The Encyclopedia of Lawmen, Outlaws, and Gunfighters

by Leon Claire Metz

  Sr'e A90: GARRETT, PATRICK FLOYD JARVIS; HUGHES, JOHN REYNOLDS

  MILTON, Jefferson Davis (186 1-1947)

  Milton is remembered primarily as a lawman. Born the son of a Florida governor, he reached Texas around 1877 and joined the rangers in 1880. After three years, he followed a law enforcement carrer in New Mexico, becoming a range detective as well as a cowboy and a deputy sheriff before signing on with U.S. Customs. He left around 1890 to become a Pullman conductor before being appointed chief of police on August 10, 1894, at El Paso, Texas.

  In mid-March 1895, John Wesley Hardin arrived in El Paso and within a week had taken up with Beulah Mrose. That upset her husband, Martin, living in Ciudad Juarez as a New Mexico fugitive charged with cattle rustling. Martin demanded that Beulah return his money, and Hardin arranged a rendezvous between the two in El Paso. He even lined up U.S. Deputy Marshal George Scarborough to guide Martin across an old railroad trestle and into town. However, Hardin also arranged for Constable John Selman, Texas Ranger Frank McMahan, and Chief of Police Jeff Milton to meet Martin on the U.S. side of the Rio Grande. Milton carried a shotgun, and the three lawmen executed Mrose as soon as he stepped onto Texas soil. Their pay was the New Mexico reward money, rumored to be $350.

  Milton now drifted back to Arizona where he again became a U.S. deputy marshal as well as a Wells Fargo agent assigned to the Southern Pacific Railroad. In 1900, a botched holdup caused Jeff Milton some serious wounds. Nevertheless, he retired as a U.S. immigration agent in 1932. He died in Tucson.

  Si'r' HARDIN, JOHN WESLEY; MROSE, HELEN; MROSE, MARTIN

  MINER, William (1846-1913)

  Bill Miner was born in Ingham County, Michigan, and reached California as soon as he could, about 1860. He Joined the Second California Cavalry in May 1864 but deserted two months later. In 1866, authorities convicted him of horse theft. He spent the next four years at San Quentin, being released on July 12, 1870. Six months later, in 1871, Miner and two friends held up a stagecoach and took the Wells Fargo box. Miner and one of his partners, "Alkali Jim" Harrington, were captured and tried in Calaveras County. Each received 10 years. However, because they had been forced to wear leg irons in court, the case was appealed and a new trial ordered. This time each man received a 13-year sentence, which should have told Miner something about com plaining too much. In 1879, Miner and a fellow convict named Gibson brutally beat another convict. Both were flogged.

  William (Bill) Miner (Robert G. McCubbin Collection)

  Miner took his release papers in 1880 and headed for Colorado, where he and Arthur Pond, and later Pond's brother, held up several stages. A posse captured all three, but Miner managed to slip away. A furious posse lynched the Pond brothers.

  In March 1881, Miner and Stanton Jones robbed the Del Norte stage. Sheriff William Bronough of Saguache County caught them, but Miner broke loose, grabbed a gun, and wounded both the sheriff and his deputy. Then Miner headed for California, where a Wells Fargo detective captured him. A jury dispatched him back to San Quentin in 1881 for another 25 years.

  In 1892 Miner tried another jail break, a futile attempt that earned him a mouth and neck full of buckshot. Still, the state released him in June 1901. After some brief, stagnant attempts at honest work, he and three others held up a train near Portland. One of his companions died in the shootout, but Miner escaped to British Columbia, where in 1904 he and others successfully robbed a couple of trains of an undetermined amount of money. A week later the Northwest Mounted Police captured him. A jury sentenced him to life imprisonment. But jails were made for breaking out of, sometimes, and on August 7, 1907, he and others slipped over the wall. The others were recaptured. Miner just kept running and didn't stop until reaching Pennsylvania, where he lived as George Anderson. He showed up next in Georgia, where on February 18, 1911, he and Charles Hunter held up a Southern Express train. He hadn't gotten 20 miles when the law caught up with him again. A Georgia jury gave him 20 years in the state prison at Milledgeville. This time, in spite of several escape attempts, he broke out only through death on September 2, 1913. No relative or friend claimed the body, so it lies today in the Milledgeville City Cemetery.

  MITCHELL, William (a.k.a. Baldy Russell; John Davis) (1850-1928)

  The remarks of Bill Mitchell's biographer tell the story: "He could not read books, but he could read sign. . . . He would not run from anybody and refused to let anyone `run over' him . . . ready for fight or a frolic." On the western frontier there may have been scores of "Bill Mitchells," but none produced a better story than Bill Mitchell from Hood County, Texas. The Mitchell story is one of a feud and its resultant killings. After that, the feud evolves into a 47-year odyssey of "life on the dodge."

  In a struggle over land, pride, and probably factors yet to be understood, the Mitchell clan went to war with the Truitts. The two factions couldn't agree about anything important or even trivial. They agreed only that they despised each other.

  After a bitter court conflict described as "vexatious litigation," on March 28, 1874, the case became deadly serious. In a sense it started outside of Granbury, Hood County, Texas, when James, Sam, and 17-year-old Isaac Truitt galloped past the Mitchell party hurling jeers and insults. The irked Mitchells grabbed their horses and caught up with the Truitts at Contrary Creek, where the family had

  stopped for water. At this point the yelling and cursing turned into gunfire that left Sam and "Little Ike" Truitt dead. Brother James had a gaping hole in his shoulder.

  From this moment on, Bill Mitchell and his friend Mit Graves were fugitives. Other Mitchells were arrested, although they probably never fired a shot. Nevertheless, the authorities locked them in "close confinement and well guarded."

  A judge sentenced Nelson "Cooney" Mitchell, the family patriarch, to be hanged. The judgment was affirmed, his appeal denied. Bill Mitchell chose not to come in and take the blame for what he himself had done. On October 7, 1875, Nelson's youngest son, who no doubt was attempting to come to his father's aid, was slain by jail guards after dark as he prowled around jailhouse walls, armed with a double-barreled scattergun and a brace of Colt revolvers. Two days later, the state executed the 79-year-old prisoner.

  Bill Mitchell remained a fugitive in the wild brush country north of Del Rio, existing on what the land could provide, trading animal pelts, and collecting county bounties for the skins of wolves and cougars so he could purchase provisions. During the early 1880s, Bill Mitchell moved over to New Mexico Territory, hanging out at Seven Rivers in the Pecos Valley. There on April 28, 1884, he married a divorcee, Mary Jane Beckett Holliday.

  By 1888, Mitchell, now using an alias of John Davis, managed to elude capture. Soon it was time for another name change-Henry "Baldy" Russell was born. He moved farther west, this time to Magdalena, New Mexico, a wild and woolly, wide-open, and wide-awake frontier town described as "behind the beyond." Later he sought and obtained employment in the mines near Silver City, but there were just too many people there for "Baldy." He headed in 1892 for the Jornada del Muerto (Journey of Death), an exceedingly hostile and desolate patch of real estate, eventually settling on the Jornada at the northern edge of the Tularosa Basin, but still in New Mexico.

  Completely cut off from the rest of the world, Mitchell would make but two or three trips to town every year for supplies, while his wife and two daughters, Maude and Belle, remained behind to do chores and tend livestock. At home, "Baldy" Russell always carried a six-shooter. Mary Jane stood guard on the roof with a rifle cradled in the crook of her arm and scanned the horizon through binoculars. A fugitive's life was hard on all.

  But trouble, when it came, was not necessarily going to be easy to see. On March 23, 1907, H. M. Denny, sheriff of Otero County, New Mexico Territory, was notified of the fugitive in his bailiwick. Accompanied by one of his deputies, Ben Wooten, he set out to arrest "Baldy" Russell. Assuming an undercover role, the pair of lawmen lured Russell away from his residence on the pretext of examining mining property. Within a brief time, Ba
ldy was in irons and on his way back to Texas.

  As the next three years dragged by, Mitchell spent time in jail, at trial, out on bond, back in jail, out again, and back in New Mexico, first at one place and then the other. On March 25, 1912, Bill Mitchell entered the Texas prison at Huntsville, sentenced to life imprisonment 38 years after the murders. But Mitchell possessed the instincts of a wily coyote. He escaped on July 14, 1914, and once again assumed the role of John Davis. For the next 14 years, the accomplished fugitive carefully guarded the secrets of his past as old age began to hobble his movement. In April 1928, Bill Mitchell, with a failing heart, surrendered at a hospital in Douglas, Arizona-and there he died.

  MORCO, John (a.k.a. Happy Jack) (?-1873)

  John Morco was a cross between a good guy and a bad guy. He allegedly killed four men in California when they tried to prevent him from beating his wife. He next showed up as a policeman in Ellsworth, Kansas, where in the Joe Brennan Saloon he was involved in the Billy/Ben Thompson confrontation that led to the death of Sheriff Chauncey Whitney.

  Morco thereafter left town after allegedly stealing a pair of six-shooters. He returned to Ellsworth in 1873. There he and policeman Charles Brown argued; Brown shot him twice, killing him.

  .366- O. THOMPSON, BEN; THOMPSON, WILLIAM J.

  MORENO, Maria (1880-1899)

  The story of Arizona Territorial Prison inmate 1224 does not revolve around the exploits of a six-shooterpacking dynamo. Near her Yuma picket-house, at 10 o'clock on the morning of July 2, 1896, Maria Moreno, armed with a double-barreled shotgun, killed her 15-year-old brother, Alberto, blowing off

  one side of his face. Alberto had been critical regarding her unbecoming behavior at an area dance. The 16-year-old Maria, not wishing to listen, shot him dead.

  Maria was held without bond, though her crime was reduced to manslaughter. A jury sentenced her to prison for one year and one month, the youngest female prisoner ever sent to the Yuma Territorial Prison. She served her sentence and was released.

  A year later, on July 25, 1899, Maria Moreno died. "Maria was demented and was not responsible for her acts," reported the citing facts apparently already widely known. Life could prove tough for teenagers, especially poor ones!

  MORTON, William Scott (1856-1878)

  This Lincoln County War gunman was born near Richmond, Virginia, and somehow wound up in Lincoln County, New Mexico, where he went to work for the House of Murphy. In March 1877, he became foreman of the Murphy-Dolan cow camp on the Pecos River; stories still exist that he killed at least two men there. As a member of Sheriff William Brady's posse, on February 18, 1878, Morton helped ignite the Lincoln County War by being one of the group that killed Englishman John Tunstall. Less than a month later, Morton and another slayer, Frank Baker, were captured by the Regulators, among them Billy the Kid. Morton subsequently wrote a letter to a friend in Richmond, Virginia, saying that he expected to be killed. And he was killed, probably by execution.

  .36P, akrj BILLY THE KID; LINCOLN COUNTY WAR

  MOSSMAN, Burton (1867-1956)

  This lawman came out of Minnesota, where he had been born, to survey the Sacramento Mountains in southern New Mexico, as well as to become a cowboy. During the next few years he moseyed over to Colorado and Kansas before becoming in 1897 manager of the Hash Knife outfit near Holbrook, Arizona. In 1901, he became the first captain of the Arizona Rangers, one of his earliest and greatest cases being his pursuit into Sonora, Mexico, and the capture of the murderer Augustino Chacon, who by his own admission had killed 52 men. Chacon was hanged at Solomonville, Arizona, on November 21, 1902. Mossman later entered the cattle business around Roswell, New Mexico, where he died. He is buried there.

  Seer o; ARIZONA RANGERS

  MROSE, Helen Beulah (1872-1904)

  She was born Helen Williams on November 1, 1872 at Berry Creek, Williamson County, Texas. In 1884, the family moved to northern Mason County, Texas, where she met Steve Jennings. They married on March 21, 1889, and in spite of a rocky marriage had three children, only one of whom-a daughtersurvived. The daughter, who in photos resembles a boy, has been referred to as "Albert.") In October 1884, Helen and her daughter moved to Eddy County, New Mexico, to be closer to kin. She had never been divorced from her first husband, but she took the name of Helen Beulah and married Martin Mrose, a local cowboy. Martin unfortunately had several local complaints pending against him, including one for cattle rustling. After being arrested-but jailed only briefly-in Midland, Texas, he fled to Mexico. In Chihuahua, both he and Beulah were arrested by a Santa Fe Railroad detective named Beauregard Lee, who arranged to incarcerate Martin briefly in Ciudad Juarez. However, Martin bribed his way out and filed for Mexican citizenship. Mrose now needed an attorney, so Helen took Martin's cash and crossed the river into El Paso, where she retained the services of lawyer and former Texas gunfighter John Wesley Hardin. Within a week, however, Hardin had both her and much of her money, and she was not returning to her husband. From across the Rio Grande, an enraged Martin Mrose demanded his funds. Hardin pretended to arrange a clandestine meeting between the husband and wife on the El Paso side of the river. Hardin convinced U.S. Deputy Marshal George Scarborough to lure and guide Mrose across the Rio Grande. Once Mrose was on the Texas side, George Scarborough, Texas Ranger Frank McMahan, former El Paso police chief Jeff Milton, and possibly El Paso constable John Selman shot him to death.

  Beulah lent John Wesley Hardin roughly $1,000 to purchase a half-interest in El Paso's Wigwam Saloon, and Hardin retained her as his secretary to write his memoirs. Still their lives and times together were not happy. He once ordered her to write a letter saying she was committing suicide,

  while she once kept him at bay in their apartment by threatening to kill him with his own six-shooter. She even filed a $100 peace bond against Hardin on August 7, 1895. Nevertheless they had a need for one another and perhaps even shared some affection. She left him once and took a train to Arizona. At Deming, New Mexico, through some premonition, no doubt a sense of doom, she wired him, "I fear you are in trouble and I'm coming back." She did return, but their life was not any better, and she left again.

  A few days later, on August 19, 1895, Constable John Selman killed John Wesley Hardin in the El Paso Acme Saloon. Beulah returned and paid the funeral costs of $77.50. She also laid claim to the Hardin estate, insisting that she had a right to it, primarily because of unpaid secretarial services regarding his autobiography.

  In the end, she was outlawyered, got nothing, and left again. In February 1896, she and her daughter moved to the San Francisco/Oakland area, where between May and July she relinquished her daughter to a Catholic orphanage and likely never saw her again. In California, Helen probably worked at prostitution and as a drink hustler, being reduced to little more than a panhandler when she collapsed in an alley and then died in a Sacramento hospital on September 11, 1904. Helen Beulah Mrose is buried in Sacramento, California, probably in the East Lawn Cemetery.

  See HARDIN, JOHN WESLEY; MILTON, JEFFERSON DAVIS; MROSE, MARTIN; SELMAN, JOHN HENRY

  MROSE, Martin (1856-1895)

  Martin Mrose (the last name is spelled in various ways) was born in 1856 at the struggling Wendish colony of Serbin, Texas. By 1879 he had become a horse wrangler, working for rancher Mahlon McCowan in Atascosa County. Later, the wellknown New Mexico figure Charles B. Eddy retained him as an employee for the Eddy-Bissell Cattle Company, with ranches in New Mexico and Colorado. Martin eventually became Eddy's trail boss and chief wrangler, although in the financial panic of 1893, Martin was released. He bought a small ranch of his own five miles east of Eddy, homesteaded on another tract, and stocked each with cattle, some of it rustled. He married in November 1894 Helen Jennings, a young lady who subsequently became Helen Beulah Mrose. Meanwhile, although he was never specifically charged with selling pilfered livestock, a grand jury indicted him for receiving $24 in stolen property. The young couple sold out and moved to Midland, Texas, where Mrose learned that rewards on
his head were now circulating across southern New Mexico. Helen fled to Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, across the Rio Grande from El Paso, and Martin quickly followed. The Mexican police arrested him on a train in Chihuahua, but he fought extradition back to the United States.

  In the meantime, Beulah crossed into El Paso and sought the legal services of attorney and former gunslinger John Wesley Hardin. Beulah and Hardin subsequently began an affectionate relationship, and she decided not to return to her husband. When Martin asked her for his money, Hardin dispatched a U.S. deputy marshal, George Scarborough, to entice Martin to the north end of the Mexican Central Railroad Bridge on the pretense of meeting Beulah. There the two men were met on June 29, 1895, by former El Paso chief of police and now U.S. deputy marshals Jeff Milton and George Scarborough, Texas Ranger Frank McMahan, and (quite possibly) El Paso constable John Selman. These four lawmen (including Scarborough) shot Martin full of revolver rounds and shotgun pellets. He was buried the next day in El Paso's Concordia Cemetery, three graves north of where John Wesley Hardin would soon lie.

  .Sr'e CGS: HARDIN, JOHN WESLEY; MILTON, JEFFERSON DAVIS; MROSE, HELEN BEULAH; SCARBOROUGH, GEORGE ADOLPHUS; SELMAN, JOHN HENRY

  MURRIETA, Joaquin (1832-1853)

  Joaquin Murrieta, one of the legendary California bandits, likely was born and raised in Sonora, Mexico. He is believed to have married a Rosa Feliz in Sonora and to have taken her with him-along with several brothers and sisters-when he moved to California during the Gold Rush. By 1850, his claim had been jumped, Rosa raped, a brother lynched, and Joaquin whipped. Joaquin killed several of his enemies, and from that time on he made his living by running stock into Mexico and by robbing miners, travelers, and occasionally ranchers. In April 1882, he and his gang murdered a merchant named Allen Ruddle and escaped with $500. The gang moved toward Los Angeles, then twisted north toward San Andreas and into Mariposa County, stealing horses