt screaming that he was not armed, and running past Wyatt, kept running for many blocks. Claiborne also cried out that he was unarmed and ducked into a nearby building where Behan had also taken cover.
Frank McLaury fell to his knees from a bullet in the stomach that quite likely came from Wyatt, who was standing in front of him and fired point blank. Some witnesses say he regained his feet and tried to cross over Fremont, firing a shot that grazed Holliday in the waist. Holliday fired his pistol and the bullet went through Frank’s head behind the right ear, killing him instantly.
Billy Clanton was shot through the right wrist, incapacitating his shooting hand. He switched his pistol to the left hand. When a bullet went through his left chest puncturing a lung, he sank to a sitting position and continued to fire his pistol. It’s believed one of his bullets entered Virgil’s calf. Billy continued to fire with his pistol resting on his leg until he ran out of ammunition. He received another shot in the abdomen, which was his mortal wound.
No pistol was found on Tom McLaury, although a witness who had just arrived in Tombstone to visit relatives and who could not have been partial to either side said that she saw Tom firing from under the neck of Billy’s horse. Witnesses say that when the shooting started, Tom ducked behind the horse and was reaching for a rifle in the horse’s scabbard when Holliday fired the shotgun blowing a hole in Tom’s right rib cage.
Morgan Earp was wounded in the melee by a bullet that either grazed or passed through both shoulder blades and a vertebra. Wyatt was the only person in the shootout to emerge unscathed.
When the smoke cleared Behan told Wyatt that he was under arrest. Supposedly, Wyatt replied: "I won't be arrested today. I am right here and am not going away. You deceived me. You told me these men were disarmed; I went to disarm them."
Later, the Earps and Holliday were charged with murder. The trial lasted 30 days, and the testimony was so contradictory that the judge threw the case out and dismissed the charges.
But a few days after Christmas 1881, Virgil was crossing a street in front of a saloon when five shots were fired at him from a building under construction. Two hit his left arm inflicting such damage that his arm was unusable for the rest of his life.
On March 18, 1882 Morgan was playing pool with the owner of a billiard parlor while Wyatt watched. As Morgan bent over to line up a pool shot, an unknown assailant shot through an outside window hitting him in the back. He fell over on the table where he died.
Wyatt suspected the killer was Frank Stillwell, with whom he’d had a run-in in the Bisbee stage coach robbery. Stillwell’s wife confirmed that he has boasted about the murder. After loading the casket carrying Morgan’s body on a California-bound train to their parents, Wyatt, Holliday, and another man found Stillwell in Tucson. No one witnessed what happened, but Stillwell’s bullet riddled body was found near the train track where Morgan’s body had been put aboard.
Behan tried to arrest Wyatt when he and Holliday returned to Tombstone but they ignored him and soon left Arizona Territory for good. Holliday headed for Colorado where he surprised himself and others by living another six years after the famous shootout. He died at age 36 in a sanatorium near Glenwood Springs. Five months prior to his death Ike Clanton died in a hail of bullets from a posse chasing him for cattle rustling.
Billy the Kid Claiborne challenged one man too many to a gunfight. He was shot to death on Allen Street one year after the shootout.
Johnny Behan was not nominated by the Democrat party as their candidate for the sheriff in 1882. He never again worked as a lawman, but spent the rest of his life employed in several government jobs. He died of natural causes at age 67 three decades after the shootout.
Virgil and his common law wife, Allie, accompanied his brother’s body to California for burial. He bounced around from saloon keeping to mining to law enforcement several times. He was a county deputy sheriff in Nevada when he contracted pneumonia and died 24 years after the shootout at age 62. Allie lived on for 42 more years, dying at age 99 in 1947.
Wyatt lived 48 years after the shootout, dying impoverished at age 80 in a dingy Los Angeles apartment. His common law wife, Josie, was too grief-stricken to attend the funeral. She had his body cremated, and since she was Jewish, she buried him in the Jewish cemetery of unincorporated Drennan, CA. When a post office was established there the next year, the town was renamed Earp, CA in his honor. Josie lived 15 more years and her body was cremated and buried next to Wyatt. It is the most visited grave in the cemetery.
In death Wyatt Earp gained the renown that had eluded him in life.
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